Gebhard Kirchgässner, 60 years on

This introductory essay summarizes the contents of the papers presented at a conference in honor of Gebhard Kirchgässner entitled “(Macro-)Economic Policy and Public Choice” which are published in this special issue. In addition to this brief overview on the contributions, this essay relates them to the scientific works of Gebhard Kirchgässner after locating the latter within the realm of Public Choice analysis.     

A sociosemiotic interpretation of cybersecurity in U.S. legislative discourse

ABSTRACT

Based on one specially created corpus of U.S. cybersecurity-related laws, this study employs the corpus approach to examine the referent objects and securitizing actors in U.S. cybersecurity legislative discourse, which are two critical issues in constructing security, including cybersecurity. Through corpus data analysis, it is found that unlike traditional security, cybersecurity has become more people-oriented in terms of referent objects with critical infrastructure as a key referent object. Additionally, the role of private sectors and cooperative security are highlighted in U.S. cybersecurity legislative discourse. From a sociosemiotic perspective, it is noted that the meaning-making process of U.S. cybersecurity not only is conveyed by the texts but also interacts with other sign systems, such as historical background, cyberspace as a virtual realm and social contexts, which suggests that the specific meanings of signs constructing cybersecurity and cybersecurity itself should be interpreted in specific temporal or spatial contexts. Furthermore, a sociosemiotic approach to U.S. cybersecurity legislative discourse also offers valuable insights to how signs and concepts in cybersecurity contribute to sketching a holistic landscape of cybersecurity and further security on a large scale.     

Good news and bad news: evidence of media bias in unemployment reports

This study employs information obtained from media content analyses, as well as economic and political data, to investigate negativity in unemployment news between 2001 and 2010 in Germany. The data indicate a substantial bias in terms of the amounts of negative and positive reports, compared with the actual development of unemployment. Moreover, the media tend to place negative unemployment reports more prominently than positive ones. The estimates suggest that the bias is not the consequence of journalists asymmetrically interpreting the official unemployment numbers. Instead, it is associated with the exploitation of often non-economic information and structural influences in the process of news production.     

Punishment and Security

Policymakers and the public widely believe that punishment can reduce crime and therefore improve security. Empirical data, however, prove the preventive effect of punishment to be very limited at best. Especially, the assumption that imposing longer sentences will reduce crime rates seems erroneous. In our opinion, this misconception is due to a confusion of time perspectives: Criminal law necessarily looks back to the past, as it reacts to a deed. Security, on the other hand, means preventing dangers, and its focus must be the future. Hence, time orientation of criminal law and the logic of protection clash. Criminal law cannot provide the security wished for. The same mistake is repeated in the prevalent theories of punishment, notably the relative or unified theories of punishment. Security cannot be achieved or fostered through harsher punishment or punishment threats. On the other hand, one means of decreasing crime is increasing the number of policemen.     

Environmental conditions associated with shark attacks against humans: a case report about territoriality

This article describes the autopsy findings of a victim of a shark attack that took place off the coast of Pernambuco, Brazil. The victim was rescued and immediately taken to a nearby hospital but did not survive, even though the lapse of time between the attack and verification of death did not exceed 15 minutes. The presence of a single, large, contused and incised, semiarched wound with a serrated aspect was decisive in elucidating the event. Thus, this study discusses aspects related to the aggressor species, to the autopsy, to the type of wound, and to the causes that have led to a significant increase in this type of event in the area. It was concluded that the lesion was produced while the victim was still alive and that it was the cause of death.     

Application of 3D documentation and geometric reconstruction methods in traffic accident analysis: with high resolution surface scanning, radiological MSCT/MRI scanning and real data based animation

The examination of traffic accidents is daily routine in forensic medicine. An important question in the analysis of the victims of traffic accidents, for example in collisions between motor vehicles and pedestrians or cyclists, is the situation of the impact. Apart from forensic medical examinations (external examination and autopsy), three-dimensional technologies and methods are gaining importance in forensic investigations. Besides the post-mortem multi-slice computed tomography (MSCT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the documentation and analysis of internal findings, highly precise 3D surface scanning is employed for the documentation of the external body findings and of injury-inflicting instruments. The correlation of injuries of the body to the injury-inflicting object and the accident mechanism are of great importance. The applied methods include documentation of the external and internal body and the involved vehicles and inflicting tools as well as the analysis of the acquired data. The body surface and the accident vehicles with their damages were digitized by 3D surface scanning. For the internal findings of the body, post-mortem MSCT and MRI were used. The analysis included the processing of the obtained data to 3D models, determination of the driving direction of the vehicle, correlation of injuries to the vehicle damages, geometric determination of the impact situation and evaluation of further findings of the accident. In the following article, the benefits of the 3D documentation and computer-assisted, drawn-to-scale 3D comparisons of the relevant injuries with the damages to the vehicle in the analysis of the course of accidents, especially with regard to the impact situation, are shown on two examined cases.     

Public pensions and immigration policy in a democracy

The paper analyzes the link between the public pension system and the immigration policy. In a pay-as-you-go system, the incentives for immigration vary significantly between individuals at different lifetime periods. In the framework of an overlapping generations model, we show that the median voter's choice in general leads to inefficient levels of immigration. The median voter neglects the effects of the externalities within the pension system on other generations. An immigration policy that is not affected by the median voter's choice but instead is constitutionally determined will avoid welfare losses. The expected lifetime income of each generation can be increased by applying a rule of steady immigration.     

Should I stay or should I go? Explaining variation in nonstate actor advocacy over time in global governance

The past decades have been characterized by a growing number of nonstate actors (NSAs) involved in global governance. However, despite this growth, only a small number of NSAs have been able to maintain a prolonged global presence over a substantial period of time. To explain why some NSAs are more active, we rely on resource dependence theory. We demonstrate that sustained advocacy over time can be explained by a density dependence mechanism, namely the more NSAs mobilize, the lower the chance that individual NSAs will prolong their global advocacy efforts. Analysis of data stemming from a unique data set of 5,627 NSAs active at the global climate conferences demonstrates that much advocacy in this field is indeed of an incidental nature, namely a large number of groups attend once and never return.     

Interindividual variability, pathological changes and decomposition as an impediment to the morphological determination of human specificity of bone finds

Playing children discovered several teeth close to the wall surrounding a village church. A subsequent police search yielded further teeth, three neurocranial fragments, a metacarpal bone and the fragment of a long tubular bone. The circumstances along with the results of the investigation and the morphological findings suggested historical bones from a former graveyard. However, a large fragment of bone shaft from a long bone could not definitely be classified as being of human origin. The tibia of a deer was amongst the possibilities considered. Comparative tests run at the Institute of Veterinary Anatomy of the University of Giessen in addition to histological examinations, however, ultimately established the human specificity. Interindividual variability and decomoositional changes were determined as causes for the conspicuous macroscopic and microscopic findings for the tibia fragment. Pathological changes could not be demonstrated.