Subject matter of copyright protection in the UK: a road map to effectuating statutory reform

The statutory framework governing the protection afforded various copyright subject matter in the UK, despite the predictability afforded by its closed list, has come under intense criticism over the last decade or so, with many scholars citing the need for urgent reform. Indeed, given the adverse range of responses in this regard, the question arises as to whether the UK should move towards a system that more closely resembles that of other Commonwealth Countries, such as Canada and Trinidad and Tobago, where a non-exhaustive or open list of protected works is provided for.     

Sophisticated and myopic? Citizen preferences for Electoral College reform

Different institutions can produce more (or less) preferred outcomes, in terms of citizens’ preferences. Consequently, citizen preferences over institutions may “inherit”—to use William Riker’s term—the features of preferences over outcomes. But the level of information and understanding required for this effect to be observable seems quite high. In this paper, we investigate whether Riker’s intuition about citizens acting on institutional preferences is borne out by an original empirical dataset collected for this purpose. These data, a survey commissioned specifically for this project, were collected as part of a larger nationally representative sample conducted right before the 2004 election. The results show that support for a reform to split a state’s Electoral College votes proportionally is explained by (1) which candidate one supports, (2) which candidate one thinks is likely to win the election under the existing system of apportionment, (3) preferences for abolishing the Electoral College in favor of the popular vote winner, and (4) statistical interactions between these variables. In baldly political terms, Kerry voters tend to support splitting their state’s Electoral College votes if they felt George W. Bush was likely to win in that state. But Kerry voters who expect Kerry to win their state favor winner-take-all Electoral College rules for their state. In both cases, mutatis mutandis, the reverse is true for Bush voters.     

Comparing and Combining List and Endorsement Experiments: Evidence from Afghanistan

List and endorsement experiments are becoming increasingly popular among social scientists as indirect survey techniques for sensitive questions. When studying issues such as racial prejudice and support for militant groups, these survey methodologies may improve the validity of measurements by reducing nonresponse and social desirability biases. We develop a statistical test and multivariate regression models for comparing and combining the results from list and endorsement experiments. We demonstrate that when carefully designed and analyzed, the two survey experiments can produce substantively similar empirical findings. Such agreement is shown to be possible even when these experiments are applied to one of the most challenging research environments: contemporary Afghanistan. We find that both experiments uncover similar patterns of support for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) among Pashtun respondents. Our findings suggest that multiple measurement strategies can enhance the credibility of empirical conclusions. Open‐source software is available for implementing the proposed methods.     

Strategic Involuntary Teacher Transfers and Teacher Performance: Examining Equity and Efficiency

Despite claims that school districts need flexibility in teacher assignment to allocate teachers more equitably across schools and improve district performance, the power to involuntarily transfer teachers across schools remains hotly contested. Little research has examined involuntary teacher transfer policies or their effects on schools, teachers, or students. This article uses administrative data from Miami‐Dade County Public Schools to investigate the implementation and effects of the district's involuntary transfer policy, including which schools transferred and received teachers, which teachers were transferred, what kinds of teachers replaced them in their former schools, and how their performance—as measured by their work absences and value‐added in math and reading—compared before and after the transfer. We find that, under the policy, principals in the lowest performing schools identified relatively low‐performing teachers for transfer who, based on observable characteristics, would have been unlikely to leave on their own. Consistent with an equity improvement, we find that involuntarily transferred teachers were systematically moved to higher performing schools and generally were outperformed by the teachers who replaced them. Efficiency impacts are mixed; although transferred teachers had nearly two fewer absences per year in their new positions, transferred teachers continued to have low value‐added in their new schools.     

Position Taking on the President’s Agenda

Political Behavior - Several political scientists argue that electorally vulnerable legislators should be more likely to cast, rather than skip, legislative roll call votes. However, most empirical...     

Stable Isotope Ratios of Marijuana. I. Carbon and Nitrogen Stable Isotopes Describe Growth Conditions*

Abstract: There remains significant uncertainty in illicit marijuana cultivation. We analyzed the δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N of 508 domestic samples from known U.S.A. counties, 31 seized from a single location, 5 samples grown in Mexico and Colombia, and 10 northwest border seizures. For a subset, inflorescences and leaves were analyzed separately. These data revealed a strong correspondence, with inflorescences having slightly higher δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values than leaves. A framework for interpreting these results is introduced and evaluated. Samples identified as outdoor‐grown by δ¹³C were generally recorded as such by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). DEA‐classified indoor‐grown samples had the most negative δ¹³C values, consistent with indoor cultivation, although many were also in the outdoor‐grown domain. δ¹⁵N indicated a wide range of fertilizers across the dataset. Samples seized at the single location suggested multiple sources. Northwest border δ¹³C values suggested indoor growth, whereas for the Mexican and Colombian samples they indicated outdoor growth.     

Inter- and intra-subject variability in ethanol pharmacokinetic parameters: effects of testing interval and dose

Calculation of a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) at the time of an offence by forward or back-extrapolation, using population average values for ethanol pharmacokinetic parameters or a single estimate of individual specific parameters, ignores the possibility of inter- and intra-subject variability. In order to estimate inter- and intra-subject variability in the elimination rate and absorption rate, BAC was measured over time in 12 male volunteers on 4 occasions. Subjects received 0.44 g kg(-1) body weight of ethanol on the first study day, and 0.70 g kg(-1) body weight on subsequent study days 1, 11 and 12 weeks later, to enable comparisons in variability over short and long time periods and when the same or different doses were administered. Evidence of both inter- and intra-subject variability was found, with inter-subject variability substantially smaller than intra-subject variability when the dose varied. Forensically important differences in pharmacokinetic parameters were observed within individuals between occasions. These findings could have an important impact on medico-legal issues related to ethanol pharmacokinetics.     

An Exploratory Study of Emotional Intelligence and Domestic Abuse

To date, there is no literature specifically addressing the relationship between spousal battering and emotional intelligence, a concept that captures the success, or lack thereof, of a person's functioning in their immediate environment. Forty-four men convicted of spousal assault and 76 undergraduate students completed the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i; R. Bar-On, BarOn Emotional Quotient Inventory: User's Manual, Multi-Health Systems, Inc., Toronto, 1997), the Propensity for Abusiveness Scale (PAS; D. G. Dutton, J. Fam. Violence 10(2): 203–221, 1995), and the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (D. Paulhus, J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 46: 598–609, 1984; Assessing Self-Deception and Impression Management in Self-Reports: The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding, Unpublished manual, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, 1988; In Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes, Academic Press, San Diego, CA, pp. 17–59, 1991). Results of this exploratory study indicate that batterers score significantly lower than the general population on all components of EQ-i. Additionally EQ-i total and subscale scores for both samples correlate negatively and significantly with scores on PAS, suggesting that deficits in various components of emotional intelligence are related to an increase in the propensity to be abusive. Implications for batterer treatment are discussed.     

Tunnel vision: The regulation of endocrine disruptors

This study examines the failure of a small but significant element of U.S. chemical regulatory policy: the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP). A range of conditions are implicated in the failure of this program, but one condition, the scientific testing and regulation paradigm (STRP), seems particularly important and ties the failure of EDSP to the failure of other U.S. chemical regulatory programs. This paradigm is a group of assumptions that have driven pesticide (and other chemical) regulatory policy since World War II. This study investigates the relationship between STRP and the failure of EDSP, the potential efficacy of alternatives to this program, and one alternative that broke from this paradigm. Ultimately, this study suggests that we must revise the role of science in regulation in order to find effective alternatives to modern chemical regulatory policy.