Psychopathy and alexithymia in female offenders.

Determined the comorbidity of psychopathy and alexithymia in 37 female inmates of a medium-security prison. The authors also investigated the association between psychopathy and alexithymia with the use of affective language in response to questions about an emotional event, and with their propensity for violence. The extent of psychopathy and alexithymia were assessed with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL-R) and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS), respectively. Using standard cutoff scores, 30% were identified as psychopaths, and 32% as alexithymics. Three Ss were both psychopaths and alexithymics. The correlation between PCL-R and TAS total scores was not significant, but the socially deviant impulsive factor of the PCL-R significantly correlated with the TAS items that reflect inability to discriminate feelings and bodily sensations. Alexithymia, but not psychopathy, was negatively related to measures of affective speech content. Both psychopathy and alexithymia were associated with a history of violence. In spite of several manifest similarities, psychopathy and alexithymia appear to be different clinical constructs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Testing Multimedia Transmission Systems

Digital television and the convergence of television and telecommunications challenges the television engineer to develop new test methods and new ways of using older methods. Supporting multimedia capabilities makes compressed data transmission an important issue. This article outlines a layered model for systems and testing analogous to the OSI model for communications systems and discusses specific test methods for analysis and generation     

Magnetic field detection enhancement in an external cavity fiberFabry-Perot sensor

The sensitivity of an extrinsic fiber-optic magnetic field sensor using a gallium doped yttrium iron garnet (Ga:YIG) bulk optic crystal has been significantly improved by incorporating a Fabry-Perot resonator around the crystal     

Effect of the kind of heat tent of tools on friction in plastic deformation of automobile sheet

In sheet stamping, friction appears between the tool and the deformed preform. It is of interest to evaluate the difference in the friction coefficient in stamping by tools subjected to different kinds of heat treatment and chemical heat treatment.     

The blocking barrier effect on aluminum electromigration due totitanium layers in multilayered interconnects of LSI's

Experimental evidence of an increase in the resistance of a cathode-side metal line without any void generation is presented for a multilayered metal structure terminated by via-holes during electromigration tests. This resistance increase is reversed to the initial value by high temperature storage after electromigration testing. The increase in the resistance of multilayered metal structures is attributed to the vacancy accumulation in the cathode side due to the blocking barrier effect of the refractory metal layer in the via-hole     

Recursive simulation models of the semiconductor laser modulationcharacteristics for accurate performance evaluation of coherent opticalCPFSK systems

Modeling of the semiconductor laser nonuniform FM response and residual IM modulation is essential for the computer-aided design of coherent optical communication systems. This paper presents an accurate simulation model, in which the FM and IM responses are represented by recursive digital filters derived directly from measurements. A comparison with previous models of the bibliography reveals the advantages of the current approach. The proposed modeling procedure is applied in the case of a single-electrode DFB laser. This DFB model, in combination with a semi-analytical technique for the evaluation of the error probability, is used to study the influence of the modulation characteristics on the performance of a coherent heterodyne CPFSK system with differential receiver operating at 1 Gb/s. Theoretical and experimental results are in excellent agreement     

An experimental investigation of thick-sample effects in the measurement of directional-hemispherical transmittance of advanced glazing materials

Samples that are thick with respect to the measuring apparatus can pose problems in the measurement of directional-hemispherical transmittance. Due to the lateral displacement of light that these samples induce, traditional small-beam techniques are often no longer applicable. Broad-area irradiation offers a solution to these problems, but, in practice, imperfections in the extent and the uniformity of the irradiation can create errors. This paper reports measurement of the “detector-integrated inscattering function”, which describes the lateral displacement of light, for a number of thick samples over a range of incidence angles. This function is used to determine the minimum area that must be irradiated for an accurate broad-area irradiation transmittance measurement. The errors caused by transverse non-uniformities in the irradiance distributions produced by a state-of-the-art broad-area irradiation spectrophotometer are also reported. Errors caused by transverse irradiation non-uniformities are estimated, and transmittance measurements made with small-area and broad-area irradiation are compared. It is shown that in most cases small-area irradiation transmittance measurements underestimate the transmittance of thick samples due to outscattering, and that broad-area irradiation measurements using state-of-the-art irradiation optics can contain large errors of up to 20%, due to irradiance non-uniformities, particularly at large angles of incidence.     

A transient induction motor model including saturation and deep bareffect

Transient cage induction motor models for use in inverter-fed drives and controllers are reviewed. A simple transient model is presented that includes rotor deep bar effect and magnetic saturation of the magnetising and rotor leakage flux paths. The improved model requires motor details in the form of simple impedance versus frequency characteristics which can be obtained from a variety of external sources. These can range typically from detailed steady-state finite-element solutions to simple experimental measurements. The model is verified experimentally using a 75 kW, 4 pole vector controlled AC motor drive     

Density functional theory studies of Cu-zeolite de-NOx catalysts

Summary Recent progress in the modelling of exchanged Cu sites and their interactions with small molecules, based on DFT cluster calculations, is briefly reviewed.