Narrative coherence in multiple forensic interviews with child witnesses alleging physical and sexual abuse

This study investigated the narrative coherence of children's accounts elicited in multiple forensic interviews. Transcriptions of 56 police interviews with 28 children aged 3–14 years alleging physical and sexual abuse were coded for markers of completeness, consistency and connectedness. We found that multiple interviews increased the completeness of children's testimony, containing on average almost twice as much new information as single interviews, including crucial location, time and abuse‐related details. When both contradictions within the same interview and across interviews were considered, contradictions were not more frequent in multiple interviews. The frequency of linguistic markers of connectedness remained stable across interviews. Multiple interviews increase the narrative coherence of children's testimony through increasing their completeness without necessarily introducing contradictions or decreasing causal‐temporal connections between details. However, as ‘ground truth’ is not known in field studies, further investigation of the relationship between the narrative coherence and accuracy of testimonies is required

The Framework and Measure of Effective School Visioning Strategy (MCP-FIV)

This article describes a pilot study in which a prototype instrument is presented as a first step toward a reliable and valid tool that facilitates both the establishment of a visioning strategy and evaluation of the effectiveness of visioning strategies, existing or new. A brief historical perspective precedes an examination of the actual steps that comprise a visioning strategy. Analysis of research data arising from a pilot study involving the instrument suggests that school leaders are more likely to be involved in visioning strategy than parents or students. All stakeholders generally, and parents, students, and principals specifically, are more likely to be involved in visioning processes in medium-sized schools. School leaders will be challenged to consider whether change in their schools is consistent with vision that has been inclusively and collaboratively established or if such change reflects centralized, mandated, top-down processes that are simply implemented by principals.Cet article décrit une étude pilote dans laquelle un prototype d'un instrument sert de première étape vers l'élaboration d'un outil fiable et valide pour faciliter tant la mise sur pied d'une stratégie de visualisation d'avenir que pour évaluer l'efficacité de telles stratégies (déjà en place ou nouvelles). Un aperçu historique est d'abord présenté, suivi d'une explication des démarches qui mènent à une stratégie de visualisation d'avenir. L'analyse de données de recherche provenant d'une étude pilote portant sur l'instrument permet de croire qu'il est plus probable que les chefs de file dans les écoles s'impliquent dans les stratégies de visualisation d'avenir que les parents ou les élèves. Globalement, toutes les parties intéressées et plus précisément, les parents, les élèves et les directeurs d'école, sont plus aptes à être impliqués dans les processus de visualisation dans les écoles de taille moyenne. Les chefs de file dans les écoles devront s'interroger pour savoir si les changements effectués dans leur école proviennent d'une vision qui a été mise sur pied par un processus inclusif et participatif ou s'ils sont le résultat de processus centralisés, mandatés et descendants tout simplement mis en œuvre par les directeurs d'école

The status of Quantum Geometry in the dynamical sector of Loop Quantum Cosmology

This letter is motivated by the recent papers by Dittrich and Thiemann and, respectively, by Rovelli discussing the status of Quantum Geometry in the dynamical sector of Loop Quantum Gravity. Since the papers consider model examples, we also study the issue in the case of an example, namely on the Loop Quantum Cosmology model of space-isotropic universe. We derive the Rovelli-Thiemann-Ditrich partial observables corresponding to the quantum geometry operators of LQC in both Hilbert spaces: the kinematical one and, respectively, the physical Hilbert space of solutions to the quantum constraints. We find, that Quantum Geometry can be used to characterize the physical solutions, and the operators of quantum geometry preserve many of their kinematical properties.Comment: Latex, 12 page

The structure of causal sets

More often than not, recently popular structuralist interpretations of physical theories leave the central concept of a structure insufficiently precisified. The incipient causal sets approach to quantum gravity offers a paradigmatic case of a physical theory predestined to be interpreted in structuralist terms. It is shown how employing structuralism lends itself to a natural interpretation of the physical meaning of causal sets theory. Conversely, the conceptually exceptionally clear case of causal sets is used as a foil to illustrate how a mathematically informed rigorous conceptualization of structure serves to identify structures in physical theories. Furthermore, a number of technical issues infesting structuralist interpretations of physical theories such as difficulties with grounding the identity of the places of highly symmetrical physical structures in their relational profile and what may resolve these difficulties can be vividly illustrated with causal sets.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

Turning big bang into big bounce: II. Quantum dynamics

We analyze the big bounce transition of the quantum FRW model in the setting of the nonstandard loop quantum cosmology (LQC). Elementary observables are used to quantize composite observables. The spectrum of the energy density operator is bounded and continuous. The spectrum of the volume operator is bounded from below and discrete. It has equally distant levels defining a quantum of the volume. The discreteness may imply a foamy structure of spacetime at semiclassical level which may be detected in astro-cosmo observations. The nonstandard LQC method has a free parameter that should be fixed in some way to specify the big bounce transition.Comment: 14 pages, no figures, version accepted for publication in Class. Quant. Gra

Parental effects on early life history traits of haddock Melanogrammus aeglefinus

Gametes from five male and three female haddock ( Melanogrammus aeglefinus ) were crossed to produce 15 half-sibling families that were used to evaluate potential parental contributions to early life history variability. Larval morphology at 0 and 5 days post-hatch (dph) and time to starvation in the absence of food were examined. Maternal influences on larval standard length and yolk area were significant at 0 and 5 dph. Paternal effects on larval standard length were significant at 0 and 5 dph, whereas paternal effects on yolk area were only significant at 5 dph. Larval eye diameter was influenced by maternity at day 0 post-hatch and by both maternity and paternity at 5 dph. Myotome height of larvae was subject to maternal and paternal influences at 0 and 5 dph. Growth rate was significantly influenced by both paternity and maternity. Yolk utilization efficiency was significantly influenced by parental interaction, while the time taken for larvae to die in the absence of food was affected only by maternity. Results of this study not only confirm the importance of female contributions to larval development but also indicate a paternal influence on the development and the early life history success of marine fish

Spacelike distance from discrete causal order

Any discrete approach to quantum gravity must provide some prescription as to how to deduce continuum properties from the discrete substructure. In the causal set approach it is straightforward to deduce timelike distances, but surprisingly difficult to extract spacelike distances, because of the unique combination of discreteness with local Lorentz invariance in that approach. We propose a number of methods to overcome this difficulty, one of which reproduces the spatial distance between two points in a finite region of Minkowski space. We provide numerical evidence that this definition can be used to define a `spatial nearest neighbor' relation on a causal set, and conjecture that this can be exploited to define the length of `continuous curves' in causal sets which are approximated by curved spacetime. This provides evidence in support of the ``Hauptvermutung'' of causal sets.Comment: 32 pages, 16 figures, revtex4; journal versio

Semiclassical Mechanics of the Wigner 6j-Symbol

The semiclassical mechanics of the Wigner 6j-symbol is examined from the standpoint of WKB theory for multidimensional, integrable systems, to explore the geometrical issues surrounding the Ponzano-Regge formula. The relations among the methods of Roberts and others for deriving the Ponzano-Regge formula are discussed, and a new approach, based on the recoupling of four angular momenta, is presented. A generalization of the Yutsis-type of spin network is developed for this purpose. Special attention is devoted to symplectic reduction, the reduced phase space of the 6j-symbol (the 2-sphere of Kapovich and Millson), and the reduction of Poisson bracket expressions for semiclassical amplitudes. General principles for the semiclassical study of arbitrary spin networks are laid down; some of these were used in our recent derivation of the asymptotic formula for the Wigner 9j-symbol.Comment: 64 pages, 50 figure

Stationary states and phase diagram for a model of the Gunn effect under realistic boundary conditions

A general formulation of boundary conditions for semiconductor-metal contacts follows from a phenomenological procedure sketched here. The resulting boundary conditions, which incorporate only physically well-defined parameters, are used to study the classical unipolar drift-diffusion model for the Gunn effect. The analysis of its stationary solutions reveals the presence of bistability and hysteresis for a certain range of contact parameters. Several types of Gunn effect are predicted to occur in the model, when no stable stationary solution exists, depending on the value of the parameters of the injecting contact appearing in the boundary condition. In this way, the critical role played by contacts in the Gunn effect is clearly stablished.Comment: 10 pages, 6 Post-Script figure

Evidence for an entropy bound from fundamentally discrete gravity

The various entropy bounds that exist in the literature suggest that spacetime is fundamentally discrete, and hint at an underlying relationship between geometry and "information". The foundation of this relationship is yet to be uncovered, but should manifest itself in a theory of quantum gravity. We present a measure for the maximal entropy of spherically symmetric spacelike regions within the causal set approach to quantum gravity. In terms of the proposal, a bound for the entropy contained in this region can be derived from a counting of potential "degrees of freedom" associated to the Cauchy horizon of its future domain of dependence. For different spherically symmetric spacelike regions in Minkowski spacetime of arbitrary dimension, we show that this proposal leads, in the continuum approximation, to Susskind's well-known spherical entropy bound.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures. Comment on Bekenstein bound added and smaller corrections. To be published in Class.Quant.Gra