The organizational structure of international drug smuggling

While most group offending is not well organized, it is generally assumed that high levels of organization can be found in group offending that generates revenue, such as white-collar crime, drug sales, and smuggling drugs or humans. The organizational structure of international drug smuggling has typically been viewed as highly rational and formally structured. Employing interviews with thirty-four federal prisoners convicted of smuggling large volumes of cocaine into the United States, this study explored the organizational structure of high level international drug smuggling. The subjects described a general lack of formal structure and depicted the drug smuggling operations as composed of isolated work groups without formal connections among each other. These findings bring into question the idea that these groups are rationally organized around pursuing efficiency and support recent research that suggests network security or minimizing risk are key organizing principles of drug trading organizations.     

The Economic Cost of March 11: Measuring the Direct Economic Cost of the Terrorist Attack on March 11, 2004 in Madrid

This article attempts to measure the direct costs that the terrorist attacks of 3/11 had on the economy of the region of Madrid. The evaluation has been made applying conservative criteria, and the results obtained have to be considered as minimum. The result indicates that the terrorist attacks caused a loss of nearly 212 million euros to the regional economy of Madrid, equivalent to 0.16 percent of the regional GDP (0.03 of the national GDP). This confirms that the immediate economic dimension of a terrorist attack such as the one of 3/11—apart from human catastrophic consequences—is relatively low.     

No class! A comment on Simon Bromley's American power and the prospects for international order

This intervention argues that Bromley's account of American power underplays some of the structural weaknesses in the US-made liberal order. These weaknesses are not principally the result of relative economic decline, but chiefly the product of a political insistence among US ruling classes in getting their own way (that is, for the immediate American interests to prevail) regardless of their longer-term socio-economic or political consequences. It is the quest for American primacy, not the pursuit of a liberal international order that is the chief driver of US external relations. Likewise it is the more volatile dynamics of class antagonism and alliances both within and outside the USA—not the rational calculation of states as Bromley suggests—that tend to determine the success or failure of American primacy. I flesh out these claims by looking successively at the ideology of post-war American Empire, the contradictions of its actual implementation and the forms of socio-economic and political instability it generates. Bromley's sanguine view of the future of liberal order, it is argued, is only persuasive with a very narrow, inter-statist conception of world order and one which therefore underestimates the social origins of geopolitical disorder.     

Evaluation of a Freezer Mill for Bone Pulverization prior to DNA Extraction: An Improved Workflow for STR Analysis

Traditional methods for bone pulverization typically generate heat, risking stability of DNA sample. SPEX? has developed cryogenic grinders which introduce liquid nitrogen to cool the sample and aid in the grinding process. In this study, the Freezer Mill 6970 EFM was used with two DNA extraction methods and routine downstream STR analysis procedures. DNA from as little as 0.1 g of bone powder was used to develop full STR profiles after freezer mill pulverization, and the method was reproducible. Further, no contamination was detected upon cleaning/reuse of the sample vials. There were no significant differences in DNA yield, STR alleles detected, or peak heights using the freezer mill as compared to traditional grinding, and successful DNA profiles were achieved from as low as 0.1 g of bone powder with this method. Overall, this work indicates that this cryogenic mill method may be used as a viable alternative to traditional tissue grinders.     

Process-based model in adolescence. Analyzing police legitimacy and juvenile delinquency within a legal socialization framework

The empirical evidence on the process-based model of self-regulation shows that procedural justice evaluations and the perceived legitimacy of authorities impact law-abiding behavior. However, few studies analyze this theory from the perspective of adolescent legal socialization. The present study aims to examine the process-based model and other socializing agents such as family, school and peers that may have an effect on it. The sample comprised 2041 youths residing in Spain, aged between 13 and 18 years. The data form part of the Third International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-3). Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to predict police legitimacy and juvenile delinquency. The results reveal that police legitimacy perceptions are not only influenced by procedural justice, but also by parental monitoring, school attachment, and delinquent peers. Moreover, perceptions of police legitimacy, parental monitoring, and delinquent peers predict juvenile delinquency. These findings complement and add new explanatory factors to the process-based model.     

X‐ray Diffraction and Rietveld Refinement in Deferrified Clays for Forensic Science

Soil vestiges might provide information about a crime scene. The Rietveld method with X‐ray diffraction data (RM‐XRD) is a nondestructive technique that makes it possible to characterize minerals present in the soils. Soil clays from the metropolitan region of Curitiba (Brazil) were submitted to DCB treatment and analyzed using XRD with CuK_α radiation in the step‐scan mode (0.02° 2θ/5 s). The GSAS+EXPGUI software was used for RM refinement. The RM‐XRD results, together with the principal component analysis (PCA) (52.6% total variance), showed the kaolinite predominance in most analyzed samples and the highest quartz contents in “site 1.” Higher anatase, and gibbsite and muscovite contents influenced discrimination, mainly in “site 3” and “site 1,” respectively. These results were enough to discriminate clays of four sites and two horizons using a reduced amount of sample showing that the technique can be applied to the investigation into soil vestiges.     

Ownership of personal data in the Internet of Things

This article analyses, defines, and refines the concepts of ownership and personal data to explore their compatibility in the context of EU law. It critically examines the traditional dividing line between personal and non-personal data and argues for a strict conceptual separation of personal data from personal information. The article also considers whether, and to what extent, the concept of ownership can be applied to personal data in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT). This consideration is framed around two main approaches shaping all ownership theories: a bottom-up and top-down approach. Via these dual lenses, the article reviews existing debates relating to four elements supporting introduction of ownership of personal data, namely the elements of control, protection, valuation, and allocation of personal data. It then explores the explanatory advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches in relation to each of these elements as well as to ownership of personal data in IoT at large. Lastly, this article outlines a revised approach to ownership of personal data in IoT that may serve as a blueprint for future work in this area and inform regulatory and policy debates.     

Development Dynamics of Chinese Resource‐Based Investment in Peru and Ecuador

This article analyzes the developmental impact of two of the earliest investments made by Chinese companies in South America, the Shougang Corporation's mining activities in Peru and Andes Petroleum's oil extraction operations in Ecuador. The article draws attention to the importance of contextualizing and disaggregating instances of Chinese resource‐based investment in order to adequately grasp the complexity of processes that are contingent to particular regimes of natural resource governance, companies' backgrounds, and the strength and nature of local reactions, among other factors. It thereby encourages a critical examination of Chinese investment in South America that explores how the characteristics of that investment are reshaped by the long and contested histories of resource extraction in the region, the promotion of and resistance to particular visions of development, the agency of multiply situated and complex actors, and the wider transnational production networks in which resource extraction processes are embedded.     

Forms of technological modernization and human resources management in privatized argentine companies

After the period of hyperinflation (1989, 1990) the Argentine economy stabilized and most of public companies were privatized. The return on investments was concentrated on promoting the technological change which adopts two basic forms: systemic modernization and revamping of existing teams.

The first variant -ilustrated by the national telephone network- makes obsolete the knowledge accumulated during the period when the company was public. To confront the structural deficiency of knowledge and experience which result, the private operators invest massively in transfering educational technologies and in the development of costly and sofisticated internal systems of training, while they negotiate numerous and various agreements of cooperation with educational system institutions, public as well as private.

In the second variant - illustrated by a steel and metallurgic company - the preexisting knowledge continues being necessary even though it may need a vis-a-vis updating facing the new demands which are stated referring to the productivity, quality, effectiveness and productive efficiency in markets which are open to competition.

Taking into account the significant achievements which are being obtained by this second alternative of modernization - most of the privatized companies fall into this pattern- the article invites to a reopening of the old debate on technological blending.