Sex Trafficking and the Attribution of Blame: A Comparison between Vietnamese and American Perception of Sex-trafficked Individuals

Sex trafficking is one of the most persistent issues in Asian countries and specifically in Vietnam. Hundreds of Vietnamese are trafficked daily across the world, but mainly in Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea, Laos, China, and Thailand. Sexually trafficked individuals are reported to have symptoms of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal tendencies, and physical violence. Despite the increasing number of victims, there is a lack of empirical research on issues relating to the impact of human trafficking on Vietnamese people and especially the public attitude about the problem. The current study examined the public’s general knowledge of trafficking myths, their willingness to believe in the trafficking situation, and their tendency to place blame on the victim, in relation to the sex of the participants and the sex of the victims. Vietnamese citizens across the country (N= 922) responded to a vignette portraying a sex trafficking situation and completed the Human Trafficking Myth survey. Results indicated that the sex of the participants and the sex of the victims significantly correlated with the participants’ perception of the human trafficking myths, trafficking story and victim’s responsibility. Acknowledging the paucity of cross-culture empirical research, the current study also compared the Vietnamese sample with the American sample that completed similar scales. The results of study 1 and 2 have the potential to serve the needs of anti-trafficking campaigns in Vietnam and support the collaboration of different countries in their effort of combating human trafficking

Optimal polarisation equations in FLRW universes

This paper presents the linearised Boltzmann equation for photons for scalar, vector and tensor perturbations in flat, open and closed FLRW cosmologies. We show that E- and B-mode polarisation for all types can be computed using only a single hierarchy. This was previously shown explicitly for tensor modes in flat cosmologies but not for vectors, and not for non-flat cosmologies.Comment: 27 pages, prepared for submission to JCAP. Matches published versio

The effective gravitational decoupling between dark matter and the CMB

We present a detailed and self-contained analytical derivation of the evolution of sub-horizon cosmological perturbations before decoupling, based on previous work by S. Weinberg. These solutions are valid in the minimal LCDM scenario, to first order in perturbation theory, in the tight-coupling limit and neglecting neutrino shear stress. We compare them to exact numerical solutions computed by a Boltzmann code, and we find the two to be in very good agreement. The analytic solutions show explicitly that CDM and the baryon-photon fluid effectively behave as separate self-gravitating fluids until the epoch of baryon drag. This in turn leads to the surprising conclusion that the CMB is much less sensitive to the clustering properties of minimally coupled Dark Matter models than what would be naively expected.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, 2 references added, few sentences clarifie

Convex regularization of discrete-valued inverse problems

This work is concerned with linear inverse problems where a distributed parameter is known a priori to only take on values from a given discrete set. This property can be promoted in Tikhonov regularization with the aid of a suitable convex but nondifferentiable regularization term. This allows applying standard approaches to show well-posedness and convergence rates in Bregman distance. Using the specific properties of the regularization term, it can be shown that convergence (albeit without rates) actually holds pointwise. Furthermore, the resulting Tikhonov functional can be minimized efficiently using a semi-smooth Newton method. Numerical examples illustrate the properties of the regularization term and the numerical solution

Prisoners' Labour Market History and Aspirations: A Focus on Western Australia

This paper examines the employability and labour market aspirations of prisoners. The results suggest that repeat prisoners are less likely to be employed than nonrepeat prisoners. However, a large proportion of the employment differential between repeat and non-repeat prisoners is due to differences in coefficients. There is no evidence to suggest that the frequency of incarceration affects individual characteristics which may limit prisoners’ labour market aspirations after their release from prison.

How secret interactions can reconcile sterile neutrinos with cosmology

Short baseline neutrino oscillation experiments have shown hints of the existence of additional sterile neutrinos in the eV mass range. However, such neutrinos seem incompatible with cosmology because they have too large an impact on cosmic structure formation. Here we show that new interactions in the sterile neutrino sector can prevent their production in the early Universe and reconcile short baseline oscillation experiments with cosmology.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, prepared for submission to PR