International environmental agreements between developing countries only: learning from the Brazil–Uruguay case over the suspicion of acid rain

This article is about the process of negotiation and implementation of a bilateral environmental agreement between two developing countries. It analyzes the case of the Act of Jaguarão between Brazil and Uruguay on assessing the risk of transboundary air pollution by the President Medici (UTPM) coal-powered thermo-electrical facility in the Candiota region of southern Brazil. The article adds to the scarce literature on international environmental conflict resolution and negotiations between developing countries, especially in Latin America. First, it explains that even with the asymmetry of power between Brazil and Uruguay, negotiation was possible due to a series of factors, such as the interest of Brazilian environmental agencies in improving the monitoring of emissions from UTPM and the international scrutiny of Brazil prior to the upcoming Rio-92 Earth Summit. Both states obtained mutual gains from the agreement by developing ‘joint fact finding’ research and monitoring. Second, different from most of the mainstream literature, the research reveals that weaknesses in institutional agreements, such as a lack of sanctions or deadlines, were not an implementation impediment. In fact, the very weaknesses of the agreement actually enabled authorities in both countries to cooperate in the development of an acid rain monitoring program in the Candiota region, and as a result, to improve air monitoring capacities in both countries. Third, this research shows that the implementation process (1991–2003) produced different results and impacts: it helped to develop technical capacities of environmental agencies in both countries, increased the political power of Brazilian environmental agencies to control UTPM, and pushed for behavioral changes to enable UTPM to respond to the demands of both governments.     

Communication Law,Technological Change,and the New Normal

Our current debates concerning communication law and policy would have been unrecognizable to us twenty years ago. Few predicted in 1993, when the World Wide Web was just five years old, that in two decades, the functions of a word processor, camcorder, telephone, camera and pager could all fit within a single, palm-sized device — let alone that the same device could be connected to hundreds of millions of like devices and distribute text, photographs and video in milliseconds. Today's prognostications are often tomorrow's follies. But as the articles in this issue show, communication scholars continue the task of fitting current law into the changed communication spaces created by the digital revolution. After surveying these changes, this article argues that over the next two decades, communications-related technological change will be felt in two areas that have long been the province of state tort law: reputation and privacy.     

Male batterers with and without psychopathy: an exploratory study in Spanish prisons

The aim of this study was to analyze the differential profile of male batterers in prison with and without psychopathy. The sample consisted of 162 perpetrators sentenced for a serious offence against their intimate partner. The prevalence of psychopathy or psychopathic traits, established according to the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, was about 12%. The psychopathic batterers were younger, more impulsive, more suspicious, and less empathetic and had lower self-esteem than nonpsychopathic batterers. However, the psychopathic batterers were not engaged in intimate femicide more often than were the nonpsychopathic batterers. The severity of the crime was similar in both groups, so it may be attributed to other variables (e.g., substance abuse, intoxication at the time of the offence, violence history, jealousy, etc.). Implications of these results for further research and clinical practice are discussed.     

Aggressors against women in prison and in the community: an exploratory study of a differential profile

The current study compares the demographic and psychopathological characteristics of 54 men, who were in prison because of a serious offence of violence against women, and of 42 men, who belonged to a program of community treatment for violence against women in the home. There were no significant differences in demographic variables between the two samples. However, from a psychopathological point of view, psychiatric antecedents and current emotional instability were much more frequent and severe in aggressors within the community. Therefore, two possible differential profiles among the violent men are presented. Implications of these results for further research and clinical practice are commented on.     

Psychological treatment of men convicted of gender violence: a pilot study in Spanish prisons

In this article, the effectiveness of a psychological treatment program for men who are in prison for committing a serious offence of gender violence is tested. The sample consisted of 52 men who were imprisoned in eight Spanish prisons. The psychological treatment was a cognitive-behavioral program, in a group format, with 20 weekly sessions that lasted for 8 months. The results showed a significant improvement of irrational beliefs, about both women and violence, as a strategy to cope with everyday difficulties and a significant decrease of psychopathological symptomatology, anger, and hostility. On the other hand, results indicated that the only difference between the patients who dropped out of treatment and those who completed it was the level of initial motivation for treatment. Implications of this study for clinical practice and future research in this field are discussed.     

Free amino acid concentrations in vitreous humor and cerebrospinal fluid in relation to the cause of death and postmortem interval

We studied free amino acids in vitreous humor and cerebrospinal fluid from 58 cadavers in the course of routine medicolegal autopsies in the city of Granada. The main objective was to establish whether free amino acids contents in these fluids were related with the cause of death, postmortem interval, and severity of the classic signs of asphyxia. The amino acids (aspartic acid, glutamic acid, serine, glutamine, glycine/threonine/histidine, citruline, arginine, alanine, taurine, GABA, tirosine, valine, methionine, isoleucine, phenylalanine/tryptophan, leucine, and lysine) were quantified by high performance liquid chromatography. There were no statistically significant differences in amino acids concentrations in vitreous humor when the different causes of death were considered. Our results did not show any statistically significant relationship when asphyxial score was plotted against the vitreous content of each amino acid. A statistically significant increase with postmortem interval was observed in vitreous taurine (r = 0.3191, p = 0.01461), glutamate (r = 0.4323, p = 0.0007) and particularly in aspartate (r = 0.4508, p = 0.0003).     

Assessing risk markers in intimate partner femicide and severe violence: a new assessment instrument

The aim of this study is to develop a scale to predict intimate partner femicide and severe violence. The sample consists of 1,081 batterer men who were reported to the police station. First, the most significant differences between the severe violence group (n = 269) and the less severe violence group (n = 812) in sociodemographic variables are determined. Both aggressors and victims of the severe violence group have a higher rate of immigration. Second, the proposed 20-item scale is derived from a larger 58-item scale, where only the most discriminative items between severe and nonsevere intimate partner violence are taken into account. Psychometric properties of reliability and validity are rather good. Cutoff scores have been proposed according to sensitivity and specificity. This easy-to-use tool appears to be suitable to the requirements of criminal justice professionals and is intended for use in safety planning. Implications of these results for further research are discussed.