Craving for Gambling Predicts Income-Generating Offenses : A Pathways Model of a Japanese Prison Population

The links between gambling and criminal offenses have been frequently reported, but the pathways from gambling to a particular offense have not. Our study applied a pathways model to predict participants’ income-generating, drug-related, and violent offenses stemming from their craving for gambling. The participants were 332 male inmates in a Japanese local prison. They answered questionnaires on gambling behavior, alcohol addiction, Internet addiction, impulsivity, and psychopathy. Their official records with information on their current offense, sentence length, number of imprisonments, and length of education were also analyzed. The results show that 38.55% (n = 128) of the participants had a probable gambling disorder, a rate of problem gambling at least four times higher than that among the general Japanese population. Furthermore, their craving for gambling predicted their income-generating offenses, but not their drug-related and violent offenses. Their craving for gambling can thus be linked to their financial issues, rather than their emotional and impulsive issues. The pathways model explained the path not only from addiction/psychopathy to gambling, but also from gambling to committing an income-generating offense

The effect of a social reintegration (parole) program on drug-related prison inmates in Japan : a 4-year prospective study

Social reintegration has been known to protect against recidivism, but its effects against drug-use relapse have previously remained unclear. To address this gap, the present study sampled 196 inmates imprisoned for drug-related offenses in Japan. We examined the protective effects of a social reintegration (parole) program against recidivism and drug-use relapse using a 4-year prospective design. During the 4-year follow up, 79 (40.3%) of the participants reoffended and 61 (31.1%) relapsed into drug use. The results suggest that the parole program was significantly associated with a decreased risk of recidivism, even if participants’ age, sentence length, number of prison terms, educational levels, and gang membership were controlled for. However, the effects of the parole program on drug relapse disappeared when the above variables were controlled for. To decrease the risk of relapse, drug-related inmates may need both prosocial communities and rehabilitative environments. The Japanese criminal justice system needs to introduce drug treatment courts for drug users

Stochastic DEMATEL for structural modeling of a complex problematique for realizing safe, secure and reliable society, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2005, nr 4

In this paper we propose a revised Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), called stochastic DEMATEL, to extract structural model of a complex problematique and to represent the priority of each factor taking into account the uncertainty of structure. In the stochastic DEMATEL, the uncertainty of structure is expressed as a stochastic model. From numerical experiments and experimental analyses, the following results are obtained: when the structure is uncertain, stochastic DEMATEL could extract the features of structure by the degree of dispatching influences and the degree of central role; stochastic composite importance could express the uncertainty of priority and decide the priority taking into account the attitude of the decision maker; pessimistic, neutral or optimistic

Structural modeling and systems analysis of uneasy factors for realizing safe, secure and reliable society, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2005, nr 3

In this paper we try to extract various uneasy factors in our life. Then, we try to construct structural models among these factors using Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL). For the purpose of analyzing priority among these factors we revised the DEMATEL and found effective factors to be resolved in order to realize future safe, secure and reliable (SSR) society

Decision support for extracting and dissolving consumers’ uneasiness over foods using stochastic DEMATEL, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2006, nr 4

In this paper we try to extract consumers’ uneasy factors on foods such as carcinogenic substance, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) problem, genetic recombination, etc., and try to construct structural models among these uneasy factors using stochastic DEMATEL. Stochastic DEMATEL is developed as a revised DEMATEL (Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory) to extract structural models of a complex problematique composed of many factors under uncertainty. For structural modeling of uneasy factors on foods we look at the binary relation such that “How much would it help to dissolve uneasy factor j by dissolving uneasy factor i?” Finally, we try to find the priority of dissolving each factor among all the uneasy factors based on the information of stochastic composite importance. This would contribute for decision support to dissolve uneasy feeling and to get sense of security on foods

The Quiescent Intracluster Medium in the Core of the Perseus Cluster

Clusters of galaxies are the most massive gravitationally-bound objects in the Universe and are still forming. They are thus important probes of cosmological parameters and a host of astrophysical processes. Knowledge of the dynamics of the pervasive hot gas, which dominates in mass over stars in a cluster, is a crucial missing ingredient. It can enable new insights into mechanical energy injection by the central supermassive black hole and the use of hydrostatic equilibrium for the determination of cluster masses. X-rays from the core of the Perseus cluster are emitted by the 50 million K diffuse hot plasma filling its gravitational potential well. The Active Galactic Nucleus of the central galaxy NGC1275 is pumping jetted energy into the surrounding intracluster medium, creating buoyant bubbles filled with relativistic plasma. These likely induce motions in the intracluster medium and heat the inner gas preventing runaway radiative cooling; a process known as Active Galactic Nucleus Feedback. Here we report on Hitomi X-ray observations of the Perseus cluster core, which reveal a remarkably quiescent atmosphere where the gas has a line-of-sight velocity dispersion of 164+/-10 km/s in a region 30-60 kpc from the central nucleus. A gradient in the line-of-sight velocity of 150+/-70 km/s is found across the 60 kpc image of the cluster core. Turbulent pressure support in the gas is 4% or less of the thermodynamic pressure, with large scale shear at most doubling that estimate. We infer that total cluster masses determined from hydrostatic equilibrium in the central regions need little correction for turbulent pressure.Comment: 31 pages, 11 Figs, published in Nature July