Criminogenic risk assessment, which was developed to predict recidivism, has risen to the status of “evidence-based practice” in corrections systems. As a result of its apparent success, proponents now claim that it captures the origins of criminal behavior, and can thus be leveraged to reduce correctional supervision rates and prevent crime. This dissertation investigates the validity of the these claims, by identifying and testing three assumptions requisite for the framework’s expansion: 1) the evidence base for the framework’s predictive performance is being interpreted correctly and appropriately, 2) the best causal models of recidivism are also the best causal models of the onset and duration of criminal behavior (and by extension, that interventions successful at reducing recidivism will be successful at reducing the onset, duration, and rate of criminal behavior); and 3) the causes of individual variation in criminal behavior are the same as causes of the population distribution, or incidence rate, of crime. This dissertation proceeds in three parts: a meta-review and critical analysis of the literature addresses the first assumption, and two empirical studies test the second and third assumptions, respectively. The meta-review determined that findings for the framework’s predictive performance are inconsistent, based on inadequate or insufficient statistical information, and often overstated. The first empirical study found that each arrest, and to a lesser extent conviction, an individual experienced increased their subsequent criminogenic risk levels, raising concerns about the framework’s applicability for crime prevention and etiology. The second empirical study found that criminogenic risks do not explain group differences in arrest and conviction rates, underscoring that researchers and policymakers should more cautiously communicate the scope of reform that the framework can deliver.

For many years, organised crime has been considered a serious threat to the world, as it affects not only national security but also economic well-being. Moreover, it is also the cause of many serious crimes. Given its nature, it is difficult for law enforcement officials to investigate and obtain evidence which can lead to the prosecution of high-ranking members of organised crime groups. For this reason, in 2000, the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC) was introduced. Under this convention, many measures were provided to fight these serious crimes. The use of special investigative techniques, such as controlled delivery, electronic surveillance and undercover operations, has been recognised in Article 20 of the UNTOC. Therefore, members of the UNTOC, including Thailand, have to incorporate these special investigative techniques into domestic law. However, due to the different interpretations of the convention in each country, the effectiveness of the use of these special investigative techniques may vary. Furthermore, the use of these special investigative techniques may have an inevitable effect on human rights. Notably, this thesis reflects the law at April 2018. After the comparative study of the use of special investigative techniques between England and Wales and Thailand, it could be seen that the former has a better legislative approach than Thailand. In the case of special organisations to combat serious crimes, the National Crime Agency (NCA) of the UK has a higher budget, more staff and better transparency than the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) of Thailand. Moreover, in England and Wales, at the national and regional levels, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) provide double protection against the misuse of the special investigative techniques which are operated by law enforcement officials. On the contrary, in Thailand, although human rights are recognised in both the Constitution and Criminal Procedure Code, the Supreme Court is not greatly concerned about these rights, nor about the unlawful investigative proceedings. At the regional level, the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD) cannot be compared to the ECHR, because it does not have supranational institutions like the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) of the ECHR to protect the rights of the people of ASEAN. Last, but not least, in practice the patronage system and corruption are also considered to be the main problems in the investigation bureaux of the country and may affect the use of special investigative techniques.

The overarching goal of the present research was to identify the interface between research and practice in the area of child-abuse investigation. The specific aims of the research were to explore how abused children present to investigators, to identify the characteristics of the children�s disclosures and the role of disclosure in the investigation, to establish the factors that influenced child-abuse investigators� decisions to interview children, and to make comparisons between sexually- and physically-abused children. Three hundred substantiated cases of child abuse (150 sexual-abuse and 150 physical-abuse investigations) investigated by the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services of New Zealand, prior to July 2001, were analysed. Children were most often physically-abused by their biological parents, and mothers were marginally more often the abusers than were fathers. The most common indicators of physical abuse were children�s disclosures and physical injuries. Risk factors for physical abuse included living in two-parent households and being of Maori or Pacific Island ethnicity. Gender or age provided no protection from physical abuse. The families of the physically-abused children were characterised by family violence, substance abuse, neglect, and poor mental health. Adverse family circumstances restrained children from telling others about their physical abuse. Physically-abused children aged more than 7 were found to present with a range of problem behaviours and fears. Child-abuse investigators often tolerated physical assaults on children, particularly by mothers. Moreover, child-abuse investigators did not routinely interview physically-abused children or treat the abuse as a criminal matter, especially if there were complicating family dynamics. Sexually-abused children were usually victimised by unrelated, known males, less often by male relatives, and infrequently by strangers, fathers, or step-fathers. One-third of the sexual abusers were aged less than 17, and over 40% of the young offenders were aged less than 12. As with adult sexual offenders, the child and teenage sexual offenders were predominantly male. Child-abuse investigators usually did not refer the young sexual offenders to the authorities for follow-up. Risk factors for sexual abuse included being female and living with a single parent. Social workers often did not meet with sexually-abused children, but instead usually referred them for a forensic interview. Social workers may not have explored issues related to the sexually-abused children�s behaviour or their families in the manner that they did for the physically-abused children. In both physical- and sexual-abuse cases, social workers were more likely to take action if children had made clear disclosures of abuse. However, despite disclosure being an important factor in decision-making, child-abuse investigators still did not meet with or interview every child, particularly preschool children and physically-abused children. The majority of factors that influenced child-abuse investigators� decisions to interview children were related to practice issues, in sexual-abuse cases, or tolerance of parental violence towards children, in physical-abuse cases. Preschool children, whether physically- or sexually-abused, did not present differently from 5- or 6-year-olds in their behaviour or style of disclosure. However, compared to older children, child-abuse investigators were unlikely to interview preschoolers. To conclude the thesis, I will highlight lessons to be learned from the present study and will make recommendations for child-abuse investigators, any professionals working with children and families, and the government of New Zealand.

This thesis provides an overview of work conducted to investigate human spatial hearing in situations involving multiple concurrent sound sources. Much is known about spatial hearing with single sound sources, including the acoustic cues to source location and the accuracy of localisation under different conditions. However, more recently interest has grown in the behaviour of listeners in more complex environments. Concurrent sound sources pose a particularly difficult problem for the auditory system, as their identities and locations must be extracted from a common set of sensory receptors and shared computational machinery. It is clear that humans have a rich perception of their auditory world, but just how concurrent sounds are processed, and how accurately, are issues that are poorly understood. This work attempts to fill a gap in our understanding by systematically examining spatial resolution with multiple sound sources. A series of psychophysical experiments was conducted on listeners with normal hearing to measure performance in spatial localisation and discrimination tasks involving more than one source. The general approach was to present sources that overlapped in both frequency and time in order to observe performance in the most challenging of situations. Furthermore, the role of two primary sets of location cues in concurrent source listening was probed by examining performance in different spatial dimensions. The binaural cues arise due to the separation of the two ears, and provide information about the lateral position of sound sources. The spectral cues result from location-dependent filtering by the head and pinnae, and allow vertical and front-rear auditory discrimination. Two sets of experiments are described that employed relatively simple broadband noise stimuli. In the first of these, two-point discrimination thresholds were measured using simultaneous noise bursts. It was found that the pair could be resolved only if a binaural difference was present; spectral cues did not appear to be sufficient. In the second set of experiments, the two stimuli were made distinguishable on the basis of their temporal envelopes, and the localisation of a designated target source was directly examined. Remarkably robust localisation was observed, despite the simultaneous masker, and both binaural and spectral cues appeared to be of use in this case. Small but persistent errors were observed, which in the lateral dimension represented a systematic shift away from the location of the masker. The errors can be explained by interference in the processing of the different location cues. Overall these experiments demonstrated that the spatial perception of concurrent sound sources is highly dependent on stimulus characteristics and configurations. This suggests that the underlying spatial representations are limited by the accuracy with which acoustic spatial cues can be extracted from a mixed signal. Three sets of experiments are then described that examined spatial performance with speech, a complex natural sound. The first measured how well speech is localised in isolation. This work demonstrated that speech contains high-frequency energy that is essential for accurate three-dimensional localisation. In the second set of experiments, spatial resolution for concurrent monosyllabic words was examined using similar approaches to those used for the concurrent noise experiments. It was found that resolution for concurrent speech stimuli was similar to resolution for concurrent noise stimuli. Importantly, listeners were limited in their ability to concurrently process the location-dependent spectral cues associated with two brief speech sources. In the final set of experiments, the role of spatial hearing was examined in a more relevant setting containing concurrent streams of sentence speech. It has long been known that binaural differences can aid segregation and enhance selective attention in such situations. The results presented here confirmed this finding and extended it to show that the spectral cues associated with different locations can also contribute. As a whole, this work provides an in-depth examination of spatial performance in concurrent source situations and delineates some of the limitations of this process. In general, spatial accuracy with concurrent sources is poorer than with single sound sources, as both binaural and spectral cues are subject to interference. Nonetheless, binaural cues are quite robust for representing concurrent source locations, and spectral cues can enhance spatial listening in many situations. The findings also highlight the intricate relationship that exists between spatial hearing, auditory object processing, and the allocation of attention in complex environments.

The present work is in the area of site and computational investigations dealing with migration of a dense non-aqueous phase liquid (DNAPL) within a discrete fractures network embedded in a porous rock media at field scale using numerical simulation. The migration of DNAPL in the subsurface is dependent upon surface parameters, subsurface aquifer parameters and other subsurface conditions. Generally, these aquifer parameters govern the temporal and spatial variability of a DNAPL. To understand the source zone architecture and dissolved plume movement in the subsurface, characterization of these relevant subsurface parameters is required with respect to space and time. The present study focuses on a systematic investigation and characterization of fluid and transport parameters at highly contaminated fractured-porous media site located at Smithville, Ontario, Canada. Data used to characterize the Smithville site include site geology, ground surface elevation, historical hydraulic head, hydraulic parameters from packer tests such as hydraulic conductivity, porosity, analyses performed on borehole core samples, pumping rates from recovery wells, and contaminants transport parameters such as DNAPL concentration data. Geostatistical and statistical analysis have been used to generate information on groundwater flow direction, vertical hydraulic gradients, contaminant plume migration and source zone architecture. TCE concentrations and pumping rates have been used to estimate TCE mass removal from the site. Important parameters for use in the multiphase model have been developed, including capillary pressure curves and relative permeability curves for rock matrix and fractures, and pore throat radius of the rock matrix. DNAPL behaves differently in fractured-porous media than it does in porous media. To understand DNAPL behaviour in fractured-porous media, site specific conceptual model development to describe geological, hydrogeological, fracture network, and DNAPL occurrence is required. Prediction of the impact of source mass depletion at highly contaminated fractured-porous media site for achieving regulatory goals, as a contaminant concentration at a down gradient compliance boundary was evaluated using multiphase compositional model CompFlow. The results demonstrate that a large amount of non-aqueous phase DNAPL is present in the Vuggy Dolostone and the Tight Dolostone (23-28m, Low Vinemount) and a small amount is present in Permeable Dolostone (Eramosa). The peak concentration at the compliance boundary is much greater than the maximum acceptable concentration (MAC) for TCE of 0.005 mg/L for drinking water.

Due to the energy crisis in 1970, the energy saving is more important for the human civilization. The energy-saving policy is important for the economic growth and competition of Taiwan. The energy of daily life and business consumes 17% of the total energy, especially the air conditioning of architectures on the peak hours occupying a third in summer. So the building energy-saving policy is the most important in Taiwan. The main of theme building energy saving is not only to save energy but also to consider the comfortable and healthy of the living environment. So that, the optimal design of the building energy saving of commercial buildings in Taiwan has been established in this paper. In this study, theoretical analysis and a full scale experiment has been performed to validate this design. Results showed this design is suitable for the NPTC building in the weather condition of south Taiwan, which also complies with the energy code of Taiwan.

According to the statistical information of WTO, Japan is an important outbound tourist market in Asia. By the way, it owns high consumption. Therefore, the Japan tourist is the important tourist market which all states want to strive for. Since 1980, Accounts for the total number of the foreigner to mainland China that Japanese occupies most. So far, the number of the Japan tourist travel to mainland China is growing. The reasons include that the outbound tourist in Japan has a massive increase; Recently, the Japanese is interest in a short itinerary; the number of scheduled flight between mainland China and Japan is unceasingly increases; rich world inheritance in mainland China has the high well-known; the price index in mainland China is lower; Japanese has more vacation than before; Chinese and Japan's historical culture approaches very much. If the mainland China wants to increase Japanese tourists, the author suggests that the quality of tourist service and facilities has to upgrade¡Fto attract the tourism market of juvenile and the feminine.

ABSTRACT The HEMS system has been gaining global attention due to its huge potential for home application in conserving energy. It is the goal of this research to study to analyze: 1. The Intelligent Operational Strategies under local Weather Conditions 2. Full-scale Experimental Investigation of the HEMS system, including the HVAC and Lighting Controls 3. Energy Savings Effect of each HEMS strategy developed and its Economic Feasibility The experimental result indicated that the HEMS system can be established efficiently in applying: For Air-conditioning Systems: Intermittent Ac PMV-assisted AC Mode DSM-controlled AC mode Predictive Control AC Mode Free-cooling Mode, and For Lighting Systems : Lighting on Demand Mode Task Lighting Sequential Control Lighting Daylighting Humane-sensored Lighting The experimental result indicated that over 30% energy savings can be experienced with huge potential for wide engineering applications.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2002. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 98 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 84-87).

Thesis (M.S. in Operations Research)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Samuel E. Buttrey, Lyn R. Whitaker. Includes bibliographical references (p. 147-148). Also available online.