Preventing Delinquency Through Improved Child Protection Services

Research indicates that the prevalence of child abuse or neglect among delinquent offenders is substantially greater than it is among the general population. Moreover, maltreated children are significantly more likely to become involved in delinquent behavior than their nonmaltreated peers, and delinquent youth with a history of abuse or neglect are more likely to continue their offending behavior than delinquents who have not suffered child abuse or neglect. Given the links between child maltreatment and juvenile offending, designing and implementing programs to reduce the incidence of child maltreatment as a means of preventing delinquency are a promising -- though often overlooked -- strategy.After reviewing what is known about the links between childhood maltreatment and juvenile and adult offending, the authors review OJJDP's Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders and examine the role that child protective services' prevention efforts can play in delinquency prevention and intervention

M&A driven IT transformation

Technological, economical, cultural, and political changesconstantly lead to new opportunities and challenges in today\u27shighly dynamic business environment. Increasingly,modern enterprises leverage the strategic instrument ofMergersand Acquisitions (M&A) to seize these tempting opportunitiesand adapt to the altering market conditions. AsInformation Technology (IT) penetrates the business of almostall enterprises, it has to be considered during virtuallyany M&A endeavor. Particularly the resulting need for ITtransformation in the course of the M&A post merger integration(PMI) phase represents a complex and intricate taskin which problem-specic models and tangible methods areof utmost importance. In all cases, the design of such helpfulartifacts requires a solid foundation and a profound understandingwith regards to the specic context, drivers, andinuence factors in reference to the IT transformation.Based on related literature in the eld of M&A, we conducted15 explorative expert interviews with industry partnersfrom the German banking industry, who were involvedin a bank merger. In doing so, the interview partners revealedilluminative insights into possible problems, solutions,and pitfalls occurring during the transformation of IT. Thisarticle summarizes the key ndings of the semi-structuredtalks and compares them with approaches and statementssuggested by current M&A literature resources. In this vein,the stage is set for future research in the realm of IT transformationduring M&A situations which can benet from theempirical grounded results presented within this document

DECISION SUPPORT FOR SELECTING AN APPLICATION LANDSCAPE INTEGRATION STRATEGY IN MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) represent a powerful strategic instrument increasingly applied in today\u27s business environment. Besides juridical, financial, and organizational challenges, it is crucial to rapidly integrate the existing application landscapes in order to capitalize the aspired synergies. Literature documents four commonly agreed strategies: \u27best-of-breed\u27, \u27absorption\u27, \u27co-existence\u27, and \u27new-build\u27. However, no consolidated set of criteria exists to ease the selection of an integration strategy most suitable for the merger or the acquisition. Based on the results of a literature study, this paper proposes four integration profiles enabling a structured decision support for selecting the appropriate application landscape strategy during M&A. Each profile comprises relevant driving factors and resulting consequences as selection criteria. The identified literature statements regarding the criteria are validated by means of 12 confirmatory interviews with M&A experts. Furthermore, collected findings from an additional exploratory interview part with the practitioners complement the devised strategy profiles

Koordination im Multi Channel Management – Ein Modellierungsansatz

Gegenstand dieses Beitrags ist ein Optimierungsmodell zur Auswahl und Koordination der Kommunikationskanäle zur Kundenansprache im Multi Channel Management. Dieses ordnet unter Berücksichtigung der verfügbaren Kanal-Kapazitäten den kundenbezogenen Geschäftsprozessen kundengruppenspezifisch den geeignetsten Kommunikationskanal zu. Dabei benennt zunächst eine kurze Motivation den Hintergrund und Zweck des Beitrags. Weiterhin wird die zentrale Problemstellung, die Frage nach dem Einsatz differenzierter Kanäle für verschiedene Kundensegmente und Prozesse erläutert. Die Struktur des Optimierungsmodells wird durch eine beispielhafte Anwendung vorgestellt. Schließlich werden Limitationen und mögliche Erweiterungen expliziert

The effect of numerical model error on data assimilation

Strong constraint 4D-Variational data assimilation (4D-Var) is a method used to create an initialisation for a numerical model, that best replicates subsequent observations of the system it aims to recreate. The method does not take into account the presence of errors in the model, using the model equations as a strong constraint. This paper gives a rigorous and quantitative analysis of the errors introduced into the initialisation through the use of finite difference schemes to numerically solve the model equations. The 1D linear advection equation together with circulant boundary conditions, are chosen as the model equations of interest as they are representative of the advective processes relevant to numerical weather prediction, where 4D-Var is widely used. We consider the deterministic error introduced by finite difference approximations in the form of numerical dissipation and numerical dispersion and identify the relationship between these properties and the error in the 4D-Var initialisation. In particular, we find that a solely numerically dispersive scheme has the potential to introduce destructive interference resulting in the loss of some wavenumber components in the initialisation. Bounds for the error in the initialisation due to finite difference approximations are determined with and without observation errors. The bounds are found to depend on the smoothness of the true initial condition we wish to recover and the numerically dissipative and dispersive properties of the scheme. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the bounds. These lead to the conclusion that there exists a critical number of discretisation points when considering full sets of observations, where the effects of both the considered numerical model error and observational errors on the initialisation are minimised. The numerically dissipative and dispersive properties of the finite difference schemes also have the potential to alter the properties of the noise found in observations. Correlated noise structures may be introduced into the 4D-Var initialisation as a result. We determine when this occurs for observational errors in the form of additive white noise and find that the effect is reduced through the use of numerically non-dissipative finite difference schemes

Potentials of Green Coding -- Findings and Recommendations for Industry, Education and Science -- Extended Paper

Progressing digitalization and increasing demand and use of software cause rises in energy- and resource consumption from information and communication technologies (ICT). This raises the issue of sustainability in ICT, which increasingly includes the sustainability of the software products themselves and the art of creating sustainable software. To this end, we conducted an analysis to gather and present existing literature on three research questions relating to the production of ecologically sustainable software ("Green Coding") and to provide orientation for stakeholders approaching the subject. We compile the approaches to Green Coding and Green Software Engineering (GSE) that have been published since 2010. Furthermore, we considered ways to integrate the findings into existing industrial processes and higher education curricula to influence future development in an environmentally friendly way.Comment: This document is the extended version of the literature report published at the German Informatik Conference titled "Potentials of Green Coding - Findings and Recommendations for Industry, Education and Science". This document has since been updated and expanded to include relevant source

Using a Knowledge Graph to Discover Earth Science Information

Knowledge graphs link key entities within a specific domain to other entities via relationships. Researchers are able to mine these relationships from numerous sources to infer new knowledge. Text extraction from peer-reviewed papers and scientific reports are untapped resources that can be leveraged by knowledge graphs to accelerate scientific discovery

A perspective on using experiment and theory to identify design principles in dye-sensitized solar cells

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) have been the subject of wide-ranging studies for many years because of their potential for large-scale manufacturing using roll-to-roll processing allied to their use of earth abundant raw materials. Two main challenges exist for DSC devices to achieve this goal; uplifting device efficiency from the 12 to 14% currently achieved for laboratory-scale ‘hero’ cells and replacement of the widely-used liquid electrolytes which can limit device lifetimes. To increase device efficiency requires optimized dye injection and regeneration, most likely from multiple dyes while replacement of liquid electrolytes requires solid charge transporters (most likely hole transport materials – HTMs). While theoretical and experimental work have both been widely applied to different aspects of DSC research, these approaches are most effective when working in tandem. In this context, this perspective paper considers the key parameters which influence electron transfer processes in DSC devices using one or more dye molecules and how modelling and experimental approaches can work together to optimize electron injection and dye regeneration. This paper provides a perspective that theory and experiment are best used in tandem to study DSC device

Origin of the S Stars in the Galactic Center

Over the last 15 years, around a hundred very young stars have been observed in the central parsec of our Galaxy. While the presence of young stars forming one or two stellar disks at approx. 0.1 pc from the supermassive black hole (SMBH) can be understood through star formation in accretion disks, the origin of the S stars observed a factor of 10 closer to the SMBH has remained a major puzzle. Here we show the S stars to be a natural consequence of dynamical interaction of two stellar disks at larger radii. Due to precession and Kozai interaction, individual stars achieve extremely high eccentricities at random orientation. Stellar binaries on such eccentric orbits are disrupted due to close passages near the SMBH, leaving behind a single S star on a much tighter orbit. The remaining star may be ejected from the vicinity of the SMBH, thus simultaneously providing an explanation for the observed hypervelocity stars in the Milky Way halo.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters; final version, minor changes onl