Female Sexual-offenders: Personality Pathology as a Mediator of the Relationship between Childhood Sexual Abuse History and Sexual Abuse Perpetration against Others

Objective: The goal was to examine, in an all-female sample, possible mechanisms for the relationship between a history of childhood sexual abuse and the likelihood of perpetrating sexual abuse as an adult. It was hypothesized that Borderline and Antisocial Personality Disorder tendencies would mediate the relationship between these two forms of abuse. Method: One hundred forty two female participants (61 sex-offenders and 81 non-sex offenders) were recruited from a women’s prison in the Midwest. The participants completed measures that included a childhood history of sexual abuse, socially desirable responding, primary and secondary psychopathy, and Borderline Personality Disorder tendencies. Results: Participants in the sexual-offender group reported more frequent instances of childhood sexual abuse (p \u3c .05, M = 16.4, SD = 7.2) than participants in the non-sex offender group (M = 12.2, SD = 7.7). Consistent with past research, childhood sexual abuse was related to Borderline Personality Disorder tendencies (r = .36, p \u3c .01). However, discriminant function analyses did not reveal support for our mediational hypotheses. Finally, the results indicated that participants in the sexual-offender group experienced childhood sexual abuse for a greater duration of time (p \u3c .05, M = 27.8, SD = 20.5 months) than participants in the non-sex offender group (M = 16.6, SD = 10.4). Conclusions: This study replicated previous research conducted on all-male samples, suggesting that the nature of the sexual abuse suffered in childhood is an important variable in predicting future sexual abuse perpetration

Collective modes and current-algebraic sum rules in nuclear medium

In-medium sum rules following from the chiral charge algebra of QCD are reviewed, and new sum rules are derived. The new sum rules relate the I^G(J^{PC})=1^-(0^{++}) excitations (quantum numbers of a_0(980)) to the scalar and isovector densities, and are nontrivial for the isospin-asymmetric medium. We present an extensive illustration of the sum rules with help of quark matter in the Nambu-Jona--Lasinio model. Collective excitations different from the usual meson branches (spin-isospin sound modes) are shown to contribute significantly to the sum rules and to play a crucial role in the limit of vanishing current quark masses.Comment: latex, elsart.sty, 32 pages, 11 figure

B=1 Soliton of the Nambu - Jona-Lasinio model in medium}

The solitonic sector of the Nambu - Jona-Lasinio model with baryon number one is solved in the presence of an external medium. The calculations fully include the polarization of both the Dirac sea and the medium as well as the Pauli blocking effect. We found that with an increasing density the medium destabilizes the soliton. At finite medium density the soliton mass gets reduced whereas the mean square baryon radius shows an increase - a swelling of the soliton. At some critical density of about two times nuclear matter density there is no localized solution - the soliton disappears.Comment: PHYSTEX, 14 pages, 5 figures (available upon request), Preprint RUB-TPII-26/9

The Conduit System Transports Soluble Antigens from the Afferent Lymph to Resident Dendritic Cells in the T Cell Area of the Lymph Node

AbstractResident dendritic cells (DC) within the T cell area of the lymph node take up soluble antigens that enter via the afferent lymphatics before antigen carrying DC arrive from the periphery. The reticular network within the lymph node is a conduit system forming the infrastructure for the fast delivery of soluble substances from the afferent lymph to the lumen of high endothelial venules (HEVs). Using high-resolution light microscopy and 3D reconstruction, we show here that these conduits are unique basement membrane-like structures ensheathed by fibroblastic reticular cells with occasional resident DC embedded within this cell layer. Conduit-associated DC are capable of taking up and processing soluble antigens transported within the conduits, whereas immigrated mature DC occur remote from the reticular fibers. The conduit system is, therefore, not a closed compartment that shuttles substances through the lymph node but represents the morphological equivalent to the filtering function of the lymph node

El Niño variability off Peru during the last 20,000 years

Here we present a high-resolution marine sediment record from the El Niño region off the coast of Peru spanning the last 20,000 years. Sea surface temperature, photosynthetic pigments, and a lithic proxy for El Niño flood events on the continent are used as paleo–El Niño–Southern Oscillation proxy data. The onset of stronger El Niño activity in Peru started around 17,000 calibrated years before the present, which is later than modeling experiments show but contemporaneous with the Heinrich event 1. Maximum El Niño activity occurred during the early and late Holocene, especially during the second and third millennium B.P. The recurrence period of very strong El Niño events is 60–80 years. El Niño events were weak before and during the beginning of the Younger Dryas, during the middle of the Holocene, and during medieval times. The strength of El Niño flood events during the last millennium has positive and negative relationships to global and Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions

Chiral Quark Dynamics in Dense Nuclear Matter

We consider a new approach to the description of dense nuclear matter in the framework of chirally symmetric, quark-based hadron models. As previously in the Skyrme model, the dense environment is described in terms of hyperspherical cells of unit baryon number. The intrinsic curvature of these cells generates a new gauge interaction for the quark fields which mediates interactions with the ambient matter. We apply this approach to the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model, construct its curved-space quark propagator and solve the ladder Bethe-Salpeter equation for the pion. We find a high-density phase transition to chiral restoration, discuss the density dependence of the chiral order parameter and of the pion properties, and compare with results of the conventional chemical-potential approach. The new approach can additionally describe baryon-density-free cavities in the dense medium.Comment: 40 pages, UMPP #94--037, (4 figures available on request by e-mail or FAX

Volumetry of [11C]-methionine PET uptake and MRI contrast enhancement in patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme

We investigated the relationship between three-dimensional volumetric data of the metabolically active tumour volume assessed using [(11)C]-methionine positron emission tomography (MET-PET) and the area of gadolinium-diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (Gd-DTPA) enhancement assessed using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in patients with recurrent glioblastoma (GBM).MET-PET and contrast-enhanced MRI with Gd-DTPA were performed in 12 uniformly pretreated patients with recurrent GBM. To calculate the volumes in cubic centimetres, a threshold-based volume-of-interest (VOI) analysis of the metabolically active tumour volume (MET uptake indexes of > or = 1.3 and > or = 1.5) and of the area of Gd-DTPA enhancement was performed after coregistration of all images.In all patients, the metabolically active tumour volume as shown using a MET uptake index of > or = 1.3 was larger than the volume of Gd-DTPA enhancement (30.2 + or - 22.4 vs. 13.7 + or - 10.6 cm(3); p = 0.04). Metabolically active tumour volumes as shown using MET uptake indexes of > or =1.3 and > or = 1.5 and the volumes of Gd-DTPA enhancement showed a positive correlation (r = 0.76, p = 0.003, for an index of > or =1.3, and r = 0.74, p = 0.005, for an index of > or =1.5).The present data suggest that in patients with recurrent GBM the metabolically active tumour volume may be substantially underestimated by Gd-DTPA enhancement. The findings support the notion that complementary information derived from MET uptake and Gd-DTPA enhancement may be helpful in developing individualized, patient-tailored therapy strategies in patients with recurrent GBM