An approach to a typology of homicide

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University Includes bibliographical references (leaf 54).This study is an analysis of data concerning 240 males convicted of first and second degree murder in the state of Massachusetts during a twenty-five year period, 1925 through 1950. These data were obtained from the files of the Department of Correction for the state of Massachusetts. The study as a whole is an original piece of research work analyzing and classifying the total group into certain experimental typologies in order to get a better understanding of the situations and/or complexes from which the motives for murder arise. The problem is one of discovering and describing certain patterns and uniformities of behavior in these killings. If this paper has accomplished anything it is to indicate that the term "Homocide" is a concept too gross to be utilized in empirical research, that we are dealing with a heterogeneity of phenomena which we term "homocide". [TRUNCATED

The Ring Imaging Cherenkov detector of the AMS experiment: test beam results with a prototype

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) to be installed on the International Space Station (ISS) will be equipped with a proximity Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) detector for measuring the velocity and electric charge of the charged cosmic particles. This detector will contribute to the high level of redundancy required for AMS as well as to the rejection of albedo particles. Charge separation up to iron and a velocity resolution of the order of 0.1% for singly charged particles are expected. A RICH protoptype consisting of a detection matrix with 96 photomultiplier units, a segment of a conical mirror and samples of the radiator materials was built and its performance was evaluated. Results from the last test beam performed with ion fragments resulting from the collision of a 158 GeV/c/nucleon primary beam of indium ions (CERN SPS) on a lead target are reported. The large amount of collected data allowed to test and characterize different aerogel samples and the sodium fluoride radiator. In addition, the reflectivity of the mirror was evaluated. The data analysis confirms the design goals.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Contribution to the 10th Topical Seminar on Innovative Particle and Radiation Detectors (Siena, Italy 2006

Learning to detect chest radiographs containing lung nodules using visual attention networks

Machine learning approaches hold great potential for the automated detection of lung nodules in chest radiographs, but training the algorithms requires vary large amounts of manually annotated images, which are difficult to obtain. Weak labels indicating whether a radiograph is likely to contain pulmonary nodules are typically easier to obtain at scale by parsing historical free-text radiological reports associated to the radiographs. Using a repositotory of over 700,000 chest radiographs, in this study we demonstrate that promising nodule detection performance can be achieved using weak labels through convolutional neural networks for radiograph classification. We propose two network architectures for the classification of images likely to contain pulmonary nodules using both weak labels and manually-delineated bounding boxes, when these are available. Annotated nodules are used at training time to deliver a visual attention mechanism informing the model about its localisation performance. The first architecture extracts saliency maps from high-level convolutional layers and compares the estimated position of a nodule against the ground truth, when this is available. A corresponding localisation error is then back-propagated along with the softmax classification error. The second approach consists of a recurrent attention model that learns to observe a short sequence of smaller image portions through reinforcement learning. When a nodule annotation is available at training time, the reward function is modified accordingly so that exploring portions of the radiographs away from a nodule incurs a larger penalty. Our empirical results demonstrate the potential advantages of these architectures in comparison to competing methodologies

Joint Design and Pricing of Intermodal Port - Hinterland Network Services: Considering Economies of Scale and Service Time Constraints

Maritime container terminal operating companies have extended their role from node operators to that of multimodal transport network operators. They have extended the gates of their seaport terminals to the gates of inland terminals in their network by means of frequent services of high capacity transport modes such as river vessels (barges) and trains.

Unified treatment and classification of superintegrable systems with integrals quadratic in momenta on a two dimensional manifold

In this paper we prove that the two dimensional superintegrable systems with quadratic integrals of motion on a manifold can be classified by using the Poisson algebra of the integrals of motion. There are six general fundamental classes of superintegrable systems. Analytic formulas for the involved integrals are calculated in all the cases. All the known superintegrable systems are classified as special cases of these six general classes.Comment: LaTeX, 72 pages. Extended version of the published version in JM

Proposal for PS beam tests of a fast rich detector

A full scale prototype Fast RICH detector with pad readout for unambiguous imaging has been constructed for operation in a high luminosity environment. It uses the best photosensitive gas capable of fast response (TEA) or the intrinsically fast solid photocathode (CsI/TMAE), developed specifically for this purpose. It can be used at e+e- or hadron colliders as well as at fixed target facilities. It has time resolution of 20 ns with a 1.3 microsecond pipeline and parallel readout of 4000 pad sectors. Fast digital VLSI electronics has been developed for readout and 24000 channels have been tested. The prototype device (12000 pad channels) is assembled and ready for beam tests in 1993

Intraoperative PTH Assay during Minimally Invasive Parathyroidectomy May Be Helpful in the Detection of Double Adenomas and May Minimise the Risk of Recurrent Surgery

Background. Minimally invasive parathyroidectomy (MIP) is increasingly replacing the traditional bilateral neck exploration in the treatment of primary hyperparathyroidism (PHP). Intraoperative PTH (IOPTH) measurement has recently been introduced as a useful adjunct in confirming successful excision of abnormal parathyroid gland. Aims. We evaluate the safety, efficacy, and clinical usefulness of IOPTH measurement during MIP in a district general hospital. Methods. Retrospective review of eleven consecutive patients with PHP who underwent MIP with IOPTH, following preoperative assessment with ultrasound and sestamibi scans. Results. All patients had successful removal of the abnormal parathyroid gland. The concordance rate between ultrasound and sestamibi scan in localising the parathyroid adenoma was 82%. IOPTH measurement confirmed the removal of adenoma in all cases and, in one case, led to identification of a second adenoma, not localised preoperatively. The median hospital stay was 2 days (range 1–7 days). All patients remained normocalcaemic after a median of 6 months (range 1–10 months). Conclusions. Minimally invasive parathyroidectomy is a feasible, safe, and effective method for treatment of PHP. The use of IOPTH monitoring potentially offers increased sensitivity in detecting multiglandular disease, can minimise the need and risk associated with recurrent operations, and may facilitate cost-effective minimally invasive surgery