Criminal self-efficacy and perceptions of risk and reward among women methamphetamine manufacturers

People consider potential risks and rewards while deciding whether to engage in crime. Such perceptions and their impact on behavior can vary according to individual differences like criminal self-efficacy, or one’s perception of criminal competency. We examine perceptions of skill, risk, and reward using semi-structured interviews with 46 women “shake and bake” meth cooks currently residing in a halfway house in Alabama. Those who expressed cooking self-efficacy identified many tangible and intangible rewards in meth cooking, which motivated them to persist. They believed the risks were lower and surmountable, employing various risk management strategies. Those who did not express cooking self-efficacy saw cooking as anxiety-inducing, rather than rewarding. They saw the risks as inevitable and made little effort to prevent them but continued cooking to maintain access to meth. Findings indicate that individual levels of criminal self-efficacy should be considered in studies of decision-making and in intervention and treatment strategies

The Crystal and Molecular Structure of 3-(Pyridyl-2\u27)- imidazo-[1,i-a] Pyridine

The crystal structure of 3:.(pyridyl-2\u27)-imidazo-[l,5-a] pyridine has been determined using three-dimensional MoK a diffractometer data. The crystal data at 293 (1) K are as follows: C12H0Na, Mr= = 195.23, orthorhombic, P212121 (No. 19), a = 0.5107(1), b = 1.3076(2}, c = 1.4343(3) nm, V = 0.9578 nm3, Dm = 1.37(5), Dx = 1.354 Mg · m-3, Z = 4. The structure has been solved with direct methods and refined by full-matrix least-squares techniques to R and Rw values of 0.085 and 0.080, respectively, for 641 contributing reflexions. The crystal structure consists of discrete molecules. Most of the bond lengths and angles are within normal ranges for aromatic heterocyclic systems. The dihedral angle between the pyridine and imidazo- pyridine parts of the molecule is 3.8°; thus the molecule is planar to within 7 pm owing to two weak C-H .. . N interactions

The Crystal and Molecular Structure of 3-(Pyridyl-2\u27)- imidazo-[1,i-a] Pyridine

The crystal structure of 3:.(pyridyl-2\u27)-imidazo-[l,5-a] pyridine has been determined using three-dimensional MoK a diffractometer data. The crystal data at 293 (1) K are as follows: C12H0Na, Mr= = 195.23, orthorhombic, P212121 (No. 19), a = 0.5107(1), b = 1.3076(2}, c = 1.4343(3) nm, V = 0.9578 nm3, Dm = 1.37(5), Dx = 1.354 Mg · m-3, Z = 4. The structure has been solved with direct methods and refined by full-matrix least-squares techniques to R and Rw values of 0.085 and 0.080, respectively, for 641 contributing reflexions. The crystal structure consists of discrete molecules. Most of the bond lengths and angles are within normal ranges for aromatic heterocyclic systems. The dihedral angle between the pyridine and imidazo- pyridine parts of the molecule is 3.8°; thus the molecule is planar to within 7 pm owing to two weak C-H .. . N interactions

Individual Readiness for Change in the Context of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems Implementation

The present study takes a bottom-up approach and investigates the organizational implications of ERP systems implementation in organizations. We adopt a likely point of view of employees and study the ERP integration process along 3 dimensions: people, processes, and information. In this manner we discover the ERP-specific sources of resistance that could affect negatively the deployment of the software. Then, we argue that a general set of beliefs shapes employees readiness to change to ERP use and provides the foundation for resistance or for adoptive behavior. We define the concept of readiness for change in the context of ERP and introduce a readiness for change assessment approach. Then, we test empirically the study hypotheses upon which the research model was build. The results obtained offer insights into factors that can improve the effectiveness of ERP implementation strategies and underline the importance of change management for the success of such projects

First international workshop on recent trends in news information retrieval (NewsIR’16)

The news industry has gone through seismic shifts in the past decade with digital content and social media completely redefining how people consume news. Readers check for accurate fresh news from multiple sources throughout the day using dedicated apps or social media on their smartphones and tablets. At the same time, news publishers rely more and more on social networks and citizen journalism as a frontline to breaking news. In this new era of fast-flowing instant news delivery and consumption, publishers and aggregators have to overcome a great number of challenges. These include the verification or assessment of a source’s reliability; the integration of news with other sources of information; real-time processing of both news content and social streams in multiple languages, in different formats and in high volumes; deduplication; entity detection and disambiguation; automatic summarization; and news recommendation. Although Information Retrieval (IR) applied to news has been a popular research area for decades, fresh approaches are needed due to the changing type and volume of media content available and the way people consume this content. The goal of this workshop is to stimulate discussion around new and powerful uses of IR applied to news sources and the intersection of multiple IR tasks to solve real user problems. To promote research efforts in this area, we released a new dataset consisting of one million news articles to the research community and introduced a data challenge track as part of the workshop

The ‘community’ in community case management of childhood illnesses in Malawi

: Malawi has achieved a remarkable feat in reducing its under-5 mortality in time to meet its MDG 4 target despite high levels of poverty, low female literacy rates, recurrent economic crises, a severe shortage of human resources for health, and poor health infrastructure. The country’s community-based delivery platform (largely headed by Health Surveillance Assistants, or HSAs) has been well established since the 1960s, although their tasks and responsibilities have evolved from surveillance to health promotion and prevention, and more recently to include curative services. However, the role of and the form that community involvement takes in community-based service delivery in Malawi is unclear