Public evaluations of the presidential nomination process

The evaluation of presidential nomination reforms has been the topic of elite discussion and debate, with little attention paid to popular evaluations. Public attitudes toward a number of reforms to the presidential nomination process were evaluated through survey data collected in 1988. The evaluations included campaign costs, debates, the influence of consultants, and the role of the media. The analysis suggests that there is a relatively high level of popular satisfaction with these dimensions of the current system. Popular concern about the nomination process is focused in two areas—the roles of money and the media. There is a strong suggestion that the movement toward regionalization of the calendar was responsive to partisan concerns in different regions of the country.     

On Being Economical with the Truth: Some Liberal Reflections

Although a commitment to free discussion of all issues is one of the traditional pillars of liberalism, contemporary liberals may be justified in feeling uneasy when their principle of universal human rights is publicly challenged in the name of ethnic community. For in spite of liberalism's reputation for rationalism, its principles rely upon a substantial element of myth which does not stand up well to public scrutiny. Liberals would be wise to become more conscious of this 'mythical' component in their outlook. This would protect them against political naivety and its consequent disillusionment. It would also help them to respond more appropriately to right-wing critics, by relying less on rationalism and more on tactics borrowed from conservatism.     

FEDERAL INTERVENTION IN TROUBLED INDUSTRY: LESSONS FROM THE NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES

The United States government has provided a range of assistance to help troubled industries. Such aid is of particular interest in debates over in- dustrial or competitiveness policy and in thinking about how effectively American government intervenes in the "micro economy." The experience of aid to one industry, the New England fisheries, suggests that programs fail to achieve their ends for three major reasons. First, industry spokesmen and government officials have difficulty understanding the cause of in- dustry problems. Second, programs fail when they are inappropriate ap- proaches to solving the problems. Third, many programs have implementation difficulties. Findings on other industries suggest that the same kinds of problems interfere with the success of other programs. If government efforts to help industries often fail in ways that are somewhat predictable, then Congress and federal agencies should make the assistance more effective by taking specific steps. These efforts to improve programs, however, are problematic themselves and will not ensure success.     

Intimate Partner Violence Exposure and Childhood Psychopathology: Associations with Discriminating Fearful and Angry Faces in Young Children

Journal of Family Violence - Childhood exposure to traumatic violence may shape how children respond to threatening faces and increase risk for psychopathology. Maltreated children may exhibit...     

Invest,Hold Up,or Accept?China in Multilateral Governance

China has played an inconsistent role in multilateral governance, sometimes contributing to the creation and maintenance of international regimes, sometimes free riding or even threatening to undermine multilateral regimes to improve its position. We show that the strategic context of a particular issue of international concern affects China's approach to multilateralism and argue that our approach adds additional leverage to existing theories that rely on assumptions about its inherent disposition or socialization processes. An emerging global power will be willing to invest more in supporting a regime when its outside options are relatively poor. When its outside options are good, it will free ride on the efforts of more established states if it is not a necessary player in maintaining regimes, and if it is seen as indispensable it will threaten to hold up regime support as a way to win concessions. We show that these two factors, outside options and indispensability, can help explain changes in China's strategy with respect to the issue of North Korea's nuclear program and the regulation of international finance.     

Secure Base Narrative Representations and Intimate Partner Violence: a Dyadic Perspective

This study aimed to understand the relationship between secure base phenomena and dating violence among couples. Within a relationship, a secure base can be defined as a balancing act of proximity-seeking and exploration at various times and contexts with the assurance of a caregiver’s availability and responsiveness in emotionally distressing situations. Participants were 87 heterosexual couples. The Actor-Partner Interdependence Model was used to examine the relationship between each partner’s scores on secure base representational knowledge and intimate partner violence. Findings demonstrated that women’s secure base representational knowledge had a significant direct negative effect on the victimization of both men and women, while men’s secure base representational knowledge did not have any significant partner or actor effects. Therefore, findings suggest that women with insecure attachments may be more vulnerable to being both the victims and the perpetrators of aggressive behavior. Research and clinical implications are discussed.     

The single most polymorphic STR Locus: SE33 performance in U.S. populations

The STR locus SE33 (ACTBP2) located on chromosome 6 (6q14) is arguably the most polymorphic marker examined thus far by the forensic community with a heterozygosity of >0.95 in some populations. Three different primer sets were utilized in this study in order to assess the possibilities of primer binding site mutations. Population variation was measured in 460 U.S. Caucasian, 445 African American, 336 Hispanic, and 202 Asian samples along with mutation rates from almost 400 father–son pairs. In addition, the 10 genomic DNA components in NIST Standard Reference Material SRM 2391b were sequenced and found to exhibit a variety of additional base changes, insertions, and deletions outside of the SE33 repeat region.     

The Application of Remote Sensing for Detecting Mass Graves: An Experimental Animal Case Study from Costa Rica*

Abstract: Detection of mass graves utilizing the hyperspectral information in airborne or satellite imagery is an untested application of remote sensing technology. We examined the in situ spectral reflectance of an experimental animal mass grave in a tropical moist forest environment and compared it to an identically constructed false grave which was refilled with soil, but contained no cattle carcasses over the course of a 16‐month period. The separability of the in situ reflectance spectra was examined with a combination of feature selection and five different nonparametric pattern classifiers. We also scaled up the analysis to examine the spectral signature of the same experimental mass grave from an air‐borne hyperspectral image collected 1 month following burial. Our results indicate that at both scales (in situ and airborne), the experimental grave had a spectral signature that was distinct and therefore detectable from the false grave. In addition, we observed that vegetation regeneration was severely inhibited over the mass grave containing cattle carcasses for up to a period of 16 months. This experimental study has demonstrated the real utility of airborne hyperspectral imagery for the detection of a relatively small mass grave (5 m²) within a specific climatic zone. Other climatic zones will require similar actualistic modeling studies, but it is clear that the applications of this technology provide the international community with both an early detection tool and a tool for ongoing monitoring.