The Prejudicial Nature of Victim Impact Statements: Implications for Capital Sentencing Policy.

Victim impact evidence is presented during sentencing hearings to convey the harm experienced by victims and victims' relatives as a result of a crime. Its use in capital cases is highly controversial. Some argue that the Supreme Court's decision to allow the admission of victim impact statements (VIS) during capital sentencing proceedings (Payne v. Tennessee, 1991) invites prejudice and judgments based on emotion rather than reason. Others reason that it provides an important voice for survivors and affords the jury an opportunity to learn about the victim. The authors outline the chief psychological issues that arise in the context of VIS, including their relevance to jurors' judgments of blameworthiness, concerns that the social worth of the victim will influence jurors' sentencing decisions, and issues related to the emotional appeal of VIS. Psycholegal research on the influence of VIS on mock jurors is reviewed, and implications of this work for capital sentencing policy and suggested directions for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recovery of Short-Term Memory and Psychomotor Speed but Not Postural Stability With Long-Term Sobriety in Alcoholic Women.

The authors assessed effects of extended abstinence on cognitive and motor function deficits previously observed in a group of alcoholic women (n = 43) initially tested after 15 weeks of sobriety. Alcoholic women were retested 1 and 4 years later, and control women were retested 3 years later. At Year 1, 14 of 23 returners had maintained sobriety, but they did not perform significantly better than relapsers; the group as a whole continued to show deficits relative to age norms. By Year 4, 13 of 14 returners had maintained sobriety for more than 30 months; as a group, these women had returned to normal levels on tests of memory and psychomotor speed but remained impaired in standing balance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Einsatz perfluorierter Kationenaustauscher-Membranen in Elektroyseverfahren,insbesondere bei der Chloralkali-Elektrolyse

Use of perfluorinated cation exchanger membranes in electrolysis processes, particularly in alkali chloride electrolysis . Depending upon their structure, texture, and possible after-treatment, the properties of perfluorinated cation exchanger membranes show variations and their use has consequently been limited to electrolyses in aqueous solutions and indirect organic syntheses. With regard to equipment, the membranes open up new techniques, extending beyond conventional two- and multi-compartment cells, which have become known as solid polymer electrolysis (SPE) and oxygen consuming cathode (OCE). Applications of the membranes, which are resistent to oxidizing acids and alkalies, are considered in the cases of alkali chloride electrolysis, soda production, decomposition of water, electrolysis of hydrochloric acid, and electrochemical synthesis of propylene oxide. Concepts of the relationships governing OH^? ion migration through the membrane and the associated problems are essential if membrane cells are to be operated economically. Only in this way can the operating conditions be chosen optimally and the specific concentration-dependent properties of the membranes be fully exploited by chemical reaction engineering modifications, e.g. by a countercurrent cascade arrangement. Granted comparable economics the advantages of membrane equipment over conventional processes lie in a reduced environmental burden and possibly far lower energy consumption (which, however, may have to be bought at the price of additional investment). These advantages may be offset by the detrimental foreign ion content of the electrolyte, possible low current density, undesired by-product formation, back-diffusion processes, limited lifetime, combined with the high price of the membranes and the low maximum area of the individual cell; solution of these latter problems will further enhance performance.     

Influence d’une erreur sur la covariance dans le problème de la détection d’un signal certain dans un bruit laplacien centré

Author considers the detection of a known, nonrandom signal in a nonstationary additive gaussian noise with continuous covariance. First she recalls results obtained when the covariance is known, she constructs the test which minimizes the probability of non detection β(α)for a given false alarm probability αand she computes β(α).Next she considers the case of an unknown but estimated covariance and then computes the false alarm probability and the probability of non detection in terms of the difference between the true covariance and its estimation.     

The relative power of logspace and polynomial time reductions

There exist many different formalisms to model the notion of resource bounded truth-table reduction. Most papers in which truthtable reductions appear refer to the seminal paper of Ladner, Lynch and Selman for a definition. The definition of truth-table reductions given there however, pertains to only one of the possible incarnations of the notion. For larger resource bounds, this definition often coincides with other-often implicitly used-definitions of the notion. In this paper we focus our attention on resource bounds for which the various definitions probably donot pertain to the same notion. In particular, we show that coincidence of different notions implies coincidence of complexity classes likeNC ₁,LOG, andP, which are widely believed to be different.