Homicide-suicide in Hong Kong 1989-1998

This study provides the first systematic research of homicide-suicide (HS) in a Chinese society. Data were drawn from the HK Homicide Monitoring Data-base computer file derived from investigation and death reports held by the HK Police Force and the Coroner's Court. During the 10-year study period, 56 events involving 133 deaths were identified. The majority of offenders were males (75%) and most victims were female (64%). The mean age of offenders and victims were 41.9 and 32.3 years respectively. Spouses and lovers comprised the majority of victims (48.2%) followed by child victims (36%). Most HS events were motivated by separation or termination of marital or sexual relations (39%), economic reasons (25%) and other domestic disputes (20%). The most frequent modes of killing were strangulation/suffocation (26%), stabbing/chopping (24%), followed by gassing/poisoning (14%) and falling from a height (14%). The commonest method of suicide was falling from a height (48%). It was followed by gassing/poisoning (22%) and strangulation/suffocation (13%). Depression (18.3%) was found to be the commonest mental disorder. Most offenders were from low-socio economic background. Two-thirds were unemployed and 76.6% had 9 or less years of education. HS in HK were distinguished from those reported in the western literature in respect to the high relevance of economic factors, the absence of mercy killing between old couples, a higher percentage of pedicide-suicides and the infrequent use of firearms

Neumann-Boundary Stabilization of the Wave Equation with Internal Damping Control and Applications

This paper is devoted to the Neumann boundary stabilization of a non-homogeneous ndimensional                      wave equation subject to static or dynamic boundary conditions. Using a linear feedback law involving only an internal term, we prove the well-posedness of the considered systems and provide a simple method to obtain an asymptotic convergence result for the solutions. The method consists of proposing a new energy norm, andapplying the semigroup theory and LaSalle's principle. Finally, the method presented in this work is also applied to several distributed parameter systems such as the Petrovsky system, coupled wave-wave equations and elastic system

Pathology of trauma-delayed traumatic deaths

Conference Theme: Challenges to specialists in the 21st centurypublished_or_final_versio

Death of the teaching autopsy: in Hong Kong teaching autopsies have been championed in public mortuaries.

published_or_final_versio

Investigating the Role of Cortical Inhibition in Tinnitus

Subjective tinnitus is characterized as the perception of a phantom sound with no external acoustic source, and is often described as a “ringing in the ears” sensation. While evidence supports a central origin for tinnitus, the underlying neural mechanisms for this condition remain elusive. The studies presented in this thesis offer significant contributions to understanding the neural basis of tinnitus by (1) validating a behavioural paradigm that can successfully screen rats for transient noise-induced tinnitus without any indications of false-positives, and (2) demonstrating that a local loss of inhibition is sufficient to induce gain enhancement in the primary auditory cortex, as well as tinnitus-positive behaviour - evidence that supports the central gain model, one of the leading hypotheses of tinnitus generation. Overall, these findings help provide more effective strategies to directly investigate putative mechanisms of tinnitus, and furthermore expand our current understanding of this distressing condition

Fostering Healthy Masculinity at the University of San Diego

The purpose of my study was to enhance supportive relationships for male undergraduates at the University of San Diego (USD) who may struggle with their masculinity, sense of belonging, and gender identity. My research question is how I can collaborate with others to create a culture that supports male undergraduates with their identity development and fosters positive connections for these men in the campus community? My findings indicate that while there are successful group spaces on campus that support USDs male students, there is a clear need to reframe and improve the approach of doing this work

Performance index for palm oil mill effluent management

The world is currently facing an energy crisis. This issue rises society concerns about the environment and energy and it urged the scientists and engineers to incorporate in sustainability process design or by retrofit of the existing or traditional process plant. There is much consideration needed to be considered environmental sustainability. Due to these issue, a systematic and structural sustainability evaluation tools are needed to help in the process of engineering design, analysis, improvement, retrofit and decision making. This research proposed a performance index for palm oil mill effluent management. Firstly, the assessment was performed with ratio normalization calculation method to measure and compare the current sustainability performance of a related palm oil mill. The feature has presented in more detail parameters to indicators for further extensive evaluation. Moreover, the weights of the parameters were determined by expert opinion survey. Based on the result evaluated, the poor performer indicators were determined, and suitable improvement method was proposed. The improvement method was chosen by comparing and evaluate various improvement methods that were suitable to enhance the weak perform indicator. This POME management model will benefit the company by assess sustainability performance of their industry and further improve it. This study is significant as it will bring an influential impact and improvement to the current palm oil industry in POME management