Differences in Handwritings of Schizophrenia Patients and Examination of the Change after Treatment

The aim of this study was to analyze the differences between the handwritings of schizophrenia patients and healthy subjects in addition to the changes that occurred in schizophrenia patients' handwriting in response to the treatment. The test subjects were 29 schizophrenia patients and 29 healthy individuals with the same age, gender, and dominant hand. The changes in the handwritings were examined according to 14 different parameters. On the day of admittance, the percentage of extra letters was 16.7%, and after 7–10 days of hospitalization, it rose to 33.3%. The percentage of skipped words decreased from 29.2% to 16.7% after 7–10 days of hospitalization, and to 10% after 3 weeks. The letters written by schizophrenia patients are significantly larger in height and width compared to the control group. The schizophrenia patients showed a higher incidence of crossed-out letters, adding extra words, missing punctuation as well as missing words.     

Covenant of Mayors: Reasons for Being an Environmentally and Energy Friendly Municipality

The Covenant of Mayors (CM) is the mainstream European movement involving local authorities who voluntarily commit to increase energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources within their territories with the aim of reducing CO₂ emissions and meet the European Union objectives by 2020. One country that has a greater number of signatories of this agreement is Spain. This article analyzes which factors influence the decision of Spanish local authorities to join the ever‐growing movement. An empirical model is formulated to describe the behavior of Spanish local governments, this being a binary choice model which is a function of various political, economic, and technical factors. Among the prominent factors that influence this decision are population, availability of renewable energy, fiscal and environmental stress, citizens’ political preference, the contagion effect of neighboring municipalities, the existence of covenant coordinators, and finally, economic motivations.     

Nations hospitable to organized crime and terrorism

This report assesses conditions that contribute to or are potentially hospitable to transnational criminal activity and terrorist activity in selected regions of the world during the period 1999–2002. Although the focus of the report is on transnational activity, domestic criminal activity is recognized as a key foundation for transnational crime, especially as the forces of globalization intensify. The report has been arranged geographically into the following major headings: Africa, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Western Europe, and the Western Hemisphere. Within the geographical headings, the report addresses individual countries with particularly salient conditions. Cases such as the Triborder Area (TBA) of South America and East and West Africa, where conditions largely overlap national borders, have been treated as regions rather than by imposing an artificial delineation by country. The bibliography has been divided into the same geographical headings as the text. The major sources for this report are recent periodical reports from Western and regional sources, Internet sites offering credible recent information, selected recent monographs, and personal communications with regional experts. Treatment of individual countries varies according to the extent and seriousness of conditions under study. Thus some countries in a region are not discussed, and others are discussed only from the perspective of one or two pertinent activities or conditions. Because they border the United States, Canada and Mexico have received especially extensive treatment.