The Psychological Impact of Long-Term Solitary Confinement on Inmates in the United States

Psychological distress among inmates is prevalent in correctional facilities throughout the United States. Although, according to Haney (2003), severe isolation of incarcerates has been commonplace in prisons since their inception, the use of secure housing units (SHU) and the development of ‘supermax’ prisons are becoming increasingly utilized within the last several decades. Legislators have expressed the need to increase punitive measures against delinquents in response to the rising prison population (Arrigo and Bullock 2008). Thus harsher crime control policies, such as administrative and disciplinary segregation, have been established in order to limit the personal freedoms of prisoners (Arrigo and Bullock 2008). Within these institutions, inmates are increasingly subjected to solitary confinement, a method of incarceration characterized by “the confinement of a prisoner in isolation with limited chance for social interaction or environmental stimulus” (The Psychology of Cruelty 2015). Theories surrounding the use of solitary confinement emphasize its potential to deter future misconduct among inmates (Morris 2015); however, little attention has been given to the potential psychological effects of long-term segregation. In response, this paper seeks to examine the exacerbating and detrimental psychological effects experienced by inmates subjected to solitary confinement in the United States

The SPIRE Photometer Interactive Analysis Package SPIA

The Herschel Common Science System (HCSS) (Ott et al. 2006) (Ott & Science Ground Segment Consortium 2010) is a substantial Java software package, accompanying the development of the Herschel Mission (Pilbratt et al. 2010), supporting all of its phases. In particular the reduction of data from the scientific instruments for instrument checkout, calibration, and astronomical analysis is one of its major applications. The data reduction software is split up in modules, called "tasks". Agreed-upon sequences of tasks form pipelines that deliver well defined standard products for storage in a web-accessible Herschel Science Archive (HSA) (Leon et al. 2009). However, as astronomers and instrument scientists continue to characterize instrumental effects, astronomers already need to publish scientific results and may not have the time to acquire a sufficiently deep understanding of the system to apply necessary fixes. There is a need for intermediate level analysis tools that offer more flexibility than rigid pipelines. The task framework within the HCSS and the highly versatile Herschel Interactive Processing Environment (HIPE), together with the rich set of libraries provide the necessary tools to develop GUI-based interactive analysis packages for the Herschel instruments. The SPIRE Photometer Interactive Analysis (SPIA) package, that was demonstrated in this session, proves the validity of the concept for the SPIRE instrument (Griffin et al. 2010), breaking up the pipeline reduction into logical components, making all relevant processing parameters available in GUIs, and providing a more controlled and user-friendly access to the complexities of the system.Comment: Proceedings accompanying a focus demo given at the ADASS 2010 in Bosto

Ants and Fairies: The Debate with Darwinism in A. S. Byatt’s Morpho Eugenia

Zadanie pt. „Digitalizacja i udostępnienie w Cyfrowym Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego kolekcji czasopism naukowych wydawanych przez Uniwersytet Łódzki” nr 885/P-DUN/2014 dofinansowane zostało ze środków MNiSW w ramach działalności upowszechniającej nauk

A Riemannian View on Shape Optimization

Shape optimization based on the shape calculus is numerically mostly performed by means of steepest descent methods. This paper provides a novel framework to analyze shape-Newton optimization methods by exploiting a Riemannian perspective. A Riemannian shape Hessian is defined yielding often sought properties like symmetry and quadratic convergence for Newton optimization methods.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure, 1 table. Forschungsbericht / Universit\"at Trier, Mathematik, Informatik 2012,

On the physical implications of Hawking's spacetime foam

Hawking's spacetime foam model predicts that due to quantum fluctuations, spacetime is filled with black hole like objects. We argue that Hawking's model implies a cosmological constant of the observed order and that it can also be used to solve the problem of time in quantum gravity.Comment: 12 page

Diffusion with restrictions

A non--linear diffusion equation is derived by taking into account hopping rates depending on the occupation of next neighbouring sites. There appears additonal repulsive and attractive forces leading to a changed local mobiltiy. The stationary and the time dependent behaviour of the system are studied based upon the master equation approach. Different to conventional diffusion it results a time dependent bump the position of which increases with time described by an anomalous diffusion exponent. The fractal dimension of this random walk is exclusively determined by the space dimension. The applicabilty of the model to descibe glasses is discussed.Comment: 1 figure, can be send on reques

Street cred : are media consumers craving more “authenticity” in the digital age?

Media organizations that provide news have traditionally relied on audience perceptions of truth and credibility to lure more readers, viewers, and listeners. The author explores whether authenticity has emerged in the digital age as an additional ingredient in media consumers’ daily decisions about where to turn – and where to return – for trustworthy information. As it becomes ever-more of a challenge for consumers to distinguish reliable information from “fake news” in the 21st century, audiences may be seeking content from media organizations that feels more authentic, genuine, and personalized. Three case studies drawn from new media, as well as legacy media, help illustrate what traditional and startup media institutions can do to better understand audience attitudes and behaviors: the HBO series “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” the online site Reddit, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold.Communication Studie