Measuring a year of child pornography trafficking by U.S. computers on a peer-to-peer network

We used data gathered via investigative “RoundUp” software to measure a year of online child pornography (CP) trafficking activity by U.S. computers on the Gnutella peer-to-peer network. The data include millions of observations of Internet Protocol addresses sharing known CP files, identified as such in previous law enforcement investigations. We found that 244,920 U.S. computers shared 120,418 unique known CP files on Gnutella during the study year. More than 80% of these computers shared fewer than 10 such files during the study year or shared files for fewer than 10 days. However, less than 1% of computers (n = 915) made high annual contributions to the number of known CP files available on the network (100 or more files). If law enforcement arrested the operators of these high-contribution computers and took their files offline, the number of distinct known CP files available in the P2P network could be reduced by as much as 30%. Our findings indicate widespread low level CP trafficking by U.S. computers in one peer-to-peer network, while a small percentage of computers made high contributions to the problem. However, our measures were not comprehensive and should be considered lower bounds estimates. Nonetheless, our findings show that data can be systematically gathered and analyzed to develop an empirical grasp of the scope and characteristics of CP trafficking on peer-to-peer networks. Such measurements can be used to combat the problem. Further, investigative software tools can be used strategically to help law enforcement prioritize investigations.     

Children''s Perceptions of Self and of Relationships with Others as a Function of Sociometric Status

We studied the relations among children's reports about their own competence, objective measures of their competence, and their views of important relationships with others as a function of sociometric status. 515 third- and fourth-grade children responded to questions about aspects of their personal competence and about their relationships with mothers, fathers, teachers, and best friends. Rejected children reported the least supportive relationships overall with their fathers of any status group; this was especially true of rejected-aggressive children. Neglected children reported the lowest perceived social competence with peers. The subjective reports of rejected but not neglected children overestimated their social competence as rated by peers. Relative to teacher reports, rejected-aggressive children also overestimated their behavioral competence. While highlighting heterogeneity among low-accepted groups, these results add to knowledge about the subjective experiences of children who are unpopular with peers.     

Early Care,Education, and Family Life in Rural Fiji: Experiences and Reflections

As a member of a delegation of educators, physicians, and lay people to rural Fiji the author shares her experiences and reflections of early care, education, and family life on a small, remote island. She discusses her visits to the village and boarding school, and her interactions with teachers, children, and parents in the early childhood classroom and community. Her understanding of teacher education and preparation, the primary educational system, and curriculum goals and revisions of the country are highlighted.     

Literary Relations: Anne Shirley and Her American Cousins

This article examines the similarities between L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables and Kate Douglas Wiggin's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. It raises a number of questions about the Canadianness of Montgomery's best loved novel and considers the author's literary indebtedness to Wiggin and other American authors including Gene Stratton-Porter and Sarah Orne Jewett. It concludes with the argument that even though statements regarding Anne's originality and distinctive Canadianness are problematic, as a literary work, Anne has real strengths that make it more than a simple formula story. Anne of Green Gables is the work of a consummate storyteller.     

Which juvenile crime victims get mental health treatment?

OBJECTIVE: To explore factors that facilitate the receipt of mental health treatment among juvenile crime victims. METHOD: Telephone interviews were conducted with a national sample of 157 caretakers whose children had suffered a serious sexual or physical assault in the previous year. RESULTS: Twenty-two percent of caretakers had thought about getting professional counseling for their child victims, and 20% of the child victims actually received it. But half of the families who thought about it did not follow through on their consideration. Moreover, nearly half of those victimized children who actually received counseling did so without their families reporting that they had considered it in advance. The level of symptoms and parent-child relationship factors were related to considering counseling which was in turn strongly related to actually getting counseling. Other factors were independently related to receiving counseling, such as the victimization occurring at school and the victim being perceived as at fault to some degree. Advice to get counseling and medical insurance also played roles. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggested two pathways to counseling. One occurred via direct parental concern, and was associated with such variables as parental perceptions that the child was depressed or withdrawn or that the parent-child relationship had been negatively affected. The other pathway occurred independent of parental concern, most likely via school interventions, because this counseling was in conjunction with school victimizations.     

Predicting Teacher Participation in a Classroom-Based, Integrated Preventive Intervention for Preschoolers

Preschools provide a promising setting in which to conduct preventive interventions for childhood problems, but classroom programs can only be effective if teachers are willing and able to implement them. This study is one of the first to investigate predictors of the frequency of teacher participation in a classroom-based, randomized controlled trial of an integrated prevention program for preschoolers. The intervention was designed to promote school readiness with an integrated social and academic program, to be implemented by teachers with the support of classroom consultants. The current study is part of a larger project conducted with Head Start and community child care centers that serve primarily economically disadvantaged families; 49 teachers from 30 centers participated in this study. Overall, teachers conducted approximately 70% of the program activities. Participation decreased significantly over time from the first to the final week of the intervention, and also decreased within each week of the intervention, from the first to the final weekly activity. Teachers working at community child care centers implemented more intervention activities than did Head Start teachers. Teacher concerns about the intervention, assessed prior to training, predicted less participation. In addition, teachers' participation was positively related to their perception that their centers and directors were supportive, collegial, efficient, and fair, as well as their job satisfaction and commitment. Teacher experience, education, ethnicity, and self-efficacy were not significantly related to participation. In multi-level models that considered center as a level of analysis, substantial variance was accounted for by centers, pointing to the importance of considering center-level predictors in future research.     

Strategic alignment of participant motivations in e-government collaborations: The Internet Payment Platform pilot

Large-scale information technology implementations are risky projects, and the challenges and risks multiply when multiple organizations are involved, as is often the case in e-government initiatives. Some of the risk can be addressed by carefully aligning the partners' motivations, which are affected by each organization's internal and external operational and information technology strategies. In this paper, we propose a strategic alignment framework and use it to examine the motivations of a set of collaborating government agencies and businesses in the pilot implementation of the Internet Payment Platform, an interorganizational, third-party hosted, e-procurement system. As we predict, the partners in this study had varied technical, political, economic, and operational motivations for participating in the project. Even so, the participating agencies reported positive outcomes from the project, and look forward to further collaboration on the next iteration of this e-procurement system.     

The development and recovery of social capital through community-based adult learning

This paper explores the connection between participation in community-based adult learning (CBAL) and the development of social capital. It is based on a life-history study of participation in community-based adult learning opportunities undertaken in two local authority areas in Scotland. A life-history approach was chosen in order to ensure that the learners' perspectives were at the heart of the research while taking account of the context in which learning took place. Two semi-structured life history interviews were carried out with each of 10 learners and data were analysed in three stages, which led to the identification of cross-cutting themes. The paper explores the learners' experiences of participating in CBAL as described by them. It confirms for CBAL what has been established previously for other types of adult learning, namely that participation can support the development of social capital for some learners. Furthermore, it is argued that other learners were able to recover decreased or lost social capital through their participation. The paper contributes to an understanding of community-based adult learning as part of the continuum of lifelong learning opportunities, as it illustrates the potential of CBAL not only to support the development of social capital, but also to help learners recover capital that might have decreased through their life circumstances.