Distributive Justice and the Crime Drop

Data were extracted from a total of almost 600000 respondents from all sweeps of the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) 1982-2012 to determine whether victimisation was more or less concentrated across households during the crime drop. The most victimised household decile experienced the greatest absolute decline in victimisation but still accounted for over 70% of all victimisations suffered. Methodological issues underlying the patterns observed are discussed. The characteristics associated with highly victimised household are consistent across survey sweeps. Cross-national and crime type extension of work of the kind undertaken is advocated as both intrinsically important and likely to clarify the dynamics of the crime drop

The Impact of Shape on the Perception of Euler Diagrams

Euler diagrams are often used for visualizing data collected into sets. However, there is a significant lack of guidance regarding graphical choices for Euler diagram layout. To address this deficiency, this paper asks the question `does the shape of a closed curve affect a user's comprehension of an Euler diagram?' By empirical study, we establish that curve shape does indeed impact on understandability. Our analysis of performance data indicates that circles perform best, followed by squares, with ellipses and rectangles jointly performing worst. We conclude that, where possible, circles should be used to draw effective Euler diagrams. Further, the ability to discriminate curves from zones and the symmetry of the curve shapes is argued to be important. We utilize perceptual theory to explain these results. As a consequence of this research, improved diagram layout decisions can be made for Euler diagrams whether they are manually or automatically drawn

Area and individual differences in personal crime victimization incidence: The role of individual, lifestyle/routine activities and contextual predictors

This article examines how personal crime differences between areas and between individuals are predicted by area and population heterogeneity and their synergies. It draws on lifestyle/routine activities and social disorganization theories to model the number of personal victimization incidents over individuals including routine activities and area characteristics, respectively, as well as their (cross-cluster) interactions. The methodology employs multilevel or hierarchical negative binomial regression with extra binomial variation using data from the British Crime Survey and the UK Census. Personal crime rates differ substantially across areas, reflecting to a large degree the clustering of individuals with measured vulnerability factors in the same areas. Most factors suggested by theory and previous research are conducive to frequent personal victimization except the following new results. Pensioners living alone in densely populated areas face disproportionally high numbers of personal crimes. Frequent club and pub visits are associated with more personal crimes only for males and adults living with young children, respectively. Ethnic minority individuals experience fewer personal crimes than whites. The findings suggest integrating social disorganization and lifestyle theories and prioritizing resources to the most vulnerable, rather than all, residents of poor and densely populated areas to prevent personal crimes

Conditions for one-dimensional supersonic flow of quantum gases

One can use transsonic Bose-Einstein condensates of alkali atoms to establish the laboratory analog of the event horizon and to measure the acoustic version of Hawking radiation. We determine the conditions for supersonic flow and the Hawking temperature for realistic condensates on waveguides where an external potential plays the role of a supersonic nozzle. The transition to supersonic speed occurs at the potential maximum and the Hawking temperature is entirely determined by the curvature of the potential

Superconducting Magnetization above the Irreversibility Line in Tl2Ba2CuO6

Piezolever torque magnetometry has been used to measure the magnetization of superconducting Tl2Ba2CuO6. Three crystals with different levels of oxygen overdoping were investigated in magnetic fields up to 10 Tesla. In all cases, the magnetization above the irreversibility line was found to depart from the behaviour M ~ ln(Hc2/H) of a simple London-like vortex liquid. In particular, for a strongly overdoped (Tc = 15K) crystal, the remnant superconducting order above the irreversibility line is characterized by a linear diamagnetic response (M ~ H) that persists well above Tc and also up to the highest field employed.Comment: RevTeX, 11 pages, 7 encapsulated PostScript figures, submitted to Physical Review

Hydrodynamic Spinodal Decomposition: Growth Kinetics and Scaling Functions

We examine the effects of hydrodynamics on the late stage kinetics in spinodal decomposition. From computer simulations of a lattice Boltzmann scheme we observe, for critical quenches, that single phase domains grow asymptotically like $t^{\alpha}$, with $\alpha \approx .66$ in two dimensions and $\alpha \approx 1.0$ in three dimensions, both in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions.Comment: 12 pages, latex, Physical Review B Rapid Communication (in press

A comparative study of Rayleigh-Taylor and Richtmyer-Meshkov instabilities in 2D and 3D in tantalum

Driving a shock wave through the interface between two materials with different densities can result in the Richtmyer-Meshkov or Rayleigh-Taylor instability and initial perturbations at the interface will grow. If the shock wave is sufficiently strong, the instability will lead to plastic flow at the interface. Material strength will reduce the amount of plastic flow and suppress growth. While such instabilities have been investigated in 2D, no studies of this phenomena have been performed in 3D on materials with strength. Initial perturbations to seed the hydrodynamic instability were coined into tantalum recovery targets. Two types of perturbations were used, two dimensional (2D) perturbations (hill and valley) and three-dimensional (3D) perturbations (egg crate pattern). The targets were subjected to dynamic loading using the Janus laser at the Jupiter Laser Facility. Shock pressures ranged from 50 GPa up to 150 GPa and were calibrated using VISAR drive targets