Risk assessment of child-victim sex offenders for extended supervision in New Zealand

Recently enacted legislation in New Zealand, the Parole (Extended Supervision) Amendment Act 2004, allows for the imposition of up to 10 years of supervision in the community for child-victim sex offenders following their release from prison. The Act requires reports to be written specifically assessing the risk of sexual re-offending against children. This study examined the application of actuarial measures used by the New Zealand Department of Corrections in these assessments, including a computer-scored instrument based on static factors (the Automated Sexual Recidivism Scale; ASRS) and a clinically-based judgement of dynamic risk factors (the SONAR). It was expected that a conservative approach would be taken in making recommendations for or against extended periods of supervision, such that a high score on either measure would predict a recommendation for extended supervision. It was found, however, that a more individualized approach was often taken, whereby a baseline assessment of risk as predicted by the ASRS was adjusted by clinicians based on SONAR ratings. Implications for the practice of risk assessment in sexual re-offending are discussed.

Intelligent clothing for automated recognition of human physical activities in free-living environment

This paper presents an intelligent clothing framework for human daily activity recognition using a single waist-worn tri-axial accelerometer sensor coupled with a robust pattern recognition system. The activity recognition algorithm is realized to distinguish six different physical activities through three major steps: acceleration signal collection/pre-processing, wavelet-based principle component analysis, and a support vector machine classifier. The proposed activity recognition method has been experimentally validated through two batches of trials with an overall mean classification accuracy of 95.25 and 94.87%, respectively. These results suggest that the intelligent clothing is not only able to learn the activity patterns but also capable of generalizing new data from both known and unknown subjects. This enables the proposed intelligent clothing to be applied in a comfortable and in situ assessment of human physical activities, which would open up new market segments to the textile industry.

Peak picking and the assessment of separation performance in two-dimensional high performance liquid chromatography

An algorithm was developed for 2DHPLC that automated the process of peak recognition, measuring their retention times, and then subsequently plotting the information in a two-dimensional retention plane. Following the recognition of peaks, the software then performed a series of statistical assessments of the separation performance, measuring for example, correlation between dimensions, peak capacity and the percentage of usage of the separation space. Peak recognition was achieved by interpreting the first and second derivatives of each respective one-dimensional chromatogram to determine the 1D retention times of each solute and then compiling these retention times for each respective fraction ‘cut’. Due to the nature of comprehensive 2DHPLC adjacent cut fractions may contain peaks common to more than one cut fraction. The algorithm determined which components were common in adjacent cuts and subsequently calculated the peak maximum profile by interpolating the space between adjacent peaks. This algorithm was applied to the analysis of a two-dimensional separation of an apple flesh extract separated in a first dimension comprising a cyano stationary phase and an aqueous/THF mobile phase as the first dimension and a second dimension comprising C18-Hydro with an aqueous/MeOH mobile phase. A total of 187 peaks were detected.

Anxiety online - a virtual clinic : preliminary outcomes following completion of five fully automated treatment programs for anxiety disorders and symptoms

Background : The development of e-mental health interventions to treat or prevent mental illness and to enhance wellbeing has risen rapidly over the past decade. This development assists the public in sidestepping some of the obstacles that are often encountered when trying to access traditional face-to-face mental health care services. Objective : The objective of our study was to investigate the posttreatment effectiveness of five fully automated self-help cognitive behavior e-therapy programs for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder with or without agoraphobia (PD/A), obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and social anxiety disorder (SAD) offered to the international public via Anxiety Online, an open-access full-service virtual psychology clinic for anxiety disorders. Methods : We used a naturalistic participant choice, quasi-experimental design to evaluate each of the five Anxiety Online fully automated self-help e-therapy programs. Participants were required to have at least subclinical levels of one of the anxiety disorders to be offered the associated disorder-specific fully automated self-help e-therapy program. These programs are offered free of charge via Anxiety Online. Results : A total of 225 people self-selected one of the five e-therapy programs (GAD, n = 88; SAD, n = 50; PD/A, n = 40; PTSD, n = 30; OCD, n = 17) and completed their 12-week posttreatment assessment. Significant improvements were found on 21/25 measures across the five fully automated self-help programs. At postassessment we observed significant reductions on all five anxiety disorder clinical disorder severity ratings (Cohen d range 0.72–1.22), increased confidence in managing one’s own mental health care (Cohen d range 0.70–1.17), and decreases in the total number of clinical diagnoses (except for the PD/A program, where a positive trend was found) (Cohen d range 0.45–1.08). In addition, we found significant improvements in quality of life for the GAD, OCD, PTSD, and SAD e-therapy programs (Cohen d range 0.11–0.96) and significant reductions relating to general psychological distress levels for the GAD, PD/A, and PTSD e-therapy programs (Cohen d range 0.23–1.16). Overall, treatment satisfaction was good across all five e-therapy programs, and posttreatment assessment completers reported using their e-therapy program an average of 395.60 (SD 272.2) minutes over the 12-week treatment period. Conclusions : Overall, all five fully automated self-help e-therapy programs appear to be delivering promising high-quality outcomes; however, the results require replication.