Has Structural Economic Vulnerability Decreased in Least Developed Countries? Lessons Drawn from Retrospective Indices

The Economic Vulnerability Index (EVI) is a well-recognised measure of the structural vulnerability of developing countries and is regularly used and published by the United Nations for cross-country comparison purposes, primarily to review the list of Least Developed Countries (LDCs). However, due to the revisions in methodology occurring over time, the official EVI cannot be used to assess the changes in vulnerability. In this paper, we use two retrospective series of the EVI, based on constant definitions. The real change in vulnerability is thus isolated from the impact of revisions in the design of the index, allowing comparison of the evolution of LDCs and non-LDCs. The implications of the revisions in the EVI design are then discussed.     

Transitional Journeys Into and Out of Extremism. A Biographical Approach

This article describes an empirical study into processes of homegrown radicalization and de-radicalization of young people. Researchers in Denmark and the Netherlands set out to answer the question regarding what pathways in and out of extremism (mainly far-right or Islamist) look like “from the inside.” The analysis is informed by grounded theory, based on interviews (N = 34) with “formers” and their family members on their life courses. The study shows that radicalization often concurs with distinct social–emotional developmental challenges that young people face in the transition between youth and adulthood. A practical implication of the marked transitional sequences in these processes is that each type of radical journey may call for a different type of (re)action.     

Price-wage nexus and the role of a tax system

The presented study was aimed to test empirically major economic hypotheses dealing with long-term relationships between wages, producer prices, prices of consumer goods and services, the consumer price index, productivity of labour, unemployment and payroll expenses other than wages themselves. It is particularly important for this approach to distinguish between net wages shaping employees’ decisions and gross wages driving employers’ decisions. Because the variables are generated by non-stationary stochastic processes integrated of order 1 and 2, the analytical tool applied was a vector equilibrium correction model, VEqCM. The findings demonstrate that prices and payroll expenses are the major sources of shocks in the system in question. Wages and prices (particularly producer prices) are the most sensitive to this type of stochastic trends. In the Polish economy prices are integrated of order two, so they can be effectively influenced by anti-inflationary policy.     

A Simple Computer‐assisted Quantification of Contrast in a Fingerprint

A simple method for quantification of contrast in a fingerprint is proposed. Contrast is defined as the average difference in intensity of pixels between valleys and ridges in a fingerprint. It is quantified from a scanner‐acquired image of the fingerprint using a histogram function of Adobe Photoshop. The method was validated with black inked prints and marks developed with aluminum powder. Moreover, we tested resistance of the method to rater‐dependent errors and dependence of the measurements on the resolution of an image and the model of the scanner. For both groups of fingerprints, the method gave coherent and easily interpretable quantitative values for contrast. There were no significant differences between measurements performed by different raters and by the same rater in a test–retest procedure. However, the method was found to be instrument dependent, as measurements were significantly affected by image resolution and the model of the scanner.     

Beliefs on Sexual Violence in the Context of System Justification Theory: The Role of Hostile Sexism and Beliefs in Biological Origins of Gender Differences

Social Justice Research - Estimates suggest that around 20% of women may have experienced rape. Various misconceptions about rape (i.e., rape myths) are closely related to victim blaming. In our...     

Application of capillary electrophoresis to examination of color inkjet printing inks for forensic purposes

In the process of questioned document examination, the discrimination of inkjet printing inks is becoming more necessary due to increasingly frequent counterfeiting of documents printed by inkjet printers. Therefore, a method based on micellar electrophoretic capillary chromatography (MECC) has been developed and applied to analysis of such inks extracted from paper. With the use of an optimized and validated analytical procedure, multielectropherograms of inks taken from various models of printers made by various producers (Hewlett-Packard, Epson, Brother, Lexmark and Canon) were created. It was shown that effective differentiation of individual inks was possible in terms of migration time, order and specific shapes of characteristic peaks. By comparison of recorded UV-Vis spectra, the identification of main dyes was also achievable. The usefulness of the method was confirmed by an intralaboratory test of utility, in which several forged printouts were successfully examined. The obtained results proved that the proposed procedure is a useful tool that could be applied to ink discrimination and group identification of dyes originating from inkjet printing inks. Consequently, the developed method can be applied in the forensic field, including investigation of the authenticity of documents.     

Isotope evidence to link a suspect with a pipe bomb multimurder in Austria 1995

A bomb attempt in Oberwart, Austria, on February 4, 1995, was the culmination of several pipe and letter bomb attempts mainly in Austria. The pipe bomb had been mounted on a self-made gypsum (plaster of Paris) pedestal and exploded when touched, killing four persons. With a level of 200 tritium units (TU), the water extracted from the gypsum pedestal was unusually enriched in tritium (3H) compared to an environmental level of about 20 TU at that time. Investigation of the 3H content of air moisture in the living room of an arrested suspect showed values of about 1000 TU (normally, 50 TU is not exceeded). Additionally, water used as sealing liquid in a glass with nitroglycerine found in the living room was also significantly enriched in 3H (>400 TU). The living room therefore offered the high 3H level environment necessary to lead to elevated 3H concentrations in the gypsum pedestal.     

First practical applications of eye temperature measurements for estimation of the time of death in casework. Report of three cases

This paper presents first three successive cases of death where at scene measurements of the internal eyeball temperature soon after death allowed to precisely estimate the times of deaths based on this data (33.1°C, 32.2°C and 29.5°C, respectively), which were later confirmed during the police investigation. Simultaneously the rectal temperatures in all three cases were measured and appeared to be between 36.3 and 36.8°C-reflecting a living individual's body temperature. Thanks to a significantly faster postmortem decrease of the eye temperature and a residual or nonexistent plateau effect affecting the eye, using the formula developed in previous comprehensive studies in pigs, the time of death in real cases could be estimated with good precision: 1 h 33 min, 2 h 24 min and 3 h 17 min since death respectively. The actual TOD established during investigation appeared to be: between 1 h 30 min and 1 h 50 min in case 1; 1 h 55 min in case 2 and between 2 h 55 min and 3 h 05 min in case 3. Such precise estimation, mainly due to the plateau effect lasting up to a few hours, could not have been done based only on rectal temperature, commonly measured in forensic practice.     

Forensic applications of stable isotope analysis: Case studies of the origins of water in mislabeled beer and contaminated diesel fuel

This paper describes the use of oxygen (¹⁸O) isotope analysis of water contained in two different materials — beer and diesel fuel — involved in the resolution of two separate cases. In the first case study, it was possible to demonstrate that a sample of beer labelled as premium brand in fact belonged to a cheap brand. The second case related to the contamination of diesel fuel from a service station. The diesel fuel contained visible amounts of water, which caused vehicles that had been filled up with it to become defective. For insurance purposes, it was necessary to determine the source of water. The δ¹⁸O values for the water of nearly all samples of diesel was close to the δ¹⁸O of local tap water at the filling station.