Low Down

  There are various ways to classify types of criminal homicide. State statutes distinguish between criminal and non-criminal homicides, degrees of murders, and types of manslaughters. Law enforcement agencies often categorize homicides according to the characteristics of the offender (e.g., gang versus non-gang), the victim (e.g., child murders, teen violence, elderly victims), or situational context or attributes (e.g., domestic violence, stranger assaults, drive-by shootings, robbery-murders, road rage, or workplace homicides). Lawyers, social scientists, and law enforcers also classify homicides in terms of motive. Common motives for homicides include trivial altercations, jealousy, revenge, romantic triangles, robbery, sexual assault, burglary, and disputes in drug transactions.     These motives betterment measures (like job training, family counseling, and educational enhancement) are often advocated as corrective actions to abate the conditions that motivate instr...

  Facet Theory offers a new approach to classifying serial murderers that may be practical for police investigations. There are two immediate advantages. First, serial murder investigations are faced with a great deal of information of investigative value that may be derived from simple overt aspects of an offense. Facet Theory can be helpful in serial murders which often involve subtle behavioral information which has value, but detailed analysis of the overt actions of the murder usually overshadow these actions.  The study found that the locations at which victims were abducted were centrally located close to the offenders’ home bases rather than at any number of the body dump locations. Second, Facet Theory can use offense and offender variables that have been inductively related and empirically replicated for linking crimes to a common offender.   There has been little empirical study of the abilities that contribute to proficient performance in psychological pr...

  Students whose heritage is other than that of the country in which they are living are often interested in learning about their relatives and ancestors. While one can learn much from the study of culture alone, acquiring high-level language proficiency can help tremendously in understanding one’s heritage. These skills open doors to the literature and the people of the parent nation. They also provide a conduit to a culture that, if you are a heritage learner, belongs to you and has shaped who you are today whether you are aware of it or not. Studying the language provides insights not only into the foreign culture but into your own kin culture, as well. The history of your relatives and the culture from which they emanated becomes more alive, understandable, and rich when you can access it, using the foreign language.   Anyone who studies a language has invested much time and effort into acquiring knowledge and proficiency. This is even more the case for those who begin stu...