Finding a serial burglar's home using distance decay and conditional origin–destination patterns: a test of empirical Bayes journey-to-crime estimation in the Hague

Can we tell where an offender lives from where he or she commits crimes? Journey-to-crime estimation is a tool that uses crime locations to tell us where to search for a serial offender's home. In this paper, we test a new method: empirical Bayes journey-to-crime estimation. It differs from previous methods because it utilises an ‘origin–destination’ rule in addition to the ‘distance decay’ rule that prior methods have used. In the new method, the profiler not only asks ‘what distances did previous offenders travel between their home and the crime scenes?’ but also ‘where did previous offenders live who offended at the locations included in the crime series I investigate right now?’. The new method could not only improve predictive accuracy, it could also reduce the traditional distinction between marauding and commuting offenders. Utilising the CrimeStat software, we apply the new method to 62 serial burglars in The Hague, The Netherlands, and show that the new method has higher predictive accuracy than methods that only exploit a distance decay rule. The new method not only improves the accuracy of predicting the homes of commuters—offenders who live outside their offending area—it also improves the search for marauders—offenders who live inside their offending area. After presenting an example of the application of the technique for prediction of a specific burglar, we discuss the limitations of the method and offer some suggestions for its future development. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Can Community Indicators Live Up to Their Expectations? The Case of the Flemish City Monitor for Livable and Sustainable Urban Development

The City Monitor is a policy instrument and has been used to measure the state of 13 Flemish cities in 2004, 2006 and 2008. The community indicators of the City Monitor provide feedback on the evolution of a multitude of phenomena, and so they represent an opportunity for policy learning about the livability and sustainability of those cities. Indicators simplify the representation of societal problems and in that sense they are helping the communication between city authorities and their stakeholders. In this article we also focus on two innovative characteristics of the co-design methodology of the City Monitor. First of all, indicators were constructed on the basis of a normative vision about urban sustainability. We argue that a sustainability framework can give value added to map vital signs of the quality of life in Flemish cities. Secondly, the City Monitor was being developed with the participation of about 200 experts, coming from city governments and other administrations, civil society and academic world. It is our argument that the participatory approach fosters the use of community indicators and generates interesting side effects. As a third argument, we indicate the importance of the attitude of city authority people for its implementation within the city organisation. The City Monitor is certainly meant as an input for urban policy debate about the quality of life in the major Flemish cities. Does it live up to its expectations? And will the vision and indicators on urban sustainability stir up the debate about urban sustainable development?     

Implementing Group Prenatal Counseling for Expanded Noninvasive Screening Options

Recently, practices have begun integrating cell-free DNA-based noninvasive prenatal screening as a screening option for a variety of genetic conditions. According to the National Society of Genetic Counselors, the integration of cfDNA screening into clinical prenatal practice may "significantly shift the paradigm of prenatal testing and screening for all women." The purpose of this study was to determine whether group information sessions can feasibly serve as an alternative to extended one-on-one genetic counseling for the increasing number of women making decisions about prenatal testing and screening. This study assessed the effect of group genetic information sessions coupled with abbreviated counseling on pregnant women’s knowledge about and attitudes toward prenatal testing and screening.     

Source-constrained retrieval influences the encoding of new information

Jacoby, Shimizu, Daniels, and Rhodes (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 852–857, 2005) showed that new words presented as foils among a list of old words that had been deeply encoded were themselves subsequently better recognized than new words presented as foils among a list of old words that had been shallowly encoded. In Experiment 1, by substituting a deep-versus-shallow imagery manipulation for the levels-of-processing manipulation, we demonstrated that the effect is robust and that it generalizes, also occurring with a different type of encoding. In Experiment 2, we provided more direct evidence for context-related encoding during tests of deeply encoded words, showing enhanced priming for foils presented among deeply encoded targets when participants made the same deep-encoding judgments on those items as had been made on the targets during study. In Experiment 3, we established that the findings from Experiment 2 are restricted to this specific deep judgment task and are not a general consequence of these foils being associated with deeply encoded items. These findings provide support for the source-constrained retrieval hypothesis of Jacoby, Shimizu, Daniels, and Rhodes: New information can be influenced by how surrounding items are encoded and retrieved, as long as the surrounding items recruit a coherent mode of processing.     

Infant responding to joint attention, executive processes, and self-regulation in preschool children

Infant joint attention is related to behavioral and social outcomes, as well as language in childhood. Recent research and theory suggests that the relations between joint attention and social-behavioral outcomes may reflect the role of executive self-regulatory processes in the development of joint attention. To test this hypothesis two studies were conducted. The first, cross-sectional study examined the development of responding to joint attention (RJA) skill in terms of increasing executive efficiency of responding between 9 and 18 months of age. The results indicated that development of RJA was characterized by a decreased latency to shift attention in following another person's gaze and head turn, as well as an increase in the proportion of correct RJA responses exhibited by older infants. The second study examined the longitudinal relations between 12-month measures of responding to joint attention and 36-month attention regulation in a delay of gratification task. The results indicated that responding to joint attention at 12-months was significantly related to children's use of three types of self-regulation behaviors while waiting for a snack reward at 36 months of age. These observations are discussed in light of a developmental theory of attention regulation and joint attention in infancy.     

Genetic Information,Non-Discrimination,and Privacy Protections in Genetic Counseling Practice

The passage of the Genetic Information Non Discrimination Act (GINA) was hailed as a pivotal achievement that was expected to calm the fears of both patients and research participants about the potential misuse of genetic information. However, 6 years later, patient and provider awareness of legal protections at both the federal and state level remains discouragingly low, thereby, limiting their potential effectiveness. The increasing demand for genetic testing will expand the number of individuals and families who could benefit from obtaining accurate information about the privacy and anti-discriminatory protections that GINA and other laws extend. In this paper we describe legal protections that are applicable to individuals seeking genetic counseling, review the literature on patient and provider fears of genetic discrimination and examine their awareness and understandings of existing laws, and summarize how genetic counselors currently discuss genetic discrimination. We then present three genetic counseling cases to illustrate issues of genetic discrimination and provide relevant information on applicable legal protections. Genetic counselors have an unprecedented opportunity, as well as the professional responsibility, to disseminate accurate knowledge about existing legal protections to their patients. They can strengthen their effectiveness in this role by achieving a greater knowledge of current protections including being able to identify specific steps that can help protect genetic information.