Home Office

About: Home Office is a government organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Poison control & High-performance liquid chromatography. The organization has 976 authors who have published 1169 publications receiving 24867 citations. The organization is also known as: HO & Home Department.

Survey of the quality of experimental design, statistical analysis and reporting of research using animals.

Abstract: For scientific, ethical and economic reasons, experiments involving animals should be appropriately designed, correctly analysed and transparently reported. This increases the scientific validity of the results, and maximises the knowledge gained from each experiment. A minimum amount of relevant information must be included in scientific publications to ensure that the methods and results of a study can be reviewed, analysed and repeated. Omitting essential information can raise scientific and ethical concerns. We report the findings of a systematic survey of reporting, experimental design and statistical analysis in published biomedical research using laboratory animals. Medline and EMBASE were searched for studies reporting research on live rats, mice and non-human primates carried out in UK and US publicly funded research establishments. Detailed information was collected from 271 publications, about the objective or hypothesis of the study, the number, sex, age and/or weight of animals used, and experimental and statistical methods. Only 59% of the studies stated the hypothesis or objective of the study and the number and characteristics of the animals used. Appropriate and efficient experimental design is a critical component of high-quality science. Most of the papers surveyed did not use randomisation (87%) or blinding (86%), to reduce bias in animal selection and outcome assessment. Only 70% of the publications that used statistical methods described their methods and presented the results with a measure of error or variability. This survey has identified a number of issues that need to be addressed in order to improve experimental design and reporting in publications describing research using animals. Scientific publication is a powerful and important source of information; the authors of scientific publications therefore have a responsibility to describe their methods and results comprehensively, accurately and transparently, and peer reviewers and journal editors share the responsibility to ensure that published studies fulfil these criteria.

“Situational” Crime Prevention: Theory and Practice

Abstract: From Clarke, R.V.G. (1980). Situational crime prevention: Theory and practice. British Journal of Criminology, 20, 136-147.Conventional wisdom holds that crime prevention needs to be based on a thorough understanding of the causes of crime. Though it may be conceded that preventive measures (such as humps in the road to stop speeding) can sometimes be found without invoking sophisticated causal theory, “physical” measures that reduce opportunities for crime are often thought to be of limited value. They are said merely to suppress the impulse to offend which will then manifest itself on some other occasion and perhaps in even more harmful form. Much more effective are seen to be “social” measures (such as the revitalisation of communities, the creation of job opportunities for unemployed youth, and the provision of sports and leisure facilities), since these attempt to remove the root motivational causes of offending. These ideas about prevention are not necessarily shared by the man-in-the-street or even by policemen and magistrates, but they have prevailed among academics, administrators and others who contribute to the formulation of criminal policy. They are also consistent with a preoccupation of criminological theory with criminal “dispositions” (cf. Ohlin 1970; Gibbons 1971; Jeffery 1971) and the purpose of this paper is to argue that an alternative theoretical emphasis on choices and decisions made by the offender leads to a broader and perhaps more realistic approach to crime prevention.

Psychopathy and the predictive validity of the PCL-R: an international perspective

Abstract: Its controversial past notwithstanding, psychopathy has emerged as one of the most important clinical constructs in the criminal justice and mental health systems. One reason for the surge in theoretical and applied interest in the disorder is the development and widespread adoption of reliable and valid methods for its measurement. The Hare PCL-R provides researchers and clinicians with a common metric for the assessment of psychopathy, and has led to a surge in replicable and meaningful findings relevant to the issue of risk for recidivism and violence, among other things. Most of the research thus far has been based on North American samples of offenders and forensic psychiatric patients. We summarize this research and compare it with findings from several other countries, including England and Sweden. We conclude that the ability of the PCL-R to predict recidivism, violence, and treatment outcome has considerable cross-cultural generalizability, and that the PCL-R and its derivatives play a major role in the understanding and prediction of crime and violence.

Synchronized Excitation of Fluorescence Emission Spectra

Abstract: THE fluorescence emission of complex mixtures of fluorescent compounds sometimes cannot be satisfactorily resolved by the usual technique of excitation at various fixed wavelengths selected specifically for individual components. Considerable improvement in such spectra often can be made when excitation and emission wavelengths are varied together, so that the fluorescence contributed by each component is restricted to that excited at wavelengths synchronously trailing the plotted emission.