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The exclusion of serious and organised offenders and their victims from the offer of restorative justice: Should this be so and what happens when the offer is put on the table?
Get PDFThere is scarce research evidence of restorative justice being used in the context of serious and organised crime offending. This study sought to explore the feasibility of using restorative justice by canvassing the views of experts, serious and organised crime offenders and serious and organised crime victims in England. Offenders and victims were given the opportunity to engage in a restorative justice initiative and individual cases were pursued accordingly as a series of case studies. Case studies were limited to large-scale serious and organised fraud. Stark differences in views were apparent between serious and organised crime experts and restorative justice experts, the former doubting offenders’ motivations and pointing to their dangerousness without fully considering victim perspectives. Despite high attrition rates among some offenders expressing an initial willingness to pursue restorative justice, where both parties wished to participate, sustained motivation was observed. This study highlights inequities in the way that police forces have implemented the 2015 Victims Code requirements for restorative justice in England and Wales, potentially blocking opportunities for closure, social integration and reduced reoffending
The multilevel governance of state aid for broadband diffusion: Evidence from three European countries
Get PDFThis paper explores multilevel governance (MLG) in the context of state aid programmes for the diffusion of broadband in the European Union. By comparing three EU Member States (Italy, Spain and the UK), the qualitative analysis illustrates how MLG affects both the implementation of public interventions and the reduction of regional inequalities in the access to broadband. The analysis suggests that a distributed and shared governance is potentially beneficial for the implementation of state aid programmes, but its application is constrained by idiosyncrasies in the structure of the public and private sector
The impact of timing of in utero drought shocks on birth outcomes in rural households: evidence from Sierra Leone
Get PDFThis paper investigates the impact of timeline-bound fetal exposure to drought shocks on birth outcomes in rural Sierra Leone. We link repeated cross-section birth record data across 11 years from the Sierra Leone Demographic and Health Surveys to district-level geolocation precipitation data from the University of Delaware weather repository. The methodology uses spatial distribution of precipitation across districts to identify the impacts of extreme droughts on birth outcomes. This study reinforces both harvest and direct gestation as maternal nutrition pathways for the impact of drought shocks on birth outcomes. Results also show that adverse in utero shock impacts are concentrated among poorer households and may be mitigated by antenatal care services
Estimating Knee Movement Patterns of Recreational Runners Across Training Sessions Using Multilevel Functional Regression Models
Get PDFModern wearable monitors and laboratory equipment allow the recording of high-frequency data that can be used to quantify human movement. However, currently, data analysis approaches in these domains remain limited. This paper proposes a new framework to analyze biomechanical patterns in sport training data recorded across multiple training sessions using multilevel functional models. We apply the methods to subsecond-level data of knee location trajectories collected in 19 recreational runners during a medium-intensity continuous run (MICR) and a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) session, with multiple steps recorded in each participant-session. We estimate functional intra-class correlation coefficient to evaluate the reliability of recorded measurements across multiple sessions of the same training type. Furthermore, we obtained a vectorial representation of the three hierarchical levels of the data and visualize them in a low-dimensional space. Finally, we quantified the differences between genders and between two training types using functional multilevel regression models that incorporate covariate information. We provide an overview of the relevant methods and make both data and the R code for all analyses freely available online on GitHub. Thus, this work can serve as a helpful reference for practitioners and guide for a broader audience of researchers interested in modeling repeated functional measures at different resolution levels in the context of biomechanics and sports science applications
Boosted lithium storage performance by local build-in electric field derived by oxygen vacancies in 3D holey N-doped carbon structure decorated with molybdenum dioxide
Get PDFThree-dimensional holey nitrogen-doped carbon matrixes decorated with molybdenum dioxide (MoO2) nanoparticles have been successfully synthesized via a NaCl-assisted template strategy. The obtained MoO2/C composites offered multi-advantages, including higher specific surface area, more active sites, more ions/electrons transmission channels, and shorter transmission path due to the synergistic effect of the uniformly distributed MoO2 nanoparticles and porous carbon structure. Especially, the oxygen vacancies were introduced into the prepared composites and enhanced the Li+ intercalation/deintercalation process during electrochemical cycling by the Coulomb force. The existence of the local built-in electric field was proved by experimental data, differential charge density distribution, and density of states calculation. The uniquely designed structure and introduced oxygen vacancy defects endowed the MoO2/C composites with excellent electrochemical properties. In view of the synergistic effect of the uniquely designed morphology and introduced oxygen vacancy defects, the MoO2/C composites exhibited superior electrochemical performance of a high capacity of 918.2 mAh g–1 at 0.1 A g–1 after 130 cycles, 562.1 mAh g–1 at 1.0 A g–1 after 1000 cycles, and a capacity of 181.25 mAh g–1 even at 20.0 A g–1. This strategy highlights the path to promote the commercial application of MoO2-based and other transition metal oxide electrodes for energy storage devices
Human-Robot Co-working Improvement via Revolutionary Automation and Robotic Technologies – An overview
Get PDFThe Fourth Industrial Revolution, prevalently dubbed “Industry 4.0”, is currently in full swing. “Smart Manufacturing for the Future" is considered “theme” of Industry 4.0. Some futurists are said to be arguing what the theme of the fifth Industrial Revolution should be. Collaboration between humans and robots is a common thread that goes across all of the concepts. In the disciplines of robotics and artificial intelligence research, there has been significant advancement in recent years. For a variety of reasons, robots are becoming more widely available, and we will soon be in frequent contact with them as we go about our daily lives. While there are several investigations and research on low-level human-robot collaboration and activities, findings on human-robot collaboration at higher and more direct levels are lacking. This work focuses on new and automation technologies to improve human-robot collaboration in this study
Children as covert human intelligence sources: spies first, children second
Get PDFThe Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 empowers the police, and other authorities, throughout the United Kingdom to use children as Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) and to authorise these children to engage in criminality, with no criminal liability, in return for information. In this article, we analyse the risk of severe physical and emotional harm that children face when acting as a CHIS and engaging in criminal behaviour to preserve their cover. This practice of using a child as a CHIS and encouraging children to engage in criminal conduct also runs counter to the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales’ ‘Child First’ vision of a youth justice system that respects children rights and operates in children’s best interests. Throughout the article we argue that, despite the existing safeguards, the emphasis should be on helping children to escape a criminal lifestyle, rather than entrenching them further in a life of criminality by encouraging them to act as a CHIS
Flexible strain sensor enabled by carbon nanotubes-decorated electrospun TPU membrane for human motion monitoring
Get PDFHigh-performance flexible strain sensors are gaining more and more attention with their bespoken detection range, excellent sensing performance and good stability, which are highly desired in the wearable electronics. Herein, a thermoplastic polyurethane elastomer (TPU) fibrous membrane was prepared as a flexible substrate by electrostatic spinning technology, then a coating of polydopamine was formed through fast synthesizing the dopamine on TPU fibrous membrane surface and loaded with CNTs to develop an extremely sensitive flexible strain sensor. The flexible sensor prepared by TPU fibrous membrane coated with polydopamine layer has an outstanding sensibility under the pulling force (GF of 10528.53 with 200 strain), rapid reaction time (188-221 ms), wide sensing range (up to 200), good stability and durability. The theoretical studies reveals that the underlying cause for the high sensitivity and the inherit relationship between the amount of conducting routes and the length between adjacent conducting fillers in the sensor. The demonstration of device shows a promising application to sense the human motion at various locations of body, with accurate and stable electrical signal output generated at corresponding motion
Calls for papers: The dark side of CSR: Causes, constraints and consequences of (un)delivering the promise
Get PDFWear characteristics, reduction techniques and its application in automotive parts – A review
Get PDFWear phenomenon impact the operating efficiency and service life of engineering materials due to the influence of surface interaction at different working conditions. Successive tribological studies on wear-resistant materials in the last decade is estimated at approximately 40 of friction and wear, including laboratory tests. Most locally improvised wear testers in accordance with American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and European (EN) standards, though, achieves 95-97 parametric accuracies with reduced cost, they hardly harmonize degradation and Archard’s coefficients for all possible wear factors, providing little data for simulation of mechanical and chemical wears which are responsible for non-uniform aggregation of wear patterns in practice. Complexities of intermeshing factors which combine to influence the effectiveness of developed test devices span over loads, speeds, temperature, pressures and ambience for various applications. This study highlights the techniques of wear characterization, test standards and wear reduction with emphasis on surface texturing for improved eta/beta phase re-arrangements at low working temperatures in the enhancement of grain contraction during high bias-voltage cathodic substrate multi-phase coating, phosphating during pretreatments using peening techniques, residual stress reduction during cryogenic heat treatments as well as the impact of suitable architectural matrix composite strengthening, microstructures and material reinforcements as suitable factors to influence improved tribological behaviors in materials. Optimal additive manufacturing (AM‐fabricating) techniques with pretreatments, thermal cycling and tempering can engineer enhanced anti-tribocorrrosion in Automotive components