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)     

Activated dissociative chemisorption of methane on Ni(100): a direct mechanism under thermal conditions?

The dissociative chemisorption of methane on a Ni(100) single crystal has been studied under thermal conditions as a function of pressure and temperature. The initial sticking coefficient was measured in the pressure range of 0.010–7.0 mbar at temperatures ranging from 375 to 500 K. A strong pressure dependence was observed, consistent with a direct dissociation mechanism under these thermal conditions. This was further confirmed by experiments where the gas at a low pressure was heated by a thermal finger facing the crystal surface. With the thermal finger at the same temperature as the surface, it was possible to ensure that the methane was fully equilibrated to the crystal and an activation energy of 59±1.5 kJ/mol was determined under isothermal conditions.     

New expressions for depolarization dyadics in uniaxial dielectric-magnetic media

We present some novel expressions for the depolarization dyadics in uniaxial dielectric-magnetic media. These expressions were obtained by generalizing the Fikioris approach for extracting the singular behaviour of integrals involving the dyadic Green functions and the source current density distributions. Cubical, cylindrical and spherical geometries serve as examples for a discussion of the depolarization dyadics' dependence on geometry and anisotropy.     

Generalization in multi-layer networks of Sigma-pi units

This paper investigates a method for predicting the generalization error that a multi-layer network of Sigma-pi units will, on average, exhibit. Theoretical values are compared with those obtained by the computer simulation of small networks learning parity and contiguity functions.     

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     

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.     

Timed Testing of Concurrent Systems

This paper is concerned with timing considerations for concurrent systems where the time needed by the individual actions is not known beforehand: it has long been suspected that the power of partial order semantics is needed here. We develop a suitable testing scenario to study this idea. With one view of timed behaviour, we can confirm that interval semiword semantics, a special partial order semantics, is indeed what can be observed with timed tests. With another view, our testing scenario leads to timed-refusal-trace semantics; this is a noninterleaving semantics, but it seems that it cannot be represented with partial orders in a meaningful way.