The Impact of ‘New Technology' on the ‘Red Brigades' Italian Terrorist Organisation

The analysis of the ‘New Technology' (NT), as a highly potent set of criminal instruments is becoming more and more relevant. In fact, the most recent expressions of both National, European and International Terrorism have revealed a progressively wider use of goods and services related to NT. The present article studies the several forms of NT exploitation by the ‘Red Brigades' (BR), Italian terrorist group. The information collected is the result of a cross-analysis of doctrine; privileged witness interviews (experts and investigators); participant's observation of websites created by terrorist and subversive movements, sharing the same ideology at the base of the BR organisation and Journal articles on the latest successes by police against the BR, as well as the evaluation of the confiscated technological material. The result is a qualitative view of the interaction between NT and BR phenomenon, in the light of the increasing importance of specific technological tools, carefully selected by the criminal organisation to achieve pragmatic and contingent goals. It is relevant also to anticipate two series of conclusions: first, we show the substantial willingness of the ‘new generation' of BR to search for alternatives to traditional channels of communication, finding in NT, Internet in particular, a valid support, as it provides new and more anonymous vehicles of information exchange, inside and outside the organisation itself. A close ideological connection with a new transnational phenomenon is evident: the Urban Subversive Associations (Black-Block, Anarchic-Insurrectional). Young people with a high degree of technological skill form a potential ‘cradle' of recruitment for the BR movement.     

Selfish and Indoctrinated Economists?

Many people believe that economists in general are more selfish than other people and that this greater selfishness is due to economics education. This paper offers empirical evidence against this widely held belief. Using a unique data set on giving behaviour in connection with two social funds at the University of Zurich, it is shown that economics education does not make people act more selfishly. Rather, this natural experiment suggests that the particular behaviour of economists can be explained by a selection effect.JEL Classification: A13, A20, H41     

Gender, Representative Bureaucracy, and Law Enforcement: The Case of Sexual Assault

Using the theory of representative bureaucracy, this paper investigates the relationship between women police officers and sexual assault reports and arrests. The theoretical contribution is to establish a case in which representation is likely to occur, even without a conscious effort on the part of the bureaucrat involved but simply because of the shared experiences of the bureaucrat and the client. Based on a pooled time series of 60 urban areas over an eight-year time frame, this study finds that the percentage of women police officers is positively associated with the number of reports of sexual assault and with the number of arrests for sexual assault.     

Sudden infant death due to neurofibromatosis type I

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the unexpected death of an infant under the age of 1 year, where a complete autopsy, including scene investigation, fails to reveal a cause of death. Although the frequency of SIDS has decreased almost 50% over the past 10 years, it remains the leading cause of death in infants aged 1 to 6 months. SIDS is a diagnosis of exclusion and requires the elimination of a wide range of possible causes, including asphyxia, poisoning, abuse, occult heart disease, and other natural disease processes. In this report, we describe the case of an infant death initially suspected to be a SIDS death in which autopsy revealed an optic pathway glioma (optic glioma or hypothalamic glioma) and other stigmata of neurofibromatosis type I.     

Sexual victimization among African American adolescent females: examination of the reliability and validity of the Sexual Experiences Survey

Adolescent females are disproportionately represented among reported cases of sexual victimization. Because sexual victimization is associated with an array of negative sequelae (e.g., depression, alcohol abuse), psychometrically sound instruments are urgently needed to assess sexual victimization or coercion. The investigation conducts a preliminary analysis of the reliability and validity of the Sexual Experiences Survey (SES) for a sample drawn from a high-risk population-African American adolescent females. Our analyses indicate good internal consistency for the SES with this sample. Convergent validity is demonstrated. Specifically, scores on the SES are associated with significantly lower levels of self-esteem and mastery, higher levels of depression, lower levels of family cohesion, higher levels of family conflict, and higher levels of using alcohol and being a smoker. Preliminary support for discriminant validity is also obtained. This study is a stepping stone for future investigations into the psychometric evaluation of the SES.     

A Lingering Question of Priorities: Athletic Budgets and Academic Performance Revisited1

Many organization theories suggest that divergent goals can hamper an organization's pursuit of its primary mission. An earlier version of this article analyzed the effect of the pursuit of divergent goals on American public schools. This is an update of the original article that adds two years of data to the original study. Using an educational production function, this article assesses the relationships between athletic budgets and various aggregate measures of academic performance. Controlling for various known components of academic performance, athletic budgets have a significant negative relationship with academic performance. Schools that devote a large amount of resources to athletic budgets have lower levels of academic achievement. A focus on athletics seems to institutionalize goals that conflict with the schools’ academic missions.