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 ...

The process industry is increasingly making use of Risk Based Inspection (RBI) techniques to develop cost and/or safety optimal inspection plans. This paper makes use of the gamma stochastic deterioration process to model the corrosion damage mechanism. This model is successfully extended to update prior knowledge over the corrosion rate with imperfect wall thickness measurements. This is very ...

The present paper discusses the development of a Markov model for performance evaluation of coal handling unit of a thermal power plant using probabilistic approach. Coal handling unit ensures proper supply of coal for sound functioning of thermal Power Plant. In present paper, the coal handling unit consists of two subsystems with two possible states i.e. working and failed. Failure and repair...

Nature has equipped organisms with the ability to regenerate or repair themselves when damaged. If I cut myself, healing takes over without need of conscious direction. If I am hurt badly enough, the body's needs will make themselves known and tend to preempt voluntary activities. In this way, a balance between short-term interests (e.g., continuing to work or play) and long-term interests (sta...

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 ...

It is somewhat true that in most mainstream statistical literature the transition from inference to a formal decision model is seldom explicitly considered. Since the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) revolution in Bayesian statistics, focus has generally been on the development of novel algorithmic methods to enable comprehensive inference in a variety of applications, or to tackle realistic pro...