After the Madrid Bombings: Internal Security Reforms and Prevention of Global Terrorism in Spain

Approaching the Madrid train bombings of 11 March 2004 from a security perspective, the occurrence of these highly lethal blasts made it evident not only a major intelligence failure, but also serious problems in the coordination between law enforcement agencies and deficiencies in international cooperation to prevent such deadly manifestations of global terrorism. As a result, governmental measures adopted in Spain immediately afterwards to reform the internal security structures and thus more adequately face the persisting risks and threats associated with that phenomenon, paid particular attention to increasing intelligence capabilities, advancing antiterrorist coordination and strengthening collaboration with relevant nations, alongside other initiatives aimed at preventing and countering al-Qaeda related terrorist activities. Overall, those measures enjoyed a high degree of legitimation among citizens.     

Brands as semiotic molecular entities

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the understanding of how brands are a phenomenon endowed with signs and meanings. From the background of Peirce's process of representation a model is developed that characterises brands as a network with three semiotic dimensions. Signs of brands spread out in the markets and establish relations of dependence between different elements. Brands can be defined through the wholeness of these semiotic elements and their relations, resembling a molecule. Thus, it is proposed that brands can be regarded as tridimensional molecule-shaped networks of semiotic elements that evolve through continuous processes of representation. The implications of the model are discussed and the article ends with suggestions for future research.     

Social perceptions on genomics in four Latin American countries. Ethical-legal implications]

The authors analyze under an ethical and legal perspective the consequences and anxieties generated by the human genome project in the population of four Latin American countries: Argentine, Chile, México and Perú, through bibliographical analysis and interviews done to biomedical researches, lawyers and legislators, students and lay civilians.     

Civil and criminal sanctions against blackmail: an economic analysis

The rationale behind the legal prohibition of blackmail and its effects have worried lawyers, economists and philosophers. The paper tries to offer a new perspective on the issue by introducing a simple game-theoretic model of the blackmail interaction under three alternative legal regimes: blackmail as a legally enforceable contract, blackmail as a voidable contract, and criminal blackmail. We show that the first two are substantially equivalent, and are unable to prevent a successful blackmail equilibrium outcome. Making blackmail a crime can instead alter this result for some parameters of the model.We also explore the justification for criminalizing blackmail and find it, in line with previous Law and Economics literature on blackmail (Ginsburg and Shechtman (1993), Coase (1988)), in the correction (albeit incomplete) of misaligned incentives to acquire information and the revelation and no revelation outcomes involved in the blackmail transaction. This justification could be undermined by the advantages of what seems to be a superior legal regime in terms of efficiency: no legal regulation of blackmail. This hands-off system can also destabilize, in a one-shot interaction, the successful blackmail outcome. In plausible dynamic interactions, however, it fails to do so and, in fact, its effects actually resemble those of blackmail as an enforceable contract. This result might explain why most legal systems stick to the criminalization of blackmail.     

The administration of remedial education in Spain Origins, influences and present situation

This article examines the regulation of remedial education in Spain that has emerged from a sweeping reform of the educational system, originating from and inspired by constitutional principles and the regulation of the right to an education. The components of this theme display certain similarities with (a) specific programmes in U.S. educational institutions; (b) the English system of priority areas for the improvement of the educational infrastructure and materials, and teacher incentives and (c) the planning, opening, and specific nature of Educational Priority Areas in France. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Explaining the process of change taking place in legal rules and social norms: The cases of institutional economics and new institutional economics

This paper deals with the phenomenon of institutional change and has been conceived as an attempt to answer the following question: Can we retain theimage of institutional change contained in a theory when we replace a methodological foundation on which the theory was built by a different and alternative one? For an answer to be developed, special attention is paid to the contributions made by institutional economists (IE) and those made by transaction cost—new institutional economists (NIE). The question clearly shows that it is a paper on applied methodology rather than a survey on institutional change contributions. Because of that, its main purpose is not to increase our knowledge about the characteristics of real changes in legal rules and social norms, their causes, their processes, or their effects, though several examples are given of those institutionalist and new institutionalist contributions that analyze those changes. Our purpose is to investigate the way in which these two groups of economists approach the object of analysis already mentioned. Our conclusion will be that institutionalist and new institutionalist contributions are built on two different and mutually exclusive approaches because their respective methods of analysis (holism versus methodological individualism) are different and, above all, because they build their respective analyses on some concepts that are mutually exclusive (concepts showing power or nonvoluntary influences versus concepts showing voluntary transactions). Their analyses contain different and mutually exclusiveimages of the changes taking place in legal rules-formal institutions and social norms-informal institutions. Some comments about the limitations of the holist method of analysis are made in the paper.     

Identifying Salient Stressors of Adolescence: A Systematic Review and Content Analysis

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Stressors play a defining role in youth development and, in particular, in adolescent psychological and behavioral adaptation. However, the nature of stressors...     

Ecstasy and suicide

Deaths due to the ring-derivative amphetamines are not common and are usually accidental involving dehydration and hyperthermia. Suicides from 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and related ring-derivative amphetamines overdose are rare. A 15-year-old female who had a history of depression and previous suicide attempts was found dead with a suicide note. Toxicology demonstrated lethal serum concentrations of MDMA (9.3 mg/L), with 34 mg/kg of MDMA in the liver, 2.4 mg/L in the urine, and 530 mg/kg in the stomach. The cause of death was MDMA toxicity, the manner suicide. While MDMA may be detected in victims in other drug-related or traumatic deaths, it is only rarely used in isolation in suicide, with a predominance in the 21- to 25-year-old range. Despite the rarity of such events, the possibility of a nonaccidental manner of death should be considered when high levels of MDMA and associated amphetamines are found at autopsy.