The Oxford Handbook of Ethnographies of Crime and Criminal Justice

The Oxford Handbook of Ethnographies of Crime and Criminal Justice provides critical and current reviews of key research topics, issues, and debates that crime ethnographers have been grappling with for over a century. Despite its long and distinguished history in the social sciences, ethnographies in criminology are still relatively rare. Over the years, however, ethnographers in the United States and abroad have amassed an impressive body of work on core criminological topics and groups, including gang members, sex workers, drug dealers, and drug users. Ethnographies on criminal justice institutions have also flourished, with studies on police, courts, and prisons providing deep insights into how these organizations operate and shape the lives of people who encounter them. This volume brings together a stellar group of ethnographers to discuss various research traditions that crime ethnographers have adopted, the ethical and pragmatic challenges associated with conducting crime-related fieldwork, relevant policy recommendations for practitioners in the field, and areas of future research for budding crime ethnographers. In addition to exhaustive overview chapters, the handbook also presents case studies that serve as exemplars for how ethnographic inquiry can contribute to our understanding of crime and criminal justice related topics.

Colliding winds in and around the stellar group IRS 13E at the galactic centre

ABSTRACT IRS 13E is an enigmatic compact group of massive stars located in projection only 3.6 arcsec away from Sgr A*. This group has been suggested to be bounded by an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH). We present a multiwavelength study of the group and its interplay with the environment. Based on Chandra observations, we find the X-ray spectrum of IRS 13E can be well characterized by an optically thin thermal plasma. The emission peaks between two strongly mass-losing Wolf–Rayet stars of the group. These properties can be reasonably well reproduced by simulated colliding winds of these two stars. However, this scenario underpredicts the X-ray intensity in outer regions. The residual emission likely results from the ram-pressure confinement of the IRS 13E group wind by the ambient medium and is apparently associated with a shell-like warm gas structure seen in Pa α and in ALMA observations. These latter observations also show strongly peaked thermal emission with unusually large velocity spread between the two stars. These results indicate that the group is colliding with the bar of the dense cool gas mini-spiral around Sgr A*. The extended X-ray morphology of IRS 13E and its association with the bar further suggest that the group is physically much farther away than the projected distance from Sgr A*. The presence of an IMBH, while favourable to keep the stars bound together, is not necessary to explain the observed stellar and gas properties of IRS 13E.

Multidimensional Feature Selection and High Performance ParalleX

Great amount of stored information used in connection with Machine Learning and statistical methods enables high quality insight and analysis of data that leads to design of high precision predictive and classification systems. In the process of analysis, selection of most informative features is crucial for later quality of the designed system. In this report, we propose two implementations of multidimensional feature selection (MDFS) algorithm (Piliszek et al. in Mdfs-multidimensional feature selection. arXiv preprint. arXiv:1811.00631, 2018) that can be used in distributed environments for detection of all-relevant variables in data sets with discrete decision variable. While most methods discard information about interactions between features, MDFS is designed towards identification of informative variables that are not relevant when considered alone but are relevant in groups. We have developed software using C++ and High Performance ParalleX (HPX) (Kaiser et al. in STEllAR-GROUP/hpx: HPX V1.3.0: the C++ Standards library for parallelism and concurrency. 2019. 10.5281/zenodo.3189323, 2019) to achieve best performance, great scalability and portability. HPX is a library that uses lightweight threads, asynchronous communication, and asynchronous task submission based on the declarative criteria of work. These features enabled us to deeply explore granularity and parallelism of the MDFS algorithm. Software is prepared entirely in C++; therefore, calculations can be performed using CPUs on desktops, distributed systems, and any system with C++ compiler support. During testing on Cray XC40 (Okeanos) using artificially prepared data, we achieved 196 times acceleration on 256 nodes compared to a single node. From this point, ICM computing facility is capable of massively parallel feature engineering. The main purpose of the software is to enable researchers for more accurate genomics data analysis in search for multiple correlations in potential sources of the diseases.

Gaia DR2 distances to Collinder 419 and NGC 2264 and new astrometric orbits for HD 193 322 Aa,Ab and 15 Mon Aa,Ab

Context. On the one hand, the second data release of the Gaia mission (Gaia DR2) has opened a trove of astrometric and photometric data for Galactic clusters within a few kiloparsecs of the Sun. On the other hand, lucky imaging has been an operational technique to measure the relative positions of visual binary systems for a decade and a half. This time is sufficient to apply the results of the technique to the calculation of orbits of some massive multiple systems within ∼1 kpc of the Sun. Aims. As part of an ambitious research program to measure distances to Galactic stellar groups (including clusters) containing O stars, I start with two of the nearest examples: Collinder 419 in Cygnus and NGC 2264 in Monoceros. The main ionizing source for each cluster is a multiple system with an O-type primary: HD 193 322 and 15 Mon, respectively. For each of the two multiple systems, I aim to derive new astrometric orbits for the Aa,Ab components. Methods. First, I present a method that uses Gaia DR2 G + GBP + GRP photometry, positions, proper motions, and parallaxes to obtain the membership and distance of a stellar group and applied these values to Collinder 419 and NGC 2264. Second, I present a new code that calculates astrometric orbits by searching the whole seven-parameter orbit space and apply it to HD 193 322 Aa,Ab and 15 Mon Aa,Ab using, as input, literature data from the Washington Double Star Catalog and the AstraLux measurements recently presented by our group in another paper published this year. Results. I obtain Gaia DR2 distances of 1006+37−34 pc for Collinder 419 and 719 ± 16 pc for NGC 2264; the main contribution to the uncertainties comes from the spatial covariance of the parallaxes. The two NGC 2264 subclusters are at the same distance (within the uncertainties) and show a significant relative proper motion. The distances are shown to be robust. HD 193 322 Aa,Ab follows an eccentric (e = 0.58+0.03−0.04) orbit with a period of 44 ± 1 a and the three stars it contains have a total mass of 76.1+9.9−7.4M⊙. The orbit of 15 Mon Aa,Ab is even more eccentric (e = 0.770+0.023−0.030); it has a period of 108 ± 12 a and a total mass of 45.1+3.6−3.3M⊙ for its two stars.

DESTINY: Database for the Effects of STellar encounters on dIsks and plaNetary sYstems

Most stars form as part of a stellar group. These young stars are mostly surrounded by a disk from which potentially a planetary system might form. Both, the disk and later on the planetary system, may be affected by the cluster environment due to close fly-bys. The here presented database can be used to determine the gravitational effect of such fly-bys on non-viscous disks and planetary systems. The database contains data for fly-by scenarios spanning mass ratios between the perturber and host star from 0.3 to 50.0, periastron distances from 30 au to 1000 au, orbital inclination from 0∘ to 180∘ and angle of periastron of 0∘, 45∘ and 90∘. Thus covering a wide parameter space relevant for fly-bys in stellar clusters. The data can either be downloaded to perform one’s own diagnostics like for e.g. determining disk size, disk mass, etc. after specific encounters, obtain parameter dependencies or the different particle properties can be visualized interactively. Currently the database is restricted to fly-bys on parabolic orbits, but it will be extended to hyperbolic orbits in the future. All of the data from this extensive parameter study is now publicly available as DESTINY.

Response

I felt both tremendously honored and slightly alarmed when I learned that this roundtable was being organized. I was delighted that such a stellar group of novel critics was willing to read Telling It Like It Wasn't but worried about their reactions to what Deidre Lynch has called the book's “deeply weird materials.” Much of the historical substance, especially the military and economic historiography, are far from our usual interests, and many of the literary texts are obscure and ephemeral. Furthermore, I passed over the opportunity to write about the best-known novels (like Philip Roth's Plot Against America) by limiting my twentieth-century case studies to American Civil War and British World War II counterfactuals. So I worried that a panel on this eccentric book might seem merely an irrelevant interruption, especially in the context of a meeting of the Society for Novel Studies.

A gas-rich disk around DX Cha

DX Cha (HD 104237) is a southern, optically bright Herbig Ae star with an infrared excess, that is part of a small stellar group younger than 5 Myr. We used the APEX and ASTE submillimeter telescopes in Chile to search for continuum and gas emission around this system. Using LABOCA on APEX we detect strong continuum emission around HD104237-A and system component HD104237-E. Our ASTE spectrum detects a double-peaked 12CO(3-2) line profile towards the system, typical of a rotating disk. The new data are used as constraints with MCFOST to produce a disk model that fits the entire SED as well as the observed CO line profile.