Persuasion, slack, and traps: how can economists change the world?

Contrary to my critics, voter irrationality does not imply that economists cannot mitigate political failure. With rational voters, reform-minded economists have few viable tactics; with irrational voters reformers have more options. Rational voters can be swayed only by facts and logic; irrational voters could respond to better rhetoric. Rational voters strategically punish those who ignore their policy preferences; irrational voters use less effective disciplinary strategies that create political slack. Even with irrational voters, efficiency-enhancing reform is hard. With rational voters, however, democracy’s failure to adopt a reform is strong evidence that the reform does not enhance efficiency.     

Sovereignty and the Foreign Fighter Problem

Sovereignty is the bedrock of international law. If security requires that the United States transgress sovereign borders to attack foreign fighters and their support networks hiding in third countries, then the U.S. should adopt a strategy to amend international law accordingly. One should not be too quick, however, to disregard a robust notion of sovereignty, a concept that has helped avert conflict among the world's major powers. The United States needs a strategy for sovereignty's future that is based in the emerging security context and a prioritization of American interests. Instead, the United States and the rest of the world are meandering toward a less robust sovereignty with weaker and more ambiguous international law. The U.S. and its global interests would be better served by strong and clear international rules that increase predictability and that confer legitimacy to action against dangerous enemies.     

The probative character of Forensic Handwriting Examiners' identification and elimination opinions on questioned signatures

This 5-year study investigated the character of Forensic Handwriting Examiners' (FHEs) authorship opinions on questioned signatures through the medium of blind validation trials. Twenty-nine thousand eight hundred and eleven authorship opinions were expressed by FHEs on trial kits comprising randomized questioned genuine signatures (written by the specimen writer), disguised signatures (written by the specimen writer) and simulated signatures (not written by the specimen writer). Results showed that, as a group, FHEs were significantly more confident at identifying writers' genuine signatures than identifying writers' disguised signatures or eliminating specimen writers from having authored simulated signatures. It is proposed that the difference in FHE confidence arises from the difficulty they have in deciding which alternative authorship explanation accounts for perceived combinations of similar and dissimilar features between specimen and questioned signatures.     

Recovery and STR amplification of DNA from RFLP membranes

Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) techniques were utilized in the forensic DNA community until the mid 1990s when less labor-intensive polymerase chain reaction short tandem repeat (PCR STR) techniques became available. During the transition from RFLP technology to PCR-based STR platforms, a method for comparing RFLP profiles to STR profiles was not developed. While the preferred approach for applying new technology to old cases would be to analyze the original biological stain, this is not always possible. For unsolved cases that previously underwent RFLP analysis, the only DNA remaining may be restriction cut and bound to nylon membranes. These studies investigate several methods for obtaining STR profiles from membrane bound DNA, including removal of bound DNA with bases, acids, detergents, various chemicals, and conventional cell extraction solutions. Direct multiplex STR amplification of template in the membrane-bound state was also explored. A partial STR profile was obtained from DNA that was recovered from an archived membrane using conventional extraction buffer components, indicating promise for recovering useful STR information from RFLP membranes that have been maintained in long-term frozen storage.     

Governance and community benefit: are nonprofit hospitals good candidates for Sarbanes-Oxley type reforms?

Recent investigations into the activities of nonprofit hospitals have pointed to weak or lax governance on the part of some of these organizations. As a result of these events, various federal and state initiatives are now either under way or under discussion to strengthen the governance of hospitals and other nonprofit corporations through mandatory board structures and practices. However, despite policy makers' growing interest in these types of governance reforms, there is in fact little empirical evidence to support their contribution to the effectiveness of hospital boards. The purpose of this article is to report the results of a study examining the relationship between the structure and practices of nonprofit hospital boards relative to the hospital's provision of community benefits. Our results point to modest relationships between these sets of variables, suggesting considerable limitations to what federal and state policy makers can accomplish through legislative initiatives to improve the governance of nonprofit hospitals.     

Associations between Cultural Stressors,Cultural Values,and Latina/o College Students’ Mental Health

Latina/o college students experience cultural stressors that negatively impact their mental health, which places them at risk for academic problems. We explored whether cultural values buffer the negative effect of cultural stressors on mental health symptoms in a sample of 198 Latina/o college students (70?% female; 43?% first generation college students). Bivariate results revealed significant positive associations between cultural stressors (i.e., acculturative stress, discrimination) and mental health symptoms (i.e., anxiety, depressive, psychological stress), and negative associations between cultural values of familismo, respeto, and religiosity and mental health symptoms. Several cultural values moderated the influence of cultural stressors on mental health symptoms. The findings highlight the importance of helping Latina/o college students remain connected to their families and cultural values as a way of promoting their mental health.     

Florence Nightingale a Hundred Years on: who she was and what she was not

This article reviews Florence Nightingale's work 100 years after her death, based on surviving writing compiled for The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale. Described are her founding of a new profession for women, based on patient care, her pioneering work in statistics and data analysis and her bold reform of the workhouse infirmaries. A section on historiography focuses on the negative impact of F. B. Smith's attack on Nightingale in 1982 and Monica Baly's progressively more negative interpretations from the 1970s to her death in 1998. Note is made of future research opportunities .     

Developing a peace course in police studies: how a culture of peace can enhance police legitimacy in a democratic society

This paper reflects my experiences developing a course within the Criminal Justice Technology Associates of Science degree program at Valencia College that fuses topics unique to peace and police studies. The key challenge in developing this course was in confronting the paradox of the police as instruments of both peace and conflict. In dealing with this paradox, students examine the role of the police in a democratic society and the authority of the police to use coercive force. Key topics covered in this course include defining peace, the police role in peace movements, the history, structure and strategies affecting the police, causes of violence, conflict analysis and conflict intervention, and ethical foundations for peace. In addition, this course examines occupational, organizational, institutional factors that contribute to the development of a unique police subculture that values crime fighting as its core responsibility and the impact of that orientation on police attitudes and behaviors toward the public. Throughout the course, students are challenged to envision a new paradigm for policing that emphasizes a culture of peace rather than a culture of conflict.