Community reactions to campaigns addressing crystal methamphetamine use among gay and bisexual men in New York City

Crystal methamphetamine (aka "crystal meth") use with high-risk sex has become an emerging health problem for gay and bisexual men in New York City since the late 1990s. Public health campaigns were eventually developed to encourage gay and bisexual men to avoid or reconsider using crystal meth. Reactions to three campaigns were measured with a cross-sectional survey administered in 2004. Among an ethnically-diverse sample of 971 gay and bisexual men, 61.8% reported seeing the campaigns. Those who reported ever using crystal meth, recent use, and recent use with sex were significantly more likely to have seen the campaigns. In general, white men, HIV-negative men, and men not currently using crystal meth responded more positively to the campaigns than their counterparts; yet, more men of color reported having discussions with partners and friends about their crystal use as a result of these campaigns. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

Vulnerability in custody: perceptions and practices of police officers and criminal justice professionals in meeting the communication needs of offenders with learning disabilities and learning difficulties

Information provision and communication within the Criminal Justice System can be highly problematic for young people and adults with learning disabilities and difficulties. Paper-based communication is common, and is mandated for the provision of rights and entitlements in custody, but such communication can be poorly understood, potentially leading to miscarriages of justice. This article uses the piloting of a more accessible version of the rights and entitlements notice in custody to explore the communication practices with vulnerable detained persons from the perspectives of professionals within the Criminal Justice System. As a legally mandated text in a context heavily imbued with organisational power, the rights and entitlements notice in custody has sociological significance as a lens through which organisational practices, and understandings, can be examined. The stressful, fast-paced and transitional context of custody shapes communication and interaction in ways that are challenging for the detained person and also the professionals who support them.     

Parallelizing particle filters with butterfly interactions

The bootstrap particle filter (BPF) is the cornerstone of many algorithms used for solving generally intractable inference problems with hidden Markov models. The long-term stability of the BPF arises from particle interactions that typically make parallel implementations of the BPF nontrivial. We propose a method whereby particle interaction is done in several stages. With the proposed method, full interaction can be accomplished even if we allow only pairwise communications between processing elements at each stage. We show that our method preserves the consistency and the long-term stability of the BPF, although our analysis suggests that the constraints on the stagewise interactions introduce errors leading to a lower convergence rate than standard Monte Carlo. The proposed method also suggests a new, more flexible, adaptive resampling scheme, which, according to our numerical experiments, is the method of choice, displaying a notable gain in efficiency in certain parallel computing scenarios.     

The Education–Occupation (Mis)Match of Asia-Born Immigrants in Australia

Population Research and Policy Review - Skills shortages in the developed world are being addressed through selective immigration programs. Immigrant skills wastage signifies costly inefficiencies...