This study is the first of its kind to explore the phenomenon of serial rape from a behavioural profiling perspective within the South African context. The dearth of scientific research on serial rape in South Africa has impacted negatively on the recognition and investigation of such cases. The data set for the study consisted of police dockets, victim statements, court transcripts, detectives’ reports, and correctional services reports on nine serial rapists who assaulted and/or raped a total of seventy five victims. A behavioural profiling framework that was developed from existing literature was used to systematically analyse the victim and offender data using both qualitative and quantitative data analysis techniques. Initial victim and offender profiles were constructed using key elements such as age, population group, modus operandi, and sexual behaviour of the offenders. The initial results showed that the South African serial rapists typically exhibit the same behavioural elements reported in international literature with respect to aspects such as the methods of approach utilised, average age of the victims, ages of the offenders, offender – victim relationship, and sexual acts. However, the research also illustrated that South African serial rapists also displayed some behavioural aspects that have not been reported in international literature. In particular, South African serial rapists approach and attack their victims at two different locations. The research also showed that South African serial rapists are more willing to target victims outside their own populations groups. Young children also appear to be targeted more frequently by the South African serial rapists. The South African offenders also employed a new method of approaching the intended victim (i.e. the delayed-con approach). The results are discussed in terms of the extent to which the behavioural patterns, similarities and differences with observations made in international literature, and current police practices with respect to the investigation of serial rape in South Africa could be utilised to enhance investigative processes. Also, specific areas in need of further examination are identified, as are strategies that could assist in decreasing the occurrence of ‘linkage blindness’ in serial rape investigations in South Africa. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Psychology / unrestricted

Sherlock Holmes har visat på slutledningskonsten att koppla ledtrådar från en situation till personlighet. Är det då inte möjligt att säga mer om en person på bas av föremål som är relativt statiska/konsistenta i ens användning över hela dagen? Praktiserandet av profilering baseras på sambandet mellan personlighet och beteende men forskning har visat att beteenden inte alltid speglar vår personlighet. Denna studie syftade till att undersöka om personlighet kunde användas som prediktor till föremål. En förstudie med sju deltagare gjordes för att utforma en checklista med 48 föremål som sammanfogades med Big Five till en webbenkät. Webbenkäten besvarades av 449 kvinnor. De 48 föremålen användes som beroende variabler i simultana logistiska regressionsanalyser varav 15 var signifikanta. Modellerna gav studien stöd för att personlighet som prediktor påverkar sannolikheten av att bära eller inte bära 15 föremål. Kompletterande studier bör göras för att utforska potentiellt samband mellan beteenden och föremål.

Sherlock Holmes har visat på slutledningskonsten att koppla ledtrådar från en situation till personlighet. Är det då inte möjligt att säga mer om en person på bas av föremål som är relativt statiska/konsistenta i ens användning över hela dagen? Praktiserandet av profilering baseras på sambandet mellan personlighet och beteende men forskning har visat att beteenden inte alltid speglar vår personlighet. Denna studie syftade till att undersöka om personlighet kunde användas som prediktor till medhavda föremål. En förstudie med sju deltagare gjordes för att utforma en checklista med 48 föremål som sammanfogades med Big Five till en webbenkät. Webbenkäten besvarades av 449 kvinnor. De 48 föremålen användes som beroende variabler i simultana logistiska regressionsanalyser varav 15 var signifikanta. Modellerna gav studien stöd för att personlighet som prediktor påverkar sannolikheten av att bära eller inte bära 15 föremål. Kompletterande studier bör göras för att utforska potentiellt samband mellan beteenden och föremål. / <p>Formalia uppdaterad</p>

Background. As computing power has increased over the years, larger parts of the digital graphics industries are moving towards using real-time rendering for their solutions. The fast iteration and visual response help make the creative processes and communication more accessible in both the desktop and smartphone markets. One noticeably growing area using real-time rendering is the communication between people and audiences using online chat applications with virtual avatars. As humans, social interaction is essential to every aspect of our health. The requirements of remote communications to satisfy the needs of social interaction are facial expressions. Facial expressions involve motion. Thus making real-time rendering mandatory for having facial expressions in computer-generated images. This thesis shows the performance result of having real-time procedural-generated eye features. Objectives. This thesis is based on an experiment by developing a data set of duration for computing different visual aspects of anime eyes, the aim is to help inform the creation of more complete and optimized shader solutions. The objectives of this thesis are to produce a profiling application, produce a collection of eye references, produce a collection of visual eye features, produce shaders based on the collections, and measure the time performance of the shaders. Method. Doing this experiment involves producing a profiling application in the C++ programming language using the OpenGL graphics API. The profiling application can render a set of shaders and measure time metrics. The experiment is executed on two different computers with different specifications. By gathering a collection of eye references from online resources, targeting popular media in the anime style, a collection of visual eye features can be established with common and unique attributes. The collections allow for the creation of a set of shaders that replicate the collected eye features. With the profiling application and shaders, a data collection of time metrics are composed. Results. The final results of the profiling experiment have a collection of 29 shaders representing different eye features. The profiling tests gave the results of how many milliseconds it took for a set number of frames to render each produced shader. This result is shown with the help of two different graphs for each computer that executed the experiment. Deconstructing the resulting data helps to analyze and distinguish interesting aspects. Conclusions. From the result of this thesis experiment, the conclusion can be made that an eye feature by itself is a fast process for the GPU to compute on its own. Aset of eye features combined to create a final eye shader including animation and eye tracking is a valid future work section regarding this thesis experiment.

No description available.

Study of possibilities of thin layers depth profiling by combined use of SIMS and ToF-LEIS methods.

1 Introduction to the Thesis and the Importance of the Topic The sorting and the categorization of individuals and groups by their capacity and inclination to risky behavior or level of dangerousness has been and remains an essential function of security apparatus of the state and a vital component in state security. Practices of this kind became even more important in the age of international terror. The western world and specifically the United States has been the primary target of international terror suffering numerous terrorist attacks including the 9/11 attacks that became thedefining moment of how security functions in themodern world. While what we call "western world" is dominantly defined by liberal democratic political order, many of its societies and specifically the US is also defined by atechnology-enabled environment that scholarship characterizes as "surveillance society" (Gandy 1989, Lyon 2001, Lyon & Bauman 2012). Withintechnology-enabled environments the technologization of security was inevitable (Ceyhan 2008), and the 9/11 generated even more intense and enhanced efforts ofspeeding this process up (Lyon 2004, Ball and Webster 2003). In the post 9/11 US war on terror, specifically surveillance technologies became central to security policies (Ceyhan 2006) as universal security enablers...

Anotation Diploma Thesis Terrorist profiling in Europe between 2004 and 2017 Bc. Kryštof Rygl Terrorism has never been so brutal and unexpected as it is now in the era of Islamic terrorism. This era initiated by series of attacks in the United States in 2001. Behind these attacks, as well as three years later during the bombings in Madrid in Spain, has been Al- Qaeda, the terrorist organization, headed by Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaeda maintained its importance on organizing of terrorist attacks until 2014 when the Islamic State, replaced Al- Qaeda's significance and dominated until 2017. Many academics have been devoted to research of Islamic terrorism and a wide range of studies have been written to explain this phenomenon from the perspective of ideology, possible causes, motivation of attackers, how to carry out attacks, the influence of socio-economic factors and many other factors causing, enhancing or suppressing the phenomenon. The aim of this work is to link the topics of the research that has been done, so far, by selecting several relevant categories that can influence the terrorist's profile or the nature of the attack. Based on the completion of these categories by the relevant data for each terrorist attack that was committed during the reference period between 2004 and 2017, a general profile of...

In vitro testing includes both cell-based and cell-free systems that can be used to detect toxicity induced by xenobiotics. In vitro methods are especially useful in rapidly gathering intelligence regarding the toxicity of compounds for which none is available such as new chemical entities developed in the pharmaceutical industry. In addition to this, in vitro investigations are invaluable in providing information concerning mechanisms of toxicity of xenobiotics. This type of toxicity testing has gained popularity among the research and development community because of a number of advantages such as scalability to high throughput screening, cost-effectiveness and predictive power. Hepatotoxicity is one of the major causes of drug attrition and the high cost associated with drug development poses a heavy burden on the development of new chemical entities. Early detection of hepatotoxic agents by in vitro methods will improve lead optimisation and decrease the cost of drug development and reduce drug-induced liver injury. Literature highlights the need for a cellbased in vitro model that is capable of assessing multiple toxicity parameters, which assesses a wider scope of toxicity and would be able to detect subtle types of hepatotoxicity. The present study was aimed at developing an in vitro procedure capable of mechanistically profiling the effects of known hepatotoxin dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT) and its metabolites, dichlorodiphenyl dichloroethylene (DDE) and dichlorodiphenyl dichloroethane (DDD) on an established liver-derived cell line, HepG2, by evaluating several different aspects of cellular function using a number of simultaneous in vitro assays on a single 96 well microplate. Examined parameters have been suggested by the European Medicines Agency and include: cell viability, phase I metabolism, oxidative stress, mitochondrial toxicity and mode of cell death (apoptosis vs. necrosis). To further assess whether the developed method was capable of detecting hepatoprotection, the effect of the known hepatoprotectant, N-acetylcysteine, was determined. Viability decreased in a dose-dependent manner yielding IC50 values of 54 μM, 64 μM and 44 μM for DDT, DDE and DDD, respectively. Evaluation of phase I metabolism showed that cytochrome P4501A1 activity was dose-dependently induced. Test compounds decreasedlevels of reactive oxygen species, and significantly hyperpolarised the mitochondrialmembrane potential. Assessment of the mode of cell death revealed a significant elevation of caspase-3 activity, with DDD proving to be most potent. DDT alone induced dosedependent loss of membrane integrity. These results suggest that the tested compounds produce apoptotic death likely due to mitochondrial toxicity with subsequent caspase-3 activation and apoptotic cell death. The developed in vitro assay method reduces the time it would take to assess the tested parameters separately, produces results from multiple endpoints that broadens the scope of toxicity compared to single-endpoint methods. In addition to this the method provides results that are truly comparable as all of the assays utilise the same batch of cells and are conducted on the same plate under the exact same conditions, which eliminates a considerable amount of variability that would be unavoidable otherwise. The present study laid a solid foundation for further development of this method by highlighting the unforeseen shortcomings that can be adjusted to improve scalability and predictive power. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Pharmacology / unrestricted

Psychological profiling of multiple murderers Abstract In my diploma thesis, I would like to summarize the basic knowledge of psychological profiling, to find out whether there are certain generally established standards for profiling experts that entitles them to participate in criminal investigations. I want to show that profiling is not just an intuitive procedure, I want to find out the role of psychological profiling in criminal investigations, whether it is important in this process for the profiling expert to know information about the victim of the crime and not only about the offender, to find out what specific information the psychological profile must provide to the investigator to be a useful tool to catch the offender, evaluate its possibilities and limits and outlined its use in the investigation of multiple murders, namely serial murders and last but not least, summarize the successful practical application of psychological profiling in practice. I divided the thesis into five parts. In the first part I deal with a summary of basic knowledge about the content of psychological profiling, a brief development of profiling, both abroad and in the Czech Republic and finally I would like to address the lack of legal anchoring of this concept in the Czech Republic. In the second part I deal with...