PLANNING AND PARTICIPATION IN CITIES THAT MOVE: IDENTIFYING OBSTACLES TO MUNICIPAL MOBILITY MANAGEMENT

The dual processes of rapidly transforming cities and administrative decentralisation demands that local government address human mobility as a means of countering urban poverty. Despite this imperative, local authorities are often poorly equipped to address the needs of poor and transient residents. Through an examination of four South African municipalities, this article helps to identify three critical factors working against effective responses: poor data and conceptual bias; institutional ambiguities and budgeting processes; and, ironically, participatory planning. Although any one of these could serve as a basis for an article, by taking them together, we better summarise the challenges' scope and outline areas for further research and policy intervention. The article concludes by considering these findings' practical and scholarly implications. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Police Response to Intimate Partner Violence in Canada: Do Victim Characteristics Matter?

This study examines the role of sociodemographic factors and violence characteristics in influencing women's reporting behaviors and types of police intervention received in response to intimate partner violence (IPV) in Canada. A subset of female respondents to Canada's 1999 General Social Survey who experienced physical or sexual IPV by a male perpetrator and who had contact with the police as a result of the violence was used for this analysis (n = 383). Findings suggest significant racial, economic, and social variations in women's motivation for self-reporting violence to the police as well as in the types of law enforcement interventions administered by police in response to reports of IPV. Implications for policy development are examined.     

Raising the Threshold,Fighting Fragmentation? Mechanical and Psychological Effects of the Legal Electoral Threshold in Belgium

Many proportional representation systems are characterised by a legal electoral threshold. Such a threshold reserves the allocation of seats for those parties that reach a minimum share of the votes. In order to fight fragmentation, a 5 per cent threshold has been introduced for both federal and regional elections in Belgium. This article seeks to explore the mechanical and psychological effects of this legal threshold after five elections. It is shown that the threshold has had limited mechanical and psychological effects on voters but some psychological effects on party elites. Moreover, while in the short term the average number of lists dropped and several pre-electoral coalitions formed, in the longer term the legal threshold has not prevented further fragmentation.     

Advancing measures of innovation in the United States

This paper introduces major themes addressed in this special issue, which is based on NSF's Division of Science Resources Statistics (SRS) workshop Advancing Measures of Innovation—Knowledge Flows, Business Metrics, and Measurement Strategies, held on June 6-7, 2006 near Washington, D.C. The first two sections describe the workshop and provide a brief background on R & D and innovation metrics. The last section introduces the papers. They are based on selected workshop presentations along with additional invited papers.

Identification of acepromazine in hair: an illustration of the difficulties encountered in investigating drug-facilitated crimes

After a drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA), a woman was found in a drowsy state at home. She remembered having drunk an unknown beverage by the accused. Blood samples (collected 8 hours after the DFSA), two glasses, and a teaspoon seized by the police were analyzed. Acepromazine, a phenothiazine tranquilizer used in human and veterinary medicine, was detected in the residue of one of the glasses. In spite of acepromazine absence in the victim's blood, the possible use of acepromazine in the DFSA was reported to the police. Two weeks later, a suspect admitted having orally administered acepromazine to the victim. Using a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method, this compound was subsequently detected (31 pg/mg) in a sample of the victim's hair collected a month and a half after the DFSA. A potential short elimination half-life in humans and/or the well-known in vitro degradation of acepromazine could explain the negative blood result. DFSA toxicological investigations are challenging and can be complicated when a rather unusual substance is concerned. In particular, special care should be taken when interpreting the results, taking into account elimination and/or instability data, when available.     

Cocaine profiling for strategic intelligence, a cross-border project between France and Switzerland: part II. Validation of the statistical methodology for the profiling of cocaine

Harmonisation and optimization of analytical and statistical methodologies were carried out between two forensic laboratories (Lausanne, Switzerland and Lyon, France) in order to provide drug intelligence for cross-border cocaine seizures. Part I dealt with the optimization of the analytical method and its robustness. This second part investigates statistical methodologies that will provide reliable comparison of cocaine seizures analysed on two different gas chromatographs interfaced with a flame ionisation detectors (GC-FIDs) in two distinct laboratories. Sixty-six statistical combinations (ten data pre-treatments followed by six different distance measurements and correlation coefficients) were applied. One pre-treatment (N+S: area of each peak is divided by its standard deviation calculated from the whole data set) followed by the Cosine or Pearson correlation coefficients were found to be the best statistical compromise for optimal discrimination of linked and non-linked samples. The centralisation of the analyses in one single laboratory is not a required condition anymore to compare samples seized in different countries. This allows collaboration, but also, jurisdictional control over data.     

Access and allocation: rights to water,sanitation and hygiene

This paper provides a decadal review of earth system governance (ESG) literature surrounding access and allocation to water, sanitation and hygiene. ‘access and allocation’ is one of five analytical problems, and ‘water’ a cross-cutting theme, identified in the ESG science and implementation plan (Biermann et al. 2010). A focused review of ESG and related literature reveals that the ESG literature is very robust in relation to access to water, sanitation and hygiene as a human right. However, the ESG literature lacks a robust, independent consideration of the right to hygiene or sanitation or its linkage and costs vis-à-vis other rights. There is no criteria for resolving competing demands on finite freshwater resources, as well as procedures for balancing rights. It is unclear how a transformed nuanced narrative of water access and allocation rights will address vulnerability and social inequality within this new balancing act.