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The Effects of Exposure to Refugees on Crime: Evidence from the Greek Islands
Get PDFRecent political instability in the Middle East has triggered one of the largest influxes ofrefugees into Europe. The different departure points along the Turkish coast generate exogenousvariation in refugee arrivals across Greek islands. We construct a new dataset on the numberand nature of crime incidents and arrested offenders at island level using official police recordsand newspaper reports. Instrumental variables and difference-in-differences are employed tostudy the causal relationship between immigration and crime. We find that a 1-percentage-pointincrease in the share of refugees on destination islands increases crime incidents by 1.7-2.5 percentagepoints compared with neighboring unexposed islands. This is driven by crime incidentscommitted by refugees; there is no change in crimes committed by natives on those islands. Wefind a significant rise in property crime, knife attacks, and rape, but no increase in drug crimes.Results based on reported crimes exhibit a similar pattern. Our findings highlight the need forgovernment provision in terms of infrastructure, social benefits, quicker evaluation for asylum,and social security
Continued glacial retreat linked to changing macronutrient supply along the West Antarctic Peninsula.
Get PDFAt the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), continued atmospheric and oceanic warming is causing significant physical and biogeochemical changes to glaciers and the marine environment. We compare sediment sources and drivers of macronutrient distributions at two bays along the WAP during austral summer 2020, using radioactive radium and stable oxygen isotopes to trace sedimentary influences and quantify different freshwater inputs. In the Ryder Bay, where the Sheldon Glacier is marine-terminating, radium activities at the sediment-water interface indicate considerable benthic mixing. Using radium isotope activity gradients to resolve radium and macronutrient fluxes, we find buoyant meltwater proximal to the glacier drives vigorous mixing of sediment and entrainment of macronutrient deep waters, on the order of 2.0 × 105 mol d-1 for nitrate. Conversely, in the Marian Cove, where the Fourcade Glacier terminates on land, low salinities and oxygen isotopes indicate a meltwater-rich surface layer < 1 m thick and rich in sediment, and strong vertical mixing to the seafloor. A continued shift to land-terminating glaciers along the WAP may have a significant impact upon nutrient and sediment supply to the euphotic zone, with impacts upon primary productivity and carbon uptake efficiency. The future of primary production, carbon uptake, and food web dynamics is therefore linked to glacier retreat dynamics in the many fjords along the WAP
Mindfulness as a Potential Moderator Between Child Behavior Problems and Maternal Well-Being
Get PDFMindfulness-based programs can help lower psychological distress among parents of children with developmental disabilities. However, less is known about the functions of mindfulness in relation to parental outcomes. In a cross-sectional survey, mothers of children with developmental disabilities (N = 313) reported on their child’s behavior problems, trait mindfulness, mindful parenting, and a range of outcomes (anxiety and depression symptoms, parenting stress, family satisfaction, and positive gain). Neither trait mindfulness or mindful parenting acted as moderators between child behavior problems and outcome variables, although both had main effect (compensatory) associations with parent outcomes. Benefits of mindfulness-based programs may be general rather than specifically in the context of high child behavior problems, given the lack of evidence for the moderating function of mindfulness
‘“I was not know for sure what be the Queen, Evan; was you?”’: Fictions of Development in Amy Dillwyn’s The Rebecca Rioter (1880)
Get PDFModernising operational risk management in financial institutions via data-driven causal factors analysis: A pre-registered report
Get PDFTo enable more proactive management of the underlying sources of operational risks in financial institutions, this pre-registered study seeks to improve traditional qualitative approaches to causal factors analysis. A Bayesian network-based approach is used to leverage both incident and operations data to model the probability of operational loss events. The approach is applied and empirically tested in a case study on an Australian insurance company. The outputs from the model go beyond simply identifying key risk drivers to offer risk managers a deeper understanding of how causal factors influence risk. Insights into the collective effects of causal factors, their relative importance and critical thresholds strategically inform more efficient and effective mitigation decisions, ultimately enhancing firm performance and value
External non-linguistic cues influence language selection during a forced choice task
Get PDFThis study investigated the effect of external non-linguistic cues on language selection in bilinguals. Participants viewed photographs and stated in which language they would speak to the individuals in those photographs via a button press. These images were manipulated such that external cues (the ‘speak Welsh’ logo, presented in the form of a poster or a lanyard) were present or absent. Participants responded faster and selected Welsh as their language of choice more often in trials that contained a language cue than in trials in which a language cue was absent. Furthermore, trials containing a lanyard had a greater effect on participant performance than trials containing a poster. These results suggest that external cues can influence language selection in bilinguals, and that the perceived reliability of the cue can modulate this effect. These findings have implications for the language selection literature and could inform the development of future language use interventions
Auditory dyadic interactions through the “eye” of the social brain: How visual is the posterior STS interaction region?
Get PDFHuman interactions contain potent social cues that meet not only the eye but also the ear. Although research has identified a region in the posterior superior temporal sulcus as being particularly sensitive to visually presented social interactions (SI-pSTS), its response to auditory interactions has not been tested. Here, we used fMRI to explore brain response to auditory interactions, with a focus on temporal regions known to be important in auditory processing and social interaction perception. In Experiment 1, monolingual participants listened to two-speaker conversations (intact or sentence-scrambled) and one-speaker narrations in both a known and an unknown language. Speaker number and conversational coherence were explored in separately localised regions-of-interest (ROI). In Experiment 2, bilingual participants were scanned to explore the role of language comprehension. Combining univariate and multivariate analyses, we found initial evidence for a heteromodal response to social interactions in SI-pSTS. Specifically, right SI-pSTS preferred auditory interactions over control stimuli and represented information about both speaker number and interactive coherence. Bilateral temporal voice areas (TVA) showed a similar, but less specific, profile. Exploratory analyses identified another auditory-interaction sensitive area in anterior STS. Indeed, direct comparison suggests modality specific tuning, with SI-pSTS preferring visual information while aSTS prefers auditory information. Altogether, these results suggest that right SI-pSTS is a heteromodal region that represents information about social interactions in both visual and auditory domains. Future work is needed to clarify the roles of TVA and aSTS in auditory interaction perception and further probe right SI-pSTS interaction-selectivity using non-semantic prosodic cues
Dynamics of Electrically Pumped Semiconductor Nano-Laser Arrays
Get PDFSemiconductor nano-lasers have been actively investigated both theoretically and experimentally with to the aim of providing a highly compact laser amenable to photonic integration. Such devices are naturally suited for assembly in close-packed one- and two-dimensional arrays. In such arrangements, optical coupling between elements of the array opens opportunities to generate a range of dynamical behaviours. In this paper, we present the first theoretical treatment of the dynamics of electrically pumped nano-laser arrays. Two specific forms of such arrays are analysed in detail: a three-element linear array, and triangular arrays. The former is the basis for extensive one-dimensional arrays, whilst the latter is a building block of many possible geometric configurations of two-dimensional nanolaser arrays. Using these prototypical configurations enables the identification of novel dynamical behaviours, which may be accessed using nano-laser arrays. A distinguishing physical feature of nano-lasers is the enhancement of the spontaneous emission rate via the so-called Purcell effect. Allowing for a range of Purcell enhancement factors, the analysis focusses on the effects of experimentally controllable parameters such as the laser drive current. It is shown that the Purcell enhancement factor is critical to the availability of a range of dynamical behaviours which arise simply due to inter-element optical coupling. Two-dimensional portraits of the regimes of differing dynamics offer a convenient means for determining the dynamics which may be accessed by varying the laser drive current
