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Drawing upon the police accountability model, the purpose of this paper is to advance the research on public attitudes toward the police (PATP) by examining the effects of reported disorder incidents at the micro level on the two dimensions of PATP.

This study uses two waves of random sample telephone survey of 2,393 residents in Houston, Texas. The disorder data were provided by the Houston Police Department. Disorder incidents surrounding each respondent’s residence were extracted by using geographic information systems technology. Structural equation modeling was used for the analysis.

The main findings suggest that while the observational measure of disorder exerts no direct impact on residents’ general attitudes toward the police; it has a significant impact on specific attitudes toward the police measured by using the neighborhoods as the principle geographical context. In addition, documented disorder incidents are found to be a robust predictor of perceptions of disorder in both models.

The measurement of PATP was ambiguous in the research literature and scholarly attention to the observational factors such as reported disorder incidents has been lacking. This study fills the gap of the relevant literature by measuring PATP as a two-dimensional concept and incorporating reported disorder incidents into the analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of juvenile attitudes toward the police (JATP) in Chinese social settings. More specifically, this study borrows from the wisdom of social bond theory and relevant literature developed in the USA to explain juvenile ratings of the police on specific job functions.

The data were collected from a multi-stage cluster sample of 2,704 high school students in a city with a population of 3.8 million located in the southwest region of China. The analysis includes variables derived from social bond theory as well as traditional models commonly employed in US studies, such as demographic background and contact with the police.

The findings suggest that both social bonds and traditional models have their respective utility to explain the variation in juvenile evaluations of the police.

This study expands the scope of the investigation on JATP in China, a distinctively different cultural environment from the USA. More specifically, it explores the utility of the respective explanatory power of the social bond model and traditional models in relation to juveniles’ ratings of the police in China.

This paper aims to propose a new model to study the relationship between the acoustic properties of the thickness shear mode (TSM) in lateral field excited (LFE) film bulk acoustic wave resonator (FBAR) and the gap distance of the surface electrodes.

In the finite element analysis, harmonic and modal analyses are performed to obtain the admittance spectrum and determine the mechanical vibration mode. The results are used to modify the ideal model used in the theoretical calculation.

In the case of LFE FBAR, the acoustic velocity and electromechanical coupling coefficient (K2) of the TSM decreases as the gap distance decreases and there is a compromise between the exciting effectiveness and the acoustic properties.

The paper proposes a new method to study the dependences of the acoustic properties of the lateral field excited FBAR on the gap distances of the surface electrodes through the extraction of the static capacitance based on the finite element simulation results.

Drawing upon the negativity bias theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of positive and negative perceptions of police-initiated or citizen-initiated contacts on three distinctive dimensions of public satisfaction with police (PSWP).

The data were obtained from a random-sample telephone survey of 1,143 residents in Houston in 2012. The OLS regressions were conducted with variables derived from the contact model and neighborhood context model that were often employed in the PSWP research. Particularly, five dichotomous variables were created to tap into the nature and quality of the police-citizen encounters.

The results confirm the negativity bias theory that “bad is stronger than good,” suggesting that the negative-contact variables have stronger influences on PSWP than the positive-contact variables, net of neighborhood context and demographic background.

This study expands the scope of the investigation on PSWP by exploring the effects of the nature and quality of the police-citizen contacts on the respondents’ sentiments toward the police.

The purpose of this study is to identify the principal determinants associated with becoming a volunteer in crime prevention programs.

Data were collected from citizen surveys in a medium sized city located in the West region of USA. The data contained 574 city residents and 264 volunteers. Binomial logistic regression analytical technique was employed to examine the relative contribution of three categories of explanatory variables – demographic background, neighborhood contextual factors, and political viewpoints – on becoming a police volunteer in community crime prevention.

The primary finding suggests that gender was a significant predictor of participation in police volunteer work. With respect to cognitive factors, the character of citizen perceptions of crime problems in their neighborhoods mattered considerably. Similarly, citizens' political orientation was another important variable among cognitive factors.

Study findings are based on surveys of citizen perceptions of police programs from a single mid‐sized city. Results cannot be generalized to all US cities.

This study provides police administrators and academic scholars with research‐based information on several unanswered questions associated with participation in police volunteer work.

Over the course of the past 40 years Wilson's theory of local political culture has influenced many students of policing. Wilson argued that variation in structural arrangements in police organizations can be explained largely by the form of municipal government structure in place. For example, police departments using a strict law enforcement style of policing tend to work within a more bureaucratic structure (e.g. hierarchically differentiated) than their counterparts employing a watchman style of policing. The purpose of this study is to test the application of Wilson's theory of local political culture in today's police organizations.

Longitudinal agency survey data for 280 police departments collected through the 1990s were analyzed using a random‐effects panel technique.

The findings observed suggest that there was only a very limited relationship between local political culture and the five principal dimensions of organizational structure — formalization, centralization, functional differentiation, specialization differentiation, and occupational differentiation derived from Peter Blau's measures among these police agencies during the 1990s.

The theory of local political culture may have limited utility in the analysis of the structural arrangements in contemporary police organizations. At the same time, a longer period of time is required in the study of local political culture.

The identification of key determinants of structural arrangements in police organizations is an important issue because there is a lack of consensus on the role of local political culture. The research used two approaches and found that organizational structure in police agencies is largely determined by socioeconomic factors.

The study represented an original study of police organization, using panel data collected by the authors during the 1990s.

The main purpose of this study in the field of automotive brake friction material is to find an effective material to replace the environmentally hazardous copper in the brake pad formulation.

Cu is used as functional filler in various forms in the friction material formulation. Because of its hazardous impact to the aquatic life, a suitable replacement of Cu is the main focus of this research. Three novel friction composite materials using ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) as a suitable alternative for Cu were developed by increasing its Wt.% from 5% to 15% in the step of 5%.

The physical, mechanical and chemical properties of the developed friction composites were tested as per the industrial standards. The tribological properties were analyzed as per SAE J661 standard using the chase test rig. Initial studies revealed that the friction composite having 5% GGBFS exhibited better physical, mechanical and chemical properties with excellent frictional performance having minimal fluctuations even at higher temperatures. Nonetheless, the results showed that the friction composite containing 15 Wt.% GGBFS revealed a better wear resistance property compared with the other two composites due to the tribo lubricating layer formation at the frictional interface. Scanning electron microscope analysis was performed to understand the wear mechanism and tribo layer formations through topography studies.

This paper explains the influence of GGBFS as a replacement of barytes in brake pads formulation to enhance the tribological performance.

Considering the small sample size and non-linear characteristics of historical energy consumption data from certain provinces in Southwest China, the authors propose a hybrid accumulation operator and a hybrid accumulation grey univariate model as a more accurate and reliable methodology for forecasting energy consumption. This method can provide valuable decision-making support for policy makers involved in energy management and planning.

The hybrid accumulation operator is proposed by linearly combining the fractional-order accumulation operator and the new information priority accumulation. The new operator is then used to build a new grey system model, named the hybrid accumulation grey model (HAGM). An optimization algorithm based on the JAYA optimizer is then designed to solve the non-linear parameters θ, r, and γ of the proposed model. Four different types of curves are used to verify the prediction performance of the model for data series with completely different trends. Finally, the prediction performance of the model is applied to forecast the total energy consumption of Southwest Provinces in China using the real world data sets from 2010 to 2020.

The proposed HAGM is a general formulation of existing grey system models, including the fractional-order accumulation and new information priority accumulation. Results from the validation cases and real-world cases on forecasting the total energy consumption of Southwest Provinces in China illustrate that the proposed model outperforms the other seven models based on different modelling methods.

The HAGM is used to forecast the total energy consumption of the Southwest Provinces of China from 2010 to 2020. The results indicate that the HAGM with HA has higher prediction accuracy and broader applicability than the seven comparative models, demonstrating its potential for use in the energy field.

The HAGM(1,1) is used to predict energy consumption of Southwest Provinces in China with the raw data from 2010 to 2020. The HAGM(1,1) with HA has higher prediction accuracy and wider applicability compared with some existing models, implying its high potential to be used in energy field.

Theoretically, this paper presents, for the first time, a hybrid accumulation grey univariate model based on a new hybrid accumulation operator. In terms of application, this work provides a new method for accurate forecasting of the total energy consumption for southwest provinces in China.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.