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Contemporary research suggests that immigrant communities often have lower rates of crime despite their disadvantaged status. Yet prior work often examines the immigration and crime association using only one level of analysis without regard for how this relationship might vary when analyzed across multiple levels of analysis simultaneously. Research also suggests that the immigration–crime link varies across spatial contexts. Using hierarchical Poisson Regression among a sample of 6,660 tracts nested within 55 cities, we examine whether the relationship between immigration and crime varies when examined at the tract and city levels simultaneously. We also include a cross–level interaction in our model to test whether the tract–level association between immigration and crime varies by the size of the foreign–born population at the city level. Results show that the immigration–crime link depends on the level of analysis, such that the relationship is positive at the tract level but negative at the city level. However, we find no support for our cross–level interaction.

AbstractVoting Advice Applications (VAAs) have proliferated in the last decade as part of electoral campaigns in Europe. Several studies have linked the usage of the applications to an increase in voting intention, yet the literature on the factors that make people more likely to be influenced by VAAs is not really developed. This paper tries to contribute to this literature by addressing two key questions: first, how non-institutional forms of political participation influence abstentionism among VAA users and second, how VAA encourages voting intention among these politically engaged abstentionists (activation effect). We first examine (a) whether being engaged in non-institutional forms of participation increases the likelihood of a VAA user declaring him/herself to be a voter and (b) whether being engaged in non-institutional forms of political participation has an effect on the probability of becoming a "voter" after filling in the VAA questionnaire. Our results suggest that the VAA "activation effect" nexus exists and it affects a significant percentage of abstentionist. Those users that have participated in non-institutional forms of participation – such as demonstrations or online petitions – are more likely to declare being voters before filling in the VAA. Among the abstentionists, once they answered the set of 30 key questions, a considerable percent (between 14 and 22 percent depending on the threshold used) declared to have the intention to vote (activation effect). The prevailing profile of the activated user is a young man with tertiary education. The motivational reason for voting a party also matter in increasing the probability that an "activation effect" happens. The competency of the party, its ideology, the candidate presented by the party and the users' self-interest are also good predictors of the "activation effect."

The current study investigates how immigrants cope and adapt to the "pains of imprisonment" by examining a specific maladjustment outcome—disciplinary infractions. Like other groups (e.g., females, LGBTQ, elderly), immigrants are regarded as a special population in prison considering that they encounter a unique set of challenges that the typical incarcerated person does not. At the same time, immigrants are not a monolithic group, and there are reasons why misconduct may differ when we separate them by country of birth. To this end, we explore whether the frequency and probability for institutional misconduct varies across Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, Jamaicans, Mexicans, as well as immigrants from other countries. We also consider whether any nationality group exhibits a higher (or lower or similar) propensity for in-prison offending than the native-born. Our results reveal there are greater differences in disciplinary infractions among our foreign-born groups than between them and natives, a finding that is obscured when immigrants are lumped into a single measure (i.e., all foreign-born).

La Triple Cuenta de Resultados busca incorporar los impactos ambientales y sociales que genera una organización a su información financiera. Esta incorporación se da mediante diversos reportes, entre ellos los reportes de sostenibilidad permiten comunicar el impacto económico, social y medioambiental que una organización ejerce sobre su entorno y comunidad, pudiendo medir a través de variables o indicadores la incidencia positiva o negativa en estas áreas. Los Estados, y todas sus empresas públicas y administraciones deberían ser pioneros y jugar un papel decisivo a la hora de desarrollar, legitimar y consolidar modelos de Triple Balance a través de diferentes reportes. Sin embargo, No se tiene evidencia sobre cómo los estados están incorporando la TCR en sus reportes, en cuántas de sus empresas y con qué propósitos. El objetivo de este estudio es precisamente ser capaz de describir qué tipo de reportes elaboran las empresas públicas uruguayas y cuál es su contenido. Se determina cuántas empresas públicas reportan sobre sostenibilidad, cómo hacen visibles dichos reportes, qué tipo de informe publican y con qué frecuencia. Asimismo se vincula la información obtenida en dichos reportes con los principios del Pacto Global de Naciones Unidas, los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible así como los Principios y Estándares del GRI. Se emplearon como fuente de información los sitios web de las empresas públicas uruguayas, se efectuó una revisión de Reportes de sostenibilidad en la base de datos del Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) y en el sitio web de Responsabilidad Social Empresaria (DERES) de Uruguay. Como resultado se obtuvo que al menos el 86% de las empresas públicas uruguayas presentan reportes de características variopintas, no encontrándose uniformidad entre estos. Sin embargo, se ha notado una evolución en la preparación de los reportes, adoptando denominaciones más adecuadas, incorporando contenidos, así como aumentando la cantidad y calidad de la información. Sin embargo, en dichos reportes no necesariamente se identifican de manera específica temas como la RSE, los principios del Pacto Global, los ODS, los principios y estándares GRI, con lo cual existe información relevante para comunicar a los grupos de interés que no queda referenciada en los informes. Asimismo, son escasas las empresas públicas que elaboran propiamente Reportes de sostenibilidad y ninguna presenta un Reporte integrado. ; The Triple Bottom Line seeks to incorporate the environmental and social impacts an organization generates to their financial information. This incorporation takes place throughout diverse reports, among them sustainability reports; allow to communicate the economical, social and environmental impacts that an organization exerts on its context and community, allowing to measure through the variables and indicators the positive or negative incidence in these areas. The governments, and all their public corporations and managements should be pioneers and play a decisive role when it comes to developing, legitimating and consolidating Triple Balance patterns throughout different reports. Nevertheless, there is no evidence on how governments are incorporating the TBL in their reports, on how many companies and with what purposes. The goal of this study is precisely being able to describe what kind of reports public corporations from Uruguay elaborate and what is their content. It is determined how many public enterprises report sustainability, how those reports become visible, what kind of report they publish and how often. As well, the obtained information is linked in the previously mentioned reports with the Principles of the United Nations Global Compact, the Sustainable Development Objectives, as well as the GRI Principles and Standards. The source of information was the Uruguayan public enterprises' websites, a revision of the Reports of Sustainability was made on the database of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and on the Uruguay Social Corporate Responsibility website (DERES). As a result, it can observed how at least 86% of Uruguay public corporations present reports with diverse characteristics, with no uniformity among them. However, there has been an evolution in the reports preparation, adopting more adequate denominations, incorporating content, and increasing the quantity and quality of information. On the other hand, in said reports certain subjects as the CSR, the principles of the United Nations, the SDO, the GRI principles and standards are not necessarily addressed, which means there is still remaining information to communicate the focus groups. At the same time, only a few public corporations elaborate properly sustainability reports and none of them presents an integrated report. ; Instituto de Investigaciones y Estudios Contables

This paper argues that current voting advice applications (VAAs) do not sufficiently fulfil their stated aim of increasing voters' political competence. First, we define four criteria to evaluate whether their methods are likely to increase political competence: informativeness, respect for users' way of comparing and aggregating policy issues, reliability, and transparency. Second, we argue that current VAAs compare and aggregate users' and parties' policy preferences following a weak method that fails in two of them. To prove it, we analyse the methodology of most currents VAAs and use the outcomes from the EU-Vox 2014 in several countries. Third, we discuss two possibilities by which VAAs could improve: (1) by using ex-ante survey data to fill their gaps, or (2) by creating a learning algorithm to adapt the VAA to users' preferences. We found that some changes need to be made if VAAs aim to have an impact on users' political competence.

When a terminal is recruited to cooperate with other neighboring terminals, its channel state and carrier frequency offset (CFO) may be unknown to the destination. Under these circumstances, this paper considers the use of distributed double-differential (DD) modulation, which simplifies receiver implementation because it by-passes channel and CFO estimation. Two double-differential codecs are proposed transmitting: i) across orthogonal channels using time-division multiplexing, achieving rate and error performance similar to that of co-located multi-antenna DD systems; or ii) simultaneously, benefiting from the distinct CFOs across terminals and bypassing the need of ordering protocols. Both (i)-(ii) approaches are considered in adaptive- and selective-relaying cooperation protocols demonstrating that maximum spatial diversity is achievable. Simulations corroborate the theoretical error performance claims. ; The work in this paper has been supported by the Spanish Government under CICyT (ref: TEC2005-06766-C03-01) and the Madrid?s Regional Government under PRICIT (ref: P-TIC-000223-0505). ; Teor?a de la Se?al y Comunicaciones

Emerging applications involving low-cost wireless sensor networks motivate well optimization of multi-user orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) in the power-limited regime. In this context, the present paper relies on limited-rate feedback (LRF) sent from the access point to terminals to minimize the total average transmit-power under individual average rate and error probability constraints. Along with the characterization of optimal bit, power and subcarrier allocation policies based on LRF, suboptimal yet simple schemes are developed for channel quantization. The novel algorithms proceed in two phases: (i) an off-line phase to construct the channel quantizer as well as the rate and power codebooks with moderate complexity; and (ii) an on-line phase to obtain, based on quantized channel state information, the optimum, rate, power and user-subcarrier allocation with linear complexity. Numerical examples corroborate the analytical claims and reveal that significant power savings result even with suboptimal schemes based on practically affordable LRF. ; The work in this paper was supported by the US ARL under the CTA Program, Cooperative Agreement No. DAAD19-01-2-0011; by USDoD ARO grant No. W911NF-05-1-0283; by Spanish Government grant No. TEC2005-06766-C03-01/TCM, and by the Government of C.A. Madrid grant No. P-TIC-000223-0505. ; Teor?a de la Se?al y Comunicaciones

8 pags., 3 figs., 5 tabs. -- This article is part of the themed collections: Supramolecular & Polymorphism and 1st International Conference on Noncovalent Interactions ; New halogen bonded networks containing the organometallic complexes [Ru(CNBu)(X)] (X = Cl, Br, I) have been prepared. Two different types of halogen donors have been explored, I and ICFI, to study the influence of the halogen bond donor on the parameters and the nature of the interaction. We have performed a combined experimental and theoretical study. In the results, the species with ICFI as a halogen bond donor show weaker interactions, as evidenced by the geometrical parameters and by the DFT calculations. In fact, it was not possible to isolate the HaB network containing the complex [Ru(CNBu)(I)] and ICFI. Furthermore, the studies show that the interaction for iodine has a higher covalent component than that for ICFI. ; Financial support from the Spanish Government (MINECO CTQ2014-58270-R and Factoría de Cristalización-ConsoliderIngenio (CSD2006-00015)) and Alcalá University, Spain (CCG2018/EXP-038) is gratefully acknowledged. J. R. acknowledges the financial support through the CSIC (Spain) – Project PIE201860E136.