1545 research outputs found
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When Attraction Becomes Addiction: A Study in Video Games
Get PDFSince their inception, video games have been accused of everything from encouraging violence to ruining the mental health of children, adolescents, and adults alike. The adverse effects of video games have been studied scientifically to prove their negative qualities. Yet, this criticism is not new or unique to video games. With the birth of every new media format, including but not limited to novels, magazines, and movies, there is some level of controversy surrounding the validity and inherent goodness of the given format. Video games are not the exception to this rule. This research questions the validity and truth behind the arguments claiming the negative effects of video games
Combating the Recruitment and Radicalization of Potential Terrorists: A State-Based Methods and Effectiveness Analysis for Application to Counter White Supremacy Terrorism in the USA
Get PDFFor approximately the past twenty years, the United States (US) government has focused on combating terrorist threats from abroad like Islamic terrorism. However, in recent years, terrorism has transitioned from an external threat to an internal threat. Some people in the US only realized how large a threat white supremacy terror poses to the nation’s security following the insurrection in the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Despite this newly gained knowledge, the threat of white supremacy terror in the US has been growing for years. This study looked at the ways foreign governments have combatted white supremacist terrorism, recruitment, and radicalization methods. Quantitative analysis was performed to assess whether those same tactics would effectively lower the number of attacks related to white supremacy terrorism within the US by combatting recruitment and radicalization efforts. There was insufficient data available to identify correlation between the number of white supremacy-related attacks and the nations’ efforts to prevent attacks and address white supremacy. Overall, many of the methods used by the nations in this paper would not be legal in the US due to violations of the First Amendment. This showed two things. First, there is a major gap in research and data collection and second, there needs to be legislative reform in the US
Product Complexity and Strategic Alliance on Drug Approval
Get PDFManagement of the business-government relationship is critical for firm performance in regulated industries. In this paper, we predict a U-shaped relationship between product complexity and the time to approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Moreover, we argue that this association is contingent on the types of strategic alliances (i.e., R&D alliance, Marketing alliance) of the focal firm in that those alliances help FDA and pharmaceutical companies achieve harmony. Using the approved drugs by FDA from 1999 to 2016 as the sample, our hypotheses are supported by the empirical analysis on US pharmaceutical firms. The findings have important implications to achieving harmony between pharmaceutical firms and regulatory agencies
Mining Bitcoin to Avoid Sanctions
Get PDFThough the world’s first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was introduced over a decade ago, it was not until recently that it became a mainstream subject. While cryptocurrencies offer many advantages, a potential downside for governments, is that no central bank controls the monetary policy and new coins can be mined by anyone anywhere in the world. Governments have always been deeply involved with how a their countries’ currency is ran and the policies they create are meant to keep a currencies’ value stable and make sure other factors like inflation is under control. Even though as of 2021, there were well over 4,000 different cryptocurrencies, the focus of this study will be Bitcoin since it is the most popular and at this point, the most valuable in terms of market capitalization. The United States government has become more involved with investigating how cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin are used, and have issued statements on the ways terrorism groups or other threats to our National Security could be effected by Bitcoin. One way countries could undermine the National Security Posture of the United States is by mining Bitcoin to replace revenue from exports that have been adversely effected by sanctions. Given the decentralized nature of Bitcoin, would it be possible for countries under sanctions from the United States to supplement their lost revenue by mining the cryptocurrency? There are a several necessary resources needed to mine Bitcoin, and countries hoping to mine Bitcoin would need an abundance of these resources. For this research, data from the World Bank Database was used to find if there was any positive or negative correlation between countries with sanctions and access to these Bitcoin mining resources. In addition to analyzing this data, different case studies were also analyzed to see if any countries are attempting to mine Bitcoins already and if so, what has been the implications so far. Furthermore, literature on sanctions, data iii analysis, recent mining activity, and white papers for Bitcoin and Ethereum where reviewed. Based on the data, it did not seem that countries with sanctions imposed were well equipped to mine Bitcoin and the case studies examined showed that there was not large mining activities taking place in sanctioned countries
Do Black-Owned Banks Substitute for Payday Lenders? An Exploratory Study
Get PDFThe annualized interest rate charged on payday loans can reach 1,950 percent, whereas similar rates charged by banks are typically less than 25 percent. Also, persons borrowing from payday lenders and paying the higher interest rates are disproportionately lower-income Blacks. This provides an incentive for Blacks seeking loans to turn to banks rather than payday lenders. This may be more likely to happen when there are Black-owned banks in communities with greater percentages of Blacks. Indeed, offices of such banks may substitute for payday loan stores, providing a greater opportunity for Blacks to avoid the higher interest rates associated with payday lenders. We hypothesize that to the extent Black-owned banks substitute for payday there is a greater opportunity for lower-income Blacks to substitute/switch firms and thereby seek lower-cost loans. We do find that there are significantly fewer payday loan stores in counties where there are more Black bank offices
Does Innovation Explain the Skewness of Stock Returns?
Get PDFThis paper investigates the impact of firm-level innovation on the skewness of stock returns. Using data on a broad sample of equities from the major US stock exchanges, we find that innovative companies exhibit strong positive skewness. Our results are robust to both input and output measures of innovation as we find that increases in both firm-level research and development expenditure (R&D), as well as the number of patents, are positively associated with future stock return skewness. Our results hold using both systematic and idiosyncratic measures of skewness while controlling for various stock characteristics, time, and industry-fixed effects
Forensic Artifact Finder (ForensicAF): An Approach & Tool for Leveraging Crowd-Sourced Curated Forensic Artifacts
Get PDFCurrent methods for artifact analysis and understanding depend on investigator expertise. Experienced and technically savvy examiners spend a lot of time reverse engineering applications while attempting to find crumbs they leave behind on systems. This takes away valuable time from the investigative process, and slows down forensic examination. Furthermore, when specific artifact knowledge is gained, it stays within the respective forensic units. To combat these challenges, we present ForensicAF, an approach for leveraging curated, crowd-sourced artifacts from the Artifact Genome Project (AGP). The approach has the overarching goal of uncovering forensically relevant artifacts from storage media. We explain our approach and construct it as an Autopsy Ingest Module. Our implementation focused on both File and Registry artifacts. We evaluated ForensicAF using systematic and random sampling experiments. While ForensicAF showed consistent results with registry artifacts across all experiments, it also revealed that deeper folder traversal yields more File Artifacts during data source ingestion. When experiments were conducted on case scenario disk images without apriori knowledge, ForensicAF uncovered artifacts of forensic relevance that help in solving those scenarios. We contend that ForensicAF is a promising approach for artifact extraction from storage media, and its utility will advance as more artifacts are crowd-sourced by AGP
Police Science: Key Readings
No full textPolice Science: Key Readings provides students with a collection of carefully curated articles that present a broad overview of the academic study of the field. The readings equip students with the knowledge they need to become consumers of information on policing and prepare them to make informed decisions on police policy and operational efficiency.The book is organized into four units, which address the overarching concepts of policing history, the criminology of policing, police and education, and public policy and policing. Individual topics addressed include the evolution of contemporary policing, crime prevention through environmental design, new perspectives on police education and training, factors affecting the supply of police recruits, the militarization of American police, and more. Each unit includes an introduction, pre-reading questions, and post-reading questions to support the student learning experience and inspire critical thought.A highly timely and relevant resource, Police Science is an exemplary textbook for courses in law enforcement, policing, and criminal justice.https://digitalcommons.newhaven.edu/criminaljustice-books/1008/thumbnail.jp
Correlation Between Tooth Root Translucency, Crystallinity, and DNA Preservation in Teeth for Unidentified Human Remains (UHR) Investigations
Get PDFEndogenous genetic material protected by the rigid, mineralized hard tissues of bones and teeth is often targeted for forensic DNA testing in missing persons and unidentified human remains (UHR) investigations. Although standard approaches have narrowed sample selection to a few optimal skeletal elements (i.e., weight-bearing long bones, teeth), subsampling and decisions beyond this can be challenging due to the non-uniform, heterogeneous pattern of postmortem diagenesis. One particular component of skeletal microstructure — the inorganic mineral matrix [hydroxyapatite (HAp), Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2] — is purported to play a major role in DNA preservation. The potential correlation between molecular changes to skeletal microstructure and the quantity/quality of endogenous DNA is an important area of investigation to maximize success and potentially streamline decision making for testing. In casework, forensic odontologists commonly examine a feature called tooth root translucency (TRT) as an established method for estimating the chronological age of an unknown decedent. The ultimate aim of this study was to determine if TRT could be used as a reliable indicator of the viability of teeth for DNA testing.
This research involved: 1) microscopic examination, measurement, and photo-documentation of TRT in intact and sectioned teeth (n=55) from human subjects of known chronological age; 2) X-ray diffraction (XRD) of pulverized tooth powder to assess the crystalline state of HAp in each tooth; and 3) DNA extraction from teeth (n=25) to assess the correlation between degree of TRT and quantity/quality of recovered DNA.
This project successfully created a cost-effective strategy to measure TRT and preserve the physical integrity of tooth samples for downstream DNA testing. The microscopic model described herein could easily be employed in Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT)
tents and other fieldwork scenarios. The crystalline state of HAp was determined to have an insignificant influence on degree of TRT in human teeth. However, TRT was shown to directly correlate to DNA preservation in teeth. Samples with low degrees of TRT possessed higher quantity/quality DNA than those with higher degrees of TRT (p \u3c 0.05). Empirical data from this study could provide a framework to guide forensic odontologists in selecting skeletal samples to submit for forensic DNA testing
Duck Hunt: Memory Forensics of USB Attack Platforms
Get PDFTo explore the memory forensic artifacts generated by USB-based attack platforms, we analyzed two of the most popular commercially available devices, Hak5\u27s USB Rubber Ducky and Bash Bunny. We present two open source Volatility plugins, usbhunt and dhcphunt, which extract artifacts generated by these USB attacks from Windows 10 system memory images. Such artifacts include driver-related diagnostic events, unique device identifiers, and DHCP client logs. Our tools are capable of extracting metadata-rich Windows diagnostic events generated by any USB device. The device identifiers presented in this work may also be used to definitively detect device usage. Likewise, the DHCP logs we carve from memory may be useful in the forensic analysis of other network-connected peripherals. We also quantify how long these artifacts remain recoverable in memory. Our experiments demonstrated that some Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) remain in memory for at least 24 h