Social Disorganization and Neighborhood Fear: Examining the Intersection of Individual,Community, and County Characteristics

Fear has long been studied as a consequence of crime given the consistent and ubiquitous nature of fear as a reaction and the systematic variations in its consequences. Past research has shown significant variations in fear of crime at both the individual and ecological level. Here we implement a multi-level approach to understanding potential interactions between perceived safety in one’s neighborhood in relation to social disorganization indicators at the neighborhood level and crime rates at the county level. The nationally representative sample data (n = 2,610) used in this analysis combines individual level data collected in 2006 from the Panel Study of Religion and Ethnicity (PS-ARE) with ecological level data at the tract and county level from the 2000 US Census. The findings suggest a three level interaction negating the well known protection hypothesis of marriage and crime; this essentially means that as being married or cohabitating decreases the negative effects of being in a community with a high level of familial disruption (percent of divorced) increases, but that effect is substantively negatively tempered as the violent crime rate of the county rises.     

Latvians on the road to market democracy

This article began as a contrast between the politics and processes of budgeting and revenue mobilization in Latvia under Soviet rule and as an independent country. The dynamics of events in Latvia and opportunities presented during our research broadened its scope. The article became a broad review of the economic and political processes in Latvia since independence, with an emphasis on the effects of attitudes inherited from fifty years of Soviet rule, traditional Latvian values, and emerging public policies. The interdependence between government and business infrastructure is dramatically shown in the bank scandal of 1995. The bank failures caused near catastrophic reductions in tax revenues.     

Habermas and the pragmatics of communication: a Deleuze–Guattarian critique

The intention in this article is to explore, explicate, and, ultimately, critique Jurgen Habermas' communication theory. Drawing on the pragmatics of Deleuze and Guattari we will propose that Habermas' defence of the importance and priority of communicative action is problematic to the extent that it implicitly involves the issuing of an imperative order that cannot be accounted for within the normative framework that he envisages. In other words, we will be suggesting—with the help of Deleuze and Guattari—that Habermas, undoubtedly against his best intentions, precipitates, what we will call, a strategic levelling of communicative action.     

Dishonestly and without due cause

Legal context: UK trade mark law was harmonised with the laws of other EU memberstates pursuant to the Trade Marks Directive (89/104/EEC) withthe coming into force of the Trade Marks Act 1994. Since then,the English courts have sought to absorb into English jurisprudencecontinental concepts of unfair competition, and a new code relatingto the use of another's trade mark in comparative advertising.Traditionally, the English approach has been more liberal andless protective of a trade mark owner's rights than that ofcontinental jurisdictions, but since 1994 the ECJ has been calledupon to provide frequent guidance on the interpretation of expressionssuch as the "essential function" of a trade mark and the "dutyto act fairly" in relation to the legitimate interests of thetrade mark proprietor. Key points: This article examines the way in which some recent decisionsof the ECJ have led to the English courts having greater regardto the property interests of the trade mark owner and less regardto the concepts of free market competition and consumer protection.In the recent High Court case of L'Oréal and others vBellure NV and others, Lewison J made findings of infringementunder s.10(1) and (3) Trade Marks Act 1994 where he found thatthere was "free riding" on the back of the reputation of certainof L'Oreal's trade marks without there being any evidence ofconfusion or association between the trade marks and the defendants'signs. Practical significance: For trade mark owners, this change in the approach of the Englishcourts opens up new opportunities to combat look-alike productsand comparative advertisements which take unfair advantage ofthe reputation of established marks.     

Reinventing the Governance of Public Finances in Remote Indigenous Australia

The economies of remote Indigenous settlements are dominated by public finances. The current system of governing public finance is highly saturated, fragmented and centralised, and this has a corrosive effect on local governance capability. The political accountability of leaders to their constituents is weakened in favour of an administrative accountability ‘upwards’ to higher authorities. New Public Management reforms have promoted administrative deconcentration, over political devolution, and this has been accompanied by an influx of public servants, Non‐Government Organisations (NGOs) and private contractors, and a decline in Indigenous organisations and local government. The end result in many settlements is a marked disengagement of Indigenous people in their own governance. There is evidence of considerable political capabilities existing within local government electorates. Decentralised financing arrangements can be used to catalyse these capabilities and then address deficits in administrative and technical performance.     

Forensic implications of respiratory derived blood spatter distributions

The nature of blood aerosols produced in physiological studies of an upright subject expiring small volumes through straws, spitting and mouthing sounds, and a semi-prone subject spitting through a bloody mouth or snorting through a single nasal orifice and by a simplified physical model of the respiratory system were investigated. Each manoeuvre produced many hundreds of droplets of a range of size, the vast majority being less than 1mm diameter. Droplets under 1mm dia. travelled over 1m - much further than could be expected if their flight was ballistic, like that of impact spatter. Respired blood aerosol properties are explained in terms of established mechanics of airflow shear induced aerosol production and the fluid mechanics of exhaled air movement.