Math may explain why serial killers kill

Researchers have discovered that the seemingly erratic behavior of the "Rostov Ripper," a prolific serial killer active in the 1980s, conformed to the same mathematical pattern obeyed by earthquakes, avalanches, stock market crashes and many other sporadic events. The finding suggests an explanation for why serial killers kill.

Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury, electrical engineers at the University of California, Los Angeles, modeled the behavior of Andrei Chikatilo, a gruesome murderer who took the lives of 53 people in Rostov, Russia between 1978 and 1990. Though Chikatilo sometimes went nearly three years without committing murder, on other occasions, he went just three days. The researchers found that the seemingly random spacing of his murders followed a mathematical distribution known as a power law.

When the number of days between Chikatilo's murders is plotted against the number of times he waited that number of days, the relationship forms a near-straight line on a type of graph called a log-log plot. It's the same result scientists get when they plot the magnitude of earthquakes against the number of times each magnitude has occurred ? and the same goes for a variety of natural phenomena. The power law outcome suggests that there was an underlying natural process driving the serial killer's behavior.

Simkin and Roychowdhury hypothesize that it's the same type of effect that has also been found to cause epileptics to have seizures. The psychotic effects that lead a serial killer to commit murder "arise from simultaneous firing of large number of neurons in the brain," they wrote. The paper, a preprint of which is available on the arXiv, has been submitted to Biology Letters.

In the brain, the firing of a single neuron can potentially trigger the firing of thousands of others, each of which can in turn trigger thousands more. In this way, neuronal activity cascades through the brain. Most of the time, the cascade is small and quickly dies down, but occasionally ? after time intervals determined by the power law ? the neuronal activity surpasses a threshold.

In epileptics, a threshold-crossing cascade of neurons induces a seizure.? And if the Simkin and Roychowdhury's theory is right, a similar buildup of excited neurons is what flooded the Rostov Ripper with an overwhelming desire to commit murder. Sometimes he went years without his neurons crossing the threshold, other times, just days.

When Simkin and Roychowdhury factored a delay into their model to account for the time it took for Chikatilo to plan his next attack, and when they treated his murders as having had a sedative effect on him by damping down the activity of his neurons, their model fit strongly with his murder pattern.

Murder rhythm
James Fallon, a neuroscientist at UC Irvine who studies the brains of psychopaths, said the new findings are well-aligned with prior observations about serial killers, many of whom seem to behave similarly to drug addicts. ?In both cases, Fallon said, withdrawal from their addiction "builds and builds and then hits a threshold trigger point, after which they go on a spree to release that 'longing.'"

And as with a drug addiction, withdrawal from killing may cause a buildup of hormones in a part of the brain called the amygdala, "and this very, very unpleasant feeling can only be reversed by acting out whatever the addicting stimulus might be," Fallon told Life's Little Mysteries.

Though the new paper presents a compelling systems-engineering quantitative analysis of serial killing, the theoretical model must be adjusted, Fallon said. "The time course of (neuronal cluster firing) is in terms of milliseconds to seconds, and not months to years (which the authors acknowledge). So I think they need to add a component, perhaps a hormonal-type damping mechanism that has a time constant over weeks, months and years," he wrote in an email.

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These types of hormonal clocks are involved in producing many types of biological rhythms, including the sleep-wake cycle, reproductive cycle and even the "sexual rut," Fallon said. If the authors were able to model a hormonal influence on the behavior of serial killers, "they may uncover a 'serial killer rhythm,' or some such beast."

Puppets of biology
Amanda Pustilnik, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Law whose work focuses on models of the mind and neuroscience in criminal law, believes that a more rigorous, expanded version of the new paper could be admissible in court cases involving serial killers. However, as it stands, there isn't enough to go on.

"Certain patterns can occur randomly in nature without meaning anything. While it is interesting in itself that the case of this one serial killer fits a power law distribution, it would be incorrect to draw conclusions from that," Pustilnik said. "If (the authors) can expand their data set and it can turn out to be a more statistically valid model, then it might be an interesting line of research on recurring human behaviors caused by an urge or drive and the discharge of an urge or drive."

According to Pustilnik, neuroscience research demonstrating that a psychopath is merely a victim of his own faulty biology cannot be used in court as an argument for his innocence. It is admissible, however, as evidence that a jury should be lenient during sentencing.

"When we're trying to figure out 'how blameworthy is this person?' I can imagine that a serial killer could use this finding at sentencing to argue that he was not morally blameworthy, but rather the puppet of his biology," she said. "As in, 'the neuron firing pattern makes me do this.'"

To be used as such, though, the result of the case study would need to be generalized across a much larger set of cases to determine whether its finding is significant, or merely a chance correlation, Pustilnik said.

As well as expanding the research to include a larger data set, there are many other lines of further inquiry. The study authors say they suspect many common human behaviors that stem from urges or addictions may also follow a power law distribution. For example, "shopping or getting drunk may follow similar pattern for some people," Simkin wrote in an email. Like some murders, these behaviors might be even less governed by free will than previously believed.

Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @ nattyover. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @ llmysteries, then join us on Facebook.

? 2012 LifesLittleMysteries.com. All rights reserved. More from LifesLittleMysteries.com.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46045497/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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Unpopular House Republicans aim to regroup (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? House Republicans, struggling to articulate a unified message after a year of fights among themselves and with Democrats, hope to use their annual retreat to craft an agenda that resonates with voters in November's elections.

That will be House Speaker John Boehner's main mission when he and his fellow Republicans gather on Thursday in Baltimore for three days of brainstorming behind closed doors.

There is also certain to be chatter about the party's frontrunner to be the presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, who is widely derided as an uninspiring moderate by members of the conservative base. And the lawmakers will hear from a rising party star: Chris Christie, the audacious New Jersey governor who is seen as a future presidential or vice presidential contender.

The retreat comes as Republicans, entering their second year in control of the House of Representatives, are hounded by disappointed voters, including many aligned with the Tea Party movement, a three-year-old grassroots conservative movement dedicated to smaller government, fiscal responsibility and individual freedom.

Recent surveys give Congress record-low approval ratings, with Democrats narrowly outpolling Republicans.

Adding to their gloom, after a year dominated by partisan brawls over spending and taxes, many conservatives feel they have little to show in their historic bid for smaller government.

In fact, polls show voters blame Republicans more than Democrats for partisan gridlock that pushed the U.S. government to the brink of shutdowns and unprecedented default amid a stubbornly high U.S. jobless rate now at 8.5 percent.

"Voters are frustrated and angry," said Representative David Dreier, a senior House Republican. "Their feelings are driven by the hard economic times" and the inability of the Republican House and Democratic Senate to agree on legislation to create jobs.

Representative Tim Huelskamp, a Tea Party activist, figures Congress's nationwide approval ratings of about 11 percent are much lower in his Kansas district.

"They're probably closer to 1 percent," said Huelskamp, who hosted seven town hall meetings with constituents during the recent holiday break.

While some House Republican boast of unprecedented efforts to downsize the U.S. government, Huelskamp and others say 2011 was a failure.

The first-term lawmaker sees little in the way of lasting, meaningful deficit reduction. He also complains that Republican leadership abandoned a 2010 campaign vow of transparency in favor of back-room deals with Democrats.

PAYROLL TAX CUT

One day before departing for the retreat, House Republicans huddled on Wednesday in the Capitol basement to assess last year's missteps, especially the December payroll tax cut debacle. The idea was to get gripes about 2011 behind them so that the retreat can focus on 2012.

"We were picking the right fight," Boehner said of his handling of the payroll tax cut last month. "But I would argue we probably picked it at the wrong time."

Boehner, the top U.S. Republican, acquiesced in December to internal and external pressures and agreed to Obama's demand for a two-month tax cut extension just before it was to expire.

Many Republicans are skeptical of the economic benefit of the payroll tax cut, part of Obama's jobs creation efforts, but opposition to the publicly popular measure was seen as a political liability.

Boehner's performance has drawn fire from critics who question his toughness. But others say the speaker is doing the best he can given the Tea Party movement's influence and Democrats' control of the Senate and presidency.

"There is a recognition by all that John has a very difficult job - and that there isn't anyone out there who can do it better," said Dreier, a Boehner ally.

In coming weeks, Republicans are expected to vote to renew the payroll tax cut beyond its February 29 expiration so they can move to other matters. They also hope to reform an antiquated budget process and hone their message on the need to streamline a clunky U.S. tax code - two moves they see as essential for restoring the nation's economic health.

The annual retreat comes before November elections that political pundits think will see Democrats gain at least a few seats in the 435-member House, but not the 25 needed to take control.

Yet control of the House could ultimately turn on the presidential race with Obama or his Republican foe providing their parties a needed lift.

Ron Bonjean, a former senior Republican leadership aide in the House and Senate, said he expects his party to coalesce around Romney as nominee.

"Republicans have a choice. Support a Republican or give up ground to President Obama. Most Republicans will decide to support a Republican," Bonjean said.

In Baltimore, House Republicans will focus on ways to boost their popularity, several aides and members told Reuters.

After years of Democrats branding them as "the party of no," Republicans will try to turn the tables and accuse Obama of blocking progress.

"We hoped the Democrats controlling the Senate and White House were willing to work with us in the interest of country," wrote Representative Jim Jordan in a letter published Tuesday on a congressional website.

"Unfortunately, the president spent the past year trying to boost his own chances for re-election by avoiding real cooperation," added Jordan, the head of the Republican Study Committee representing core House conservatives.

Last week, Republican Senator Ron Johnson, a Tea Party activist, wrote a Wall Street Journal column outlining his prescription for success in 2012 - ideas that leading House conservatives will echo, according to a Jordan spokesman.

Johnson called on Republicans to highlight, through House votes, differences between their party and Obama's Democrats, on matters from health care to domestic energy production.

(Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Cynthia Osterman)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/democrats/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120118/pl_nm/us_usa_congress_republicans

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'Modern Family': Lily Drops The F-Bomb, Claire Gets Personality Advice (VIDEO)

It's something all parents can remember -- or will experience if not there yet. That awkward moment when their child first discovers profanity. Unfortunately, their usage by a toddler tends to get quite a response from any adults present, which tends to make them new favorites for the little ones. On this week's "Modern Family" (Wed., 9 p.m. EST on ABC), Cam proved incapable of holding in his laughter after Lily drops the f-bomb. But some advocacy groups weren't laughing, calling for ABC to pull the plug before the episode even aired.

Cam's laughter was rather the wrong response, as HuffPost Parent's Parent Coach advises, as both Cam and Mitchell knew, Unfortunately, Cam simply couldn't help himself, which convinced Lily this was a good word to use, as it so clearly delighted her Daddy.

It escalated, as expected on a sitcom, until Cam was tearing up at a wedding and flower girl Lily knew just how to cheer him up and make him laugh. It got laughs from everyone, which only encouraged her to say it more until Cam rushed up and grabbed her uncomfortably, ushering her from the room.

While Lily was struggling to learn what a bad word is, Claire was coming face-to-face with all of her own imperfections -- including the "bad side" of her face. Facing a campaign debate, the Dunphys decided to rally around Claire and help her out by convincing her to get rid of all of her off-putting and aggressive habits. Their only problems with her are only virtually every single personality trait Claire has displayed since the pilot episode.

The ensuing debate followed the path of most political campaigns by quickly going negative and pulling out smut from Claire's past -- remember the episode when Phil got undressed to seduce Claire at the hotel, but was in the wrong room? -- and was as outrageous as one would expect, with Phil's outburst on his wife's behalf winding up autotuned and hitting huge on YouTube.

Catch "Modern Family" every Wednesday at 9 p.m. EST on ABC.

TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

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MONDAY, JANUARY 16: "Alcatraz"

1? of ?20

"Alcatraz" (8 p.m. EST, Fox) two-hour series premiere Produced by J.J. Abrams, this moody mystery series combines procedural elements with a hint of supernatural suspense. Detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) and Alcatraz historian Doctor Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia) team up with a secret agency that is dedicated to finding and catching inmates from the infamous prison who went missing 50 years ago and have begun reappearing today. "Alcatraz" (8 p.m. EST, Fox) two-hour series premiere

Produced by J.J. Abrams, this moody mystery series combines procedural elements with a hint of supernatural suspense. Detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) and Alcatraz historian Doctor Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia) team up with a secret agency that is dedicated to finding and catching inmates from the infamous prison who went missing 50 years ago and have begun reappearing today.

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MONDAY, JANUARY 16: "Alcatraz"

"Alcatraz" (8 p.m. EST, Fox) two-hour series premiere Produced by J.J. Abrams, this moody mystery series combines procedural elements with a hint of supernatural suspense. Detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) and Alcatraz historian Doctor Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia) team up with a secret agency that is dedicated to finding and catching inmates from the infamous prison who went missing 50 years ago and have begun reappearing today. "; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/modern-family-lily-drops-f-bomb-video_n_1215240.html

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Video: Investing in Emerging Markets

As the MSCI Emerging Markets Index rises above 6%, Darrell Cronk, Wells Fargo Private Bank, and Mike Ryan, UBS Wealth Management, discuss whether investors should look overseas for opportunities, particularly in the emerging markets.

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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/46045143/

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Maine college has biomass plant for heat, energy (AP)

WATERVILE, Maine ? While temperatures dropped below zero in Maine, Colby College fired up a new biomass plant that will offset the need for oil by burning wood chips, bark and treetops.

The Waterville college says its $11 million biomass plant will replace about 1 million gallons of heating fuel with about 22,000 tons of locally produced wood annually. During peak usage, the college is expected to save $250,000 monthly at current market prices.

The wood will feed boilers to produce steam used for heat, hot water, cooking and cogeneration of electricity.

Colby says the biomass plant is a key part of its plan to be carbon neutral by 2015.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/energy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120118/ap_on_bi_ge/us_colby_green_energy_maine

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Children's Drowning Injuries, Deaths Decline: Study (HealthDay)

MONDAY, Jan. 16 (HealthDay News) -- More than 1,000 children die from drowning in the United States each year and another 5,000 are injured, but these casualties have declined dramatically since the early 1990s, a new study shows.

The number of children who died annually from drowning after being admitted to a hospital declined 42 percent between 1993 and 2008. Total trips to the hospital after drowning-related incidents declined by 51 percent among children during that time, researchers found.

"There have been efforts at education from a variety of groups," said study author Stephen Bowman, an assistant professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "One would think that those messages are getting across."

"We need to keep up our diligence to continue to reduce drowning-related deaths and injuries," he added.

The study, published online and in the February issue of Pediatrics, used the National Inpatient Sample, a vast database compiled by a consortium of about 1,000 hospitals.

Drowning injuries are the second leading cause of accidental trauma in children in the United States. Only car accidents injure more children, Bowman said. Nonfatal drowning often results in brain damage and long-term disability, according to the study.

Breaking down different levels of risk, the study found that children less than 4 years old are most likely to die in drowning incidents, usually in bathtubs or after falling into water. Older children are more likely to drown while swimming, according to research cited in the study, with the risk rising in warmer regions of the South and West that have longer swimming seasons.

Boys, meanwhile, are four to six times more likely than girls to suffer a drowning injury, possibly because they drink alcohol while swimming or overestimate their swimming skills, according to study background information, and between 30 and 50 percent of teen and adult drownings are caused, at least partly, by drinking.

The study found a 40 percent drop in hospital visits following bathtub-related drownings among children under 4 years old and a 50 percent decline in swimming-related hospital trips for children ages 10 to 14. In warmer parts of the country, drowning injuries declined by almost 50 percent during the study period.

"We wanted to create some benchmarks," so that various states and regions could measure their progress against national trends, Bowman said.

While the number of drowning deaths and injuries has dropped, the cost of medical treatment has remained about the same because expenses per case have grown, Bowman said.

"The relative cost per drowning case has risen dramatically and offsets the reduction in hospitalizations," Bowman said.

In 2000, costs associated with such injuries exceeded $5.3 billion, including $2.6 billion for children up to 14 years old, the study said.

The reason for the decline in drowning cases among the youngest children may be "targeted injury-prevention efforts" aimed at parents and caregivers of young children, the study said.

For children of all ages, other factors in reduced drowning rates include education, public health initiatives and safety legislation, according to the head of an organization devoted to preventing accidental childhood injury and death.

Kate Carr, chief executive officer of Safe Kids Worldwide, cited federal legislation passed in 2007 requiring pool and hot tub drains to have covers and calling for other safety measure to be taken by states. The law followed the drowning death of a child whose mother was unable to free her from the suction of a hot-tub drain.

"You can see that it is working. It is not the only thing, but it is one thing that has worked," Carr said.

The study is important, she said, because it helps safety organizations target their efforts at regions where more drownings occur. It "allows us to celebrate the progress that has been made," but more efforts are needed because "one death is one too many," she said.

More information

To learn more about drowning prevention, visit Safe Kids USA.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/parenting/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20120117/hl_hsn/childrensdrowninginjuriesdeathsdeclinestudy

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Two more bodies found on ship, three people rescued (Reuters)

GIGLIO, Italy (Reuters) ? Three survivors and two more dead bodies were pulled from the partially submerged wreck of a cruiseliner off the Italian coast, while a search continued though thousands of cabins for 15 people still missing.

In the early hours of Monday, the massive 114,500 ton Costa Concordia wallowed on its side only meters from the picturesque Tuscan port of Giglio, with rescuers continuing a painstaking search for survivors or bodies.

The 290-metre long vessel, a multistorey floating resort carrying 4,229 passengers and crew, foundered and keeled over after being holed by a rock on Friday night. A total of 64 people were injured in the accident, health authorities said.

Sunday's discovery of the bodies of a Spanish and an Italian man, both wearing life jackets, brought the known death toll to five. The bodies of two French tourists and a Peruvian crewmember were found on Saturday.

Rescuers plucked a South Korean honeymoon couple and an injured crewmember alive from the wreck on Sunday. But as time passed, the prospects of finding more passengers alive grew ever more uncertain.

The ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, was arrested on Saturday on charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship. The first officer was also detained.

The ship's owners, Costa Crociere said Schettino appeared to have made a serious error in coming too close to shore and had not followed standard emergency procedures.

"The route followed by the ship was too close to the coast and it seems that his decisions on the management of the emergency did not follow the procedures of Costa Crociere, which are in line with and in some cases go beyond international standards," said the company, a unit of Carnival Corp. & Plc, the world's largest cruiseliner operator.

Investigators were working through evidence from recorders - the equivalent of the "black boxes" carried on planes - to try to establish the precise sequence of events behind the accident, which occurred in calm seas and shallow waters.

Searching the vast ship for survivors was like combing through a small town - but one tilted on its side, largely in darkness, partly underwater and full of floating debris.

The discovery of the bodies on Sunday dampened earlier euphoria when a helicopter lifted off injured chief purser Manrico Gianpetroni, hours after rescuers made voice contact with him deep inside the stricken, multi-storey vessel.

Gianpetroni, who had a broken leg, was winched up from the ship on a stretcher and taken to hospital.

"I never lost hope of being saved. It was a 36-hour nightmare," he told reporters.

TITANIC

As the search for survivors and bodies continued, attention began to turn to the wreck itself, which loomed over the little port of Giglio, a picturesque island in a maritime nature reserve off the Tuscan coast.

Dutch salvage experts said the ship's oil tanks did not appear to have been holed, reducing the risk of an oil spill in the pristine waters, and dredgers were expected to begin pumping some 2,380 tons of fuel from the ship in the next few days.

However dealing with the ship itself is likely to prove a daunting task and will need extremely careful planning, coastguard official Ilarione dell'Anna told SkyTG24 television.

"This will not be simple," he said. "The alternatives are removing it, refloating it or not removing it but leaving it in place and cutting it into sections."

Paolo Tronca, a local fire department official, said the search would go on "for 24 hours a day as long as we have to" and that rescue workers were using sniffer dogs in the section of the ship above water.

As the search continued, there were demands for explanations of why the vessel had come so close to the shore and bitter complaints about how long it took to evacuate the terrified passengers.

Costa Crociere expressed "deep sorrow" for the accident. It said all the crew members had been properly trained in safety procedures and the ship was fully equipped with lifevests, medical supplies and other safety equipment.

State prosecutor Francesco Verusio said investigations might go beyond the captain, who he said had abandoned the vessel not long after midnight, before all the passengers were taken off.

"We are investigating the possible responsibility of other people for such a dangerous maneuver," he told SkyTG24 television. "Command systems did not function as they should."

He said the ship had come within 150 meters (yards) of the coast, which he called "incredibly close."

Schettino has told Italian television that the ship hit rocks that were not marked on maps and were not detected by navigation systems. He said the accident occurred some 300 meters from the shore.

Agnese Stella, a 72-year-old housewife who has lived on Giglio for 50 years Said the ship appeared to have come much closer in than it normally did.

"It came much too close, it never comes this close normally," she told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Silvia Ognibene,; Writing by Philip Pullella and James Mackenzie; Editing by Barry Moody and Peter Graff)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120115/wl_nm/us_italy_ship

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