Extreme versus quotidian: addressing temporal dichotomies in Philippine disaster management

Brief narratives of two recent events in Luzon island—a flashflood in Angeles City and an eruption of Mayon volcano—underscore the disparity between natural hazards as amplifiers of everyday hardship for many Filipinos and the Philippine disaster management system's orientation towards extreme‐event response. Three major factors contribute to this dichotomy. First, population dynamics combined with the lack of access to resources compels poor Filipinos to live and work in hazardous areas, discounting risk from extreme natural events to focus on daily needs. Second, the institutional setting of the country's disaster management within the military establishment makes it difficult, though not impossible, to focus and address the underlying causes of vulnerability. Third, existing modes of funding disaster expenditures are all biased towards immediate response rather than long‐term risk‐reduction. The implications of these findings to disaster management and research in the Philippines are identified. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Influence of environmental variables on fear of crime: Comparing self-report data with physiological measures in an experimental design

Objectives

Self-reports and questionnaires have been the preferred research methods in the criminological field of “fear of crime” (FOC) since its rise in the 1960s. Our study had two main goals: (1) to measure the physiological indicators of fear in real time and (2) to compare these data with those obtained through self-reports, designed also to measure the emotion of fear.

Methods

An experimental study was conducted over the course of a week during late February 2016 in Aarhus (Denmark), in which the focus was on traditional environmental variables in the field of FOC (i.e., poor lighting conditions).

Results

Our results support the ideas that: (1) the absence of good luminosity in an open public space in an urban setting elicits physiological reactions of arousal that can be taken as indicators of experiences of fear and (2) heart rate appears to capture aspects of the emotion of fear that are not reflected in data obtained through self-report questionnaires.

Conclusions

This study, introducing a pioneering approach to the study of FOC, presents great potentials in complementing traditional methods in the crime sciences. The many challenges we faced are significant and reported with the hope that subsequent literature will build upon. We propose that traditional methods and new measurements could be combined to advance research in the field by allowing researchers to more unambiguously constrain the interpretation of their data. This becomes particularly relevant in a field like FOC, which has long suffered from irreconcilable results stemming from different investigations.

     

Comparison Among Manual Facial Approximations Conducted by Two Methodological Approaches of Face Prediction

This study verified the difference between two methods of forensic facial approximation (FFA) regarding recognition and resemblance rates. Three‐dimensional models of skulls were obtained from computerized tomography (CT) scans of two subjects (targets). Two manual FFAs were performed for each target, by applying two different guidelines for the facial structures (what we called “American method” (AM) and “Combined method” (CM)). Unfamiliar assessors evaluated the sculptures by recognition and resemblance tests. The AM was that which allowed more correct responses of recognition and higher resemblance's scores for the male target (p < 0.001). Regarding guidelines for modeling characteristics of the face, the ones that are practical and easily performed for sculptures, such as the length of the anterior nasal spine multiplied by 3 for nose prediction, may offer better results in terms of resemblance.     

DXAGE: A New Method for Age at Death Estimation Based on Femoral Bone Mineral Density and Artificial Neural Networks

Age at death estimation in adult skeletons is hampered, among others, by the unremarkable correlation of bone estimators with chronological age, implementation of inappropriate statistical techniques, observer error, and skeletal incompleteness or destruction. Therefore, it is beneficial to consider alternative methods to assess age at death in adult skeletons. The decrease in bone mineral density with age was explored to generate a method to assess age at death in human remains. A connectionist computational approach, artificial neural networks, was employed to model femur densitometry data gathered in 100 female individuals from the Coimbra Identified Skeletal Collection. Bone mineral density declines consistently with age and the method performs appropriately, with mean absolute differences between known and predicted age ranging from 9.19 to 13.49 years. The proposed method—DXAGE—was implemented online to streamline age estimation. This preliminary study highlights the value of densitometry to assess age at death in human remains.     

The Evolution and Convergence of the Government Expenditure Composition in the OECD Countries

In the light of models of composition ofgovernment expenditure and economic growthand the growing globalization process, weinfer that countries should tend to asimilar structure of government spendingover time. In fact, using Tukey box-plotsand σ-convergence we show evidenceof an approaching process in thecomposition of government expenditures inOECD countries for the period 1970–1997. Wealso identify by means of cluster analysisthat most countries are converging towardstwo different models: one including twelveEuropean and non-European countries and theother composed solely of eight countries ofthe European Union.     

Y-chromosome STR haplotypes in two population samples: Azores Islands and Central Portugal

The Y-chromosome haplotypes defined by nine STRs (DYS19, DYS385, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392 and DYS393) were studied in 207 unrelated individuals from Central Portugal and 63 from Azores Islands. The most common haplotype in Central Portugal was shared by 3.4% of the males, while 160 haplotypes were unique. In Azores Islands the most common haplotype was shared by 6.4% of the males, while 40 haplotypes were unique. The values of haplotype diversity were 0.993 for Central Portugal and 0.976 for Azores Islands.     

Gresham's law in politics: Why are politicians not the most remarkable men for probity and punctuality?

Economists have always criticized politicians' behaviour. Adam Smith called politicians “crafty and insidious"; and, more recently Brennan and Buchanan have applied Gresham's law to politics, arguing that the man for whom the expected profit is highest will be the highest bidder for political power. However in their model there is not an argument to explain why these people are elected to public offices. This paper presents a supply model and a demand model explaining why politicians behave as “wicked" men, and are elected by the citizens. Firstly, we develop a model of repetitive and reputation games that shows why probity is not important for many politicians. The second model employs asymmetric information theory to explain why voters elect “wicked" people even if probity is a highly estimated value for them. The paper ends with some suggestions of legal reforms for reducing this asymmetry of information. classification D72. D82     

LAP-banding obesity: a case of stomach perforation, peritonitis, and death

We present a case of peritonitis and death due to the misplacement of a laparoscopic adjustable band inserted through, instead of around, the stomach. This represents the first case in the published literature where a LAP-BAND perforated the stomach, followed by peritonitis and death. The morbidly obese female patient with a history of hypertension and arthritis was 47 years old, 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighed 361 pounds, and had a body mass index of 58.3. She underwent a 2-hour, elective, LAP-band insertion operation to achieve weight loss; 27 hours after band insertion, following the conduction of all FDA-mandated Lap-Band postoperative protocol (including a radiologic Gastrogrografin swallow), the patient was discharged with "no evidence of esophageal stasis or obstruction." She remained out of hospital care and in her residence until she called for and was taken by an ambulance to an alternate, local hospital (57 hours after band insertion), when gastric perforation was confirmed via x-ray and CT scans. No open surgery was attempted to repair the damage, and cardiac arrest ensued 7 hours after admission to the second hospital. The patient was pronounced dead 64 hours after LAP-band insertion. This unique case is significant, given that there were no deaths of this kind reported in The LAP-BAND(R) Adjustable Gastric Banding System Summary of Safety and Effectiveness Data by the United States Center for Devices and Radiologic Health, of the Food and Drug Administration, or in searches of the published literature.