Organised Crime Typologies: Structure, Activities and Conditions

Abstract: Typologies are intended to assist researchers in understanding complex social phenomena. This paper reviews the current literature on organised crime typologies and argues that the majority of organised crime typologies are reflected to some extent in a typology developed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 2002. Organised crime typologies can be categorised into three groups: models that focus on the physical structure and operation of an OCG, the activities of OCGs and the social, cultural and historical conditions that facilitate organised crime activity. This paper will only discuss models that examine the physical structure and operation of an OCG; the UNODC typology is exclusively focused on structural elements. Typologies on organised crime structure have developed largely in isolation from each other and appear disparate. This paper will analyse the formation of each typology to establish their individual elements. It will then identify which typologies and their respective characteristics can be aligned with or distinguished from the UN typology. The value of this review is that it will enable greater uniformity and consistency in academic discussion on organised crime typologies

On a sub-supersolution method for the prescribed mean curvature problem

summary:The paper is about a sub-supersolution method for the prescribed mean curvature problem. We formulate the problem as a variational inequality and propose appropriate concepts of sub- and supersolutions for such inequality. Existence and enclosure results for solutions and extremal solutions between sub- and supersolutions are established

Existence and comparison principles for general quasilinear variational–hemivariational inequalities

AbstractWe consider quasilinear elliptic variational–hemivariational inequalities involving convex, lower semicontinuous and locally Lipschitz functionals. We provide a generalization of the fundamental notion of sub- and supersolutions on the basis of which we then develop the sub–supersolution method for variational–hemivariational inequalities, including existence, comparison, compactness and extremality results

Existence and comparison principles for general quasilinear variational–hemivariational inequalities

AbstractWe consider quasilinear elliptic variational–hemivariational inequalities involving convex, lower semicontinuous and locally Lipschitz functionals. We provide a generalization of the fundamental notion of sub- and supersolutions on the basis of which we then develop the sub–supersolution method for variational–hemivariational inequalities, including existence, comparison, compactness and extremality results

Exact Mode Shapes of T-shaped and Overhang-shaped Microcantilevers

Resonance frequencies and mode shapes of microcantilevers are of important interest in micro-mechanical systems for enhancing the functionality and applicable range of the cantilevers in vibration transducing, energy harvesting, and highly sensitive measurement. In this study, using the Euler-Bernoulli theory for beam, we figured out the exact mode shapes of cantilevers of varying widths such as the overhang- or T-shaped cantilevers. The obtained mode shapes have been shown to significantly deviate from the approximate forms of a rectangular cantilever that are commonly used in mechanics and physics. They were then used to figure out the resonance frequencies of the cantilever. The analytical solutions have been confirmed by using the finite element method simulations with very low deviation. This study suggested a method for correctly obtaining the resonance frequency of microcantilevers with complicated dimensions, such as the doubly clamped cantilever with the undercut, with the overhangs at the clamped positions, or with an attached mass in the middle