Developmental risk factors for sexual offending

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to identify the general, common, and specific developmental risk factors for pedophilia, exhibitionism, rape, and multiple paraphilia, and to address five methodological issues observed in this area of research. METHOD: This study involved 64 sex offenders and 33 nonsex, nondrug-related, and nonviolent property offenders. The group of 64 sex offenders was further divided into eight subgroups, some of which overlapped in memberships because of multiple diagnoses. To overcome the methodological problem associated with overlapping group memberships, a special approach involving comparisons of sets of logistic regression analyses was adopted. Offenders were clinically assessed for evidence of paraphilias, and their adverse childhood experiences were measured by a battery of tests. RESULTS: Childhood Emotional Abuse and Family Dysfunction, Childhood Behavior Problems, and Childhood Sexual Abuse were found to be general developmental risk factors for paraphilias. Furthermore, Childhood Emotional Abuse and Family Dysfunction was found to be a common developmental risk factor for pedophilia, exhibitionism, rape, or multiple paraphilia. Additional analyses revealed that childhood emotional abuse contributed significantly as a common developmental risk factor compared to family dysfunction. Besides, Childhood Sexual Abuse was found to be a specific developmental risk factor for pedophilia. CONCLUSIONS: The study has supported the value of conceptualizing certain childhood adversities as developmental risk factors for paraphilic behaviors. The role of childhood emotional abuse as an important developmental risk contributor, and the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and pedophilia are of theoretical significance. Furthermore, the results have significant implications for the prevention of childhood abuse and treatment of sex offenders.     

An example based environment for beginning programmers

Making a good programming environment for beginning programmers is an enterprise which can exploit the strong connections between machine learning and human learning. Applying what we know about teaching and learning to improve the programming environment can result in a system which allows beginners to more readily acquire programming skills.Surprisingly, a universally accepted principle of good teaching and good learning has not been taken seriously enough in designing programming environments-learning by example. A good teacher presents examples of how to solve problems, and points out what is important about the examples. The student generalizes from the examples to learn principles and techniques. This paper describes a programming environment called Tinker, in which a beginning programmer presents examples to the machine, distinguishing accidental and essential aspects of the examples. The programmer demonstrates how to handle the specific examples, and the machine formulates a procedure for handling the general case. Because people are much better at thinking about concrete examples than they are at thinking about abstractions, and because examples provide immediate feedback, Tinker is a more congenial environment for a beginner than conventional programming systems.     

Advanced project work in distance teaching

The problem of presenting advanced project work in distance teaching is discussed and criteria established for its success. An evaluation of empirical research projects involved in an advanced course on research methods in education and social science is described and some principles put forward for sound project design in distance teaching. Finally, three models suggesting different combinations of distance teaching and conventional institution-based teaching are proposed which incorporate advanced project work. It is suggested that conventional teaching institutions working in isolation can all benefit from a distance teaching element in their programmes.     

The Gift of Magi(extract)

One dollar and eighty-seven cents.That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies.①Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony(2)that     

Pattern of disruption in the extinction of a chain FR 7-FR 7 in pigeons

Performance was studied during extinction after training on a homogeneous chain FR 7-FR 7, with a tandem FR 7-FR 7 as control, eight pigeons per group. During extinction, disruption of the chain was considerably greater in the first than in the second component, while tandem controls showed no differential disruption.     

Factors affecting occlusion pressure and ischemic preconditioning

Purpose: To determine the effect of limb selection (upper/lower), cuff width (small (6?cm)/medium (13?cm) upper; medium/large (18?cm) lower) and anthropometry on arterial occlusion pressure (AOP) in ischemic preconditioning (IPC). Methods: Twenty athletes (10 females and 10 males) had surface anthropometry and dual x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) assessments before using Doppler ultrasound to confirm AOP for each limb. Subsequently, 5?min of occlusion occurred, with near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) measuring muscle oxygenation changes. Resultant AOP was compared between sexes, limbs and cuff sizes using linear regression models. Results: Mean AOP was higher in the lower limbs than the upper limbs (161?±?18 vs. 133?±?12?mm?Hg; p?p?p?=?.222). Sex and resting systolic blood pressure (SBP) accounted for 77% (small cuff) to 83% (medium cuff) of variance in AOP for upper limbs, and 61% (medium cuff) to 63% (large cuff) in lower limbs. Including anthropometry accounted for 82% (small cuff) to 89% (medium cuff) and 78% (medium cuff) to 79% (large cuff) of variance for upper and lower limbs, respectively. Adding DXA variables improved the explained variance up to 83% (small cuff) to 91% (medium cuff) and 79% (medium cuff) to 87% (large cuff) for upper and lower limbs, respectively. NIRS data showed significantly greater tissue oxygenation changes in upper versus lower limbs. Conclusions: The AOP in athletes is dependent on limb occluded, sex, SBP, limb and cuff size, and body composition.