How does proximity to crime influence people's perception of safety?

Individuals may put themselves at risk of criminal victimisation through a misguided sense of safety born from the optimistic notion that crime happens “elsewhere”. Despite the analogous nature of fear and perceived safety, the latter has received far less research attention within the criminological literature. As perceptions of safety are guided by cognitive appraisals of the threat a danger poses, the present study aimed to investigate whether crimes that occur in nearby locations affect perceptions of safety more so than those that occur further away, due to the proximity of the danger or threat thereof. Respondents were given a number of fictitious scenarios within which a crime was presented as having occurred at one of four locations, ranging in distance from the respondents’ hometown (i.e. the independent variable). The respondents rated each scenario in terms of its seriousness, how safe they would perceive themselves to be following the news of the crimes and how likely they would be to engage in precautionary measures following the crimes (i.e. the dependent variables). The relationship between crime seriousness, perceived safety and a numberof prominent sociodemographic factors that have emerged from the fear of crime literature were also examined. Proximate crimes were found to produce lower perceptions of safety; higher crime seriousness ratings; and greater likelihood of engaging in reactive behaviours than distant crimes, as hypothesised. It was found that young people, females and those who get most of their crime information from local news sources tended to report lower safety perceptions, although several findings were inconsistent with previous research. Possible explanations and implications of the findings are discussed and an argument is made for the importance of increasing individuals’ knowledge and awareness of victimisation risks, rather than attempting to reduce fear of crime as has been a major research focus to date

Ethics, politics, and Nonsatiation in Consumption: A Synthesis

In contrast with the production of goods and services by firms, where the production costs are minimized under appropriate behavioral assumptions, consumer-producers in neoclassical theory maximize consumption expenditure, i.e., production costs of their outputs. According to Kenneth Boulding, were the impact upon the limited resources available on planet Earth taken into account, consumption expenditure should be minimized. We propose that we keep consumer theory as a reasonable description of reality.However,we should evaluate the long run consequences of such postulated behavior in a larger context,which, as a consequence of larger population with increasing per capita consumption, comprises the overburdening of natural resources. By decomposing the time horizon of cultural evolution into shorter periods of adjustment, we may then distinguish several types of institutional determination of how societies take decisions, as a group and individually. The consumer theory simply reflects the predominant ethical values, of which ideologies, political platforms, and demand patterns are shorter run adjustments.Consumption, Natural Resources, Political Process, Ethics

Tape cast PZT material with porosity gradient

Functionally graded porous Nb-doped PZT material (PZTN) was produced by addition of pore forming agents and tape casting. Stacked layers with different content of carbon black (CB) were co-fired and a porosity gradient was obtained. Tailoring the binder to plasticizer volume ratio of each single green layer, gradually increasing CB content and adjusting the binder burnout procedure are the critical issues to eliminate cracks and delaminations and develop crack-free porosity-graded multilayer with porosity ranging from 10 to 30 vol%. A load applied during the heating treatments was required to obtain a warpage-free, 400 ?m thick, planar multilayer specimen. Layers with different pore former content show different shrinkage values that can cause delamination or warpage during sintering. These differences are reflected in strain rate mismatch and can be influenced by the layer thickness and viscosity ratio. The piezoelectric properties of these materials are suitable for ultrasonic application

Robust motion estimation using connected operators

This paper discusses the use of connected operators for robust motion estimation The proposed strategy involves a motion estimation step extracting the dominant motion and a ltering step relying on connected operators that remove objects that do not fol low the dominant motion. These two steps are iterated in order to obtain an accurate motion estimation and a precise de nition of the objects fol lowing this motion This strategy can be applied on the entire frame or on individual connected components As a result the complete motion oriented segmentation and motion estimation of the frame can be achievedPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Local Structure and Spin Transition in Fe2O3 Hematite at High-Pressure

The pressure evolution of the local structure of Fe2O3 hematite has been determined for the first time by extended x-ray absorption fine structure up to 79 GPa. The comparison to the different high-pressure forms proposed in the literature suggests that the orthorhombic structure with space group Aba2 is the most probable. The crossover from Fe high-spin to low-spin states with pressure increase has been monitored from the pre-edge region of the Fe K-edge absorption spectra. The "simultaneous" comparison with the local structural changes allows us to definitively conclude that it is the electronic transition that drives the structural transition and not viceversa