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The Model Penal Code’s “De Minimis” provisions (§ 2.12) cover different kinds of case in which, for reasons of equity, a prosecution should be dismissed. An exploration of these different cases illuminates some important general issues about the structure of the criminal process, and about the processes of criminalization. These include the significance of the difference between dismissing a case and acquitting the defendant, and of the distinction between offences and defenses; whether criminal offences should always be so defined that they specify at least a pro tanto wrong, or may sometimes legitimately specify only a prima facie wrong — and whether this is consistent with the presumption of innocence; what kinds of conduct we can properly be expected to answer for in a criminal court; and the proper division of labor, and of responsibilities, between legislatures, prosecutors and courts in determining what kinds of conduct are to be defined and treated as criminal wrongs.

A qualitative case study sought to investigate the impact of a recently opened Play Library in Istanbul, Turkey upon the acquisition and development of literacy and creative reading culture for attending children and their families. The research was carried out among pre-schoolers from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds attending the Şişli Feriköy Kitap Okuyan Çocuklar (Children Reading Books) Play Library, which was the third Play Library opened in Turkey. Kitap Okuyan Çocuklar is a civil society group that works to establish local children’s spaces, blending the concepts of play-centers, children’s libraries, and family-centers as found in Western countries. The qualitative methods utilized during the research employed direct observation, interviews and questionnaires with stakeholders, which included librarians, children and their families.

While media multitasking is an emerging issue, little is known about the underlying motivations of this behavior. We ran a large-scale online study with 351 Facebook users to examine people who multitask when using social media, and why they multitask. We found that the motivation to use Facebook for social reasons significantly predicted increased media multitasking. Moreover, this connection was mediated by individual differences in sensation seeking. These findings contribute to understanding of multitasking behavior and its relationship with the use of social media. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

The rise of mobile usage, as well as increasing amount of information, contributes to the individual’s inattention to ads and multitasking behavior. In many situations, multitasking has taken atten...

This is a response to ten critiques of my 2018 book The Realm of Criminal Law, by Stephen Bero and Alex Sarch, Kim Ferzan, Stuart Green, Doug Husak, Nicola Lacey, Sandra Mayson, Victor Tadros, Patrick Tomlin, Alec Walen, and Gideon Yaffe. I take the opportunity to explain the main aims and themes of the book, to clarify some of its arguments, and to note some of the ways in which those arguments need expansion, development, or revision. Topics discussed include: the usefulness and limits of ‘rational reconstruction’ as a method of normative theorising; public wrongs and the scope of the criminal law; the idea of civil order as central to a political theory of criminal law; wrongness constraints on criminalization; mala prohibita and regulatory offences; the ‘De Minimis’ principle; and criminal law ‘abolitionism’.

Social media affords users the ability to control how they present themselves to their audience. People generally choose to show an ideal self-image on social media. However, this may be dependent ...

Flow (state of intense focus) during media use has been largely considered a desirable experience, with technologies developed to maximize the chance of encountering flow in computer-mediated environments. However, the total absorption of attention due to flow could be problematic in contexts where the user has multiple predetermined goals, and engaging with the flow-inducing media could cost them resources that may be otherwise devoted to other goals. When flow imposes a cost on the user’s goal performance, it may also reduce their post-experience gratification with the flow-inducing media. The present study proposes a novel theoretical framework to begin understanding the potential cost of flow in media use with supporting evidence from two survey and vignette studies (N= 235 andN= 245). Its findings will extend human-computer interaction research by highlighting the double-edged impact that flow might have on media users’ larger goal performance and downstream well-being.

People frequently do not pay full attention to advertising messages to which they are exposed. While external distraction such as active avoidance (e.g., multitasking while ads play) or background ...

The foodservice industry generates food waste by disposing of unserved food in the kitchen as well as uneaten food from consumers’ plates. In all-you-care-to-eat dining settings, such as university dining halls or buffet-style restaurants, food waste can be problematic because there is little monetary incentive to take less food. In addition, university dining facilities primarily serve young consumers who tend to be more wasteful than the average adult, further increasing the likelihood of waste. Appeals to money-saving have generally been identified as the best motivator to reduce consumer food waste; however, alternative motivators are needed when the quantity of food and its associated cost are not directly linked in all-you-care-to-eat settings. The purpose of this study is to determine the efficacy of a food waste reduction campaign in a university dining hall. Consumer plate waste was collected, sorted, and weighed in a treatment and comparison dining hall for a semester to assess the impact of the campaign on the quantity and type of food waste. Results reveal that the campaign had a modest, though insignificant, impact on waste behavior, but there were changes in students’ beliefs related to food waste, which may be an important first step to achieving behavioral change.

Jones is on trial for a violent assault on his daughter. Proof of the following facts is available; each increases the statistical probability that Jones committed this assault: Jones belongs to an ethnic group among whom this kind of crime (of violence, of violence against family members, of violence against daughters) is significantly more prevalent than it is among the general population. Also, Jones has prior convictions for criminal offences; or for crimes of violence; or for assaults on his daughter. Should the prosecution be allowed to introduce such facts as evidence of Jones's propensity to commit the crime of which he is now accused? We engage with recent arguments in defence of the (in principle) admissibility of such evidence offered by Federico Picinali and by Mike Redmayne, and we suggest that the most persuasive arguments against its admissibility are grounded in political rather than in moral philosophy.

In this study, we present a computational method for analyzing the congruence between personality of a brand’s Twitter account and the personality of their followers. We investigated attachment to ...

Media multitasking (MMT) is now a common way to engage with media. Flexibility in devices and content allow people to actively manage their attention but also to become distracted from their origin...

Media multitasking has been receiving increased attention from communication scholars as well as scholar in other fields, with studies focusing on the prevalence, predictors, behavior, and ...

First paragraph: I am very grateful to my four commentators, Vincent Chiao, Shachar Eldar, Miri Gur-Arye, and Re’em Segev, for their constructively critical responses to my book.1 I cannot do justice to all their comments here, but will tackle (what I take to be) their most significant criticisms. Their papers bring out some of the ways in which I failed to make my arguments clear enough—and ways in which my own thinking was not clear enough; they also helpfully indicate ways in which the ideas in the book could be further developed: but they do not (I hope, and will argue) threaten the main claims that the book seeks to sustain. In what follows I will first give a brief account of the book’s aims and its main themes, in Section 1, and will then respond to each of the commentators: to Segev, who offers the most radical critique, in Section 2; to Chiao, who is mainly concerned with the relationship between political theory and criminal law, in Section 3; to Gur-Arye, who argues that a proper attention to human rights should lead to significant revisions in my account of criminal law’s addressees, in Section 4; and to Eldar, who suggests that the logical structure of deliberations towards criminalization decisions that I propose needs to be complicated and revised, in Section 5.

Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) has major impacts on yield and quality of the tuberous roots of cassava in Eastern and Central Arica. At least two Potyviridae species cause the disease: Cassava brown streak virus (CBSV) and Ugandan cassava brown streak virus (UCBSV). Cloned viral genome sequences known as infectious clones (ICs) have been important in the study of other viruses, both as a means of standardising infectious material and characterising viral gene function. IC construction is often technically challenging for Potyviridae due to sequence instability in E. coli. Here, we evaluate three methods for the construction of infectious clones for CBSD. Whilst a simple IC for in vitro transcription was made for UCBSV isolate ‘Kikombe’, such an approach failed to deliver full-length clones for CBSV isolates ‘Nampula’ or ‘Tanza’, necessitating more complex approaches for their construction. The ICs successfully generated symptomatic infection in the model host N. benthamiana and in the natural host cassava. This shows that whilst generating ICs for CBSV is still a technical challenge, a structured approach, evaluating both in vitro and in planta transcription systems should successfully deliver ICs, allowing further study into the symptomology and virulence factors in this important disease complex. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s12033-018-0139-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Domestic criminal law is the law of a particular political community; it speaks in the voice of that community, about wrongs that count as “public” wrongs in the context of that community’s civic life. However, can we understand international criminal law in similar terms, as the law of a specifiable political community? We cannot plausibly talk of “humanity” as a political community whose law international criminal law could be, but if we instead, and more plausibly, talk of the “community of nations,” it is not clear what it would mean to portray international criminal law as the law of that community. It might be argued that this just shows it to be a mistake to try to connect criminal law to political community in this way: in response to that kind of criticism, I explore two ways in which we can try to explain the normative force of international criminal law in terms of an idea (or ideal) of political community.

Discussions of responsibility typically focus on the person who is held responsible: what are the conditions or criteria of responsibility; what can be done to or demanded of a person who is responsible? This paper shifts focus onto those who hold, rather than those who are held, responsible: what do we owe to those whom we hold responsible? After distinguishing responsibility as answerability from responsibility as liability, it attends mainly to the former, and points out the ways in which it is multiply relational: I am responsible for something to someone who has the standing to call me to account for it, under the norms of some particular practice. Responsibility as thus understood is also reciprocal: if you are to be answerable to me, I must treat you with a certain respect, attend seriously to your answer, and be ready to answer to you myself. The paper explores some of the implications of this point both for our moral dealings with each other, and for criminal law and the criminal trial.

The idea that crimes can usefully be understood as ‘public wrongs’, and that this can generate a plausible principle of criminalisation, has found some support in recent years; it has also been subjected to some sharp criticism. This paper aims to sketch the most plausible version of that idea, and to show how, once properly explained, it is not vulnerable to those criticisms. After a brief defence of the negative principle, that we may not criminalise conduct that does not constitute a public wrong, it explains the positive principle, that we have reason to criminalise conduct if it constitutes a public wrong, by drawing an analogy between criminal law and codes of professional ethics, and by appealing to the idea of civil order, as the normative structure of a polity—a structure that criminal law helps both to constitute and to sustain. Four objections are then met: that this account implies an unacceptable relativism; that it distorts the reasons that bear on criminalisation; that it cannot make room for those who do not identify themselves with the polity in which they live; and that it implies an unrealistically demanding conception of what is required for a polity to exist.

Brand logo design has been extensively studied, yet little research has tapped into visual complexity and how it influences aesthetic preference for logo design. Past research proposed three major ...

This research addresses three primary goals: (1) to ascertain the genetic diversity of natural populations of Euhrychiopsis lecontei, a biological control agent currently used for the management of the invasive aquatic weed, Eurasian watermilfoil; (2) to determine the presence of any potential cryptic species of E. lecontei; and (3) to examine the phylogeography of E. lecontei to determine whether geographic patterns are identifiable in the genetic diversity. Sequence data from the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene were determined for E. lecontei from 35 populations throughout their native range in North America. A maximum likelihood tree indicates all haplotypes of E. lecontei form a monophyletic group. Based on branch lengths, the tree indicates there are two major subgroupings of haplotypes. This tree structure is further supported by the haplotype network, the SAMOVA results, and the geographic barrier to gene flow which clearly demonstrates genetic and geographic structuring within t...

Antony Duff’s contribution is concerned with the obligations that we might be held to have in relation to the criminal law. In this context, Duff makes two main arguments. First, criminal law theorists often describe the criminal law’s offence definitions as ‘prohibitions’ that citizens are obligated to obey: though this way of talking fits naturally with talk of the criminal law as imposing obligations, it is at best misleading: these offence definitions should not, typically, be understood as imposing obligations to refrain from the conduct they define as criminal, or as consisting in prohibitions that we are to obey. Second, theorists of political obligation also commonly take it that that obligation is an obligation to obey the law. Duff notices that this implies an overly deferential attitude towards the law on the part of citizens; we should instead talk of the responsibility of citizens of a democratic republic to play an active role in the enterprise of criminal law, as part of the larger civic enterprise of self-government under the rule of law.

Experiments are conducted to help establish cause-and-effect relationships, and they can be powerful tools for doing so. We review fundamental concepts for conducting experimental advertising research. Good experimental research involves careful consideration of independent and dependent variables, and what they are supposed to represent. To this end, we review threats to construct validity as well as offer some suggestions on how to think about external and ecological validity in ad research. We review three quasi-experimental research designs and three simple, randomized experimental designs, along with more complex factorial design experiments. Finally, we discuss ethical considerations and the crucial role researchers play in maintaining research integrity.

Narrative messages on average produce higher levels of involvement, intention, and behavior than other message formats. Narratives also generate feelings of sympathy and empathy, although few studies have directly compared the roles of each emotion in the persuasion process. This article presents the results of two studies that tested the effect of exposure to a narrative or nonnarrative ad on persuasive outcomes and the roles sympathy and empathy play in the persuasion process. Both studies found that the narrative ad produced higher levels of involvement, intention, and behavior and that empathy played a more important role in persuasion than sympathy.

The organic label has been studied extensively in the literature; however, few studies take into consideration the context in which the organic purchase takes place. In this study, we examine the product type (virtue vs. vice) as well as the purchase context (retailer: Target vs. Walmart). Using an online experiment with U.S. consumers (N = 605), we determine how the organic label interacts with each of these contexts and how these interactions impact downstream evaluations such as expected taste, nutrition, safety, likelihood of purchase, and attitude and trust toward the product’s brand. Results of the study reveal both the organic label and retail context impact product evaluations. First, results showed organic products were perceived more favorably on a number of measures (including nutrition, safety, brand attitude, and brand trust) than their non-organic counterparts, providing evidence of an organic “halo” effect. Interestingly, though, the organic “halo” did not extend to two measures: expected taste and likelihood of purchase. Secondly, organic labeling benefits virtue and vice products in distinct aspects – the organic virtue product had better expected taste while the organic vice product had higher expected nutrition. Finally, we find that retailers are a crucial factor that moderates the evaluation of organic products. Our results suggest retailers like Target may be better outlets for promoting organic vice products whereas retailers like Walmart may only be good outlets for promoting organic virtue products. This study has important implications for the National Organic Program, the Organic Trade Association, producers, and food brand managers.

I discuss two problems for the standard Anglo-American account of recklessness, and the distinctions between intention, recklessness, and negligence. One problem concerns the over-breadth of recklessness as thus defined — that it covers agents whose actions display different kinds of culpability. The other problem concerns the importance attached to awareness of risk in distinguishing recklessness from (mere) negligence — that one who is unaware of the risk that he takes or creates sometimes displays just the same kind of fault as an advertent risk-taker. We can work towards solutions to these problems by contrasting the Anglo-American schema with the German schema: this distinguishes intention (Vorsatz, consisting in purpose, or knowledge, or ‘dolus eventualis’) from negligence (Fahrlassigkeit, which can be either advertent or inadvertent). Dolus eventualis, properly understood, constitutes a distinctive kind of fault, which should be distinguished from advertent negligence within the category of what the Anglo-American schema counts as recklessness: this helps to solve the first problem, of over-breadth. As for the second problem, we can see why the difference between advertent and inadvertent risk-taking is not always normatively significant by noticing that an agent’s failure to realise the risk he is creating can itself display a significant fault in the structure of the practical reasoning that informs his action — just the same kind of fault as that displayed by an advertent risk-taker. The upshot of this discussion is a new schema of types of criminal fault; I finally note some problems about the practicability of such a schema.