'Every time it happens, you question continuing as an officer': the experiences of police officers as victims of hate crime

• Purpose: This paper fills a research and literature gap by examining the nature and impact of hate crime victimisation on police officers, and their responses to it. The research explores victimisation due to the occupational stigma of policing and the personal characteristics and identities of individual officers. • Design/methodology/approach: The research design is qualitative, based on 20 in-depth interviews with police officers in one English police force. Thematic analysis was applied to the data. • Findings: All participants had experienced hate crime arising from their occupational or personal identities. Initially shocked, officers became desensitized and responded in different ways. These include tolerating and accepting hate crime but also challenging it through communication and the force of law. • Research limitations: This research is based on a small sample. It does not claim to be representative but it is exploratory, aiming to stimulate debate and further research on a contemporary policing issue. • Practical implications: If further research were to confirm these findings, there are implications for police training, officer welfare and support, supervision and leadership. • Originality/value: The police occupy a problematic position within hate crime literature and UK legislation. This paper opens up debate on an under-researched area and presents the first published study of the hate crime experiences of police officers

Paranoid thinking, cognitive bias and dangerous neighbourhoods: implications for perception of threat and expectation of victimisation

Background: Paranoid thinking is prevalent in the non-clinical population and cognitive mechanisms of heuristic reasoning and jumping to conclusions bias contributes to its formation and maintenance. Aims: This study investigated the degree to which paranoia, perceived environmental risk, heuristic reasoning and jumping to conclusions bias (measured with the beads task) contribute to misinterpretation of neutral stimuli, and whether this informed judgements regarding vulnerability to threat and crime. It is also investigated whether impulsiveness is a confounding factor on the beads task. Methods: Two hundred participants were recruited using a snowball-sampling method for a quantitative cross-sectional study. Participants reported demographic information, three psychometric questionnaires and two experimental tasks via an online paradigm hosted by the Bristol Online Survey tool. Results: Participants with high paranoia scores perceived their environment to be more dangerous than those with low scores. Participants with high paranoia scores also overestimated threat in neutral stimuli and had high expectations of future victimisation. Jumping to conclusions on the beads task did not predict fear of crime outcomes, but was predicted by impulsivity. Conclusion: Participants who demonstrated paranoid thinking were more likely to reside in perceived dangerous neighbourhoods and overestimate threat. While this could indicate a paranoid heuristic, it is a potentially rational response to prior experiences of crime and victimisation. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed

Impact of cross-section uncertainties on supernova neutrino spectral parameter fitting in the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment

A primary goal of the upcoming Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is to measure the $\mathcal{O}(10)$ MeV neutrinos produced by a Galactic core-collapse supernova if one should occur during the lifetime of the experiment. The liquid-argon-based detectors planned for DUNE are expected to be uniquely sensitive to the $\nu_e$ component of the supernova flux, enabling a wide variety of physics and astrophysics measurements. A key requirement for a correct interpretation of these measurements is a good understanding of the energy-dependent total cross section $\sigma(E_\nu)$ for charged-current $\nu_e$ absorption on argon. In the context of a simulated extraction of supernova $\nu_e$ spectral parameters from a toy analysis, we investigate the impact of $\sigma(E_\nu)$ modeling uncertainties on DUNE's supernova neutrino physics sensitivity for the first time. We find that the currently large theoretical uncertainties on $\sigma(E_\nu)$ must be substantially reduced before the $\nu_e$ flux parameters can be extracted reliably: in the absence of external constraints, a measurement of the integrated neutrino luminosity with less than 10\% bias with DUNE requires $\sigma(E_\nu)$ to be known to about 5%. The neutrino spectral shape parameters can be known to better than 10% for a 20% uncertainty on the cross-section scale, although they will be sensitive to uncertainties on the shape of $\sigma(E_\nu)$. A direct measurement of low-energy $\nu_e$-argon scattering would be invaluable for improving the theoretical precision to the needed level

Airbnb and crime in Barcelona (Spain): testing the relationship using a geographically weighted regression

The existence of works proving the possible relationship empirically that Airbnb lodgings could have with crime in Spain is not known. This research analyzes the relationship between Airbnb lodgings and crimes against the properties and people in Barcelona’s neighbourhoods. To achieve this, we use an ordinary least squares regression model and a geographically weighted regression model. The results show a significant and positive relationship between the higher density of Airbnb lodgings and the higher crime rates in the neighbourhoods, especially of patrimonial nature. Divided by type of leased space, the Airbnb homes, in which the guest shares a room with other guests, show a higher relationship with crimes against property and people. The results of the local model show a spatial heterogeneity in all variables used, indicating the need to address non-stationary spatial processes that reveal hidden patterns. However, the only variable that shows statistically significant local variability is the total Airbnb lodgings variable. Finally, we discussed some unexpected results, proposing some future lines of research. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group, on behalf of Nanjing Normal University

Mycobacterium tuberculosis Transmission from Human to Canine

A 71-year-old woman from Tennessee, USA with a 3-week history of a productive, nonbloody cough was evaluated. Chest radiograph showed infiltrates and atelectasis in the upper lobe of the right lung. A tuberculosis (TB) skin test resulted in a 14-mm area of induration. Sputum stained positive for acid-fast bacilli (AFB) and was positive for Mycobacterium tuberculosis by DNA probe and culture. Treatment was initiated with isoniazid, rifampicin, and pyrazinamide. After 14 days of daily, directly observed therapy, the patient complained of nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. Treatment adjustments were made, and therapy was completed 11 months later with complete recovery. Six months after the patient\u27s TB diagnosis, she took her three and a half-year-old male Yorkshire Terrier to a veterinary clinic with cough, weight loss, and vomiting of several months\u27 duration. Initial sputum sample was negative on AFB staining. Eight days after discharge from a referral veterinary teaching hospital with a presumptive diagnosis of TB, the dog was euthanized due to urethral obstruction. Liver and tracheobronchial lymph node specimens collected at necropsy were positive for M. tuberculosis complex by polymerase chain reaction. The M. tuberculosis isolates from the dog and its owner had an indistinguishable 10-band pattern by IS6110-based restriction fragment length polymorphism genotyping

Intergroup struggles over victimhood in violent conflict: The victim-perpetrator paradigm

Most groups in violent, intergroup conflict perceive themselves to be the primary or sole victims of that conflict. This often results in contention over who may claim victim status and complicates a central aim of post-conflict processes, which is to acknowledge and address harms experienced by the victims. Drawing from victimology scholarship and intergroup relations theory, this article proposes the victim-perpetrator paradigm as a framework to analyse how, why and to what end groups in conflict construct and maintain their claims to the moral status of victim. This interdisciplinary paradigm builds on the knowledge that groups utilise the ‘ideal victim’ construction to exemplify their own innocence and blamelessness in contrast to the wickedness of the perpetrator, setting the two categories as separate and mutually exclusive even where experiences of violence have been complex. Additionally, this construction provides for a core intergroup need to achieve positive social identity, which groups may enhance by demonstrating a maximum differentiation between the in-group as victims and those out-groups identified as perpetrators. The paradigm contributes greater knowledge on the social roots of victim contention in conflict, as well as how groups legitimise their violence against out-groups during and after conflict

Reconstruction of interactions in the ProtoDUNE-SP detector with Pandora

The Pandora Software Development Kit and algorithm libraries provide pattern-recognition logic essential to the reconstruction of particle interactions in liquid argon time projection chamber detectors. Pandora is the primary event reconstruction software used at ProtoDUNE-SP, a prototype for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment far detector. ProtoDUNE-SP, located at CERN, is exposed to a charged-particle test beam. This paper gives an overview of the Pandora reconstruction algorithms and how they have been tailored for use at ProtoDUNE-SP. In complex events with numerous cosmic-ray and beam background particles, the simulated reconstruction and identification efficiency for triggered test-beam particles is above 80% for the majority of particle type and beam momentum combinations. Specifically, simulated 1 GeV/c charged pions and protons are correctly reconstructed and identified with efficiencies of 86.

Highly-parallelized simulation of a pixelated LArTPC on a GPU

The rapid development of general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is allowing the implementation of highly-parallelized Monte Carlo simulation chains for particle physics experiments. This technique is particularly suitable for the simulation of a pixelated charge readout for time projection chambers, given the large number of channels that this technology employs. Here we present the first implementation of a full microphysical simulator of a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) equipped with light readout and pixelated charge readout, developed for the DUNE Near Detector. The software is implemented with an end-to-end set of GPU-optimized algorithms. The algorithms have been written in Python and translated into CUDA kernels using Numba, a just-in-time compiler for a subset of Python and NumPy instructions. The GPU implementation achieves a speed up of four orders of magnitude compared with the equivalent CPU version. The simulation of the current induced on 10^3 pixels takes around 1 ms on the GPU, compared with approximately 10 s on the CPU. The results of the simulation are compared against data from a pixel-readout LArTPC prototype

Scintillation light detection in the 6-m drift-length ProtoDUNE Dual Phase liquid argon TPC

DUNE is a dual-site experiment for long-baseline neutrino oscillation studies, neutrino astrophysics and nucleon decay searches. ProtoDUNE Dual Phase (DP) is a 6 × 6 × 6 m3 liquid argon time-projection-chamber (LArTPC) that recorded cosmic-muon data at the CERN Neutrino Platform in 2019–2020 as a prototype of the DUNE Far Detector. Charged particles propagating through the LArTPC produce ionization and scintillation light. The scintillation light signal in these detectors can provide the trigger for non-beam events. In addition, it adds precise timing capabilities and improves the calorimetry measurements. In ProtoDUNE-DP, scintillation and electroluminescence light produced by cosmic muons in the LArTPC is collected by photomultiplier tubes placed up to 7 m away from the ionizing track. In this paper, the ProtoDUNE-DP photon detection system performance is evaluated with a particular focus on the different wavelength shifters, such as PEN and TPB, and the use of Xe-doped LAr, considering its future use in giant LArTPCs. The scintillation light production and propagation processes are analyzed and a comparison of simulation to data is performed, improving understanding of the liquid argon properties