Classifying the torture experiences of refugees living in the United States

Few research studies have systematically categorized the types of torture experienced around the world. The purpose of this study is to categorize the diverse traumatic events that are defined as torture, and determine how these torture types relate to demographics and symptom presentation. Data for 325 individuals were obtained through a retrospective review of records from the Bellevue/NYU for Survivors of Torture. A factor analysis generated a model with five factors corresponding to witnessing torture of others, torture of family members, physical beating, rape/sexual assault, and deprivation/passive torture. These factors were significantly correlated with a number of demographic variables (sex, education, and region of origin). Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, anxiety, and depression symptoms were significantly correlated with the rape factor but no other factors were uniquely associated with psychological distress. The results offer insight into the nature of torture and differences in responses.     

美国与德国法院体制之比较

美国与德国都是联邦制国家也是奉行宪法至上的国家 ,两国的法院体制都必须适应这一特点。比较两国的法院体制的基本特征 ,分析这些特征产生的原因并进而探讨法院在维护联邦制中的作用。     

Professionalism and accountability. Controlling health services in the United States and West Germany

This paper examines the new Professional Standards Review Organizations (PSROs) program in light of a similar program ("Economic Monitoring") that has been used in West Germany for over forty years. In the first section the PSRO program is described as government-mandated peer review by professional organizations, and is compared with that of the West Germany system. The second section argues that the PSROs are likely to strengthen the organization of established medicine, to increase the bargaining power of professional organizations, and to further insulate professional behavior from public scrutiny. The third section describes some of the effects of bureaucratic rigidities in peer review on the practice of medicine: the preservation of old technologies, the development of fixed patterns of practice, and the strengthening of the technical and interventionist biases in medical care. The final section evaluates the PSRO program as a complete delegation of congressional authority and a failure of Congress to set any rules for the development and application of norms and standards. The lack of any mechanism for accountability of the PSROs to public and choices is emphasized.     

Serving the State: Constitutionalism and Social Spending, 1860s-1920s

In the 19th century, courts supervised states' social spending by limiting taxation to public purposes. The focus of this article is the courts' approach to pensions. Under a 19th-century doctrine, states could pay money to those who had served the state or, under the rubric of charity, to those who were the indigent helpless. States first paid pensions to people for military service and for serving as firemen; later in the century, the doctrine from these cases provided a framework for expanding civil service pensions as states expanded their civil service. Courts characterized the earlier pensions as earned because the service had been dangerous, requiring bravery from men and possibly leaving helpless women and children without protection. This characterization later shaped evaluations of civil service pensions. The doctrine persisted as states enacted pensions for widowed mothers; when these pensions were challenged in state courts, the courts approved of them as payments to helpless people, not as rewards to those who had served. This characterization counters recent scholarship that argues that mothers' pensions rewarded service as military pensions did.     

Comparison of the criminal statistics of the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany

A systematic procedure for comparing the criminal statistics of the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany is presented. The procedure was developed after (1) reviewing and translating applicable paragraphs of the Federal Republic of Germany's Penal Code and (2) reviewing both the formal and informal processes used in both countries for recording crime statistics. Subsequently, a detailed comparison of criminal statistics was made using this comparative procedure.     

Informal university technology transfer: a comparison between the United States and Germany

Existing literature has confined university technology transfer almost exclusively to formal mechanisms, like patents, licenses or royalty agreements. Relatively little is known about informal technology transfer that is based upon interactions between university scientists and industry personnel. Moreover, most studies are limited to the United States, where the Bayh-Dole Act has shaped the institutional environment since 1980. In this paper, we provide a comparative study between the United States and Germany where the equivalent of the Bayh-Dole Act has come into force only in 2002. Based on a sample of more than 800 university scientists, our results show similar relationships for the United States and Germany. Faculty quality which is however based on patent applications rather than publications serves as a major predictor for informal technology transfer activities. Hence, unless universities change their incentives (e.g., patenting as one criterion for promotion and tenure) knowledge will continue to flow out the backdoor.     

美韩两国在城市更新改造和住房供给中的公正性问题研究

城市的更新和改造是现代城市规划的一个重要组成部分,这其过程中的公正性也是各国公众普遍关注的问题？本文以美国和韩国为例,回顾了这两个国家在城市更新和改造的历史进程,以及它们在制订政策用以解决和改善在诸如暴力拆迁和低收入群体住房短缺等方面的问题,并指出美韩两国在缺乏强制性行为、补偿定义的狭义化、决策及公正性等方面仍然面临诸多挑战．     

Social and economic impact of the commercialization of the Argus II artificial retina in the United States

Each year, the United States invests about $45 billion in research conducted by federal researchers within federal laboratories. These efforts generate extensive social benefits when results are transferred to the private sector. It is important that we effectively quantify the economic and societal impact of federal technology transfer activities to inform taxpayers and policymakers about the value of public investments in this form of research. The Argus II device, an artificial retina commercialized in the United States by Second Sight in 2013, provides a rich example of how private sector innovation can be enhanced by research collaborations with federal labs and academia. Over the 25-year journey from idea to product, Second Sight carried out research and development collaborations with six Department of Energy national laboratories and seven universities. The case of Argus II also offers valuable insight into (1) how private industry, academia, and government can work together to bring socially beneficial innovations to fruition and (2) the tradeoffs inherent in these public–private collaborations. In this paper, we use a Markov model to estimate the realized and potential future social benefits associated with Argus II. We provide an interactive tool that can be used to replicate our findings and modify assumptions using updated patient information as it becomes available. We also provide insight into the aspects of federal involvement surrounding the development of Argus II that contributed to its successful commercialization and discuss other spillover benefits from these public–private collaborations.     

Physicians' conflicts of interest in Japan and the United States: lessons for the United States

Japanese health policy shows that even with physician ownership and the absence of for-profit, investor-owned health care, physicians' conflicts of interest thrive. Physician dispensing of drugs and ownership of hospitals and clinics were justified in Japan as ways to avoid commercialization of medicine. Instead, they create physicians' conflicts and fuel patient overuse of services. Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) has responded by introducing per-diem payment, thereby creating incentives to decrease services in ways similar to those of American managed care organizations, but with none of their benefits, such as coordination of care, oversight of physicians practices, and quality assurance. Although the United States and Japanese health care systems are organized and financed differently there is convergence in the source of their physicians' conflicts and the way they are addressed. The United States is starting to integrate institutional and physician payment and align their incentives, in a traditional Japanese way. In so doing, the United States creates new physicians' conflicts and reduces the role of countervailing incentives and power, an advantage of previous policy. Japan, in turn, has combined incentives to increase and decrease services, thus moving closer to the U.S. policy.     

Fugitives in the United States

Little is known, empirically, about fugitives in the U.S. There is no research describing basic facts such as the prevalence of warrants or how features of warrants vary across geography or demographics of fugitives.PurposeTo (A) describe the prevalence of warrants in the U.S., including variation in warrant features across geography as well as demographics of fugitives (age, race, and gender). In addition, the paper (B) models a key feature of warrants (extradition limits) as a function of legal and extra-legal factors.MethodsThis study draws on the Wanted Persons file—the central operational database maintained by the National Criminal Information Center (NCIC) for tracking warrants from all jurisdictions in the United States. Warrant factors are described across demographic groups via bivariate comparisons. Extradition is modeled via a multivariate fixed effects logistic regression framework (i.e., within state comparisons)ResultsThe data show approximately 2 million warrants are active on any given day. Warrant features vary significantly across states (per capita), and fugitive demographics. Extradition varies as a function of legal (e.g., crime seriousness) and extra-legal factors (e.g., race of fugitive).ConclusionsWarrants may provide an important new avenue for scholarship on disparity, criminal carreers, and the administration of justice.     

Reproducing a Fit Citizenry: Dependency, Eugenics, and the Law of Marriage in the United States, 1860-1920

Between the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, American state legislatures enacted a series of new laws that delineated a class of citizens who were deemed ineligible to participate in the institution of marriage. Scholars have characterized this development as evidence that lawmakers had lost faith in a laissez-faire approach to nuptial governance, and thus transformed marriage into an object of public regulation. This essay argues that behind the ostensible nuptial privatism of the mid-nineteenth century lay a self-conscious policy of judicial governance. Judges invoked the language of nuptial privacy and the common law of contract strategically to advance their vision of moral and economic discipline. The new marital prohibitions thus represented, the essay argues, not the expansion of the state's police power into the previously private realm of domestic relations, but rather a critical transformation in how nuptial reformers and lawmakers understood the relationship between marriage and the well-being of the polity.
Fueled by growing concerns about pauperism, the racial character of the urban proletariat, and the collapse of the economically independent single-male-breadwinner household, the changing form of nuptial governance signaled a thoroughgoing intellectual and strategic reorientation from an understanding of marriage as forming economically and morally viable households – the fundamental units of society – to an understanding of marriage as a largely procreative institution, as the literal source of the citizenry. This reconceptualization of marriage underwrote a strategy of nuptial governance that mobilized marriage as a strategy in the state's regulation of social reproduction.