Fatal Drowning Accident and Undiagnosed Hydrocephalus

Abstract: Bodies found in water present several diagnostic challenges for the forensic examiner, such as the identification of the time and mechanism of death, the postmortem submersion time, and above all the circumstances of drowning. We report the case of a 33‐year‐old security guard found dead in Venice, in the water of the lagoon, who at autopsy presented a previously undiagnosed hydrocephalus with macrocephaly. The victim remained asymptomatic until 2 months before death and had never undergone a neurological or radiological examination. In the article, we emphasize the need to perform a thorough autopsy in all suspected drownings, discuss the etiopathogenesis of the neurological disease and hypothesize a possible relationship between the hydrocephalus and the drowning accident. Finally, we discuss the major clinical and forensic implications of macrocephaly and hydrocephalus in adults.     

Reshaping Cultural Heritage Protection Policies at a Time of Securitisation: France,Italy, and the United Kingdom

In the context of the increasing securitisation of cultural heritage, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom have reacted differently to the recent wave of iconoclasm perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and similar radical groups and terrorist organisations. With cultural heritage now discursively identified as a security concern, the three states enacted security practices to deal with the newly emerged security threats. All three cases show a tight association between the protection of cultural heritage, development and security policies. State-driven cultural heritage protection policies continue to be designed around the notion of multilateral cooperation, although innovative forms of public-private multilateralism and civil-military cooperation are increasingly being introduced.     

Diversity Management: Regionalism and the Future of the International Order

Abstract

The ongoing redistribution of power on the international stage points to a more decentred international system featuring a multiplication of governance arrangements. A larger range of pivotal countries have the capacity and the confidence to pursue different priorities, a development that questions the prevalent post-Cold War expectation that the liberal international order would grow both wider and deeper. The central challenge for the future of the international order is managing diversity in ways that minimise conflict and leverage the benefits of interdependence. The evolution of regionalism and regional orders will be a critical dimension of the realignment of power, interests and normative agendas at the global level. Both more competition and more cooperation are likely to take place at the regional level, with the mix changing in different parts of the world. Provided that it is not merely a cover for coercive hegemonic aspirations and that it is designed to complement other levels of cooperation, regionalism can play an important role in preventing a more polycentric world from becoming a more fragmented and unstable one.     

Fake & original: the case of Japanese food in Southeast Asian countries

This paper seeks to answer two main questions: whether restaurants using a national brand to capture customers in fact use original national ingredients for producing food and, in cases where original ingredients are not used, what is the economic rationale behind this choice? Specifically, the study focuses on Japanese restaurants in three Southeast Asian countries, using a theoretical model and an empirical investigation based on interviews and survey data collected through field research. Considering restaurants, their suppliers, and their customers, we show how a dual asymmetric-information problem exists, between suppliers and restaurants and between restaurants and their customers. The results indicate that a first reason for buying non-original ingredients—important especially for cheaper restaurants—is a desire to reduce costs. That said, the use of non-original ingredients occurs among all types of Japanese restaurants in the three studied countries. It does not depend on the presence of a Japanese chef or owner, nor on the share of Japanese customers. By contrast it does significantly depend on the reliability of the wholesale channel, and the resultant difficulties that restaurants encounter when buying original ingredients.

     

Personality Profiles of Special Force Police Officers

The present study was aimed at investigating whether different personality profiles could be found among Italian police Special Force (SF) officers. Our hypothesis was that different personality profiles would be found, and that they would differ with respect to psychological and organizational functioning. This conjecture was tested on anonymously collected Big Five scores of all members of a 'Reparto Mobile' unit (n?=?289) by means of a Two-Step cluster analysis. Two distinct personality profiles were found: two-thirds of participants showed a personality profile that was quite similar to the general population, with the exception of a higher self-reported emotional stability and self-deceptive enhancement, while the remaining third showed higher levels of any personality domain than both the other cluster and the general population. These officers also endorsed lower scores in measures of depression, anxiety, professional exhaustion, loss of empathy, and higher scores in a measure of organizational resilience, suggesting that they may represent the most suitable personnel for the delicate tasks their unit usually has to accomplish. In addition, self-deceptive enhancement emerged as a likely personality trait of police SF officers.     

Life Satisfaction across Cities: Evidence from Romania

Based on the literature on agglomeration economies and studies on life satisfaction, especially with regard to Central and Eastern European countries, this article focuses on subjective wellbeing in Romania between 1996 and 2011. The findings indicate that life satisfaction was greater in larger cities, although the positive effects of agglomeration held up to a certain threshold. These effects were both direct (people living in large cities were more satisfied than those living in rural areas) and indirect (people living in rural areas embedded in urbanised regions were more satisfied than people in rural areas embedded in less urbanised regions).     

Pragmatic Maxims and Presumptions in Legal Interpretation

The fields of linguistic pragmatics and legal interpretation are deeply interrelated. The purpose of this paper is to show how pragmatics and the developments in argumentation theory can contribute to the debate on legal interpretation. The relation between the pragmatic maxims and the presumptions underlying the legal canons are brought to light, unveiling the principles that underlie the types of argument usually used to justify a construction. The Gricean maxims and the arguments of legal interpretation are regarded as presumptions subject to default used to justify an interpretation. This approach can allow one to trace the different legal interpretive arguments back to their basic underlying presumptions, so that they can be compared, ordered, and assessed according to their defeasibility conditions. This approach allows one to understand the difference between various types of interpretive canons, and their strength in justifying an interpretation.