Requirements Engineering Technology Transfer: An Experience Report

This paper is an experience report on an initiative to incorporate requirements engineering practices into the development process of two large corporations. The project was framed by a government program to foster collaboration between academia, industry, and government agencies. Its expected result—proposals for cooperative work—is in itself a major challenge, since it was not decided from the beginning what aspect of requirements engineering would be covered by the proposals.We describe the cooperation process followed by the project partners, three universities, and two companies, the difficulties found therein, and compare our experience with other reports on the issue of adoption of requirements engineering into the mainstream practice.     

Cocaine and homicide in Memphis and Shelby county: an epidemic of violence

In Memphis and the surrounding county, there were a record number of homicides (179) in 1986. During the same year, there was a marked increase in medical examiner cases where tests were positive for cocaine or its metabolites. Review of medical examiner and toxicology records from 1980 to 1986 found 87 cocaine related deaths; 46 of these were homicides. In 1986 alone, there were 53 cocaine related deaths, all manners, and 31 cocaine related homicides. In this year, 17.3% of the homicides were positive for cocaine or metabolite. The cocaine related homicides were similar to other homicides in terms of age, race, sex, blood ethanol concentration, and cause of death being due most often to firearms. In homicide cases in which an abuse drug was detected, cocaine accounted for the entire increase in 1986. Police records indicated that cocaine directly contributed to the homicide in 39% of the cases in which the drug was found. In other cases, we speculate that cocaine altered behavior may have contributed to the victim's being murdered either during the drug "high" or during the posteuphoric depression or withdrawal phase.     

Regulatory Competition: A Private International Law Approach

This article analyzes the regulatory competition model (RCM) from a private international law perspective. This perspective helps us identify and resolve two gaps in the standard explanation of the RCM. According to the standard explanation, two conditions must be fulfilled for the market of legal products to function well: (1) free movement of resources (persons, capital, and goods); (2) the absences of cross-border externalities. In relation to this second condition, the standard model argues that a uniform material rule is necessary to overcome cross-border externalities. The main thesis of this article is that a private international law approach can complete this model by adding two ideas. First, a smooth functioning of the market-of-legal products requires, not only the free movement of resources, but also a uniform private international law system which guarantees the autonomy of the parties (free choice of law) and the procedural implementation of this autonomy (free choice of forum and free movement of judgments). And second, a uniform material law, which wipes out the regulatory market, is not essential to deal with the externality problem; rather a uniform conflict-of-laws rule, which leads to the internalization of cross-border externalities by states, can correct at least some of the externalities problem and also maintains the regulatory market.     

The Impact of Mixed‐member Districts on Legislators' Behavior: The Case of Bolivia

Many studies suggest that mixed‐member electoral systems produce different attitudes and behaviors among representatives. This article assesses how this type of electoral system shapes Bolivian legislators' perceptions of their roles as representatives, their district activities, and their relationships with their political parties. It examines these dimensions using elite survey data and interviews with legislators and their personal assistants. The results show that the electoral system does not produce a uniform impact. It shapes how legislators perceive their role as representatives and the nature of the relationship they build with their political parties, but it does not produce differences in the kinds of activities that both types of legislators carry out in their districts.     

Bite Mark Analysis in Foodstuffs and Inanimate Objects and the Underlying Proofs for Validity and Judicial Acceptance

Even though one of the first bite mark cases was Doyle v. State in 1954 (a bitten cheese case), the research has focused on bite marks inflicted in human skin. As published Papers, Case Reports, or Technical Notes can constitute precedents which are relied upon in making the legal arguments and a considerable amount of case law exists in this area, we present a systematic review on bite mark analysis in foodstuffs and inanimate objects and their underlying proofs for validity and judicial acceptance according to Daubert rulings. Results showed that there is vulnerability in these procedures, and it is essential to demand for focus scrutiny on the known error rates when such evidence is presented in trials. These kinds of bite marks are well documented; however, there has been little research in this field knowing that the protocols of analysis and comparison are the responsibility of the forensic odontologists.     

Social Trust, Social Capital and Perceptions of Immigration

Analyses of social capital and immigration have stressed the negative impact that culturally diverse societies have for the development of social trust. Ethnic heterogeneity, according to these studies, is associated with lower levels of social trust. However, social trust has not been studied as an independent variable in order to explain attitudes towards immigration. This article argues that societies with high levels of social capital facilitate the integration of immigrants because those members with high levels of social trust will tend to have more positive attitudes towards immigration. This hypothesis is empirically tested in a cross-country multi-level empirical analysis for sixteen European countries, drawing on the 2002–3 European Social Survey. This analysis shows that, regardless of the impact of other individual-level variables and contextual variables such as levels of unemployment or percentage of foreign population, those with high social capital do exhibit more positive attitudes towards immigration than the rest of the population.     

Roles,trust and skills: A typology of patronage appointments

This article contributes to the study of the politics of patronage appointments by creating a typology of patronage roles based on the nature of trust between patrons and appointees and on the skills patrons seek in appointees. Our classification brings together the dispersed literature on patronage roles and can be applied to the study of modalities of patronage across and within countries. We offer preliminary evidence from our study of the politics of patronage appointments in Latin America suggesting that variations in patronage roles can be related to variations in the institutionalization of party systems and to the nature of the links between political actors and voters. Finally, we explore whether the categories identified in our empirical study can be found in other settings. We conclude that our typology can contribute to the study of the impact of modalities of patronage on the quality of public administration and on political governability.     

Risk Exposure,Humanitarianism and Willingness to Pay for Universal Healthcare: A Cross-National Analysis of 28 Countries

Social Justice Research - In this article, we explore the associations of people’s valuations of universal healthcare with risk exposure and humanitarianism across diverse institutional...     

Building indicators to address community sustainability: learning from the Mixteca region,Mexico

This article reports on an indicator model to assess sustainability at the community level that was developed by an interdisciplinary work group. We applied this model in a case study of the Mixteca region in Oaxaca, Mexico, and provided a tool guide to measure the effectiveness of community-based actions. Two innovative aspects are presented: an iterative process with the community to develop a locally appropriate set of indicators drawn from the literature, and a baseline diagnostic assessment of the community’s performance on these indicators. This assessment may serve as a basis for future research and community-driven projects.