Crime,antisocial personality and pathological gambling

To investigate the hypothesized causal relationship between pathological gambling and gambling-related illegal behaviors, 77 patients seeking behavioral treatment for excessive gambling and 32 members of Gamblers Anonymous were administered a structured interview schedule. Data on the incidence, nature and extent of both gambling and non-gambling related illegal behaviors was obtained and DSM-III (A.P.A., 1980) criteria for Antisocial personality were used as the measure of sociopathy.Of the sample, 54.1% admitted to a gambling related offense and 21.1% were charged. Results showed that 14.6% met DSM-III criteria for Antisocial Personality, Four subgroups were subsequently identified; gamblers who committed no offense (36.7%), gambling only offenses (40.4%), non-gambling only offenses (9.2%) or both gambling and non-gambling offenses (13.7%). Significantly more subjects from the gambling plus non-gambling related offenses subgroup were classified as antisocial personalities.Of pathological gamblers who committed offenses, two thirds reportedly did so as a direct consequence of gambling induced problems. Subjects reporting gambling-only related offenses showed a significant increase in antisocial features after adolescence suggesting that antisocial features emerge as a secondary phenomenon to pathological gambling behavior patterns.Acknowledgments: This study was made possible by a grant from the Criminology Research Council, Australian Institute of Criminology.     

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A Compressive Sensing Based Analysis of Anomalies in Generalized Linear Models

In this article, we present a compressive sensing based framework for generalized linear model regression that employs a two-component noise model and convex optimization techniques to simultaneously detect outliers and determine optimally sparse representations of noisy data from arbitrary sets of basis functions. We then extend our model to include model order reduction capabilities that can uncover inherent sparsity in regression coefficients and achieve simple, superior fits. Second, we use the mixed ?₂/?₁ norm to develop another model that can efficiently uncover block-sparsity in regression coefficients. By performing model order reduction over all independent variables and basis functions, our algorithms successfully deemphasize the effect of independent variables that become uncorrelated with dependent variables. This desirable property has various applications in real-time anomaly detection, such as faulty sensor detection and sensor jamming in wireless sensor networks. After developing our framework and inheriting a stable recovery theorem from compressive sensing theory, we present two simulation studies on sparse or block-sparse problems that demonstrate the superior performance of our algorithms with respect to (1) classic outlier-invariant regression techniques like least absolute value and iteratively reweighted least-squares and (2) classic sparse-regularized regression techniques like LASSO.     

Lightning Rods in the Local Moral Economy: Debating Unauthorized Migrants' Deservingness in Israel

Localized debates about who unauthorized migrants are and what they do, or do not, deserve unfold in a culturally specific register that is deeply charged with emotion and moral valuation. Structuring such debates are vernacular discursive frames that emerge from, and reflect, a common “local moral economy.” Taking Israel as case study, this article examines six elements of the country's local moral economy – biopolitical logic, historical memory, political emotion, popularized religion, an ideology of “fruitful multiplication,” and hasbara (“public diplomacy”/propaganda) – and explores their impact on public debates about unauthorized and irregular forms of migration. Here, as elsewhere, conventionalized distinctions that frame much migration scholarship – e.g. “economic” vs. “political” migrants, “migrant workers” vs. “refugees,” even the terms “authorized” and “unauthorized” themselves – bear but limited salience. Migration researchers who hope to influence local policy debates must recognize the weight and influence of local moral economies, and the chasms that divide vernacular from conventionalized frames. Achieving this sort of nuanced understanding is, at root, an ethnographic challenge.     

Exploring the Importance of Business Clockspeed as a Moderator for Determinants of Supplier Network Performance*

As the importance of supplier networks becomes increasingly recognized as a vital factor to company performance, researchers and practitioners alike are focusing their attention on this subject. The study's main objective is to test the specific hypotheses that effective use of Information Technology (IT) and the depth of company relationships with suppliers are directly related to Supplier Network (SN) performance, and that industry clockspeed moderates these relationships. A convenience sample of 135 manufacturing organizations was used to empirically test these hypotheses. Our results indicate that clockspeed does moderate the relationship between IT use effectiveness and supplier network performance. The same is true in the case of supplier relations depth, and hence, managers are encouraged to pay attention to the items comprising network performance as a determinant of supplier network performance.