Breaking the silence. Family ties and social networks of the deaf. A case study of East Flanders,Belgium, 1750–1950

In this article the social networks and family ties of a pre-industrial (married and/or died between 1770 and 1850) and industrial (married and/or died between 1850 and 1950) cohort of deaf men and women are compared to each other and to a cohort of non-disabled siblings. The aim is to assess the extent to which the deaf participated in a full-fledged manner in family and social life and to evaluate the ways in which their social networks changed as a result of nineteenth-century industrialisation processes. The extent of social integration is deduced from the profile of the witnesses registered in marriage and death certificates. In the absence of personal testimonies of social experiences, demographic sources are invaluable for providing a glimpse of the everyday social life of ordinary people in the past. In combination with historical records identifying disabled individuals, this research is a first attempt to study the social opportunities of an up-until-now often forgotten, but nevertheless integral part of society: the disabled. Based on the analysis of the witnesses, this article argues that in the course of the nineteenth century deaf individuals became less embedded in their social environment and their relationship with their family weakened. The minority of married deaf persons, however, expressed a much higher connectedness with family.     

城市青少年消费行为与品牌消费心理调研报告

在这个重视消费的时代,勤俭节约作为优良传统仍然得到大多数青少年的肯定。但他们同时主张“在节约的前提下,追求舒适、时尚和流行”;经济发展程度、地域和教育背景的差异使城市青少年的消费形态和消费心理也有区别;城市青少年注重品质消费、自主消费意识强、目标性消费突出,受广告影响大,品牌消费意识呈上升趋势;运动鞋消费在城市青少年消费习惯和消费心理中具有极高的指标性。     

Paradoxes of Constitutional Democracy

Drawing on the work of Frank Michelman and Jürgen Habermas, I outline two interconnected paradoxes of constitutional democracy. The paradox of the founding prevents a purely democratic constitution from being founded, because the procedures needed to secure its legitimacy cannot be spontaneously self-generated. It displays an infinite regression of procedures presupposing procedures. The paradox of dynamic indeterminacy heads off any attempt to resolve this problem through constitutional amendment. It shows that we cannot evaluate the legitimacy of a dynamically evolving constitution based on projections of its future development. To do so, we would need a stronger basis for making probabilistic judgments about the constitution's future path. After exploring the problems of using constitutional patriotism as such a basis, I outline an alternative built on the ideas of dynamic constitutionalism and reflexive citizenship. It shows how a dynamically evolving constitution can promote its own legitimacy from within, simultaneously resolving both paradoxes.     

Racial Differences in Public Support for the Death Penalty: Can Racist sentiment and Core Values Explain the Racial Divide?

Prior research has established a strong and enduring “racial divide” in support for capital punishment, but little research has explored the processes that explain the racial divide. Following the lead of Unnever and Cullen (Social Forces 85:1281–1301, 2007a), this research explores whether racist sentiment and core values (individualism, egalitarianism, symbolic patriotism, and authoritarianism) can partially explain the racial divide in public support for capital punishment. The findings suggest that racist sentiment by Whites and belief in core values by Whites partially explains the racial divide in support for capital punishment.     

Do Computers Make Output Harder to Measure?

In recent years, U.S. productivity growth accelerated sharply in manufacturing, but has remained sluggish in the most computer-intensive service industries. This paper explores the possibility that information technology is generating output that is increasingly hard to measure in non-manufacturing industries, which contributes to the divergence in industry productivity growth rates. Our results suggest that measurement error in 13 computer-intensive, non-manufacturing industries increased between 0.74 and 1.57 percentage points per year in the 1990s, which understates annual aggregate productivity growth by 0.10 to 0.20 percentage points in the 1990s. This adds to an estimated 0.22 to 0.30 percentage point error from the increasing share of aggregate output in these hard-to-measure industries. Thus, increasing measurement problems may understate aggregate productivity growth by an additional 0.32 to 0.50 percentage points per year in the 1990s and play an important role in understanding recent productivity trends at the industry level.     

A more efficient extraction method of human bone resulting in improved DNA profiling

Eight human bone samples, from a forensic case, were extracted in parallel using our standard protocol with and without PTB in the buffer. Both methods were sometimes inadequate for (complete) STR profiling, while the presence of PTB even decreases the DNA yield.The complete decalcification of the bone extraction residues in an EDTA-solution with SDS recovered sufficient amounts of DNA, which resulted in complete STR profiling for all samples. Complete decalcification without SDS yielded even higher amounts of DNA and also complete STR profiling for all samples.Similar results were obtained for the DNA extraction from a human tooth.