Working positively with sexual offenders : maximizing the effectiveness of treatment

In this article, the authors draw on literatures outside sexual offending and make suggestions for working more positively and constructively with these offenders. Although the management of risk is a necessary feature of treatment, it needs to occur in conjunction with a strength-based approach. An exclusive focus on risk can lead to overly confrontational therapeutic encounters, a lack of rapport between offenders and clinicians, and fragmented and mechanistic treatment delivery. The authors suggest that the goals of sexual offender treatment should be the attainment of good lives, which is achieved by enhancing hope, increasing self-esteem, developing approach goals, and working collaboratively with the offenders. Examples are provided of how these targets may be met. When this is done within a therapeutic context where the treatment providers display empathy and warmth and are rewarding and directive, the authors suggest that treatment effects will be maximized.

Insights from the eco-physiological book of records : Bewick's swans outperform the canonical intake-maximizing vertebrate

During periods of high energy demand an animal may be constrained by a physiological maximum to its energy intake rate. Predictions by allometric equations describing this maximum for endotherms were significantly surpassed during a few recent laboratory experiments on birds and mammals, being given access to food 24 h day^-1. How relevant this is in the field remains to be assessed. We predicted that Bewick’s swans Cygnus columbianus bewickii might surpass this maximum during stopover on their migration. We determined intake rate by measuring initial and final biomass density, and dividing the biomass difference by the feeding time required to reach this difference. This feeding time was given by the functional response. After conversion to daily energy intake rates, these exceeded the previously assumed maximum on two of the three stopover sites studied. The exception was a stopover site where daily foraging time was limited by the tidal cycle. Our study confirms that intake rates may exceed the formerly generally supposed maximum under natural conditions when foraging is possible day and night.

Conducting field research in a primary school setting : methodological considerations for maximizing response rates, data quality and quantity

Background: Schools are an ideal setting in which to involve children in research. Yet for investigators wishing to work in these settings, there are few method papers providing insights into working efficiently in this setting.

Objective: The aim of this paper is to describe the five strategies used to increase response rates, data quality and quantity in the TRansport Environment and Kids (TREK) project.

Setting: The TREK project examined the association between neighbourhood urban design and active transport in Grade 5–7 school children (n = 1480) attending 25 primary schools in metropolitan Perth, Western Australia during 2007.

Method: Children completed several survey components during school time (i.e. questionnaire, mapping activity, travel diary and anthropometric measurements) and at home (i.e. pedometer study, parent questionnaire).

Results: Overall, 69.4% of schools and 56.6% of children agreed to participate in the study and, of these, 89.9% returned a completed travel diary, 97.8% returned their pedometer and 88.8% of parents returned their questionnaire. These return rates are superior to similar studies. Five strategies appeared important: (1) building positive relationships with key school personnel; (2) child-centred approaches to survey development; (3) comprehensive classroom management techniques to standardize and optimize group sessions; (4) extensive follow-up procedures for collecting survey items; and (5) a specially designed data management/monitoring system.

Conclusion: Sharing methodological approaches for obtaining high-quality data will ensure research opportunities within schools are maximized. These methodological issues have implications for planning, budgeting and implementing future research.

Maximizing real-time streaming services based on a multi-servers networking framework

In recent years, we have witnessed substantial exploitation of real-time streaming applications, such as video surveillance system on road crosses of a city. So far, real world applications mainly rely on the traditional well-known client-server and peer-to-peer schemes as the fundamental mechanism for communication. However, due to the limited resources on each terminal device in the applications, these two schemes cannot well leverage the processing capability between the source and destination of the video traffic, which leads to limited streaming services. For this reason, many QoS sensitive application cannot be supported in the real world. In this paper, we are motivated to address this problem by proposing a novel multi-server based framework. In this framework, multiple servers collaborate with each other to form a virtual server (also called cloud-server), and provide high-quality services such as real-time streams delivery and storage. Based on this framework, we further introduce a (1-?) approximation algorithm to solve the NP-complete "maximum services"(MS) problem with the intention of handling large number of streaming flows originated by networks and maximizing the total number of services. Moreover, in order to backup the streaming data for later retrieval, based on the framework, an algorithm is proposed to implement backups and maximize streaming flows simultaneously. We conduct a series of experiments based on simulations to evaluate the performance of the newly proposed framework. We also compare our scheme to several traditional solutions. The results suggest that our proposed scheme significantly outperforms the traditional solutions.

Maximizing desistance: adding therapeutic jurisprudence and human rights to the mix

The law can be a systemically induced decision point for offenders and can act to help or hinder desistance. Desistance can be described as a change process that may be initiated by decisive momentum, supported by intervention, and maintained through re-entry, culminating in a citizen with full rights and responsibilities. Desistance within courts, corrections, and beyond is maximized by applying the law in a therapeutic manner. In common, desistance, therapeutic jurisprudence, and human rights support offender autonomy and well-being. The intersections between the three models have been explored to propose a normative framework that provides principles and offers strategies to address therapeutic legal rules, legal procedures, and the role of psycholegal actors and offenders in initiating, supporting, and maintaining desistance.

The theory and practice of coastal area planning: linking strategic planning to local communities

Integrated coastal management (ICM) has been slowly accepted over the last decade as a unifying approach for coastal planning and management throughout the world. Coastal planning aimed at achieving the objectives of ICM can be implemented by varying processes and faces many challenges. One major challenge for coastal planning is to adapt the well-developed theoretical principles of ICM to practical and understandable outcomes in local areas. Associated with this challenge is the need to balance coastal planning objectives for conservation and economic development of a nation or state/province with the objectives of the local community. This article describes a three-tiered approach to coastal planning in Victoria, Australia, which will be of value to other countries, particularly those with subnational coastal planning jurisdictions. This approach not only has the aim of balancing subnational (e.g., state government) and local objectives, but also of applying the theoretical concept of ICM in practice on the ground. In addition, the approach sets out to achieve a sense of ownership of the planning process by local communities by maximizing their involvement at all levels of planning and also by making the state strategy as easy to understand and follow as possible.

Deconstructing diversity discourses in the fields of educationnal management and leadership

Discourses of diversity have supplanted those of equal opportunity or social justice in many Western democratic societies. While the notion of diversity is seemingly empowering through its recognition of cultural, religious, racial and gender difference within nation states, the emergence of this discourse during the 1990s has been in the context of neoliberal managerialist discourses that assume social action is fully explicable through theories of maximizing self interest. Thus notions of diversity, while originating in collective demands of social movements of feminism, anti racism and multiculturalism of the 1970s and 1980s, have in recent times privileged learning and leadership as an individual accomplishment and not a collective practice. Thus the dominant discourse of diversity is more in alignment with the deregulatory aspects of the increasingly managerial and market orientation of schooling, decentring earlier discourses of more transformatory notions premised upon reducing inequality and discrimination and developing ‘inclusivity’ in and through schooling. This paper provides a contextual and conceptual framework through which to explore the intersections and divergences of discourses of diversity in schools and their practical application.

On the determinants of derivative usage by Australian companies

This paper provides an examination of the determinants of derivative use by Australian corporations. We analysed the characteristics of a sample of 469 firm/year observations drawn from the largest Australian publicly listed companies in 1999 and 2000 to address two issues: the decision to use financial derivatives and the extent to which they are used. Logit analysis suggests that a firm's leverage (distress proxy), size (financial distress and setup costs) and liquidity (financial constraints proxy) are important factors associated with the decision to use derivatives. These findings support the financial distress hypothesis while the evidence on the underinvestment hypothesis is mixed. Additionally, setup costs appear to be important, as larger firms are more likely to use derivatives. Tobit results, on the other hand, show that once the decision to use derivatives has been made, a firm uses more derivatives as its leverage increases and as it pays out more dividends (hedging substitute proxy). The overall results indicate that Australian companies use derivatives with a view to enhancing the firms' value rather than to maximizing managerial wealth. In particular, corporations' derivative policies are mostly concerned with reducing the expected cost of financial distress and managing cash flows. Our inability to identify managerial influences behind the derivative decision suggests a competitive Australian managerial labor market.

A comparison of methods to obtain active parental consent for an international student survey

Many school-based research efforts require active parental consent for student participation. Maximizing rates of consent form return and agreement is an important issue, because sample representativeness may be compromised when these rates are low. This article compares two methods for obtaining active parental consent: return of consent forms in the mail versus return by students to their classrooms. The methods were tested in a pilot study of 46 schools (1,058 students), with half of the schools randomly allocated to each of the alternative methods. A hierarchical nonlinear model of consent form return and agreement rates suggests that the student delivered method is more successful at producing higher rates of consent form return and agreement to participate in the study, after controlling for school-level characteristics. The authors discuss the findings and their implications for other researchers engaged in school-based research with adolescents.

A scalable and extensible segment-event-object-based sports video retrieval system

Sport video data is growing rapidly as a result of the maturing digital technologies that support digital video capture, faster data processing, and large storage. However, (1) semi-automatic content extraction and annotation, (2) scalable indexing model, and (3) effective retrieval and browsing, still pose the most challenging problems for maximizing the usage of large video databases. This article will present the findings from a comprehensive work that proposes a scalable and extensible sports video retrieval system with two major contributions in the area of sports video indexing and retrieval. The first contribution is a new sports video indexing model that utilizes semi-schema-based indexing scheme on top of an Object-Relationship approach. This indexing model is scalable and extensible as it enables gradual index construction which is supported by ongoing development of future content extraction algorithms. The second contribution is a set of novel queries which are based on XQuery to generate dynamic and user-oriented summaries and event structures. The proposed sports video retrieval system has been fully implemented and populated with soccer, tennis, swimming, and diving video. The system has been evaluated against 20 users to demonstrate and confirm its feasibility and benefits. The experimental sports genres were specifically selected to represent the four main categories of sports domain: period-, set-point-, time (race)-, and performance-based sports. Thus, the proposed system should be generic and robust for all types of sports.

A backward glance of who and what marketing scholars have been researching 1977-2002

Despite the diversity of all those involved within the marketing discipline, all have a stake in maximizing the advancement of marketing knowledge. Without a specific analysis it is difficult to reflect on where a field has been or where it might be heading. The purpose of this chapter is to examine who and what marketing scholars have been researching over the period 1977–2002 using content analysis. This chapter provides longitudinal benchmarking of the ‘‘inputs’’ (authors and institutions) and ‘‘outputs’’ (articles) examining the marketing literature in the four major marketing journals: the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Consumer Research, and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.

Functional dairy protein supplements for elite athletes

Elite athletes require a greater dietary protein intake than recreationally active people to maintain optimal muscular function. The timing of protein ingestion relative to exercise is critical to maximizing its physiological impact on skeletal muscles. Sports protein supplements provide a convenient means of supplying athletes with an adequate and timely source of quality dietary protein. There is now strong evidence that not all dietary proteins are equipotent in their effects on various aspects of athletic performance and specific protein isolates can provide benefits to athletes beyond simple supply of nutritional amino acids. Thus, there is an opportunity to develop new functional protein supplements to maximize athletic performance. This paper outlines the clinical evidence for the benefits of dairy proteins in sports performance and describes the development of new dairy protein supplements to build muscle strength, and to expedite recovery of strength following muscle-damaging eccentric exercise.

Adopting reflexive capability in international briefing

Purpose – The aim of the paper is to investigate the architectural firm's role in the briefing process on international projects and to identify the strategies of successful firms to overcome barriers.

Design/methodology/approach – A model is developed based on a critique of briefing models and international design management theory. The development of a reflexive capability model borrows cultural theory concepts of capital and reflexivity. The model is based on maximizing reflexive capability through the management of social, cultural and intellectual capital. Two case studies of architectural firms identify barriers during the briefing process and strategies to overcome these barriers. Data collection involved 16 interviews with senior management and design team staff.

Findings – There are various barriers and strategies used to achieve success in the briefing process. However, the management of a firm's capital is key to successful briefing on international projects and is a characteristic of reflexive practice. Reflexivity is based in a positive interpretation of change, and a continual responsiveness to change by participants in a system. The study provides useful information on management of the design and briefing stages of international projects.

Research limitations/implications – The study is limited by the number of case studies used and the difficulty of generalisability of findings.

Practical implications – The research is that it provides useful information about how to approach constant change during briefing for the architects and clients who work on international projects.

Originality/value – The model is original and has value as it assists in explaining why some firms are more successful than others. The case studies provide new knowledge on international projects and the briefing process. The value of the paper is for the academic community, professionals in the built environment and clients involved in international projects.