Easy Targets Research Articles

Spectroscopic signatures of extratidal stars around the globular clusters NGC 6656 (M 22), NGC 3201, and NGC 1851 from RAVE

Stellar population studies of globular clusters have suggested that the brightest clusters in the Galaxy might actually be the remnant nuclei of dwarf spheroidal galaxies. If the present Galactic globular clusters formed within larger stellar systems, they are likely surrounded by extra-tidal halos and/or tails made up of stars that were tidally stripped from their parent systems. The stellar surroundings around globular clusters are therefore one of the best places to look for the remnants of an ancient dwarf galaxy. Here an attempt is made to search for tidal debris around the supernovae enriched globular clusters M22 and NGC 1851 as well as the kinematically unique cluster NGC 3201. The stellar parameters from the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) are used to identify stars with RAVE metallicities, radial velocities and elemental-abundances consistent with the abundance patterns and properties of the stars in M22, NGC 1851 and NGC 3201. The discovery of RAVE stars that may be associated with M22 and NGC 1851 are reported, some of which are at projected distances of ~10 degrees away from the core of these clusters. Numerous RAVE stars associated with NGC 3201 suggest that either the tidal radius of this cluster is underestimated, or that there are some unbound stars extending a few arc minutes from the edge of the cluster's radius. No further extra-tidal stars associated with NGC 3201 could be identified. The bright magnitudes of the RAVE stars make them easy targets for high resolution follow-up observations, allowing an eventual further chemical tagging to solidify (or exclude) stars outside the tidal radius of the cluster as tidal debris. In both our radial velocity histograms of the regions surrounding NGC 1851 and NGC 3201, a peak of stars at 230 km/s is seen, consistent with extended tidal debris from omega Centauri.

Anti-theft travel bag design: advantage, interest, and satisfaction

Theft around the world continues to rise and among the victims of theft, tourists have always been easy targets for thieves. However, research into the investigation of tourists’ perceptions of and attitudes towards the existing designs of anti-theft products is scarce. In this study, several bag theft cases were identified and corresponding anti-theft designs were selected. Consumers’ perceptions of advantage, interest, and satisfaction were collected through online image survey among college students. The results identified consumers’ perceptions of the existing designs of anti-theft travel bags and provided the designers with useful and practical suggestions during the bag designing processes. Modified designs are expected to enhance the theoretical plausibility of anti-theft function of travel bags, which might be capable of building up barriers to criminals and preventing or reducing the occurrences of bag theft incidents.

Between Life and Death: Why Some Soviet Jews Decided to Leave and Others to Stay in 1941

One Story of Escape in 1941 In 1941, 16-year-old Naum A., lived with his mother, his two sisters, his brother-in-law, a little nephew, and grandparents in a small house in Kherson, Ukraine. On 23 June 1941, the day after the war broke out, Naum's brotherin-law voluntarily signed up with the Red Army and left town. A few days after his departure, in early July 1941, a neighbor, who held a position at the district executive committee (raiispolkom) came to the house for an informal visit and said to Naum's mother: You, need to go, it seems. Naum remembers this statement word for word. Neither Naum nor his mother understood the exact meaning of especially. The mother thought especially referred to the vulnerability of her young daughters, who could become easy targets of rape. Naum's grandfather thought especially meant the danger for the family of having among its members a Communist and Red Army draftee. It was decided that Naum, his mother, and his sisters should try to get a horse and a wagon and leave Kherson, while his grandparents would stay to keep an eye on the house. The grandfather added: No one will touch the old folks. Germans are cultured people, and locals respect me too much to hurt me. It took Naum and his family about a month to get to Saratov, and eventually they made it to Kazakhstan. Naum was drafted into the army in 1943, was wounded a few times, but survived to see the end of the war. So did his mother and his sisters. In contrast, his brother-in-law was killed in military action in 1941, and his grandparents were killed, too. In the 1950s, Naum found out that his grandparents, together with the remaining Jews of Kherson--including young children--were shot, and their corpses were piled up in wells a few kilometers from the town center. The wells have long since been closed, but locals whispered about bloody water seeping through for months after the shootings. Naum became a family doctor and worked in Kherson for decades until his family immigrated to Israel in the late 1980s. He considers his own survival a miracle, one that imposes on him a tremendous responsibility to tell the story of those who were killed, such as his grandparents. Interviewed in the 2000s, he, of course, realized the importance of every detail in his story. He emphasized the significance of the word especially, dropped by the government official in that fateful conversation of 1941, and he wonders what that official actually knew. He sees now that, among other things, the word especially signified the beginning of a new era for him--an era in which he would regard himself as a Jew, and not just a Soviet person. Human Behavior in the Face of Disaster In the face of dangers such as war or natural disaster, humans go through several stages as they decide whether to stay or leave. The sociologist Thomas Drabek lists these stages as follows. First, people assess the reliability of information regarding the danger at hand by cross-examining various sources, including government officials, the mass media, and word of mouth. Second, they assess their ability to leave, including the availability of transportation. Finally, they factor in personal circumstances, such as the presence of sick and immobile family members and the fear of losing property. When the sense of danger prevails over the reasons to stay, residents seek all possible means to escape and often leave older family members behind in order to evacuate the young. (1) Applied to the situation in the Soviet Union of June-August 1941, this theory helps us analyze the confluence of factors--the action of central and local governments, perceptions of Soviet policies, and individual considerations--that prompted some Jews to make a fateful decision to leave the war zone as opposed to hoping for the best under German occupation. This article analyzes the process of decision making based on the oral testimonies of survivors. …

Is popularity associated with aggression toward socially preferred or marginalized targets?

This study was designed to test whether aggression toward easy or challenging targets is more likely to be associated with popularity. More specifically, we tested two alternative hypotheses with a sample of 224 adolescents (12- and 13-year-olds): (a) whether aggression toward highly disliked peers is associated with popularity (the easy target hypothesis) or (b) whether aggression toward highly liked peers is associated with popularity (the challenging target hypothesis). Support was found only for the challenging target hypothesis. In particular, our results indicate that aggressiveness toward peers who are liked by many others has social benefits in the form of greater popularity (particularly for highly preferred adolescents) without social costs (i.e., is unrelated to social preference). In contrast, aggressiveness toward peers who are disliked by many others is associated with lower social preference but bears no association with popularity. These results highlight the importance of studying contextualized aggression in order to understand the conditions under which aggression is most, and least, likely to be associated with social power and dominance.

Diverse host feeding on nesting birds may limit early-season West Nile virus amplification.

Arboviral activity tracks vector availability, which in temperate regions means that transmission ceases during the winter and must be restarted each spring. In the northeastern United States, Culex restuans Theobald resumes its activity earlier than Culex pipiens L. and is thought to be important in restarting West Nile virus (WNV) transmission. Its role in WNV amplification, however, is unclear, because viral levels commonly remain low until the rise of Cx. pipiens later in the season. Because a vector's feeding habits can reveal key information about disease transmission, we identified early-season (April-June) blood meals from Cx. restuans collected throughout New Jersey, and compared them to published datasets from later in the season and also from other parts of the country. We found significantly higher avian diversity, including poor WNV hosts, and fewer blood meals derived from American Robins (17% versus over 40% found in later season). Critically, we identified blood meals from significantly more female than male birds in species where females are the incubating sex, suggesting that Cx. restuans is able to feed on such a wide variety of hosts in early spring because incubating birds are easy targets. Because WNV amplification depends on virus consistently reaching competent hosts, our results indicate that Cx. restuans is unlikely to be an amplifying vector of WNV in the early season. As the season progresses, however, changes in the availability of nesting birds may make it just as capable as Cx. pipiens, although at somewhat lower abundance as the summer progresses.

Blaming the Jocks and the Greeks?: Exploring Collegiate Athletes’ and Fraternity/Sorority Members’ Attitudes Toward LGBT Individuals

While past research has documented significant relationships between both athletic and Greek system (fraternity and sorority) membership and negative attitudes toward gays and lesbians, such work seems to vilify membership in athletics and the Greek system as causal mechanisms of homophobia. In this way, athletes and Greeks may be easy targets to blame for the homophobia evident on college campuses. However, it may be more productive to attempt to identify underlying constructs that are related to collegiate athletes’ and fraternity/sorority members’ attitudes to best inform campus LGBT programs. In this study, athletes’ and fraternity and sorority members’ attitudes toward lesbian, gay, bisexual men and women, and transgender (LGBT) individuals are examined. Further exploration considers how LGBT affiliations (i.e., knowing LGBT individuals, knowing about LGBT programs, and having Gay–Straight Alliances in high school) and religiosity may mediate the relationship between athletic and Greek membership and attitudes toward LGBT individuals. Results show that being a male athlete or being a fraternity member is related to unsupportive attitudes toward LGBT individuals; however, LGBT affiliations and religiosity mediate some of the significant relationships. In contrast, being a female athlete is unrelated to attitudes toward LGBT individuals while being a sorority member is related to attitudes toward LGBT individuals in some models. Campus LGBT program implications for both athletes and Greek system members are provided.

Hepatitis Prevalence of Epidemic Magnitude among Sanitary Workers in Pakistan

Hepatitis is among the world's most prevalent and life threatening diseases. High risk populations like sanitary workers dealing with all sorts of infective materials are easy targets for transmission of this killer disease. The primary objective of our study is to determine the burden of hepatitis B and C among people belonging to this occupation. The secondary objective is to compare the efficacy of ELISA with ICT for screening of both the maladies. 107 subjects who gave informed consent were included in this study. Blood samples were drawn and screening performed with both ELISA and ICT. 26 subjects were found to be sero positive with ICT while 39 were positive with ELISA. 20 subjects were found sero positive with ICT and 36 with ELISA. Our study found that there is a high burden of HBV and HCV among sanitary workers and therefore, there is a great need to devise preventive regimens for protection of this high risk group against viral hepatitis. Objectives: To evaluate the burden of Hepatitis B & C among Sanitary Workers in Pakistan, To compare the sensitivity of ICT and ELISA for screening of HBV and HCV

Impact of Displacement on Tribal Children: Cases of Child Labour and Abuse in Odisha

Displacement due to development projects is rampant in Odisha now; research reveals that most of the cases of displacement are largely seen on the tribal belt. However, the impact of displacement has been studied by many research scholars and social scientist. The impact of displacement on children is all the more precarious. It was revealed that displacement in many cases has led to child labour in Odisha especially when they are not resettled and rehabilitated properly. Research indicated that, in most of the time, displaced children find themselves separated from their close relatives and community people; they are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. They are generally weakened by the long distances resettlement that they are forced to travel and by the difficulties they have to thus endure. They are more prone to the easy targets by the smugglers, traffickers, and/or armed groups. Furthermore, such displaced children can also become victims of discrimination and many of their fundamental rights may be violated due to their displacement. The present paper has tried to examine the impact of displacement on tribal children in Odisha, which has further tried to study the case of child labour and child abuse in post displacement situation.

Witches which Never Flew: Native Witchcraft and the Cunning Woman on the Stage

In early modern England cunning men and women (often older people on the fringes of society) became easy targets for gossip within rural communities. I will examine some figures of the cunning woman in this period and show how they appear in different senses: the cunning woman as a healer, nurturer, fortune-teller and domestic manager. Mother Sawyer, in The Witch of Edmonton by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford (1621), complains of the community of Edmonton that she has been convicted because she is ‘poor, deform’d, and ignorant’ (II.i.3).1 Sawyer has been abused because she is old and ugly and does not have any means by which to make her living. She is physically portrayed as a contemporary English witch. However Sawyer is not a witch from the beginning of the play, and not presented as one until her community accuse her of witchcraft. After she realizes that there is nothing left to lose, she makes a pact with the devil and thus her identity changes from an old woman into a real witch. In John Lyly’s Mother Bombie (1594), Bombie is a ‘white witch’ or ‘cunning woman’ whose mysterious power is used to help people, not to harm. In Thomas Heywood’s The Wise Woman of Hogsdon (1604), the Wise Woman pretends to be a cunning woman and skilled in fortune-telling, palmistry and curing diseases. The three protagonists in the mentioned plays are drawn from English witch-lore, and they live in the suburbs and resort to witchcraft in order to make their living. Mother Sawyer, a traditional English witch, is portrayed as hag-like whereas Mother Bombie and the Wise Woman are English local cunning women. The witches do not fly and stage directions do not call for flight in the witch scenes; their feet remain firmly on the ground in all scenes. Cunning women are not the same as witches: they do not have a familiar, they tell fortunes and cure diseases, are benevolent, they do not hold covens on the Sabbath, do not make pacts with the devil in return for rewards and they do not act maleficium. The chronological approach taken here is used in order to determine the dramatic development of the witches and cunning women in two theatrical modes—the tragic (The Witch of Edmonton) and the comic (Mother Bombie, and The Wise Woman of Hogsdon).

Geopolitical drivers of foreign investment in African land and water resources

Resource grabs, particularly land and water, can be a proxy for geopolitical influence. As such, ‘grabs’ become intertwined in international power relations and the competing collective goals and state priorities of economic development, poverty elimination, ecosystem management, energy, self-sufficiency, and food supply stability. African land has become the most appealing and vulnerable to acquisition. In this article we will analyze external investor actions in Africa by South Africa to explain how regional and global geopolitics are fostering a ‘new’ scramble for natural resources on the African continent. This south–south geopolitical concern examines South Africa's investment in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Lesotho. We argue that ‘grabbing’ is important, but often it is not the foremost factor in south–south relations and, as such, is an inadequate basis for exploring the role of domestic capital and government investment corporations. We contend that grabbing is not only about food, finances, energy, or even water itself, but also about geopolitical influence. Land and water resource acquisition become intertwined in international power relations and the competing goals of state priorities. This article uses an International Relations framework to analyze these complex relationships, spheres of influence, and asymmetries. Its central argument is that countries with limited arable land ‘securitize’ (B. Buzan, O. Waever, & J. de Wilde [Eds.], 1998, Security: A framework for analysis, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf) their food supply and seek ways to increase the supply of food and sources of ‘virtual’ water by targeting ‘easy targets’ for resource imperialism, like weak states.

WISEDETECTIONS OF KNOWN QSOs AT REDSHIFTS GREATER THAN SIX

We present WISE All-Sky mid-infrared (IR) survey detections of 55% (17/31) of the known QSOs at z>6 from a range of surveys: the SDSS, the CFHT-LS, FIRST, Spitzer and UKIDSS. The WISE catalog thus provides a substantial increase in the quantity of IR data available for these sources: 17 are detected in the WISE W1 (3.4-micron) band, 16 in W2 (4.6-micron), 3 in W3 (12-micron) and 0 in W4 (22-micron). This is particularly important with Spitzer in its warm-mission phase and no faint follow-up capability at wavelengths longwards of 5 microns until the launch of JWST. WISE thus provides a useful tool for understanding QSOs found in forthcoming large-area optical/IR sky surveys, using PanSTARRS, SkyMapper, VISTA, DES and LSST. The rest-UV properties of the WISE-detected and the WISE-non-detected samples differ: the detections have brighter i/z-band magnitudes and redder rest-UV colors. This suggests that a more aggressive hunt for very-high-redshift QSOs, by combining WISE W1 and W2 data with red observed optical colors could be effective at least for a subset of dusty candidate QSOs. Stacking the WISE images of the WISE-non-detected QSOs indicates that they are on average significantly fainter than the WISE-detected examples, and are thus not narrowly missing detection in the WISE catalog. The WISE-catalog detection of three of our sample in the W3 band indicates that their mid-IR flux can be detected individually, although there is no stacked W3 detection of sources detected in W1 but not W3. Stacking analyses of WISE data for large AGN samples will be a useful tool, and high-redshift QSOs of all types will be easy targets for JWST.

Offline: A renaissance in WHO's regions

The Regional Offices of WHO—there are six of them: in Copenhagen, Manila, New Delhi, Brazzaville, Cairo, and Washington, DC—are easy targets for criticism. Here is what sceptics often say. The Regional Offices of WHO are bureaucratic fiefdoms of power-loving Regional Directors (RDs), who have mostly been elected through outright bribery. Regional Offices obstruct, rather than facilitate, the advance of health in countries. They compete with Geneva and rival the Director-General of WHO for influence and resources. Since RDs are elected and not appointed, they feel they have the right to ignore Geneva and indulge their own interests, which often centre on personal enrichment and winning re-election. RDs are unaccountable to countries (indeed, to anyone). Ultimately, the only sure fact about WHO's Regional Offices is that they dilute the overall effectiveness of the agency, leaving it vulnerable to attack by those hostile to multilateral institutions. While Regional Offices fiddle, these sceptics argue, WHO burns. Although this view may have been true 20 years ago, it is certainly not true today—at least, not in all WHO regions.

Use of Omnidirectional Images to Analyze Elderly People′s Feelings of Insecurity about Snatch Occurrences on Roads

Safety and security are essential to successful, sustainable communities. To build and maintain such communities, research on their safety must be carried out and appropriate policies enacted. In developed countries, the proportion of elderly people is increasing; furthermore, elderly people are easy targets for street crime. Therefore, they might feel insecure, even on safe roads. In this study, in order to understand the road features that people encounter daily that make them feel secure or insecure, authors used omnidirectional images. Authors assessed the percentages of space that different road features (buildings, open spaces, and other road characteristics) occupy in each image and clarified the relationship between these features and elderly people′s feelings of security or insecurity in relation to snatch occurrences. The results were as follows: (1) areas with the highest rate of snatch occurrences and feelings of security had the highest percentage of high-rise buildings (4.6%), all types of buildings (24.2%), sidewalks (19.2%), and setbacks (3.5%), and the lowest percentages of detached houses (0.9%), roads (4.5%), and sky (33%); and (2) areas with low rates of snatch occurrences and unreasonable feelings of insecurity had no high-rise buildings, high percentages of detached houses (9%), roads (19%), and sky (44%), and low percentages of sidewalks (1.5%) and setbacks (0.9%).

Enough of that already: sufficiency-based challenges to high-carbon consumption in Canada

While dominant responses to climate change aim to decouple economic growth and emissions, a sufficiency approach challenges infinitely growing production and consumption. Sufficiency can target different levels. At the macro level, it questions endless economic growth, but it has advanced further at the micro level, where it challenges specific commodities, practices, or sectors. Relatively easy targets for politicians and others wanting to signal ecological concern include plastic bags and bottled water. The idea of ‘less’ has also progressed, paradoxically, when it contributes to a broader growth agenda. Examples in Canada include efforts to reduce food miles, which can expand the local agricultural economy, and state promotion of reduced electricity consumption to ensure power-system reliability, upon which overall economic growth depends. These cases suggest that sufficiency may, for the foreseeable future, find its best prospects in limited circumstances where it can be linked to the legitimation or, ironically, the economic imperatives of states.

Seeking out ‘easy targets’? Tobacco companies, health inequalities and public policy

IntroductionThe prominence of socioeconomic and ethnic disparities in tobacco use has led to increased policy attention on smoking inequalities in many countries. In 2008 the UK Department of Health held...

How tourism and pastoralism influence population demographic changes in a threatened large mammal species

Pastoralism impacts the habitat quality of wild animals, while poaching is a direct threat to populations. The demographic effects of pastoralism are well known, whereas the effects of poaching are difficult to obtain. In addition, little attention has been paid to the role of tourism as a facilitator of poaching, especially when tourists feed animals and thus lower their fear of humans. In this paper, we investigate the demographic effects of pastoralism (a habitat quality indicator) and tourism (a poaching indicator) on wild Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus) in Middle Atlas (Morocco). Neither pastoralism nor tourism affected reproduction rates. High tourism pressure was related to a dramatic deficit in immature individuals. In groups near tourist sites, about half of the infants disappeared suggesting a high poaching pressure on these groups; as poachers select infants to sell as pets, infants used to seeing tourists probably constitute easy poaching targets. Group size and age structure were unrelated to the intensity of pastoralism. Groups were then half the size of those in undisturbed forests and in Middle Atlas 30 years ago. The effects of poaching are predicted to cause a severe collapse of the population. Our results demonstrate the need for Moroccan authorities to be aware of the conservation issues of Barbary macaques and to stop tourists feeding them. This research work illustrates that the potential links between tourism and poaching should be taken into account regarding species conservation, even in protected areas.

Art History from the Bottom Up

Art history may take itself seriously, but art historians and their practices have often been made the butt of jokes and taken as easy targets for ridicule and satire. Though the pedant is a stock comic figure, the premise here is that art history has a special, structural, vulnerability that derives from the objects of its inquiry. This essay argues that art has the potential to subvert history by calling paradox and ambiguity into play. Accepting Jeremy Tanner's argument that Western art history was invented in ancient Greece and that art became a topic for history when it constituted an autonomus province of meaning, works by Titian, Rembrandt, and Hans Baldung Grien provide examples of the fluid boundaries of that province. In each case artists bound their identities to works that elude interpretation and forestall high-minded historical closure.

Understanding and overcoming cyber security anti-patterns

This article presents an empirical and practice-based analysis of the question, why despite substantial investments, there are still major security weaknesses in today’s information systems. Acknowledging that cyber security is not a purely technical discipline, the article takes a holistic approach and identifies four anti-patterns that are frequent in practice and detrimental to the goal of achieving strong cyber security. The first anti-pattern is that decisions about security are frequently based on intuition rather than data and rigor; this introduces cognitive biases and undermines decision quality. Second, many organizations fail to implement foundational security controls and consequently, are easy targets for opportunistic and novice attackers. Third, there is an overreliance on the relatively static threat knowledge in products such as virus scanners, while an inability to learn and adapt dynamically opens the door for advanced threats. Fourth, weaknesses in security governance create systemic control gaps and vulnerabilities. The article describes each anti-pattern and presents specific steps that organizations can take to overcome them.

Taking the Phenomics Revolution into the Field

Taking the <i>Phenomics Revolution</i> into the Field

Flow of innovation in deviantArt: following artists on an online social network site

Computer and communication technologies created new modes of creating and sharing arts. In this paper, we apply ‘diffusion of innovation’ theory to investigate how artistic content travels in an online social network site called deviantArt, a site designed for sharing user-generated artworks. We first define what innovation corresponds to in such a context, and then discuss how it can be measured with the help of network, image and text analysis methods. We propose to use user-shared resources as relatively easy targets of tracking innovation.