Moral disengagement among serious juvenile offenders: A longitudinal study of the relations between morally disengaged attitudes and offending.

The present study investigates the relation between moral disengagement—one's willingness to conditionally endorse transgressive behavior—and ongoing offending in a sample of adolescent male felony offenders (N = 1,169). In addition, the study attempts to rule out callous–unemotional traits as a third variable responsible for observed associations between moral disengagement and offending. A bivariate latent change score analysis suggests that reduction in moral disengagement helps to speed decline in self-reported antisocial behavior, even after adjusting for the potential confound of callous–unemotional traits. Declines in moral disengagement are also associated with declining likelihood of offending, based on official records. Given that both moral disengagement and offending tend to decrease over time, these findings suggest that changing attitudes toward antisocial behavior contribute to desistance from offending among delinquent youth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The economic effect of efficiency programs on energy consumers and producers

An increase in the efficiency of natural gas fired residential appliances allows users to realize the same level of service, heating water for example, while using less natural gas. In addition to this technological benefit to the residential sector, the reduced demand for natural gas depresses the price of natural gas, resulting in pecuniary gains to other energy consumers and pecuniary losses to energy producers. The question we address in this study is whether purely pecuniary effects, those that follow from the price changes elicited by lower usage of natural gas, should enter the debate concerning the implementation of energy efficiency programs. To that end, we explore the price and social welfare impacts of natural gas energy efficiency standards by evaluating the impacts of a specific efficiency standard using the National Energy Modeling System. Our analysis indicates that purely pecuniary losses to producers are largely offset by pecuniary benefits to consumers. Our analysis also provides useful insight into the sources of these benefits and losses. Although our results are based on a specific model and efficiency standard, we believe that the results generalize to other efficiency programs and would be reproduced using other energy models.     

Phase Equilibria of “Cu2O”-“FeO”-CaO-MgO-Al2O3 Slags at PO2 of 10-8.5 atm in Equilibrium with Metallic Copper for a Copper Slag Cleaning Production

Limited data are available on phase equilibria of the multicomponent slag system at the oxygen partial pressures used in the copper smelting, converting, and slag-cleaning processes. Recently, experimental procedures have been developed and have been applied successfully to characterize several complex industrial slags. The experimental procedures involve high-temperature equilibration on a substrate and quenching followed by electron probe X-ray microanalysis. This technique has been used to construct the liquidus for the “Cu₂O”-“FeO”-SiO₂-based slags with 2 wt pct of CaO, 0.5 wt pct of MgO, and 4.0 wt pct of Al₂O₃ at controlled oxygen partial pressures in equilibrium with metallic copper. The selected ranges of compositions and temperatures are directly relevant to the copper slag-cleaning processes. The new experimental equilibrium results are presented in the form of ternary sections and as a liquidus temperature vs Fe/SiO₂ weight ratio diagram. The experimental results are compared with the FactSage thermodynamic model calculations.     

国产首张蓝光现象，《艾图兰》勇作先锋

只要你稍有关注蓝光碟片的发展,都会知道一直以来销售的蓝光影碟都是以A区的美版、日版、台湾版和香港版为主,因此A区的蓝光碟数量和品种一直是最多的,国内众多高清玩家如果想要获取高清蓝光片源,就只能把目光投放到经过特殊途径进入国内的A区蓝光机,并且要对A区的蓝光碟片慷慨解囊。相对于A区,B、C区（B区包括英国、法国、澳大利亚等地区,而C区则包括了中国大陆、     

海外家庭影院视听室设计赏析——身处其中你就可以放松心情

这是一个三层的平房,而房主是一个非常随性的人,从原来的安装设计就可以感觉得到。这里并没有使用花俏和颜色鲜艳的墙纸和家私,一切摆设都非常随意贴心,透出淡淡的简约美。负责设计的公司考虑到需要在整个住宅范围内都安装上灯光和照明系统,因此在装修之前就已经把电源设备重新更换了一次,并且从新铺设了新的线材,这样以便在日后的视听室建造中能够有足够而且良好的电力供应。     

A broadband high-frequency electrical impedance tomography system for breast imaging.

Bio-electric impedance signatures arise primarily from differences in cellular morphologies within an organ and can be used to differentiate benign and malignant pathologies, specifically in the breast. Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is an imaging modality that determines the impedance distribution within tissue and has been used in prior work to map the electrical properties of breast at signal frequencies ranging from a few kHz to 1 MHz. It has been suggested that by extending the frequency range, additional information of clinical significance may be obtained. We have, therefore, developed a new EIT system for breast imaging which covers the frequency range from 10 kHz to 10 MHz. The instrument developed here is a distributed processor tomograph with 64 channels, capable of generating and measuring voltages and currents. Electrical benchmarking has shown the system to have a SNR greater than 94 dB up to 2 MHz, 90 dB up to 7 MHz, and 65 dB at 10 MHz. In addition, the system measures impedances to an accuracy of 99.7 % and has channel-to-channel variations of less than 0.05 %. Phantom imaging has demonstrated the ability to image across the entire frequency range in both single- and multiplane configurations. Further, 96 women have participated safely in breast exams with the system and the associated conductivity spectra obtained from 3-D image reconstructions range from 0.0237 S/m at 10 kHz to 0.2174 S/m at 10 MHz. These findings are consistent with impedance values reported in the literature.     

Sex-Specific Effects of Plastic Caging in Murine Viral Myocarditis

Background: Myocarditis is an inflammatory heart disease caused by viral infections that can lead to heart failure, and occurs more often in men than women. Since animal studies have shown that myocarditis is influenced by sex hormones, we hypothesized that endocrine disruptors, which interfere with natural hormones, may play a role in the progression of the disease. The human population is exposed to the endocrine disruptor bisphenol A (BPA) from plastics, such as water bottles and plastic food containers. Methods: Male and female adult BALB/c mice were housed in plastic versus glass caging, or exposed to BPA in drinking water versus control water. Myocarditis was induced with coxsackievirus B3 on day 0, and the endpoints were assessed on day 10 post infection. Results: We found that male BALB/c mice that were exposed to plastic caging had increased myocarditis due to complement activation and elevated numbers of macrophages and neutrophils, whereas females had elevated mast cell activation and fibrosis. Conclusions: These findings show that housing mice in traditional plastic caging increases viral myocarditis in males and females, but using sex-specific immune mechanisms.     

A sustainable power architecture for mobile computing systems

Extension of battery life and dissipation of heat from components with high power density are significant challenges in mobile computing platforms. A power architecture suitable for the integration of low voltage, low power renewables into the bus is described in this paper as an innovative, green approach to help both of these issues. The architecture is both scaleable and flexible in order to accommodate the intermittent nature of the renewable energy sources. A new charge pump based boost scheme with fully asynchronous control is utilized as the enabling building block to meet the stringent power dissipation and efficiency requirements of this application. The resulting power electronics do not contain magnetic components and can be integrated into an LSI chip.     

Data-Intensive Computing in the 21st Century

The deluge of data that future applications must process—in domains ranging from science to business informatics—creates a compelling argument for substantially increased R&D targeted at discovering scalable hardware and software solutions for data-intensive problems.