Public orchestration,social networks,and transnational environmental governance: Lessons from the aviation industry

This article contributes to current debates on the potential and limitations of transnational environmental governance, addressing in particular the issue of how private and public regulation compete and/or reinforce each other – and with what results. One of the most influential approaches to emerge in recent years has been that of “orchestration.” But while recent discussions have focused on a narrow interpretation of orchestration as intermediation, we argue that there is analytical traction in studying orchestration as a combination of directive and facilitative tools. We also argue that a social network analytical perspective on orchestration can improve our understanding of how governments and international organizations can shape transnational environmental governance. Through a case study of aviation, we provide two contributions to these debates: first, we propose four analytical factors that facilitate the possible emergence of orchestration (issue visibility, interest alignment, issue scope, and regulatory fragmentation and uncertainty); and second, we argue that orchestrators are more likely to succeed when they employ two strategies: (i) they use a combination of directive and facilitative instruments, including the provision of feasible incentives for industry actors to change their behavior, backed up by regulation or a credible regulatory threat; and (ii) they are robustly embedded in, and involved in the formation of, the relevant transnational networks of actors and institutions that provide the infrastructure of governance. © 2017 JohnWiley & Sons Australia, Ltd     

Ambivalence in Intergroup Evaluation: The Role of Fairness Norm

We conducted two studies to examine the role of the social norm of fairness on cognitive (beliefs and judgments) and affective (emotions and feelings) ambivalence in an intergroup context of evaluation. As predicted, we found that ambivalence toward the ingroup is constantly higher in the cognitive dimension than in the affective dimension. Instead, cognitive and affective ambivalence toward the outgroup are generally similar but when the outgroup is highly protected by the fairness norm (i.e., the elderly), cognitive ambivalence is considerably lower than affective ambivalence. These findings provide evidence that (1) cognitive ambivalence is more controlled by the fairness norm than affective ambivalence, and that (2) it holds an adaptive function, changing in accordance with the demands of the normative context.

Regulatory novelty after financial crises: Evidence from international banking and securities standards, 1975–2016

Financial crises are often presented as triggers for important innovations in international regulation of financial markets, but existing evidence for this claim primarily derive from the analyses of individual initiatives, assessed against noncomparable benchmarks. In order to provide systematic evidence of financial crises' impact on international financial regulatory change, this paper develops a novel text-as-data approach to measure regulatory novelty. We use this approach to analyze the full population of international banking and securities standards between 1975 and 2016. Contrary to theoretical expectations, our empirical findings indicate rules designed by international banking and securities regulators following financial crises are on average as likely to build on existing international regulations as those designed before a crisis. We also find that international banking rules published after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis are an important exception.     

Private and public authority interactions and the functional quality of sustainability governance: Lessons from conservation and development initiatives in Tanzania

The changing shape of sustainability governance has been a key academic and policy concern in the past two decades, as part of a wider debate on the interactions between public and private authority in governing the economy, society, and the environment. In this article, we contribute to these debates by examining how these interactions operate locally and across jurisdictions in three conservation and development initiatives in Tanzania and what impact they have on the functional quality of sustainability governance. We find that clear division of responsibilities, coupled with material incentives for communities and equal and transparent distribution of benefits, are key positive contributors to functional quality. These factors underpin the complementary interactions (collaborative at the local level; institutional layering across jurisdictions) that are needed to successfully negotiate and implement the compromises needed to balance conservation and development goals. We also find that competitive dynamics are harmful to functional quality, especially those taking the form of local institutional duplication and of dominance by central government across jurisdictions. These tend to appear especially when sustainability initiatives involve multiple stakeholders with wide discrepancies in resources, interests, and power, which leads to compromises determined in a top-down manner.     

Beta-tryptase and quantitative mast-cell increase in a sudden infant death following hexavalent immunization

The association between sudden infant death syndrome and immunization is frequently discussed. Serious adverse events following vaccination have generally been defined as those adverse events that result in permanent disability, hospitalization or prolongation of hospitalization, life threatening illness, congenital anomaly or death. They are generally referred to the inherent properties of the vaccine (vaccine reaction) or some error in the immunization process (programme error). The event could also be totally unrelated but only temporally linked to immunization (coincidental event). A fatal case of a 3-month-old female infant, who died within 24 h of vaccination with hexavalent vaccine is presented. Clinical data, post-mortem findings (acute pulmonary oedema, acute pulmonary emphysema), quali-quantitative data collected from immunohistochemical staining (degranulating mast cells) and laboratory analysis with a high level of beta-tryptase in serum, 43.3 microg/l, allows us to conclude that acute respiratory failure likely due to post hexavalent immunization-related shock was the cause of death.     

The Right to Gender Recognition before the Colombian Constitutional Court: A Queer and Travesti Theory Analysis

This article discusses the case-law on gender recognition of the Colombian Constitutional Court. It argues that the Court, paying attention to queer and trans theory and to the demands of trans activists, has interpreted mainstream constitutional rights in such a way that trans people can have their self-defined identities recognised. The article criticises the limitations of this case-law, which still does not explicitly include non-binary and gender fluid people. On the other hand, it highlights that the Court's doctrine has the potential to challenge both the gender binary and the very category of ‘sex’ or ‘gender’ in the law.     

Age estimation by pulp/tooth ratio in lower premolars by orthopantomography

Accurate age estimation has always been a problem for forensic scientists, and apposition of secondary dentine is often used as an indicator of age. Since 2004, in order to examine patterns of secondary dentine apposition, Cameriere et al. have been extensively studying the pulp/tooth area ratio of the canines by panoramic and peri-apical X-ray images. The main aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between age and age-related changes in the pulp/tooth area ratio in monoradicular teeth, with the exception of canines, by orthopantomography. A total of 606 orthopantomograms of Spanish white Caucasian patients (289 women and 317 men), aged between 18 and 75 years and coming from Bilbao and Granada (Spain), was analysed. Regression analysis of age of monoradicular teeth indicated that the lower premolars were the most closely correlated with age. An ANCOVA did not show significant differences between men and women. Multiple regression analysis, with age as dependent variable and pulp/tooth area ratio as predictor, yielded several formulae. R(2) ranged from 0.69 to 0.75 for a single lower premolar tooth and from 0.79 to 0.86 for multiple lower premolar teeth. Depending on the available number of premolar teeth, the mean of the absolute values of residual standard error, at 95% confidence interval, ranged between 4.34 and 6.02 years, showing that the pulp/tooth area ratio is a useful variable for assessing age with reasonable accuracy.     

Factitious disorder comorbid with bipolar I disorder. A case report

We describe a case of factitious disorder with physical and psychological symptoms comorbid with bipolar I disorder in a 37-year-old woman. Since the onset of bipolar disorder, which occurred at the age of 31, she increasingly complained of physical symptoms, compulsively seeking medical and surgical interventions. She has been hospitalised several times and her Munchausen-type factitious disorder recently appeared to be developing into Munchausen by proxy, involving her 11-year-old daughter. The patient adhered poorly to stabilising and antipsychotic drug treatment and did not improve through the years. We here analyse her mood phases, which were always associated with changes in the quality of factitious symptoms, according to whether the disorder was in its depressive phase (somatic complaints and suicidal ideation prevail), or in its manic or mixed phase (medical intervention-seeking and manipulation of clinicians to obtain surgical interventions). We also briefly discuss some important forensic issues to consider in similar cases, mainly stemming from the psychotic aspects of these two co-occurring disorders. Clinicians should be aware of some patients' ability to produce signs and symptoms of physical and/or psychological illness and consult psychiatrists before giving consent to invasive diagnostic procedures or surgery.