The Detection of Malingering on Measures of Competency to Stand Trial: A Study of Coached and Uncoached Simulators

Competency to stand trial evaluations serve as the most frequently requested type of forensic evaluation. Despite the court?s need for accurate and credible information, defendants referred for competency evaluations may be motivated to malinger incompetency in order to avoid trial and gain personal liberty (Rogers, Sewell, Grandjean, & Vitacco, 2002). Furthermore, motivated malingerers can obtain information about tests prior to evaluations, particularly from the Internet and their attorneys. Previous research has demonstrated that coaching on test-taking strategies helps malingerers avoid detection on psychological tests like the MMPI-2 (e.g., Storm & Graham, 2000), but no research has examined the effects of test-strategy coaching on competency measures. This study investigated the detection of malingering on two measures of competency to stand trial: the Georgia Court Competency Test (GCCT) and the Evaluation of Competency to Stand Trial ? Revised (ECST-R). Using a simulation design, undergraduates (n = 101) were randomly assigned into Control (instructed to respond honestly), Uncoached Malingerer (instructed to feign incompetency without receiving tips to elude detection), and Coached Malingerer groups (instructed to feign incompetency and received tips to elude detection) and presented with a hypothetical criminal case scenario that required them to undergo a competency evaluation. Scores on the GCCT and the ECST-R Factual Scale served as indicators of competency, while scores on the GCCT Atypical Presentation and ECST-R Atypical Presentation scales served as indicators of malingering. MANOVA and profile analysis were employed. As expected, results indicate that both malingering groups appeared markedly impaired on overall competency scores in comparison to the Control group. Furthermore, the two malingering groups appeared markedly elevated on malingering scale scores in comparison to the Control group. Contrary to expectations, test-strategy coaching exerted little impact on competency and malingering scale scores. Both malingering scales effectively discriminated between malingerers and honest responders. The findings allow for cautious optimism in the ability of these measures? malingering screens to detect feigned incompetency, even when individuals receive coaching on how to defeat the measures. Moreover, this study adds to the growing body of literature underscoring the importance of the assessment of malingering as a routine component of competency evaluations

Optimal Foraging By Bacteriophages Through Host Avoidance

Optimal foraging theory explains diet restriction as an adaptation to best utilize an array of foods differing in quality, the poorest items not worth the lost opportunity of finding better ones. Although optimal foraging has traditionally been applied to animal behavior, the model is easily applied to viral host range, which is genetically determined. The usual perspective for bacteriophages ( bacterial viruses) is that expanding host range is always advantageous if fitness on former hosts is not compromised. However, foraging theory identifies conditions favoring avoidance of poor hosts even if larger host ranges have no intrinsic costs. Bacteriophage T7 rapidly evolved to discriminate among different Escherichia coli strains when one host strain was engineered to kill infecting phages but the other remained productive. After modifying bacteria to yield more subtle fitness effects on T7, we tested qualitative predictions of optimal foraging theory by competing broad and narrow host range phages against each other. Consistent with the foraging model, diet restriction was favored when good hosts were common or there was a large difference in host quality. Contrary to the model, the direction of selection was affected by the density of poor hosts because being able to discriminate was costly.Integrative Biolog

Evolutionary Stability of a Refactored Phage Genome

Engineered genetic systems are commonly unstable; if propagated, they evolve to reverse or modify engineered elements because the elements impair fitness. A goal of synthetic biology is thus to anticipate and avoid detrimental engineering, but little is yet known about which types of elements cause problems in different contexts. In prior work, 30% of the genome of bacteriophage T7 was “refactored” by the insertion or modification of 65 short sequences that included a useful restriction enzyme site in order to, among other goals, separate genes and their translational initiation regions from each other and from other genetic elements. Although gene sequences and known important regions of regulatory elements were kept intact, the translational efficiency of some genes or element regulatory function might have been compromised. We adapted the refactored phage for rapid growth in two conditions, observing fitness and sequence evolution. As anticipated from the original work, refactoring had major fitness effects in both environments, but most of the fitness costs were recovered upon adaptation. The evolved phages retained 60–70% of the design elements, suggesting they had only minor fitness effects. Approximately half the elements that were lost lie within large deletions commonly observed during adaptation of the wild-type genome. Some elements were lost or modified in parallel between the adaptations without affecting T7 gene sequences, but no obvious correlates can be made. Nevertheless, experimental adaptations are useful for identifying specific synthetic design problems, and we suggest that experimental evolution in conjunction with alternative engineering may also be useful in overcoming those problems

Evolutionary Stability of a Refactored Phage Genome

Engineered genetic systems are commonly unstable; if propagated, they evolve to reverse or modify engineered elements because the elements impair fitness. A goal of synthetic biology is thus to anticipate and avoid detrimental engineering, but little is yet known about which types of elements cause problems in different contexts. In prior work, 30% of the genome of bacteriophage T7 was “refactored” by the insertion or modification of 65 short sequences that included a useful restriction enzyme site in order to, among other goals, separate genes and their translational initiation regions from each other and from other genetic elements. Although gene sequences and known important regions of regulatory elements were kept intact, the translational efficiency of some genes or element regulatory function might have been compromised. We adapted the refactored phage for rapid growth in two conditions, observing fitness and sequence evolution. As anticipated from the original work, refactoring had major fitness effects in both environments, but most of the fitness costs were recovered upon adaptation. The evolved phages retained 60–70% of the design elements, suggesting they had only minor fitness effects. Approximately half the elements that were lost lie within large deletions commonly observed during adaptation of the wild-type genome. Some elements were lost or modified in parallel between the adaptations without affecting T7 gene sequences, but no obvious correlates can be made. Nevertheless, experimental adaptations are useful for identifying specific synthetic design problems, and we suggest that experimental evolution in conjunction with alternative engineering may also be useful in overcoming those problems

Running Title: A Physical Map of the Soybean Genome

ABSTRACT- 2-Wu et al. We report a genome-wide, bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) and planttransformation-competent binary large-insert plasmid clone (hereafter BIBAC)based physical map of the soybean genome. The map was constructed from 78,001 clones from five soybean BAC and BIBAC libraries representing 9.6 haploid genomes and three cultivars. The map consisted of 2,905 BAC/BIBAC contigs, and was estimated to span 1,408 Mb in physical length. The physical length is about 293 Mb greater than the expected 1,115-Mb genome size of the species, indicating that most, if not all, of the contigs remain overlapped. We evaluated the reliability of the map contigs using different contig assembly strategies, independent contig building methods, DNA marker screening results of the BACs and BIBACs and different fingerprinting methods, and the results showed that the map was assembled properly. Furthermore, we have integrated 781 of the contigs spanning 663 Mbp (59.5%) of the soybean genome into the existing soybean composite genetic map using 273 SSR and 115 RFLP markers. This map represents the first genome-wide, BAC/BIBAC-based physical map of soybean and will provide a powerful platform for many areas of soybean genome research, including large-scale genome sequencing, target marker development, gene mapping, and gene and quantitative trait locus (QTL) cloning. The inclusion of BIBACs in the map will further streamline the utility of the map for positional cloning of genes and QTLs, and functional analysis of soybean genomic sequences. [The supplemental material on the clone fingerprint database and contigs of the physical map is available online a