Ask Atkins

Individualizing justice after Atkins.

On August 6, 2005, newspapers and other media outlets reported that Daryl Atkins had been determined by a Virginia jury not to be retarded and therefore was mentally competent to receive the death penalty. A judge immediately scheduled his execution for December. Atkins, of course, is the convicted murderer whose case three years earlier had led the U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling, to ...

Atkins' Physical Chemistry

In this chapter we apply the concepts of statistical thermodynamics to the calculation of chemically significant quantities. First, we establish the relations between thermodynamic functions and partition functions. Next, we show that the molecular partition function can be factorized into contributions from each mode of motion and establish the formulas for the partition functions for translat...

Atkins ’ Physical Chemistry

Commentary: Atkins and clinical practice.

The American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law’s Committee on the Developmentally Disabled, founded in 1990, has continually grappled with the inequities faced by persons with mental retardation within the criminal justice system. Not the least of our concerns has been capital sentencing and execution of disabled defendants. Indeed, the Committee cut its teeth on the 1989 Supreme Court decision...

Atkins – the superior slimming diet?

Four diets of varying composition, from the high-protein Atkins diet to the balanced educational tool LEARN, showed modest one-year weight-loss results but had no adverse effects. None of the four diets reaches the standard figure of at least 5 Á10% used to evaluate the success of weight loss treatments. It seems reasonable to state that a well-conducted study has shown us that modest weight lo...