A baseline study of domestic abuse prevention activities in seven local authorities in Scotland

This report creates the first baseline of domestic abuse prevention work in a sample of seven Scottish local authorities. The focus of the study is on primary prevention. This is work with children and young people which is aimed at preventing violence before it happens. There is some interlinking with secondary prevention, which is work that targets women and children who have experienced domestic abuse. The study locates these activities in the context of recommendations made by Jane Ellis in her review of prevention evidence (Scottish Government 2008). It also pays particular attention to the National Domestic Abuse Delivery Plan for Children and Young People (Scottish Government 2008) and the emerging Curriculum for Excellence. The study was commissioned by the National Children and Young People's Prevention Network. It is the companion to A Report on the Evaluation of the 'Why Create a Drama'? Project which evaluates the impact of a forum theatre production on the theme of domestic abuse presented in schools by Baldy Bane Theatre Company

A picture worth millions: state of the young people’s workforce

"This is a three year project, sponsored by the Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) and the Children’s Workforce Network, to establish the most up to date picture of the young people’s workforce in England and to improve the data for effective workforce planning to achieve the Aiming High for Young People Strategy."

What Discourages Participation in the Lay Judge System (Saiban’in Seido) of Japan? Interaction between the Secrecy Requirement and Social Networks.

The lay judge system, a quasi-jury system, was introduced in Japan from May 2009. This paper attempts to analyze Japanese people’s attitude towards this system by examining whether they show a willingness to serve as a lay judge. The major findings from regression analysis are: (1) In general, people with a spouse inclined to adopt a negative attitude about serving as a lay judge. This tendency is, however, not observed in large cities. (2) Long-time residents and homeowners are more likely to have a negative attitude about serving as a lay judge. These results show that a tightly knitted interpersonal social network discourages people from serving as a lay judge. Because of the life time secrecy obligation and the penalty provisions for those who break this obligation, people with closer interpersonal ties are under greater pressure and strains, leading to larger psychological cost. The obligation and its penalty should be eased to improve people’s attitudes about serving as a lay judge.Lay judge system; Social network; Secrecy requirement

OPAL Community Environment Report

The Open Air Laboratories network, or OPAL, as it quickly became known, was launched in 2007 following a successful application to the Big Lottery Fund It was the first time that Big Lottery funding on this scale had been awarded to academic institutions. The University of Central Lancashire led by Dr Mark Toogood was responsible for understanding public engagement with OPAL. The Open Air Laboratories (OPAL)network is a nationwide partnership comprising of ten universities and five organisations with grants awarded totalling £14.4 million. • Over half a million people have participated in the OPAL programme. OPAL activities are carried out by people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities, including 10,000 people in ‘hard to reach’ communities. • OPAL opens people’s eyes to the natural world. Nearly half (44%) of OPAL survey participants said that this was the first time that they had carried out a nature survey. 90% of participants have learnt something new. • OPAL has the ability to change people’s behaviour. Almost half (43%) of respondents said OPAL had changed the way they thought about the environment and more than a third (37%) said they will change their behaviour towards it. • In addition to raising environmental awareness, OPAL also improves personal well-being by motivating people to spend time outdoors doing something positive, while connecting with people and nature

A privacy-preserving fuzzy interest matching protocol for friends finding in social networks

Nowadays, it is very popular to make friends, share photographs, and exchange news throughout social networks. Social networks widely expand the area of people’s social connections and make communication much smoother than ever before. In a social network, there are many social groups established based on common interests among persons, such as learning group, family group, and reading group. People often describe their profiles when registering as a user in a social network. Then social networks can organize these users into groups of friends according to their profiles. However, an important issue must be considered, namely many users’ sensitive profiles could have been leaked out during this process. Therefore, it is reasonable to design a privacy-preserving friends-finding protocol in social network. Toward this goal, we design a fuzzy interest matching protocol based on private set intersection. Concretely, two candidate users can first organize their profiles into sets, then use Bloom filters to generate new data structures, and finally find the intersection sets to decide whether being friends or not in the social network. The protocol is shown to be secure in the malicious model and can be useful for practical purposes.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Application of artificial intelligence in computer network technology

With the continuous development of science and technology in China, a rtifi cial intelligence has played an important role in many industries. By applying artifi cial intelligence to computer network technology, computer network technology can provide greater help for people’s life and work, enrich the content of computer network technology, and improve the effi ciency of people’s life and work. In the era of big data, the computer system gradually has some defects. The introduction of artifi cial intelligence technology can greatly improve the effi ciency and quality of computer data processing. In view of this, this paper will analyze the application of artifi cial intelligence in computer network technology, and put forward some strategies for your reference

Collaboration in education: Lessons from Actor Network Theory

This chapter concerns the growing interest in networking and partnership in post compulsory education and training in the face of increased risk and uncertainty in the globalised context. Internationally, the sector is evolving in a context of globalisation, and now the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), where schools and other education, training and employment providers are facing increasing challenges in facilitating young people’s transitions to secure employment in the context of the risk society (Bauman, 1998; Beck, 1992). The chapter is theoretical but draws on empirical research undertaken in Victoria, Australia to illustrate its arguments around the insights into collaboration that can be gained through the use of Actor Network Theory

Adaptive data synchronization algorithm for IoT-oriented low-power wide-area networks

The Internet of Things (IoT) is by now very close to be realized, leading the world towards a new technological era where people’s lives and habits will be definitively revolutionized. Furthermore, the incoming 5G technology promises significant enhancements concerning the Quality of Service (QoS) in mobile communications. Having billions of devices simultaneously connected has opened new challenges about network management and data exchange rules that need to be tailored to the characteristics of the considered scenario. A large part of the IoT market is pointing to Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs) representing the infrastructure for several applications having energy saving as a mandatory goal besides other aspects of QoS. In this context, we propose a low-power IoT-oriented file synchronization protocol that, by dynamically optimizing the amount of data to be transferred, limits the device level of interaction within the network, therefore extending the battery life. This protocol can be adopted with different Layer 2 technologies and provides energy savings at the IoT device level that can be exploited by different applications

Does Daily Travel Pattern Disclose People’s Preference?

Existing studies normally focus on extracting temporal or periodical patterns of people’s daily travel for location based services. However, people’s characteristics and preference are actually paid much more attention by business. Therefore, how to capture characteristics from their daily travel patterns, is an interesting question. In order to address the research question, we first develop two basic measures in terms of repetitiveness of travel and then two advanced measures, to capture people’s activity of daily travel, and the colorfulness of lifestyle, respectively. Incorporating historical trajectories, with real-time positions from a location-based social network (LBSN), i.e. Foursquare, we conduct statistical analysis for people’s travel patterns in US cities. Finally, we illustrate people’s profiles of travel patterns and lifestyles. Results show that people’s preference can be inferred from the developed activity and colorfulness measures. Those findings demonstrate that proposed measures are supposed to be effectively adopted for researchers on travel pattern analysis and preference analysis, and further give suggestions to individuals for location-based decision making