Mengmeng Hao

Dec 18, 2024 | nature.com | Shuai Chen |Fangyu Ding |David Buil-Gil |Mengmeng Hao |Jingying Fu |Jiping Dong | +4 more

The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly altered socio-economic activities, human behaviors, and crime patterns. However, less is known about how the pandemic and associated restrictions affected cyber-enabled and traditional fraud. Here, we conducted a retrospective analysis using police-recorded crime data in the UK to examine the impact of COVID-19 restrictions and changes in human activity on fraud. Results indicate that following the onset of the lockdown, the number of recorded fraud cases increased by 28.5%, contrasting with traditional property crimes, which dropped by 28.1%. However, the lockdown did not have a significant impact on the long-term trend of fraud. With the lifting of restrictions, fraud gradually regressed to levels approaching those before the pandemic. By inspecting the effects of different government responses and changes in population mobility on various types of fraud, we found that more stringent restrictions were associated with larger increases in most types of cyber-enabled fraud, except for those that rely on offline activities, whereas the impact on traditional fraud was mixed and contingent upon specific opportunity structures. These findings overall align with the assumptions of routine activity theory and provide clear support for its applicability in fraud and cybercrime.

Nov 12, 2024 | nature.com | Mengmeng Hao |Fangyu Ding |Dong Jiang |Shuai Chen |Jiping Dong |Jun Zhuo

Cybercrime is a complex human behavior and social phenomenon. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly altered socioeconomic activities, potentially causing changes in crime patterns. However, there has been limited research on how the interaction between the pandemic and socioeconomic factors affects cybercrime. Here we explore the spatiotemporal patterns of police-recorded cybercrime, including fraud and cyber-dependent crime, and employ a machine learning approach to assess the correlation of various factors on cybercrimes at the level of internal regions and police areas within the United Kingdom. Our results show that fraud and cyber-dependent crime are mainly concentrated in London and the southeast region of England. Moreover, following the implementation of the third national lockdown, these areas experienced a noticeable increase, while changes in other regions were not as pronounced. The spatial autocorrelation analysis further suggests that there are significant spatial heterogeneities among regions, with spatiotemporal hotspots centered around London and cold spots mainly concentrated in the northeast of England. Additionally, we found that the identified patterns of fraud and cyber-dependent crime are primarily associated with socioeconomic factors, followed by government containment measures and mobility factors. These findings can help law enforcement and regulatory agencies better understand the social-environmental factors contributing to the prevalence of cybercrime within those areas.

Oct 31, 2024 | onlinelibrary.wiley.com | Huiyuan Cheng |Nanotechnology The |Mengmeng Hao |Shanshan Ding

Conflict of Interest The authors declare no conflict of interest. Supporting Information Filename Description smll202405327-sup-0001SuppMat.docx3 MB Supporting Information References 1, , , , , , , J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2022, 144, 5864. 2, , , , , , , , , , Chem. Mat. 2020, 32, 1089. 3, , , , , , , ACS. Mater. Lett. 2021, 3, 1541. 4, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021, 143, 5470. 5, , , , J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2014, 136, 8094. 6, , , J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2018, 9, 620.

Nov 29, 2023 | onlinelibrary.wiley.com | Dongxu He |Nanotechnology The |Peng Yun Chen |Mengmeng Hao

Introduction Narrow-band gap tin-lead mixed (Sn−Pb) perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are attracting increasing attention for their potential in the development of efficient monolithic all-perovskite tandem devices1-7 that possess the advantages of low manufacturing cost, all-solution processes, flexible substrate compatibility and lightweight over their Si-perovskite counterparts.8, 9 Nonetheless, the practical implementation of Sn−Pb PSCs is hampered by the easy oxidation of Sn2+ to Sn4+ under...

Oct 2, 2023 | journals.plos.org | Xiaolan Xie |Dong Jiang |Mengmeng Hao

Loading metrics Open Access Peer-reviewedResearch Article Citation: Xie X, Jiang D, Hao M, Ding F (2023) Modeling analysis of armed conflict risk in sub-Saharan Africa, 2000–2019. PLoS ONE 18(10): e0286404. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286404Editor: Jacob Freeman, Utah State University, UNITED STATESReceived: September 19, 2022; Accepted: May 10, 2023; Published: October 2, 2023Copyright: © 2023 Xie et al.