Review of Pornography and sexual aggression.

Reviews the book, Pornography and sexual aggression by N. M. Malamuth and E. Donnerstein (1984). Malamuth and Donnerstein are well qualified to prepare a book on pornography by virtue of their extensive research on the topic over the last several years. In 1970, the United States Commission on Obscenity and Pornography concluded that there was no evidence that pornography had adverse effects on the incidence of violence toward women. It is clear from Malamuth and Donnerstein's chapters that they believe the evidence now points to radically different conclusions and that a book summarizing all of the evidence was warranted. In the opening chapters, Malamuth and Donnerstein present summaries of their respective lines of research. Malamuth has concentrated primarily on the effects of aggressive pornography on men's sexual arousal to portrayals of coercive sexual interactions, their self-reported likelihood to rape, their acceptance of rape myths, their acceptance of interpersonal violence, and the belief that women enjoy being raped. Donnerstein discusses the effects of aggressive pornography on men's aggression toward females in a laboratory situation. The evidence presented in the book points to three main conclusions: (a) portrayals of sex and violence in the media have important effects on at least some people; (b) it is possible to formulate general theories to account for most of the results presented; and (c) the results present serious problems for society. This book is an important contribution to the literature on the effects of pornography. Put together in one volume, the evidence on the effects of pornography, especially violent pornography, is very convincing. The theoretical aspects of why this should be so are much less convincing. But the authors have made a good beginning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Patients admitted to psychiatric hospital: Presenting problems and resolution at discharge.

Examined a cohort of admissions (N?=?280) to a 150-bed public psychiatric hospital to investigate homogeneity in patient problems and patient subtypes. The interrelationships of presenting problems, treatment provided, length of stay, resolution of presenting problems, and several other variables were also studied. Results indicated that many problems experienced by patients were not psychiatric symptoms. Most presenting problems were addressed but few resolved. The primary form of treatment was psychotropic medication. Many patients were discharged before treatment effectiveness was determined. Little association was found between diagnosis, patients' problems or patient subgroup, and psychotropic drugs prescribed. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maximizing the discriminant validity of phallometric assessment data.

Independent data sets from phallometric assessment studies were analyzed to examine methods of maximizing the discriminant validity of phallometric testing. Community volunteers and non-sex-offender patients were compared with rapists and child molesters recruited primarily from a maximum security psychiatric institution. The results indicate that the discriminant validity of phallometric assessment was enhanced by the use of (1) z (rather than raw) scores to compensate for individual differences in responsivity, (2) deviance indexes (computed by calculating the difference in responsivity between deviant and nondeviant stimuli) rather than responses to deviant categories alone, (3) stimuli depicting brutal sexual coercion, and (4) pubescent stimuli for assessing sexual age preferences. Discriminant validity was unimpaired by including Ss with low levels of response. The implications for clinical practice and future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Violent recidivism: Assessing predictive validity": Correction to Rice and Harris (1995).

Reports an error in "Violent recidivism: Assessing predictive validity" by Marnie E. Rice and Grant T. Harris (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1995[Oct], Vol 63[5], 737-748). In this article, several errors are present on pp. 738 and 746. The corrections are listed in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1996-04934-001.) Until very recently, there has been little evidence of the ability of either clinicians or actuarial instruments to predict violent behavior. Moreover, a confusing variety of measures have been proposed for the evaluation of the accuracy of predictions. This report demonstrates that receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) have advantages over other measures inasmuch as they are simultaneously independent of the base rate for violence in the populations studied and of the particular cutoff score chosen to classify cases as likely to be violent. In an illustration of the value of this approach, the base rates of violence were altered with the use of data from 3.5-, 6-, and 10-year follow-ups of 799 previously violent men. Base rates for the 10-year follow-up were also altered by changing the definition of violent recidivism and by examining a high-risk subgroup. The report also shows how ROC methods can be used to compare the performance of different instruments for the prediction of violence. The report illustrates how ROCs facilitate decisions about whether, at a particular base rate, the use of a prediction instrument is warranted. Finally, some of the limitations of ROCs are outlined, and some cautionary remarks are made with regard to their use. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy as a taxon: Evidence that psychopaths are a discrete class.

Taxometric analyses were applied to the construct of psychopathy (as measured by the Psychopathy Checklist) and to several variables reflecting antisocial childhood, adult criminality, and criminal recidivis. Ss were 653 serious offenders assessed or treated in a maximum-security institution. Results supported the existence of a taxon underlying psychopathy. Childhood problem behaviors provided convergent evidence for the existence of the taxon. Adult criminal history variables were continuously distributed and were insufficient in themselves to detect the taxon. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Extending the High Level Architecture Paradigm to Economic Simulation

This paper describes the potential application ofa US Department of Defense-developed simulationarchitecture to the domain of economic and financialsimulation. This approach, known as the High LevelArchitecture (HLA)¹ for Simulation Interoperability,provides the ability to link disparate simulations.This approach supports simulation interoperability andre-use, allowing for the development of composablesets of interacting simulations. The HLA approach hasproven to be extremely successful in the militarysimulation arena, a domain that has a number of stronganalogies to the economic and financial simulationdomain. This paper provides an overview of the tenetsof the HLA approach and proposes an extension of thetools and capabilities to the economic simulationdomain.     

Docosahexanoic Acid Improves Chemotherapy Efficacy by Inducing CD95 Translocation to Lipid Rafts in ER? Breast Cancer Cells

Docosahexanoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentanoic acid (EPA) have been shown to possess anti-carcinogenic properties in mammary cancers, both in vitro and in vivo. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of treating three different breast cancer cell lines with DHA or EPA on cellular growth, chemotherapy efficacy, and CD95 expression and localization in the cell. MDA-MB-231, MCF-7 and SKBr-3 cells were incubated with EPA or DHA with or without chemotherapy agents [doxorubicin (dox), Herceptin]. Cell growth was assessed by WST-1 assay and CD95 expression was investigated using flow cytometry, Western blotting and confocal microscopy. DHA and EPA inhibited the growth of all three breast cancer cell lines in a dose-dependent fashion (P?<?0.05). DHA, and to a lesser extent EPA, induced the movement and raft clustering of CD95 in the cell membrane (via confocal microscopy) and the surface expression (via flow cytometry) in MDA-MB-231 cells. Neither fatty acid altered the growth/metabolic activity of the non-transformed MCF-12A breast cell line. Pre-treatment with DHA, but not EPA, improved the efficacy of dox in estrogen receptor negative MDA-MB-231 cells (P?<?0.05), but not in the other two cell lines. Pre-treating cells with DHA increased CD95 surface expression (threefold) and the plasma membrane raft content of CD95 (2fold) and FADD (>4-fold) after dox treatment, compared to dox treatment alone (P?<?0.05). This study demonstrated that pre-treatment of estrogen receptor negative MDA-MB-231 cells with DHA increased the anti-cancer effects of dox and presents evidence to suggest that this may be mediated in part by CD95-induced apoptosis.     

A Brief Actuarial Assessment for the Prediction of Wife Assault Recidivism: The Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment.

An actuarial assessment to predict male-to-female marital violence was constructed from a pool of potential predictors in a sample of 589 offenders identified in police records and followed up for an average of almost 5 years. Archival information in several domains (offender characteristics, domestic violence history, nondomestic criminal history, relationship characteristics, victim characteristics, index offense) and recidivism were subjected to setwise and stepwise logistic regression. The resulting 13-item scale, the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA), showed a large effect size in predicting new assaults against legal or common-law wives or ex-wives (Cohen's d = 1.1, relative operating characteristic area = .77) and was associated with number and severity of new assaults and time until recidivism. Cross-validation and comparisons with other instruments are also reported. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Salient victim suffering and the sexual responses of child molesters.

In phallometric testing, audiovisual stimuli in which the audio component depicted a child victim's suffering described from the child's point of view were compared with similar scenarios described from the adult male offender's point of view and to portrayals of consenting adult heterosexual activity. Fifteen male participants who had sexually assaulted girls and 15 nonoffenders were also administered questionnaire measures of empathy and opinions regarding sex with children. Consistent with predictions, maximal discrimination between groups was obtained using deviance indices based on stimuli that emphasized victim trauma. Also consistent with predictions, the questionnaire measures were related to sexual deviance. Recommendations are made regarding stimuli for phallometric testing. The results point to the relevance of changing deviant preferences and enhancing empathy for the victim in the treatment of child molesters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

加压还原气氛下脱硫基础研究

文章在参考国内外现有研究成果的基础上对加压还原脱硫过程进行了基础研究。研究工作在一台自制的加压热重分析仪上进行，研究内容包括压力、温度、H2S浓度等因素对反应速度的影响，获得了加压还原气氛下南京石灰石脱硫反应的动力学参数及相应的动力学方程。