Six Steps for Profitable and Environmentally Sound Management of Crop Pests

PaperHow to balance control of pests with profitable crop production and environmental protection

Case study of isosurface extraction algorithm performance

Journal ArticleIsosurface extraction is an important and useful visualization method. Over the past ten years, the field has seen numerous isosurface techniques published, leaving the user in a quandary about which one should be used. Some papers have published complexity analysis of the techniques, yet empirical evidence comparing different methods is lacking. This case study presents a comparative study of several representative isosurface extraction algorithms. It reports and analyzes empirical measurements of execution times and memory behavior for each algorithm. The results show that asymptotically optimal techniques may not be the best choice when implemented on modern computer architectures

Journal publishing with Acrobat: the CAJUN project

The publication of material in electronic form should ideally preserve, in a unified document representation, all of the richness of the printed document while maintaining enough of its underlying structure to enable searching and other forms of semantic processing. Until recently it has been hard to find a document representation which combined these attributes and which also stood some chance of becoming a de facto multi-platform standard. This paper sets out experience gained within the Electronic Publishing Research Group at the University of Nottingham in using Adobe Acrobat software and its underlying PDF (Portable Document Format) notation. The CAJUN project1 (CD-ROM Acrobat Journals Using Networks) began in 1993 and has used Acrobat software to produce electronic versions of journal papers for network and CD-ROM dissemination. The paper describes the project's progress so far and also gives a brief assessment of PDF's suitability as a universal document interchange standard

Drug-Related Police Crime: An Exploratory Study of Law Enforcement Officers Arrested for Drug-Related Offenses, 2005‐2016

Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, Las Vegas, NV, on March 18, 2022

The role of anti-terror measures in the development of 'Islamic' terrorism.

Post-September 11th 2001, academic attention on 'Islamic' terrorism is increasingly concentrating upon national and global security, political instability within majority-Muslim nation-states and perceived civilizational conflict between religio-cultural entities. Attempts to explain contemporary 'Islamic' terrorism within social science have tended to focus upon processes associated with increasing globalization and interlinked forms of cultural, economic, political and social changes. Clearly these are important, but many predate the emergence of the terror groups under investigation, failing to account for the prominent role of relatively highly educated and wealthy members. Underlying these accounts is an assumption that the rectification of poverty, introduction of democracy, universal education and improved proactive security arrangements will eradicate terrorism. However, the measures being implemented by national and international actors to improve security and address militancy and terrorism are contributing to an amplification of the beliefs and behaviour they are seeking to prevent and change. In other words, recent terrorism is in part an unintended consequence of intentionally preventative measures. This paper focuses on the impact of anti-terror measures on identity formation and in particular the relationship between such measures and the development of al-Qa'ida and associated groups. The impact of government policies designed to undermine the appeal of militant Islam within nation-states and actions undertaken in association with the American-led war on terror are assessed. The sociological concept of the 'unintended consequences' of intentional action is invoked here to help identify the social processes underlying recent terrorist activity. These processes are contributing to the ongoing creation and maintenance of 'Islamic' terrorism across a range of different nation-states

Islamic 'new social movements'?

European new social movement (NSM) theory was developed to describe and explain the apparently unique character of the wave of collective action that began in the 1960s and continues to this day. Key characteristics of NSM theory are a post-industrial orientation, middle-class activist core, loose organizational form, use of symbolic direct actions, creation of new identities, and a 'self-limiting radicalism'. The theory's claims to movement innovation were later criticized by many as exaggerated and ahistorical. However, the filtering down of key NSM elements into social movement studies has led to changing definitions of what social movements actually are and opened up new opportunities for the integration of religious movements into the social movements mainstream. Using the case of radical Islam, and with particular reference to the terrorist social movement organization al-Qa'ida, this article argues that drawing on key features of NSM theory should lead to a better understanding of radical Islam as well as a more realistic explanation of its continuing development and transformation

The emotional well-being of young people: a review of the literature.

Suicide is increasingly described by governments and policy-makers as a global public health problem. Between 1950 and 1995 global suicide rates have increased by 60%. In recent years concerns have been expressed in Scotland and the UK about rising suicide rates amongst children and young people and the accumulation of increasing evidence that the adoption of negative coping strategies is contributing to rising levels of deliberate self harm (DSH).This literature review was in part used and incorporated into chapter two of the final report, The emotional wellbeing of young people: final report of phase one of a 'Choose Life' research project in Aberdeenshire (March 2004-March 2007), which can be found at http://hdl.handle.net/10059/439

Predicting which people with psychosocial distress are at risk of becoming dependent on state benefits: analysis of routinely available data

Objectives To examine whether there was significant variation in levels of claiming incapacity benefit across general practices. To establish whether it is possible to identify people with mental health problems who are more at risk of becoming dependent on state benefits for long term health problems based on their general practice consulting behaviour