How does childhood trauma and victimisation contribute to youth homelessness and criminal misconduct? A study of influences on young people’s propensity to offend and the role of professionals in supporting homeless young people into living a crime free life

Homeless youth experience social exclusion on numerous fronts, as they are a demographic who occupy the margins of the social, economic and civil spheres of English society. It is the misrepresentation of these marginalised youth that has contributed to this ostracism. Therefore, the crux of this study is to gain a thorough insight into the realities of youth homelessness and crime, through the lens of the lived experiences of young homeless people and the professionals who work directly with them. This insight is attained through the application of grounded theory with a substantial emphasis on ethnography, consisting of professional and research reflection, participant observation, life-story, in-depth, semi-structured interviews, and analysis. This use of grounded theory and the accounts of their lived experiences challenges the societal isolation of the marginalised homeless youth themselves. It draws upon their own ‘first person’ accounts of being homeless, addressing issues including discrimination, racism, bullying, victimisation, coping and survival mechanisms, family life and parental influence, opportunities and reasons for criminal behaviour, limited access to education, conventional employment and housing. A key question raised through this research is ‘how does childhood trauma and victimisation contribute to youth homelessness and criminal misconduct’. The findings were clear that there was a direct correlation between suffering early traumatic or abusive experiences through primary caregivers (guardians) and later homelessness and involvement in criminal activity. Deterrents such as police action or punishment were not a motivating factor in refraining from criminal behaviours, rather moral or religious beliefs often served to dissuade involvement in criminal activity. Perceptions of crime also varied greatly between the young people interviewed which had significant bearing on the research findings. In seeking to establish if there was a direct correlation between homelessness and crime, the findings illustrated the complexities in defining the young person’s status of ‘perpetrator’ or ‘victim’ – with some homeless youth occupying both roles simultaneously. The practical implications of this research are multifaceted. In the first instance, it serves to clarify many of the societal and professionals misunderstandings around the issues affecting homeless youth as well as the characters and motivations of the youth themselves. As the research progressed, it became clear that there is sufficient confusion to warrant a systematic ethnographic review. Secondly, this work challenges the debilitating stereotypes of homelessness, providing a perspective on youth homelessness that is up to date and rooted in lived experience whilst raising awareness of the actual challenges faced by homeless youth. In addition, this research makes a meaningful contribution to the scholarly literature examining the topic of youth who experience homelessness and crime. Too often, young people’s voices are rarely heard in relation to the issues and actions that deeply affect them. This research represents an attempt to build an academic study around the voices and perspectives of the homeless youth. Finally, if the concerned authorities, policy makers, academics, youth, and social work professionals are serious about resolving this significant social, ethical and moral matter in a purposeful manner, they need to consider the reality of the challenges that homeless young people face. The findings and recommendations laid out in this study clearly highlight the key issues that need to be addressed, as identified by the young people themselves, and those who work with them. This can subsequently enable policy makers and experts to find more workable, viable and sustainable solutions to the issues related to youth homelessness and crime

Experiments on Passive Hypervelocity Boundary-Layer Control Using an Ultrasonically Absorptive Surface

Recently performed linear stability analyses suggested that transition could be delayed in hypersonic boundary layers by using an ultrasonically absorptive surface to damp the second mode (Mack mode). Boundary-layer transition experiments were performed on a sharp 5.06-deg half-angle round cone at zero angle of attack in the T5 Hypervelocity Shock Tunnel to test this concept. The cone was constructed with a smooth surface around half the cone circumference (to serve as a control) and an acoustically absorptive porous surface on the other half. Test gases investigated included nitrogen and carbon dioxide at M∞ ≃ 5 with specific reservoir enthalpy ranging from 1.3 to 13.0 MJ/kg and reservoir pressure ranging from 9.0 to 50.0 MPa. Comparisons were performed to ensure that previous results obtained in similar experiments (on a regular smooth surface) were reproduced, and the results were extended to examine the effects of the porous surface. These experiments indicated that the porous surface was highly effective in delaying transition provided that the pore size was significantly smaller than the viscous length scale

M-GEAR: Gateway-Based Energy-Aware Multi-Hop Routing Protocol for WSNs

In this research work, we advise gateway based energy-efficient routing protocol (M-GEAR) for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). We divide the sensor nodes into four logical regions on the basis of their location in the sensing field. We install Base Station (BS) out of the sensing area and a gateway node at the centre of the sensing area. If the distance of a sensor node from BS or gateway is less than predefined distance threshold, the node uses direct communication. We divide the rest of nodes into two equal regions whose distance is beyond the threshold distance. We select cluster heads (CHs)in each region which are independent of the other region. These CHs are selected on the basis of a probability. We compare performance of our protocol with LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy). Performance analysis and compared statistic results show that our proposed protocol perform well in terms of energy consumption and network lifetime.Comment: IEEE 8th International Conference on Broadband and Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications (BWCCA'13), Compiegne, Franc

Analogy Between Linear Optical Systems and Linear Two-Port Electrical Networks

Attention is called to the analogy between linear optical systems and linear two-port electrical networks. For both, the transformation of a pair of oscillating quantities between input and output is of interest. The mapping of polarization by an optical system and of impedance (admittance) by a two-port network is described by a bilinear transformation. Therefore for each transfer property of a system of one type, there is a similar property for the system of the other type. Two-port electrical networks are synthesized whose impedance-(or admittance-) mapping properties are the same as the polarization-mapping properties of a given optical system. The opposite problem of finding the optical analogs of two-port networks is also considered. Besides unifying the methods of handling these two different kinds of systems, the analogy appears fruitful if used reciprocally to simulate electrical networks by optical systems, and vice versa. Linear mechanoacoustic systems have optical analogs besides their well-known electrical analogs

Analogy Between Linear Optical Systems and Linear Two-Port Electrical Networks

Attention is called to the analogy between linear optical systems and linear two-port electrical networks. For both, the transformation of a pair of oscillating quantities between input and output is of interest. The mapping of polarization by an optical system and of impedance (admittance) by a two-port network is described by a bilinear transformation. Therefore for each transfer property of a system of one type, there is a similar property for the system of the other type. Two-port electrical networks are synthesized whose impedance-(or admittance-) mapping properties are the same as the polarization-mapping properties of a given optical system. The opposite problem of finding the optical analogs of two-port networks is also considered. Besides unifying the methods of handling these two different kinds of systems, the analogy appears fruitful if used reciprocally to simulate electrical networks by optical systems, and vice versa. Linear mechanoacoustic systems have optical analogs besides their well-known electrical analogs

Loci of Invariant-Azimuth and Invariant-Ellipticity Polarization States of an Optical System

The loci of polarization states for which either the ellipticity alone or the azimuth alone remains invariant upon passing through an optical system are introduced. The cartesian equations of these two loci are derived in the complex plane in which the polarization states are represented. The equations are quartic and are conveniently expressed in terms of the elements of the Jones. matrix of the optical system. As an exple the loci are determined for a system composed of a π/4 rotator followed by a quarter-wave retarder

Effect of Packet Inter-arrival Time on the Energy Consumption of Beacon Enabled MAC Protocol for Body Area Networks

AbstractOne of the major concerns for the development of Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is to increase the network lifetime. IEEE 802.15.4 standard for Medium Access Control (MAC) layer can be used for energy efficient and reliable transmission by modifying the different control parameters. Such a modification is very difficult, because an accurate model for the influence of these control parameters of minimum energy and delay is not available. Moreover, there is no mechanism available how to adopt and implement these parameters that can implement on the Body Nodes (BNs). In this paper, we provide the mechanism for emergency data along with normal and periodic data by modifying the superframe structure. Coordinator transmits and extra beacon upon the request of emergency data. A comprehensive analysis of energy consumption of BNs including the affect of packet inter-arrival time is given in this paper. Analysis show that, Contention Access Period (CAP) of superframe is not feasible for emergency data due to its extra delay and energy

Investigating visibility affordance, knowledge transfer and employee agility performance. A study of enterprise social media

The research analyzes the associations between enterprise social media (ESM) visibility affordance (i.e., message transparency and network translucence) and employee agility performance through knowledge transfer (knowledge acquisition and knowledge provision) in organizations that have applied ESM. Utilizing the communication visibility theory, this study further examines the moderating role of task interdependence in strengthening the interactions between knowledge transfer and employee agility performance. We conducted two studies, one in China (347 samples) and the other in the United States (335 samples) to cross-culturally test our research model. Our results indicate that message transparency and network translucence have significant positive associations with employee agility performance in both studies. The findings also show that knowledge provision mediates the relationships between ESM visibility affordance and employee agility performance in both samples, while knowledge acquisition mediates the association between ESM visibility affordance and employee agility performance in the Chinese sample but not in the U.S. sample. Further, task interdependence moderates the link between knowledge acquisition and employee agility performance in China and the United States. However, task interdependence moderates the relationship between knowledge provision and employee agility performance in China but not in the United States. The implications for theory and management are also discussed