A defence model for the Baltic states

It is often argued that the Baltic states should not be accepted in NATO because they are not defensible and NATO forces would not be able to intervene in time if they were attacked. This article presents a possible Baltic defence concept which appears to be well adapted to Baltic terrain and Baltic material and manpower resources, and which should at the very least impose significant delay (weeks) and heavy losses on a massive attack. Friendly intervention could be in the form of air strikes against aggressor columns blocked on the roads.     

The highway of Europe and Asia

The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient. By Henri Frankfort. The Pelican History of Art. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Essex. 1954. Pp. xxvi + 270; 192 plates and 117 figures in the text. Price 42s.

The History and Culture of the Indian People. The Classical Age. By Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Bombay: Arthur Probsthain. 1554. Pp. lx + 745, with four maps and 43 plates (two, of Ajanta paintings, in colour).

Malaya, Indonesia, Borneo and the Philippines. By Charles Robequain. Translated by E. D. Laborde. Longmans. 1954. Pp. 456; 15 photographs, 36 maps, bibliography and index. 30s.

Iran. By Professor R. Ghirshman. Translated from the French for the Pelican Series. 1951 (1954, translation). 5s.

A Bibliography of Painting in Islam. By K. A. C. Creswell. (Publications de l'Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale du Caire : Art Islamique, tome I.) Cairo, 1953.

The Arabian Peninsula. By Richard Sangar. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York. 1954. Pp. 296. Ill. $5.

Qataban and Sheba. Exploring Ancient Kingdoms on the Biblical Spice‐routes of Arabia. By Wendell Phillips. Gollancz. 1955. Pp. 335. Ill. Price 21s.

The Old Turkey and the New. From Byzantium to Ankara. By Sir Harry Luke, K.C.M.G., D.Litt. London : Geoffrey Bles. 1955. Pp. 233. 16s.

The Sūfi Path of Love. An Anthology of Sūfism. Compiled by Margaret Smith, D.Lit. Luzac and Co. 1954. Pp. 154. 21s.

The Road to Mecca. By Muhammad Asad. London: Max Reinhardt. 1954. Pp. xiii + 381. Illustrated. 21s.

Danger in Kashmir. By Josef Korbel. With a Foreword by C. W. Nimitz, Fleet Admiral, U.S.N. Princeton (New Jersey) University Press. 1954. Pp. xvi + 351. Two maps drawn by Waldo R. Barton. Oxford University Press, London. $5.

The Life of Lord Roberts. By David James. (Foreword by L. S. Amery, C.H.) London : Hollis and Carter. 1954. 5¾” × 8¾”. Pp. xxiii + 503; Index, 18 maps, 16 illustrations. 30s. net.

Jinnah. By Hector Bolitho. John Murray. London. 1954. Pp. 244. Ill. 18s.

Tibetan Marches. By André Migot. London : Rupert Hart‐Davis. Pp. 288; 40 illustrations; 2 maps. 18s.

South Col. By Wilfrid Noyce. Heinemann. London. 1954. Pp. 303; 40 plates with line drawings and maps. 21s.

Journey by Junk. By Willard Price. Wm. Heinemann Ltd. 1954. Pp. 219 and Index. Illustrated. 18s.

The Indus Civilization. By Sir Mortimer Wheeler. A supplementary volume to the Cambridge History of India. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 95 and xxiv plates of illustrations. 18s.

Iran. By Richard N. Frye. George Allen and Unwin. London. 1954. Pp. 120; 2 sketch‐maps. 7¼” × 4¼”. 8s. 6d.

Al Yemen. A General Social, Political and Economic Survey. By Dr. Gamal‐Eddine Heyworth‐Dunne. Cairo: Renaissance Bookshop. 1952. Pp. X + 118; sketch‐map. 50 piastres.

Report from Malaya. By Vernon Bartlett. Published by Derek Verschoyle. 1954. Pp. 128. Ill. 10s. 6d.

Babylonian and Assyrian Religion. By S. H. Hooke. London: Hutchinson's University Library. 1953. Pp. 128. 8s. 6d.     

Risk Governance of the Swedish Customs Service: Negotiating Security,Efficiency, and Poor Information

During the last decade, ‘risk management’ has become the common language through which different and sometimes contradictory expectations are brokered in the Swedish customs service. Security concerns, corporate interests and managerial reforms are all phrased—or re‐phrased—as considerations of risk. These considerations are then used to direct organizational strategy and resources. The crucial moment is the operationalization of risks, which are negotiated at the policy level, all the way down through the organization. I will argue that this has happened in the Swedish customs service during the last decade. The successive operationalizations of drugs, violation of intellectual property rights and organized crime have enabled a streamlining of the organization along the policy level risks. The resulting risk governance is mainly about managing the customs as an organization. Yet it also affects the customs' use of force by changing the way border crossers are singled out for control. The traditional, informal risk assessment at the border is being replaced—or supplemented—by formal risk profiles, constructed from the booking information provided by transportation companies. As a consequence, the control selection is increasingly based on a set of impersonal indicators such as mode of payment and possible rebooking.     

The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention: a Short Presentation

The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rådet, BRÅ) is a centre for research and development work within the justice system and is to provide assistance to the agencies of the criminal justice system in improving their knowledge and developing their methods to combat and to prevent crime.

In this article a summary of the operations of the Council – with a focus on the year 2004 – is presented. It is shown that a great number of evaluation projects have been conducted (e.g. of electronic monitoring of offenders). Another way in which the Council can contribute is working to develop various instruments that can be used to measure the effects of different parts of the criminal justice system. As an example, a routine measure of repeat victimization at the regional and local level for different crime types, is being developed.

In order to maintain a national centre of expertise in the broad area of economic and organized crime, a special secretariat has been established. Its focus is directed at the area of prevention, ranging from strategies to methods. Finally, the Council has the responsibility to support local crime prevention work and mediation at the local level.

The article also points out some challenges for the future.     

Development of a harmonized method for the profiling of amphetamines. I. Synthesis of standards and compilation of analytical data

Reference material was synthesised for 21 substances that are frequently present as synthetic impurities, i.e. by-products, in illicitly produced amphetamine. Each of these substances is a typical by-product for at least one of the three approaches most often used to synthesise amphetamine, namely, the Leuckart, the reductive amination of benzyl methyl ketone, and the nitrostyrene routes. A large body of data on the substances was recorded, including the following: mass spectra, ultraviolet spectra, Fourier transform infrared spectra, infrared spectra in gas phase, and 1H NMR and 13C NMR spectra.     

Development of a harmonized method for the profiling of amphetamines. II. Stability of impurities in organic solvents

The present study focused on the stability of 22 amphetamine impurities dissolved in six organic solvents: isooctane, toluene, ethanol, dichloromethane, ethyl acetate, and diethyl ether. The aim was to find the most inert, and thereby most suitable, solvent for amphetamine profiling. Mixtures of the impurities were prepared in the different solvents, and changes in the concentrations of the individual compounds over-time were monitored by gas chromatographic analysis after 0, 4, 12, 24, 48, and 96 h. Isooctane and toluene provided the most inert conditions, although, a few of the impurities were insufficiently stable in these two solvents. The present experiments were performed as a part of the development of a harmonized method for profiling of amphetamine. The results can be used to support the choice of organic solvents for sample preparation. They also provide information about the stability of the impurities that are found in profiles of illicit amphetamine. This is essential due to the fact, that unstable compounds can have a negative influence on the comparison of profiles.     

Designing Efficient Institutions for Science-Based Entrepreneurship: Lesson from the US and Sweden

The recent scientification of commercial technology has brought the interface between universities and industry into sharp focus. In particular, academic entrepreneurship, i.e., the variety of ways in which academics take direct part in the commercialization of research, is widely discussed. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a framework for identifying the strategic individual decisions involved when educational choice is translated into science-based entrepreneurship. Identifying these decisions also allows us to hypothesize what incentive structures should be crucial. Our suggested framework is informally tested by an in-depth examination of the experiences of Sweden and the US. Despite large levels of R&D spending and comprehensive government support schemes, science-based entrepreneurship has been far less important in Sweden compared to the US. Our analysis points to weaknesses in the Swedish incentive structure in key respects: the rate of return to human capital investment, incentives to become an entrepreneur and to expand existing businesses, and insufficient incentives within the university system to adjust curricula and research budgets to outside demand. Several policy measures during the 1990s have reduced the weaknesses in the Swedish incentive structure. The current emergence of a more vibrant entrepreneurial culture in Sweden in some areas is consistent with these changes. Our analysis suggests that a policy aimed at encouraging science-based entrepreneurship should focus on strengthening individual incentives for human capital investment and entrepreneurial behavior both within universities and in business.     

Decentralized governance and environmental change: Local institutional moderation of deforestation in Bolivia

Dozens of countries have decentralized at least part of their natural resource policies over the last two decades. Despite the length of time that these policy experiments have been in force, there is little agreement about their effectiveness. We argue that part of this ambivalence stems from three limitations of extant studies, suggesting that future studies of decentralized natural resource governance should consider a combination of 1) variation in the local institutional context, 2) the fit between the reform and other public policies, and 3) more adequate outcome measures for decentralized resource governance. After developing such an approach, we posit that varying forest conditions depend on the moderating effects that local institutions have on the socioeconomic and biophysical drivers of environmental change. Analyzing data from interviews and remotely sensed images from 30 municipalities in the Bolivian lowlands, we find that the local institutional performance affects unauthorized deforestation directly and indirectly, but detect no effects on either permitted or total deforestation. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Reliability of breath-alcohol analysis in individuals with gastroesophageal reflux disease.

Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is widespread in the population among all age groups and in both sexes. The reliability of breath alcohol analysis in subjects suffering from GERD is unknown. We investigated the relationship between breath-alcohol concentration (BrAC) and blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) in 5 male and 5 female subjects all suffering from severe gastroesophageal reflux disease and scheduled for antireflux surgery. Each subject served in two experiments in random order about 1-2 weeks apart. Both times they drank the same dose of ethanol (approximately 0.3 g/kg) as either beer, white wine, or vodka mixed with orange juice before venous blood and end-expired breath samples were obtained at 5-10 min intervals for 4 h. An attempt was made to provoke gastroesophageal reflux in one of the drinking experiments by applying an abdominal compression belt. Blood-ethanol concentration was determined by headspace gas chromatography and breath-ethanol was measured with an electrochemical instrument (Alcolmeter SD-400) or a quantitative infrared analyzer (Data-Master). During the absorption of alcohol, which occurred during the first 90 min after the start of drinking, BrAC (mg/210 L) tended to be the same or higher than venous BAC (mg/dL). In the post-peak phase, the BAC always exceeded BrAC. Four of the 10 subjects definitely experienced gastric reflux during the study although this did not result in widely deviant BrAC readings compared with BAC when sampling occurred at 5-min intervals. We conclude that the risk of alcohol erupting from the stomach into the mouth owing to gastric reflux and falsely increasing the result of an evidential breath-alcohol test is highly improbable.