To what extent is criminal behavior in adolescence attributable to risk appraisal? Using two large cross-sectional samples (N = 929, age range: 10-30 years; and N = 1,357, age range: 12-24 years), we examine whether (a) reward bias in risk appraisal is more prominent in adolescence and (b) the association between risk appraisal and criminal behavior is stronger during adolescence than at other ...

Genetic testing is becoming more common and more powerful by the day. The costs of the underlying DNA sequencing technology are plummeting, making it likely that tests based on it will become even more pervasive. The use of tests to determine DNA sequence to help make clinical decisions is here to stay. DNA sequencing is also finding new uses in forensics, determination of ancestry, understandi...

The Supreme Court decision O'Connor v. Donaldson (1975) has been widely interpreted to assert that dangerousness is a constitutional requirement for civil commitment. This interpretation is a misreading of the decision, which actually addressed the conditions disallowing indefinite, involuntary custodial confinement and not the requirements for an initial commitment. An excessive reliance on da...

The recent High Court ruling upholding a prior decision to allow a mother to sue for the cost of rearing a child after having had a failed sterilisation has understandably attracted great controversy (Cattanach v Melchior [2003]). The implications of this decision on what can now be claimed for through medical litigation are significant, and lawyers and doctors will extract from it lessons for ...

Super-peer topologies have been found efficient and effective in heterogeneous peer-to-peer networks. Due to dominant position of super-peers, super-peer selection requires a protocol that is aware of peer capacities. Lack of global information about other peers capacity and dynamic nature of peer-to-peer networks are two major challenges that impose uncertainty in decisionmaking. SG-1, is a we...

The use of a simple 50%-50% box score of decisions for parents and districts, respectively, is a false measure of the impartiality of hearing officers under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This analysis canvasses relevant structural factors that the stakeholders, the mass media, and the professional literature have failed to recognize both generally and systematically. T...