Getting a Job in China

正Not too long ago, the idea of migrating from Europe to China for work would have seemed remote or even bizarre. Today, it seems a trend on the rise among Westerners unable to find jobs in recession-ridden home countries. A few weeks ago, I became one of the many young Europeans moving to Beijing to try to seize professional opportunities unimaginable back home.     

Agrarian and social change in a Javanese village

This article examines rural economic changes in a Javanese village since the introduction of the Green Revolution. Special focus is placed on rural labour market and on the structure of land tenure. It will be shown that cropping intensification, expanding work opportunities in the non-agricultural sector, the longer periods of education and the formation of a more rigid boundary between agricultural and non-agricultural work have helped to decrease pressure on the rural labor market. It will be argued in the latter part of this article that a pessimistic view of profitability in rice cultivation, coupled with rising land prices, has provided a condition in which capital investment in the agricultural sector is not thought of as the best option and consequently, the structure of land tenure has not experienced a substantial change after the Green Revolution.     

Kinematics of Signature Writing in Healthy Aging

Forensic document examiners (FDE) called upon to distinguish a genuine from a forged signature of an elderly person are often required to consider the question of age‐related deterioration and whether the available exemplars reliably capture the natural effects of aging of the original writer. An understanding of the statistical relationship between advanced age and handwriting movements can reduce the uncertainty that may exist in an examiner's approach to questioned signatures formed by elderly writers. The primary purpose of this study was to systematically examine age‐related changes in signature kinematics in healthy writers. Forty‐two healthy subjects between the ages of 60–91 years participated in this study. Signatures were recorded using a digitizing tablet, and commercial software was used to examine the temporal and spatial stroke kinematics and pen pressure. Results indicated that vertical stroke duration and dysfluency increased with age, whereas vertical stroke amplitude and velocity decreased with age. Pen pressure decreased with age. We found that a linear model characterized the best‐fit relationship between advanced age and handwriting movement parameters for signature formation. Male writers exhibited stronger age effects than female writers, especially for pen pressure and stroke dysfluency. The present study contributes to an understanding of how advanced age alters signature formation in otherwise healthy adults.     

Assessment of non-timber forest products in Phnom Kok community forest, Cambodia

Our study focused on the potential revenues of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) in the Phnom Kok forest community in Cambodia. Questionnaires were administered at the beginning of 2007, and results showed that people collected plant- and animal-based NTFPs seasonally. Plant-based NTFPs collected included fodder, food, medicines, resin, construction materials, and ingredients for cosmetics. Animal-based NTFPs collected included honey and beeswax, live animals, bushmeat, medicines, and hides (skins). NTFPs are important economic and natural resources in community forests, and they are used for both family consumption and commercial trade. Resin products represented the largest source of income, followed by honey and beeswax and live animals. Overexploitation of NTFPs, forest degradation, and anarchic forest clearing through fire pose great threats to the continued production of NTFPs. Therefore, sustainable management techniques must be implemented and harvesting should be regulated. Local residents and leaders need to be educated about the long-term benefits of the forest and NTFPs in preserving the environment.     

Temporal Selective Exposure: How Partisans Choose When to Follow Politics

Political Behavior - It is widely theorized that echo chambers contribute to polarization, yet behavioral evidence of partisan selective exposure in the real world is surprisingly tenuous. Why do...     

Justifying Human Rights: Does Consensus Matter?

This paper is a critical examination of a widely accepted method of human rights justification. The method defends the universality of human rights by appeal to diverse worldviews that converge on human rights norms. By showing that the norms can be justified from the perspective of diverse worldviews, human rights theorists suggest that there is reason to believe that human rights are universal norms that should govern the institutions of all societies. This paper argues that the evidence of plural foundations of human rights fails to increase our confidence in the universality of human rights. The paper defends the following claims: (1) the convergence on human rights is better explained as an accidental outcome than as an indicator of the universality of human rights, (2) the plurality of human rights justification is superfluous to the explanation of why human rights apply to all societies, (3) the aggregation of justifications decreases rather than increases the reliability of the universality belief, and (4) the reasonable disagreement among conflicting justifications generates an epistemic dilemma.