The reliability and validity of the Sexual Violence Risk-20 (SVR-20): An International Review

This article reports on the current state of research about the most commonly used Structured Professional Judgement (SPJ) guidelines for sexual offender risk assessment, the Sexual Violence Risk-20 (SVR-20). After describing the general characteristics as well as frequently discussed strengths and weaknesses of this risk assessment approach, we give an international overview of the empirical results of the reliability and validity of the SVR-20. We conclude by describing briefly a convergent strategy for sexual offender risk assessment incorporating the SVR-20 and offer some future directions for international research on the SPJ approach

Event-Based Driver Performance Assessment

Driving is an intermittent control task during which drivers manage their work across a number of driving and non-driving sub-tasks. The multitasking nature forces drivers to adopt situated safety margins (tolerances) in terms of time-headway (THW), time-to-collision (TTC), time-to-linecrossing (TLC), etc. Unacceptable situations (i.e. violations of safety margins defined here as events) are characterized by corrective maneuvers or actions. The frequency with which corrective actions are necessary (bandwidth), the hazard level of the situation that inspired these actions (performance), and the rate and magnitude of the responses to these situations (effort) provide a rich signature of how drivers manage their task(s). We hypothesize that drivers’ perception of performance and effort are founded in the characteristics of experienced events. This is explored by comparing driving characteristics of bus drivers who drive on the shoulder of a highway with and without the support of a haptic lateral support system (LSS). Subjective performance and effort scores extracted from a usability questionnaire and objective ones from our event-based analysis show highly significant correspondence when comparing supported versus unsupported driving. This provides validating support for the adopted event-based approach. The proposed approach offers not only sensitive metrics of driver performance and effort to evaluate ITS applications but also explanatory power by exposing the various strategically different ways drivers are affected by these systems. This method of quantifying and analyzing driver data affords new opportunities to evaluate driver responses to ITS applications

Event-Based Driver Performance Assessment

Driving is an intermittent control task during which drivers manage their work across a number of driving and non-driving sub-tasks. The multitasking nature forces drivers to adopt situated safety margins (tolerances) in terms of time-headway (THW), time-to-collision (TTC), time-to-linecrossing (TLC), etc. Unacceptable situations (i.e. violations of safety margins defined here as events) are characterized by corrective maneuvers or actions. The frequency with which corrective actions are necessary (bandwidth), the hazard level of the situation that inspired these actions (performance), and the rate and magnitude of the responses to these situations (effort) provide a rich signature of how drivers manage their task(s). We hypothesize that drivers’ perception of performance and effort are founded in the characteristics of experienced events. This is explored by comparing driving characteristics of bus drivers who drive on the shoulder of a highway with and without the support of a haptic lateral support system (LSS). Subjective performance and effort scores extracted from a usability questionnaire and objective ones from our event-based analysis show highly significant correspondence when comparing supported versus unsupported driving. This provides validating support for the adopted event-based approach. The proposed approach offers not only sensitive metrics of driver performance and effort to evaluate ITS applications but also explanatory power by exposing the various strategically different ways drivers are affected by these systems. This method of quantifying and analyzing driver data affords new opportunities to evaluate driver responses to ITS applications

Beyond the Brim of the Hat: Kinematics of Globular Clusters out to Large Radius in the Sombrero Galaxy

We have obtained radial velocity measurements for 51 new globular clusters around the Sombrero galaxy. These measurements were obtained using spectroscopic observations from the AAOmega spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope and the Hydra spectrograph at WIYN. Combined with our own past measurements and velocity measurements obtained from the literature we have constructed a large database of radial velocities that contains a total of 360 confirmed globular clusters. Previous studies' analyses of the kinematics and mass profile of the Sombrero globular cluster system have been constrained to the inner ~9' (~24 kpc or ~5 effective radii), but our new measurements have increased the radial coverage of the data, allowing us to determine the kinematic properties of M104 out to ~15' (~41 kpc or ~9 effective radii). We use our set of radial velocities to study the GC system kinematics and to determine the mass profile and V-band mass-to-light profile of the galaxy. We find that the V-band mass-to-light ratio increases from 4.5 at the center to a value of 20.9 at 41 kpc (~9 effective radii or 15'), which implies that the dark matter halo extends to the edge of our available data set. We compare our mass profile at 20 kpc (~4 effective radii or ~7.4') to the mass computed from x-ray data and find good agreement. We also use our data to look for rotation in the globular cluster system as a whole, as well as in the red and blue subpopulations. We find no evidence for significant rotation in any of these samples.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal; 23 pages, 14 figures, and 2 table

Sea ice led to poleward-shifted winds at the Last Glacial Maximum: the influence of state dependency on CMIP5 and PMIP3 models

Latitudinal shifts in the Southern Ocean westerly wind jet could drive changes in the glacial to interglacial ocean CO2 inventory. However, whilst CMIP5 model results feature consistent future-warming jet shifts, there is considerable disagreement in deglacial-warming jet shifts. We find here that the dependence of pre-industrial (PI) to Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) jet shifts on PI jet position, or state dependency, explains less of the shifts in jet simulated by the models for the LGM compared with future-warming scenarios. State dependence is also weaker for intensity changes, compared to latitudinal shifts in the jet. Winter sea ice was considerably more extensive during the LGM. Changes in surface heat fluxes, due to this sea ice change, probably had a large impact on the jet. Models that both simulate realistically large expansions in sea ice and feature PI jets which are south of 50° S show an increase in wind speed around 55° S and can show a poleward shift in the jet between the PI and the LGM. However, models with the PI jet positioned equatorwards of around 47° S do not show this response: the sea ice edge is too far from the jet for it to respond. In models with accurately positioned PI jets, a +1° difference in the latitude of the sea ice edge tends to be associated with a −0.85° shift in the 850 hPa jet. However, it seems that around 5° of expansion of LGM sea ice is necessary to hold the jet in its PI position. Since the Gersonde et al. (2005) data support an expansion of more than 5°, this result suggests that a slight poleward shift and intensification was the most likely jet change between the PI and the LGM. Without the effect of sea ice, models simulate poleward-shifted westerlies in warming climates and equatorward-shifted westerlies in colder climates. However, the feedback of sea ice counters and reverses the equatorward trend in cooler climates so that the LGM winds were more likely to have also been shifted slightly poleward

Intensity Distribution of Waves Transmitted Through a Multiple Scattering Medium

The distributions of the angular transmission coefficient and of the total transmission are calculated for multiple scattered waves. The calculation is based on a mapping to the distribution of eigenvalues of the transmission matrix. The distributions depend on the profile of the incoming beam. The distribution function of the angular transmission has a stretched exponential decay. The total-transmission distribution grows log-normally whereas it decays exponentially.Comment: 8 pages, revtex3.0, 3 postscript figures, NvR0

Association of high-level MCL-1 expression with in vitro and in vivo prednisone resistance in MLL-rearranged infant acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Abstract MLL-rearranged acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) represents an unfavorable type of leukemia that often is highly resistant to glucocorticoids such as prednisone and dexamethasone. Because response to prednisone largely determines clinical outcome of pediatric patients with ALL, overcoming resistance to this drug may be an important step toward improving prognosis. Here, we show how gene expression profiling identifies high-level MCL-1 expression to be associated with prednisolone resistance in MLL-rearranged infant ALL, as well as in more favorable types of childhood ALL. To validate this observation, we determined MCL-1 expression with quantitative reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction in a cohort of MLL-rearranged infant ALL and pediatric noninfant ALL samples and confirmed that high-level MCL-1 expression is associated with prednisolone resistance in vitro. In addition, MCL-1 expression appeared to be significantly higher in MLL-rearranged infant patients who showed a poor response to prednisone in vivo compared with prednisone good responders. Finally, down-regulation of MCL-1 in prednisolone-resistant MLL-rearranged leukemia cells by RNA interference, to some extent, led to prednisolone sensitization. Collectively, our findings suggest a potential role for MCL-1 in glucocorticoid resistance in MLL-rearranged infant ALL, but at the same time strongly imply that high-level MCL-1 expression is not the sole mechanism providing resistance to these drugs

Measurement of the Probability Distribution of Total Transmission in Random Waveguides

Measurements have been made of the probability distribution of total transmission of microwave radiation in waveguides filled with randomly positioned scatterers which would have values of the dimensionless conductance g near unity. The distributions are markedly non-Gaussian and have exponential tails. The measured distributions are accurately described by diagrammatic and random matrix calculations carried out for nonabsorbing samples in the limit g >> 1 when g is expressed in terms of the variance of the distribution, which equals the degree of long-range intensity correlation across the output face of the sample.Comment: 5 pages, 5 post script figures, RevTe

A comparison of CMB- and HLA-based approaches to type I interoperability reference model problems for COTS-based distributed simulation

Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) simulation packages (CSPs) are software used by many simulation modellers to build and experiment with models of various systems in domains such as manufacturing, health, logistics and commerce. COTS distributed simulation deals with the interoperation of CSPs and their models. Such interoperability has been classified into six interoperability reference models. As part of an on-going standardisation effort, this paper introduces the COTS Simulation Package Emulator, a proposed benchmark that can be used to investigate Type I interoperability problems in COTS distributed simulation. To demonstrate its use, two approaches to this form of interoperability are discussed, an implementation of the CMB conservative algorithm, an example of a so-called “light” approach, and an implementation of the HLA TAR algorithm, an example of a so-called “heavy” approach. Results from experimentation over four federation topologies are presented and it is shown the HLA approach out performs the CMB approach in almost all cases. The paper concludes that the CSPE benchmark is a valid basis from which the most efficient approach to Type I interoperability problems for COTS distributed simulation can be discovered

The transient response of ice volume to orbital forcing during the warm Late Pliocene

Examining the nature of ice sheet and sea level response to past episodes of enhanced greenhouse gas forcing may help constrain future sea level change. Here, for the first time, we present the transient nature of ice sheets and sea level during the late Pliocene. The transient ice sheet predictions are forced by multiple climate snapshots derived from a climate model set up with late Pliocene boundary conditions, forced with different orbital forcing scenarios appropriate to two Marine Isotope Stages (MISs), MIS KM5c, and K1. Our results indicate that during MIS KM5c both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets contributed to sea level rise relative to present and were relatively stable. Insolation forcing between the hemispheres was out of phase during MIS K1 and led to an asynchronous response of ice volume globally. Therefore, when variations of precession were high, inferring the behavior of ice sheets from benthic isotope or sea level records is complex