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This paper aims to shed light into money laundering using bitcoin. Digital payment methods are increasingly used by criminals to launder money obtained through cybercrime. As many forms of cybercrime are motivated by profit, a solid cash-out strategy is required to ensure that crime proceeds end up with the criminals themselves without an incriminating money trail. The authors examine how cybercrime proceeds can be laundered using services that are offered on the Dark Web.

Focusing on service-percentages and reputation-mechanisms in underground bitcoin laundering services, this paper presents the results of a cash-out experiment in which five mixing and five exchange services are included.

Some of the examined services provide an excellent, professional and well-reviewed service at competitive cost. Whereas others turned out to be scams, accepting bitcoin but returning nothing in return.

The authors discuss what these findings mean to law enforcement, and how bitcoin laundering chains could be disrupted.

These cash-out strategies are increasingly facilitated by cryptocurrencies, mainly bitcoin. Bitcoins are already relatively anonymous, but with the rise of specialised bitcoin money laundering services on the Dark Web, laundering money in the form of bitcoins becomes available to a wider audience.

This paper aims to explore the market dynamics that led to a shift in Swedish consumers' alcohol preferences from schnapps to wine. Specifically, the study investigates how the Swedish state influenced consumers' alcohol habits and highlights the role of governance units in shaping consumer culture.

The study reconstructs the historical memory of the “Operation Vin”, a strategic marketing campaign implemented by Systembolaget from 1957 to 1985, to conceptualize the past and to uncover the structures and change dynamics of the Swedish alcohol market system. Following this approach, the research contrasts historical data from multiple sources with market-oriented ethnographical data and traces the trajectory of how the consumption of alcohol has changed as a consequence of the Swedish state’s initiatives.

The study offers two contributions to the literature in marketing and consumption history. Firstly, it uncovers the lines of actions (framing and settlement) involved in creating marketing systems and shaping consumer culture. Secondly, it explores how the state strategically leveraged its social skills to promote a specific type of alcohol consumption (wine) and to induce the Swedish consumer to cooperate in the refashioning of the alcohol field.

The authors aspire for this paper to offer valuable insights into how a state, as a governance entity, can shape consumer culture through a strategic blend of various regulatory measures, both gentle and forceful. The authors emphasize the pivotal role of social skills in fostering cooperation during the implementation of a new alcohol policy.

This paper provides valuable insights into the role of the Swedish state in shaping consumer culture and explores the strategic actions and marketing systems involved, contributing to marketing and consumption history literature.

While most efforts to combat climate change are focussed on energy efficiency and substitution of fossil fuels, growth in the built environment remains largely unquestioned. Given the current climate emergency and increasing scarcity of global resources, it is imperative that we address this “blind spot” by finding ways to support required services with less resource consumption.

There is now long overdue recognition to greenhouse gas emissions “embodied” in the production of building materials and construction, and its importance in reaching targets of net zero carbon by 2050. However, there is a widespread belief that we can continue to “build big”, provided we incorporate energy saving measures and select “low carbon materials” – ignoring the fact that excessive volume and area of buildings may outweigh any carbon savings. This is especially the case with commercial real estate.

As the inception and planning phases of projects offer most potential for reduction in both operational and embodied carbon, we must turn our attention to previously overlooked options such as “build nothing” or “build less”. This involves challenging the root cause of the need, exploring alternative approaches to meet desired outcomes, and maximising the use of existing assets. If new build is required, this should be designed for adaptability, with increased stewardship, so the building stock of the future will be a more valuable and useable resource.

This points to the need for increased understanding and application of the principles of strategic asset management, hitherto largely ignored in sustainability circles, which emphasize a close alignment of assets with the services they support.

Arguably, as the built environment consumes more material resources and energy than any other sector, its future configuration may be critical to the future of people and the planet. In this regard, this paper seeks to break new ground for deeper exploration.

This paper aims to examine the existence of the ripple effect from Amsterdam to the housing markets of other regions in The Netherlands. It identifies which regional housing markets are influenced by house price movements in Amsterdam.

The paper considers the ripple effect as a lead-lag effect and a long-run convergence between the Amsterdam and regional house prices. Using the real house prices for second-hand owner-occupied dwellings from 1995q1 to 2016q2, the paper adopts the Toda–Yamamoto Granger Causality approach to study the lead-lag effects. It uses the autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL)-Bounds cointegration techniques to examine the long-run convergence between the regional and the Amsterdam house prices. The paper controls for house price fundamentals to eliminate possible confounding effects of common shocks.

The cumulative evidence suggests that Amsterdam house prices have influence on (or ripple to) all the Dutch regions, except one. In particular, the Granger Causality test concludes that a lead-lag effect of house prices exists from Amsterdam to all the regions, apart from Zeeland. The cointegration test shows evidence of a long-convergence between Amsterdam house prices and six regions: Friesland, Groningen, Limburg, Overijssel, Utrecht and Zuid-Holland.

The paper adopts an econometric approach to examine the Amsterdam ripple effect. More sophisticated economic models that consider the asymmetric properties of house prices and the patterns of interregional socio-economic activities into the modelling approach are recommended for further investigation.

This paper focuses on The Netherlands for which the ripple effect has not yet been researched to the authors’ knowledge. Given the substantial wealth effects associated with house price changes that may shape economic activity through consumption, evidence for ripples may be helpful to policy makers for uncovering trends that have implications for the entire economy. Moreover, the analysis controls for common house price fundamentals which most previous papers ignored.

This study aims to establish a correlation between a patient’s mini mental state examination (MMSE) score and their ability to remember how to use common assistive dressing devices.

The study was a prospective, cross-sectional and correlational study. A final sample of 63 patients formed the study. Patients’ cognition was measured using the MMSE, and a new assessment tool was developed to assess patients’ ability to use three assistive devices and piloted on 15 patients to address normality, reliability, validity and clinical usefulness. Pearson’s rank correlation coefficient was used to establish direct correlations between the MMSE score and the assessment tool score. Eta squared was used to calculate the effect size to achieve an indication of the difference between the groups. Ethical approval had been granted by the regional ethics committee. The null hypothesis states that patients with an MMSE score of 22 or less show no difference in their ability to safely and appropriately use assistive devices provided and demonstrated by an occupational therapist than patients with an MMSE score of 23 or higher.

The null hypothesis was rejected and patients with an MMSE score of 22 or less showed a significant difficulty in their ability to use the three devices. Correlation coefficients showed significant positive correlations between MMSE scores and assistive devices scoring tool results for all three devices: Helping hand (r = 6.677, n = 60, p = 0.01), shoe horn (r = 0.649, n = 54, p = 0.01) and sock aid (r = 0.877, n = 54, p = 0.01).

The study is in an Irish context and demonstrated primary, objective evidence of the impact of impaired cognition on functional ability. Patients with cognitive deficits pose a larger safety challenge but still should be afforded an opportunity to use and benefit from assistive devices. The assessment tool is a new and unique instrument and although requires further development, may conceivably act not just as an assessment instrument but also an effective treatment tool.

This study examined the prevalence and relationship between addictive use of smartphones and symptoms of depression and anxiety among female undergraduates.

Standardized scales were used to measure the addictive use of smartphones, depression and anxiety among 398 female students (mean age 21.75 years, SD = 2.67) at two large higher institutions in southwest Nigeria and were opportunely sampled. Two hypotheses were tested using Spearman's rho and Mann–Whitney U tests.

The results showed that 1.01% of the respondents were probable smartphone addicts and 17.34% were at-risk, while 14.32% and 16.33% manifested symptoms of anxiety and moderate-to-severe depression, respectively. Depression (r = 0.24, p < 0.01) and anxiety (r = 0.21, p < 0.01) have significant relationship with addictive use of smartphone. Addictive/at-risk smartphone users significantly scored higher on symptoms of depression (average rank of 233.40) than normal smartphone users (average rank of 191.88); U = 9387.50; z = −2.81, p < 0.05; Also, addictive/at-risk smartphone users reported significantly higher level of anxiety (average rank of 229.27) than normal smartphone users (average rank of 192.81); U = 9689.00; z = −2.46, p < 0.05.

Generalizing these results to a clinical setting and other at-risk demographic groups might prove difficult due to the respondents' condition of homogeneity.

The findings suggest that relationships exist between the addictive use of smartphones and symptoms of depression and anxiety among undergraduate students in southwest Nigeria. Clinicians should assess smartphone use in the management of depression and anxiety disorders.

University administrators should target prevention and intervention strategies that would assist students to be taught positive ways of using their smartphones.

The study contributes to the body of knowledge by revealing relationships between smartphone addiction and mental health in an African sample.

The purpose of this paper is to explore an association between women experience lifetime intimate partner violence (IPV) and women decision making with utilization of reproductive and maternal health services in Cambodia.

An analysis of secondary data of Cambodia Demographic and Health Survey (CDHS) 2014. The total number of sample size was 1,539 married women who had birth in the last five years prior to the time of interview and completed the domestic violence module in the CDHS 2014 questionnaire. χ² test and binary logistic regression were performed in this study.

Results give an evidence that emotional violence had significant impact on receiving sufficient antenatal care (ANC) (OR: 0.7, 95%CI: 0.43–0.86) while physical violence had significant association with deliver with skilled birth attendance (SBA) (OR: 0.5, 95%CI: 0.27–0.79). Further, women’s participation in household decision making played as important factor in enabling women revive sufficient ANC (OR: 1.7, 95%CI: 1.19–2.29), and utilization of modern contraceptive method (OR: 1.5, 95%CI: 1.09–1.97).

This study provides significant finding on the impact of IPV and women’s decision making on reproductive and maternal health in Cambodia. Result has drawn an attention to policy makers, related ministries and stakeholder to promulgate and effectiveness of policies and program implementation within the country.

Information Systems research on emotions in relation to using technology largely holds essentialist assumptions about emotions, focuses on negative emotions and treats technology as a token or as a black box, which hinders an in-depth understanding of distinctions in the emotional experience of using artificial intelligence (AI) technology in context. This research focuses on understanding employees' emotional experiences of using an AI chatbot as a specific type of AI system that learns from how it is used and is conversational, displaying a social presence to users. The research questions how and why employees experience emotions when using an AI chatbot, and how these emotions impact its use.

An interpretive case study approach and an inductive analysis were adopted for this study. Data were collected through interviews, documents review and observation of use.

The study found that employee appraisals of chatbots were influenced by the form and functional design of the AI chatbot technology and its organisational and social context, resulting in a wider repertoire of appraisals and multiple emotions. In addition to positive and negative emotions, users experienced connection emotions. The findings show that the existence of multiple emotions can encourage continued use of an AI chatbot.

This research extends information systems literature on emotions by focusing on the lived experiences of employees in their actual use of an AI chatbot, while considering its characteristics and its organisational and social context. The findings inform the emerging literature on AI.