Unpunished criminals: The social acceptablity of white collar crimes in America

White collar crime is a serious issue in the United States of America, responsible for an estimated $250 billion to$1 trillion in economic damages each year. White collar crimes include: bank fraud, blackmail, bribery, counterfeiting, credit card fraud, embezzlement, extortion, forgery, insider trading, insurance fraud, investment schemes, securities fraud, tax evasion, advanced fee scams, service and repair scams, as well as Ponzi & pyramid schemes just to name a few. There are a number of factors to consider regarding crimes, both street and white collar level including: the total cost of the damages and ripple effects that will reach others, how likely the victims are to recover from the crime, and how likely the victims are to get justice for being wronged, when considering the acceptability that society has placed on white collar crimes versus street crimes. As seen in case studies, white collar criminals are far less likely to experience justice than street criminals, who are also more likely to be caught in their wrongdoing. Because white collar criminals have this additional safety barrier of anonymity, federal law enforcement must dig deeply into the records of suspected individuals in order to find any trace of white collar criminal activity. Whereas the affluent have access to pricey legal representation for defense against potential repercussions, street criminals cannot retain such legal representation, leaving them considerably more vulnerable in the legal system. Therefore, white collar criminals are seen and treated as more socially acceptable than street criminals in America

An Investigation of Trait Aggression: Its Relationship with Reported Injuries and Moral Disengagement

Objective. To examine the potential relationship that exists between the level of aggressiveness and the number of injuries reported during the course of a season. The secondary analysis will determine whether aggressiveness is related to moral disengagement. Background. There are a number of factors that exist that may predispose an athlete to sustaining an injury during participation in sports. According to the researchers Anderson and Bushman innate personality factors may play a role in the event of an injury. One factor that has not been thoroughly examined in the literature is aggressiveness in athletes, which is essentially the personality trait of acting aggressively. Since this factor could potentially be modifiable through an intervention involving both the athletic training staff and a trained sports psychology professional further researcher is necessary. In addition to injury rate, aggressiveness has been negatively implicated in moral reasoning. Theorized by Bandura, moral disengagement, is composed of eight individual mechanisms which allow the individual to free themselves of having to accept blame for transgressions. The eight processes of moral disengagement are moral justification, euphemistic labeling, advantageous comparison, displacement of responsibility, diffusion of responsibility, distortion of consequences, dehumanization, and finally attribution of blame. Design and Setting. A convenience sample was utilized for the data collection using athletes at Division III Mid-Atlantic University. The coaches of various teams at the school were contacted to inquire whether they would allow their athletes to participate in the current study. The data was collected during team meetings, spring practices, and prior to team lifting sessions. Packets containing the Competitive Anger and Aggressiveness Scale (CAAS), the Moral Disengagement in Sport Scale (MDSS), and a demographics questionnaire were distributed to the participants. The number of injuries sustained during the most recent season were counted and recorded. Participants. A total of 116 athletes participated in the study involved in a variety of sports including the football team (n=73), men\u27s basketball ( n = 12), women\u27s basketball (n = 5), men\u27s soccer (n = 21), and women\u27s soccer (n = 5). All collegiate levels were represented by the sample population with an age range of 18 to 26 years old (M = 19.655, SD = 1.326). Results. A positive significant weak correlation was determined to exist between the number of reported injuries and the aggressiveness scale on the CAAS (r (116) =0.216; p = 0.02). Positive correlations were found to exist between aggressiveness on the CAAS and the subscales of the MDSS: Conduct Reconstrual (r (116) = 0.598; p \u3c 0.001), Advantageous Comparison ( r (116) = 0.481; p \u3c 0.001), Non-responsibility, (r (116) = 0.448; p \u3c 0.001), Distortion of Consequences (r (116) = 0.516; p \u3c 0.001), Dehumanization (r (116) = 0.558; p \u3c 0.001), and finally Attribution of Blame (r (116) = 0.407, p \u3c 0.001). Conclusions. The findings of this research may allow athletic trainers and other members of the sports medicine department prevent injuries for those athletes that have been identified as acting aggressively by intervening through various methods

Managing Triads in a Military Avionics Service Maintenance Network in Taiwan

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different types of triad structures, and the management mechanisms adopted by the focal company, affect cooperative performance. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses a social network perspective to examine the triad management phenomenon in the military avionics maintenance context, which is closely associated with the field of operations management. Findings – This paper demonstrates that different triad structures and management mechanisms influence perceived cooperative performance. Four main findings emerged: in a triad, a firm playing a bridging role perceives higher cooperative performance than when playing a peripheral role in the triad or being located in a fully connected triad. When a firm plays the bridging role in a triad, and has a high level of trust, this leads to higher perceived cooperative performance. When a firm plays a peripheral role in a triad, high levels of coordination mechanism combined with high levels of trust result in higher levels of perceived cooperative performance. In a fully linked triad, when the coordination mechanism is well developed, the level of trust is high, so that the resulting level of perceived cooperation is high. Originality/value – This paper extends the knowledge of triad management by providing an in-depth study of a well-defined network setting with exceptionally high-level access to the most senior executives. In practice, this paper shows how to manage differen

Space-Based Capstone: Public-Private-Academic Partnership in the Making

The Electronic Systems Engineering Technology (ESET) Program at Texas A&M University provides a recognized undergraduate program with an emphasis in electronics, communication, embedded systems, testing, instrumentation and control systems. The program combines engineering and industrial knowledge and methods to develop, design, and implement new innovative products through a two-semester long Senior Capstone Project. Capstone is designed to prepare future engineers by bridging the gap between the classroom and industry. Students are required to form teams of two to six members which allows them to develop the skills necessary to succeed in a diverse industry setting. Each team is required to use their knowledge and skills to design, develop, document, and deliver a real-world project equivalent to the assignments they will soon receive as professional engineers. Following NASA’s approval for funding the development of a research facility named Hermes, a Capstone team, named Microgravity Automated Research Systems (MARS), was sponsored by T STAR, a local space commercialization company, to develop the electronics portion of the facility. Hermes will reside on the International Space Station for five years in the hopes of streamlining the development of experiments that require extended periods of time in microgravity environments. The Hermes facility will host and manage up to four experiments at a time while allowing for the downlink of experiment data to an Earth station, and the uplink of commands to change experiment parameters. Experiments will adhere to a power budget and communication standard established by MARS so that experiments can be swapped out during the facility’s lifetime. MARS will work with the Mobile Integrated Solutions Laboratory (MISL), an undergraduate applied research lab, in order to prepare them to maintain support for Hermes in the future.Cockrell School of Engineerin

The Genetic Signature of Perineuronal Oligodendrocytes

Oligodendrocytes in the central nervous system can be categorized as precursors, myelin-forming, and non-myelinating perineuronal cells. The function of perineuronal oligodendrocytes is unknown; it was proposed that following injury, they may remyelinate denuded axons. We investigated these cells' potential. A combination of cell-specific tags, microarray technology and bioinformatics tools to identify gene expression differences between these subpopulations allowed us to capture the genetic signature of perineuronal oligodendrocytes. Here we report that perineuronal oligodendrocytes are configured for a dual role. As cells that embrace neuronal somata, they integrate a repertoire of transcripts designed to create their own code for communicating with neurons. But they maintain a reservoir of untranslated transcripts encoding the major myelin proteins for - we speculate - a demyelinating episode. We posit that the signature molecules, PDGFR-[alpha][beta] cytokine PDGF-CC, and transcription factor Pea3, used - among others - to define the non-myelinating phenotype, may be critical for mounting a myelinating programme during demyelination. Harnessing this capability is of therapeutic value for diseases such as multiple sclerosis. This is the first molecular characterization of an elusive neural cell

Subclinical Photoreceptor Disruption in Response to Severe Head Trauma

Commotio retinae is a transient opacification of the retina due to outer retinal disruption occurring in a contrecoup fashion after blunt trauma.Histological studies in animals and humans after ocular blunt trauma have revealed that disruption occurs at the level of the photoreceptor outer segments and retinal pigment epithelium.Recent reports using optical coherence tomography (OCT) have shown detectable disruption at the level of the photoreceptor inner segment/outer segment junction and retinal pigment epithelium and that these changes may be reversible over time with restoration of normal outer retinal architecture.However, the resolution of existing OCT technology may not be sensitive enough to detect photoreceptor disruption. Adaptive optics (AO) imaging systems enable cellular-resolution imaging of the human retina, and there is a growing number of cases where deficits have been visible on AO images but not on OCT. Herein, we report a case of subclinical photoreceptor disruption after head trauma as seen by an AO scanning ophthalmoscope (AOSO) but not apparent clinically or on spectral-domain OCT (SD-OCT)

Study of localization in the quantum sawtooth map emulated on a quantum information processor

Quantum computers will be unique tools for understanding complex quantum systems. We report an experimental implementation of a sensitive, quantum coherence-dependent localization phenomenon on a quantum information processor (QIP). The localization effect was studied by emulating the dynamics of the quantum sawtooth map in the perturbative regime on a three-qubit QIP. Our results show that the width of the probability distribution in momentum space remained essentially unchanged with successive iterations of the sawtooth map, a result that is consistent with localization. The height of the peak relative to the baseline of the probability distribution did change, a result that is consistent with our QIP being an ensemble of quantum systems with a distribution of errors over the ensemble. We further show that the previously measured distributions of control errors correctly account for the observed changes in the probability distribution.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figure