Marginal lands: the role of remote sensing in constructing landscapes for agrofuel development

With the growth of the biofuel complex, the concept of ‘marginal land’ has emerged as a term commonly associated with the promotion of agrofuels. Remote sensing and other data are used to globally characterize land as marginal based on predominantly biophysical features that render it ‘non-competitive’ for the purpose of commercial food agriculture. This paper explores the limitations of current geospatial technologies in determining whether marginal land is appropriate for bioenergy crops given that (i) people often have intentions behind land use that are not reflected in most routinely collected remote sensing data and (ii) a remote (and spatio-temporally static) characterization of marginality is unable to capture the shifting character of what constitutes marginality in an economic sense and is therefore a non-sequitur for guiding land use decisions on the ground. This paper also explores the latent values embedded in the ontology of a macro-scale ‘marginal land’ land cover class and advances the notion that ‘marginal land’ as an artificial spatial construct serves to re-frame land in a way that neglects socio-ecological processes in order to re-frame it in support of principles based in resource productivism.     

Should Science Class Be Fair? Frames and Values in the Evolution Debate

Communicators try to shape public opinion to their advantage by invoking social values. We examine a vivid example of this value framing in the debate over teaching evolution in the public schools. Supporters of intelligent design (ID) theory have pressed for greater acceptance in public schools by framing the issue as a question of fairness. A survey experiment revealed overwhelming agreement that including ID in science class is fairer than excluding it. This belief had a greater impact on tolerance for ID when the issue was framed with respect to fairness. A second study showed similar effects from a pro-ID documentary film. A final study showed that training in scientific reasoning counteracts the impact of the fairness value, thereby decreasing tolerance for ID. Combined, these studies show how political debate can be understood as a contest over which values deserve greatest consideration or emphasis.     

Assessing programs designed to improve outcomes for children exposed to violence: Results from nine randomized controlled trials

Objectives

The study tests whether participation in interventions offered by a subset of sites from the National Safe Start Promising Approaches for Children Exposed to Violence initiative improved outcomes for children relative to controls.

Methods

The study pools data from the nine Safe Start sites that randomized families to intervention and control groups, using a within-site block randomization strategy based on child age at baseline. Caregiver-reported outcomes, assessed at baseline, 6 and 12 months, included caregiver personal problems, caregiver resource problems, parenting stress, child and caregiver victimization, child trauma symptoms, child behavior problems, and social-emotional competence.

Results

Results revealed no measurable intervention impact in intent-to-treat analyses at either 6- or 12-month post-baseline. In 6-month as-treated analyses, a medium to high intervention dose was associated with improvement on two measures of child social-emotional competence: cooperation and assertion. Overall, there is no reliable evidence of significant site-to-site effect variability, even in the two cases of significant intervention effect.

Conclusions

Since families in both the intervention and control groups received some degree of case management and both groups improved over time, it may be advantageous to explore the potential impacts of crisis and case management separately from mental health interventions. It may be that, on average, children in families whose basic needs are being attended to improve substantially on their own.     

Friendship Networks and Delinquency: The Relative Nature of Peer Delinquency

Although acknowledging the importance of adolescent friendships in the etiology of delinquency, prior studies have yet to provide a detailed examination of the role of actual friendship networks in delinquency. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (1995–1996), this study's incorporation of friendship networks allows for a more rigorous conceptualization and measurement of peer delinquency based on carefully defined networks of adolescent friendships. Findings illustrate that friendship networks are very heterogenous in terms of members' participation in delinquent behavior with the majority of adolescents belonging to networks containing both delinquent and non-delinquent friends. In support of differential association's premise that delinquent behavior is influenced by the ratio of definitions favorable to those unfavorable to law violation (Sutherland, 1947), the proportion of delinquent friends in a respondent's network is most strongly associated with respondents' subsequent delinquency. This relative measure of peer delinquency is preferable to a measure of the absolute level of delinquency occurring by friends, the average delinquency committed by friends, or the absolute number of delinquent friends. Enmeshment in a friendship network where consensus about the appropriateness of delinquency is maximized (i.e., all friends are delinquent or non-delinquent) most effectively constrains the behaviors of network members to resemble the groups' behavior.     

Between commandments and laws: Religiosity, political ideology, and legal obedience in Israel

This paper presents three surveys designed to examine the effect ofreligiosity and political ideology on legal disobedience among Israeli citizens. In addition to samples of the general Jewish population (N = 1,728), thesurveys included samples of three groups characterized by a combinationof religiosity and right-wing political orientation: Yeshiva (religiousseminary) students (N = 464), ultra-orthodox Jews (N = 217), andsettlers in the occupied territories (N = 361). The results show thatacceptance of the rule of law is weaker among ultra-orthodox andright-wing respondents. Furthermore, compared to the general populationof Jews, Yeshiva students and ultra-orthodox Jews expressed lower levelsof commitment to legal obedience. Comparison of attitudes before andafter the occurrence of controversial legal and political events indicated thatsuch events have a generalized effect on legal obedience.     

How Behavioral Science Ultimately Fails Retirement Savers: A Noble Experiment

Behavioral scientists boast that their insights have increased savings in 401(k) plans. Evidence shows that careful use of default decision settings and nudges can prevent decisional errors and encourage behavior that aligns with public policy while retaining individual power of choice. Indeed, even the Swedish National Academy of Sciences highlighted the effect of his behavioral science work on retirement savings when it awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in economics to Professor Richard Thaler. This article shows, though, that, unlike the three plan default settings attributed to behavioral science insights, the default setting that I term automatic retention fails. That failure means too many savers take affirmative actions to move (rollover) assets from their 401(k) plans to individual retirement accounts (IRAs). Primarily because of rollovers, IRAs hold more than 11.5% of U.S. household financial assets. However, usually the decision to roll over is not an optimal choice for the saver. This last mile problem undermines the goal of the first three default settings to help employees build long‐term retirement savings. This article examines research on what causes default settings to be slippery, as is the case for automatic retention, instead of sticky, as is the case for the other 401(k) default settings. It then evaluates three categories of potential interventions to mitigate the popularity of rollovers: aggressive regulation, expansion of fiduciary obligation, and use of incremental impeding altering rules. It concludes that adoption of incremental impeding altering rules would be both politically feasible and effective in increasing the stickiness of the automatic retention default setting.