Your vote counts on account of the way it is counted: An institutional solution to the paradox of not voting

When we explicitly lay out all its steps, we find that the Paradox of Not Voting (since the chance of one vote's making a difference is about zero, why trouble to vote?) rests on a false but hitherto unremarked assumption about the institutional context of elections. My solution to the Paradox is more conservative than others that have been proposed, and it yields a rational-choice model of voting whose consequence accord well with empirical findings on turnout.     

Friedman economic policies,social exclusion,and crime: toward a gendered left realist subcultural theory

Left realists contend that people lacking legitimate means of solving the problem of relative deprivation may come into contact with other frustrated disenfranchised people and form subcultures, which in turn, encourage criminal behaviors. Absent from this theory is an attempt to address how, today, subcultural development in North America and elsewhere is heavily shaped simultaneously by the recent destructive consequences of right-wing Friedman or Chicago School economic policies and marginalized men’s attempts to live up to the principles of hegemonic masculinity. The purpose of this paper, then, is to offer a new left realist theory that emphasizes the contribution of these two key determinants.     

Examining the Light and Dark Sides of Emerging Adults�� Identity: A Study of Identity Status Differences in Positive and Negative Psychosocial Functioning

Identity is a critical developmental task during the transition to adulthood in Western societies. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate an empirically based, cluster-analytic identity status model, to examine whether all four of Marcia's identity statuses (diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement) would emerge empirically, and to identify different patterns of identity formation among American college-attending emerging adults. An ethnically diverse sample of 9,034 emerging-adult students (73% female; mean age 19.73?years) from 30 U.S. universities completed measures of identity exploration (ruminative, in breadth, and in depth) and commitment (commitment making and identification with commitment), identity synthesis and confusion, positive and negative psychosocial functioning, and health-compromising behaviors. The identity status cluster solution that emerged provided an adequate fit to the data and included all four of Marcia's original identity statuses, along with Carefree Diffusion and Undifferentiated statuses. Results provided evidence for concurrent validity, construct validity, and practical applicability of these statuses. Implications for identity research are discussed.     

The genetic origins of psychopathic personality traits in adult males and females: Results from an adoption-based study

Purpose

Research has consistently revealed that measures of psychopathy and psychopathic personality traits represent some of the most consistent predictors of violent criminal involvement. As a result, there has been a considerable amount of interest in trying to identify the various etiological factors related to psychopathy. The current study builds on this existing body of literature by examining the genetic foundations to psychopathic personality traits.

Methods

An adoption-based research design is used to estimate genetic effects on psychopathic personality traits. Adoptees are drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

Results

Analyses revealed that having a biological criminal father was related to psychopathic personality traits for male adoptees, but not for female adoptees. For males, having a criminal biological father increased the odds of scoring in the extreme of the psychopathic personality trait scale by a factor ranging between 4.3 and 8.5. However, there was no association between having a biological criminal mother and psychopathic personality traits for adoptees.

Conclusions

Psychopathic personality traits are transmitted from father-to-offspring due to genetic reasons.     

The development and initial validation of the dating attitudes inventory: a measure of the gender context of dating violence in men

The development and initial psychometric investigation of the Dating Attitudes Inventory (DAI) is reported. The DAI was created, to fill a gap in the literature and to measure specific masculine ideology and traditional gender attitudes that rationalize the abuse of women. Using a sample (n = 164) of male college students, a 20-item measure was developed consisting of two subscales (Rationalization of Abuse and Dominance and Control) and a total score. The 20-item DAI and other measures used for validation were completed by 216 male college students. The DAI correlated in theoretically expected ways with measures of propensity for abusiveness, relational dominance, and masculine gender role stress. A confirmatory factor analysis supported the two theorized factors of the DAI. Results of the present study offer initial support for the validity and reliability of the DAI. The authors discuss the importance of measuring masculine gender role attitudes and beliefs that support and rationalize dating violence.     

Speaker identification utilizing noncontemporary speech

The noncontemporariness of speech is important to both of the two general approaches to speaker identification. Ear-witness identification is one of them; in that instance, the time at which the identification is made is noncontemporary. A substantial amount of research has been carried out on this relationship and it now is well established that an auditor's memory for a voice decays sharply over time. It is the second approach to speaker identification which is of present interest. In this case, samples of a speaker's utterances are obtained at different points in time. For example, a threat call will be recorded and then sometime later (often very much later), a suspect' s exemplar recording will be obtained. In this instance, it is the speech samples that are noncontemporary and they are the materials that are subjected to some form of speaker identification. Prevailing opinion is that noncontemporary speech itself poses just as difficult a challenge to the identification process as does the listener's memory decay in earwitness identification. Accordingly, series of aural-perceptual speaker identification projects were carried out on noncontemporary speech: first, two with latencies of 4 and 8 weeks followed by 4 and 32 weeks plus two more with the pairs separated by 6 and 20 years. Mean correct noncontemporary identification initially dropped to 75-80% at week 4 and this general level was sustained for up to six years. It was only after 20 years had elapsed that a significant drop (to 33%) was noted. It can be concluded that a listener's competency in identifying noncontemporary speech samples will show only modest decay over rather substantial periods of time and, hence, this factor should have only a minimal negative effect on the speaker identification process.     

Evaluation of capillary electrophoresis performance through resolution measurements

The application of resolution measurements to an electrophoretic system can give a quantitative analysis of the health of that system. Capillary electrophoresis has become a routine method for the analysis of DNA and resolution measurements can be used to assess the resulting electropherogram. A number of methods are available to evaluate resolution and three methods are detailed in the current work. Parameters such as polymer concentration and column length were also examined in terms of resolution, and changes therein, if these parameters were modified.