Results are needed,not ideology

He has been a Fulbright-Hays Senior Lecturer with the Institute of Geography and Regional Development in Caracas, Venezuela, where he taught field methods in agricultural geography. His books include Geopolitics of the Caribbean: Ministates in a Wider Worldand, with Jim Norwine, Geography as Human Ecology?     

The myth of the corporation as a creation of the state

The general movement to joint stock enterprise could not take place until certain economic and legal changes had been effected … The legal change was the substitution of the law of corporations for the law of partnership in company affairs. Investors could then invest safely and full exploitation of the economic changes became possible … Out before the legal changes of 1844 and 1855. English law virtually prohibited joint-stock enterprise for ordinary trading and manufacturing purposes.¹     

On assessing the mood of the public toward the police: Some conceptual issues

The use of attitudinal surveys has become a widely accepted method for the incorporation of public opinion in public policy decisions. Because of the assumption that the interpretation of such surveys is straightforward and clear, little critical attention has been devoted to the methodological and theoretical problems encountered when translating these findings into public policy. A case in point involves the proliferation of surveys aimed at assessing the mood of the public toward the police. A review of the literature reveals that the research findings about the public mood are contradictory and thus lack convergent validity. The findings of this study indicate that this lack of convergent validity in the images of the public toward the police can be explained on both methodological and theoretical grounds. More specifically, the findings indicate that the mood of the public is very different depending on the level of specificity of the items used to tap that mood. Items eliciting evaluations of a general nature show the public as supportive of the police, while items of a specific nature show much less public support. This apparent paradox is explained through the use of a theoretical framework developed by Easton (1965), which emphasizes diffuse and specific support as external influences on institutions.     

The Assignment Convention: how will it affect IP licensors?

The Assignment Convention designed to liberalize the marketfor credit and to increase the ability of businesses to raisecredit on the back of their income flow, may be set to havea negative impact on IP owners/licensors.     

Defendant-juror similarity and mock joror judgments

It was hypothesized that joror-defendant similarity would lead to greater leniency toward a criminal defendant when the evidence against that defendant was weak or inconclusive; but when evidence was strong, it was expected that this relationship would be reversed. In Study 1, religious similarity was found to be simply and positively related to evaluation of the defendant and leniency, a relationship unaffected by the strength of evidence. This pattern of results was attributed to (a) insufficiently strong evidence against the defendant and (b) the lack of anticipated jury deliberation, problems addressed in Study 2. In that study, when evidence was strong against the defendant, juror-defendant racial similarity did increase the likelihood of conviction, but only when jurors anticipated being in the racial minority in their jury. Implications of the findings for psychological theory and for voir dire were discussed.The authors wish to thank Howard Klein and Jane Stanfel for their assistance in data collection and analysis in Experiment 2, and the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions on an earlier draft.     

The Implications of Elections for Federalism in Iraq: Toward a Five-Region Model

For most observers, Iraq's recent elections were an importantfirst step on the road to democratic normalcy. However, threerelated outcomes—the political marginalization of SunniArabs, the electoral gains made by Shi'a religious parties,and the triumphant performance of the Kurds—render thetask of crafting Iraq's permanent constitution significantlymore problematic. In this paper, we examine the implicationsof these election results for the design of Iraq's federal system.Our focus is on the character of the subunits in any futuresystem, specifically on whether Iraq should adopt a form ofterritorial federalism based on the country's existing eighteenprovinces (as most scholars argue) or whether a form of ethnic,or "plurinational," federalism based on five regions would bebetter able to address the very significant problems createdby the election results. After assessing the relative meritsof the various proposals for a federal Iraq, we conclude thata system based on five broad regions, though not ideal, is theleast bad of the options available.     

Roadside detection of impairment under the influence of ketamine--evaluation of ketamine impairment symptoms with reference to its concentration in oral fluid and urine

Although there are many roadside testing devices available for the screening of abused drugs, none of them can be used for the detection of ketamine, a popular abused drug in Hong Kong. In connection to local drug driving legislation, effective roadside detection of ketamine in suspected drug-impaired drivers has to be established. According to the drug evaluation and classification program (DEC), ketamine is classified in the phencyclidine (PCP) category. However, no study has been performed regarding the signs and symptoms exhibited by users under the influence of ketamine. In a study to develop a protocol for effective roadside detection of drug-impaired drivers, 62 volunteers exiting from discos were assessed using field impairment tests (FIT) that included measurements of three vital signs (i.e. body temperature, pulse rate and blood pressure), three eye examinations [pupil size, lack of convergence (LOC) and horizontal gaze nystagmus (HGN)] and four divided attention tests (Romberg, one-leg stand, finger-to-nose and walk-and-turn tests). Subsequent laboratory analysis of oral fluid and urine samples from the participants revealed the presence of common abused drugs in both the urine and oral fluid samples of 55 subjects. The remaining 7 subjects with no drug in their oral fluid samples were used as drug-free subjects. In addition, 10 volunteers from the laboratory who were regarded as drug-free subjects were also assessed using the same FIT. Among the 62 volunteers, 39 of them were detected with ketamine in their oral fluid. Of these ketamine users, 21 of them (54%) with only ketamine found in their oral fluid samples while the rest (18 subjects) of them had other drugs (i.e. MA, MDMA, benzodiazepines and/or THC) in addition to ketamine. Of the 21 ketamine-only users, 15 of them (71%) were successfully identified by FIT. It was found that when salivary ketamine concentrations were greater than 300 ng/mL, signs of impairment became evident, with over 90% detection rate using the FIT. By comparing the FIT observations on the 21 ketamine-only users with the drug-free subjects, the typical signs and symptoms observable for subjects under the influence of ketamine included LOC, HGN, elevated pulse rate and in general, failing the divided attention tests, especially the walk-and-turn and one-leg stand.