2018 American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting

Financed by Title III funds, I attended the American Society of Criminology\u27s (ASC) 2018 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. The Conference took place from Tuesday, November 13th through Saturday, November 17th. It was a large conference, with over 1,000 Sessions covering four floors of Atlanta’s Downtown Marriot Marquis Hotel. I attended sessions from Thursday through Sunday. Of note, the guest speaker at the Presidential Address was former mayor of Atlanta and representative to the United Nations under President Jimmy Carter Andrew Young, who gave a memorable speech with plenty of anecdotes from his civil rights days. I concentrated on attending sessions related to classes I teach. One class I am teaching is on Gangs. I was able to attend a session by Boston Ceasefire, a very progressive anti-gang violence program. I was a little surprised by the diverse nature of those working in Boston Ceasefire, with ex-gang members working alongside researchers and administrators. In another presentation, I was able to hear Arizona State University Professor Scott Decker present his classic theory on the gang violence. I also teach Criminological Theory. In another presentation, Stephen Messmer presented on his classic Great American Dream Theory, showing a link between it a classic economic theory by Karl Polyani. Finally, I attended a session on qualitative research by one of the better qualitative researchers in the field today, Keith Hayward of Texas Christian University. Keith discussed researching street people. In all, the conference was very worthwhile

The American Society of Criminology’s 2022 Annual Meeting

Using Title III funds, I attended the American Society of Criminology’s (ASC) 2022 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, which took place from Wednesday, November 16th through Saturday, November 19th. Of note was the Presidential address given by Janet Lauritsen of the University of Missouri at St. Louis who stressed how politicians should utilize lessons learned from localized efforts at fighting crime in formulating their crime policies. I did not present at the conference, rather I used the conference to formulate ideas about future research and teaching. In all, I attended sessions from Thursday through Saturday on: (1) prison-based research, (2) teaching in prison, and (3) social networking research. In regard to prison-based research, I attended several sessions that involved researchers using actual prisoners as researchers in their research projects. This provided me with some ideas for conducting similar research at the local prisons associated with Lincoln University’s teaching in prison program. On teaching in prison, I attended several presentations by the ASCs Convict Criminology division where I was able to meet with Ian Ross, who authored one of the main textbooks on Convict Criminology. I will be able to use some of what we discussed at the Convict Criminology sessions in teaching with Lincoln’s prison program. Finally, I attended several sessions on social networking research. Recently, I was awarded a Department of Homeland Security grant to research labor trafficking. Attending the sessions allowed me review what other labor trafficking researchers were doing with their research

ASCJ 2022 Annual Conference Paper

Financed by Title III funds, I attended the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (AJCS) 2022 Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Conference took place from Wednesday, March 16th through Saturday, March 19th. It was a large conference, attended by over 1500 people, covering an entire floor of the Las Vegas Rio Hotel. Of note, the guest speaker was Father Boyle of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles who spoke on reforming members of criminal gangs. I attended sessions from Wednesday through Friday, presenting at 11:00 AM on Wednesday to about 100 attendees. In my presentation, I argued that the wave of police protests since Ferguson has produced a “future shock” in most Americans that was caused by the failure of the United States to reform racialized criminal justice policies first put in place at the time of the 1965 Civil Rights Act. I continued on to a deeper analysis of race and criminal justice by showing their historical relationship to colonialism. I then discussed how citizens have organized the recent police protests around anti-colonial narratives produced on new cell phone and internet communication technologies. I then discussed how the resulting “future shock” and the recent protests could have been avoided if more people would have listened to Tofler’s 1979 ideas on the future and Lyotard’s 1979 theory on narratives. I closed by showing how both colonialism and narrative theory can be applied to assist the police and lawmakers to resolve issues resulting from the police protests

2017 American Society of Criminology Conference

The following blog is a synopsis of my recent trip to the 2017 American Society of Criminology Conference which took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from November 15th through 19th

Quality Matters Annual Conference 2020

To better develop my online courses at Lincoln University, I attended Quality Matters 2019 Annual Conference in Grapevine, Texas from Sunday, October 27th to Tuesday, October 29th. I began the conference by attend two workshops on Sunday: one that addressed researching teaching methods in online courses, and another on online course development. While both workshops were productive, the online course development workshop was particularly helpful. It was taught by two co-authors of a recent manual on online course development. I have ordered a copy of the manual, which contained many of the tips and tricks we learned in the workshop. I will able to apply concepts I learned in the course development workshop when formulating both my online and face to face classes at Lincoln for the Spring 2020 Semester. The workshop on researching online courses answered a lot of questions I had on what was involved in online teaching research. After Sunday’s workshops, I attended various conference presentations on Monday and Tuesday. I was able to attend several sessions on how to get online courses QM certified. Coupled with Sunday’s workshop, I am now confident I can develop any course and have it QM certified. I also attended several sessions on course review. I am a QM Course Reviewer and found the sessions very helpful in further developing my course review skills. In all, attending the conference enabled me to further develop my online teaching skills for which I can apply to my teaching at Lincoln University

Sets of lines and cutting out polyhedral objects

AbstractWe study algorithmic questions related to cutting polyhedral shapes with a hot wire cutter. Such cutters are popular manufacturing tools for cutting expanded polystyrene (styrofoam) with a thin, moving heated wire. In particular, we study the question of polyhedral-wise continuity: Can a given object be cut out without disconnecting and then reattaching the wire? In an abstract setting this question translates to properties of sets of lines and segments and therefore becomes suitable for computational geometry techniques. On the combinatorial and algorithmic levels the results and methods are related to two problems: (1) given a set F={f1,…,fk} of polygons and a polygon f, decide if there is a subset of lines in the set of lines not stabbing F that cover f; (2) construct the connectivity graph for free movements of lines that maintain contact with the polyhedral shape. Problem (1) is solved with the dual projection and arrangements of convex and concave x-monotone curves. Problem (2) can be solved with a combination of the skewed projections [6] and hyperbola arrangements proposed by McKenna and O'Rourke [11]. We provide an O(n5) algorithm for constructing a cutting path, if it exists. The complexity of the algorithm is determined by the O(n4) size of the connectivity graph and the cost of solving (2)

Virtual reality in chemotherapy support for the treatment of physical functions, fear, and quality of life in pediatric cancer patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis

BackgroundAppropriately selected complementary therapies, such as virtual reality (VR) and active video games (AVG), provide support to young patients during the process of cancer treatment. Therefore, this systematic review with meta-analysis aimed to analyze the effects of VR and AVG on fear, physical functions, and quality of life.MethodsA systematic search was performed independently in Scopus, PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and Cochrane Library electronic databases for relevant randomized controlled and crossover studies. From a total of 5,963 records, 11 met the inclusion criteria. After full-text screening two publications were excluded, yet six studies were included in the quantitative analysis because three studies had a large discrepancy in their measured outcomes. For methodological quality assessments, the RoB2 software program was used, while RevMan 5.4.1 was used for statistical analysis and meta-analysis. Standard Mean Difference (SMD) outcome measures were used for the analysis. Statistical heterogeneity was assessed using the I2 statistic with a cut-off value of 50% considering intervention and outcome measures.ResultsOur systematic review includes six randomized controlled studies and three randomized crossover studies. The participants represented both sexes and were children and adolescents (<18 years old) with a diagnosis of cancer. The analysis of the results allows for a careful conclusion that VR has the potential to become an accessory tool in rehabilitation and oncologic treatment. All of the included studies noted a significant advantage of this intervention.ConclusionVR has the potential to be an effective and important tool in the oncologic treatment of children. VR immerses the patient, and as a result, produces a distraction that effectively reduces pain associated with standard oncologic care procedures in children. However, this systematic review and meta-analysis highlights the need for more research into the use of VR as support for pediatric oncologic care.Systematic review registrationPROSPERO database (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=319000), CRD42022319000