The World Bank's land of kiosks: Community driven development in Timor-Leste

The World Bank's Community Empowerment and Local Governance Project (CEP) was the key donor programme to assist with community reconstruction in a newly independent Timor-Leste. Commencing in 2000, the US$18 million project provided funds to over 400 local development councils that had been newly created to meet their community's development needs. Rather than creating genuine participatory structures, tight deadlines to disburse project funds and bureaucratic project rules reduced the councils to little more than transmission lines to Bank-controlled dollars. By bypassing existing governance structures, including that of the fledging government, the councils also bypassed sources of local legitimacy and technical knowledge, which resulted in community conflict, indifference, and poor project sustainability. The CEP's poorly administered microcredit scheme led to a proliferation of unviable kiosks—underlining the folly of hastily attempting to construct a market economy on a deeply scarred subsistence economy.     

The case against the use of polygraph examinations to monitor post‐conviction sex offenders

In this article I caution against the use of polygraph testing in convicted sex‐offenders programs. First, I explain that the prevalent method of polygraph testing, the CQT, suffers from several major flaws and has no scientific basis. These flaws, which characterize all usages of the CQT, including its use with sex offenders, create a considerable risk for false positive as well as false‐negative errors. Second, no methodologically sound research examining the validity of the CQT, neither in its forensic application, nor in its use with sex offenders has been conducted. Finally, I explain why the use of CQT polygraphy with sex offenders is even more problematic than its common use as an aid in criminal investigations. Clearly, rehabilitation programs of convicted sex offenders are highly important, but the use of polygraph testing in this context is misguided and instead of reducing recidivism in sex offenders is likely to achieve just the opposite.     

Fair use and copyright protection: a price theory explanation

Copyright scholars suggest that computer technology has reduced transaction costs associated with copyright transfer, allegedly eliminating the need for the fair-use doctrines that were developed to allow limited use of copyrighted material in situations where the transaction costs of securing authorized use would be prohibitive. According to this emerging view, in an ideal world with no contracting costs, third party use of copyrighted material could realistically only take place with the express consent of the copyright holder. This would give the author absolute power to dispose of his work, including the right to veto uses, without the possibility of a fair use “override” of any sort.This paper shows the limits of such transaction cost-based arguments. If transaction costs provide the dominant economic justification of “fair-use” doctrines, an exogenous reduction of such transaction costs would limit the scope and application of the defense of fair use. Nevertheless, in this paper we suggest that, when viewed in light of the anticommons theory, fair-use doctrines retain a valid efficiency justification even in a zero transaction-cost environment. Fair-use defenses are justifiable, and in fact instrumental, in minimizing the welfare losses prompted by the strategic behavior of the copyright holders. Even if copyright licenses can be transferred at no cost (for instance, in a “click and pay” frictionless computer world), the strategic behavior of the copyright holders would still create possible deadweight losses.In this context, we identify a number of critical variables that should guide and constrain the application of fair-use doctrines. These variables include (a) the number of copyright holders; (b) the degree of complementarity between the copyrighted inputs; (c) the degree of independence between the various copyright holders in the pricing of their licenses; and (d) ability to price discriminate.     

猪卵丘细胞和胎儿成纤维细胞的分离培养及传代

对猪卵丘细胞和胎儿成纤维细胞的分离、培养和传代进行了系统研究。结果显示,猪的卵丘细胞生长形成单层需要5~6 d;运用组织块法和酶消化法获得胎儿成纤维细胞单层的生长时间分别为10~11 d和8~9 d。猪的卵丘细胞和胎儿成纤维细胞均可以建立并获得稳定的细胞系,这些方法的应用可为猪体细胞核移植研究提供丰富的供体细胞。     

关于我国引进外资质量问题的思考

引进外资的实质，就是让出国内部分市场、资源去换取国际资本的一部分资金和技术。我国在引进外资时一定要注意其负面效应。本借鉴发展中国家和发达国家引进外国资本的经验、教训，结合我国的实际，提出了我国今后利用外资的若干对策建议。     

经济全球化背景下的文化问题——兼驳"文化全球化"论

关于“文化全球化”的争论关系到我们能否正确地制定自己的文化发展战略。“文化全球化”论者对全球化的本质、文化的本质、文化和商品经济的关系等问题的一些观点,均有可质疑之处,需要进一步展开讨论。     

The Legal Response of the League of Nations to Terrorism

Terrorism was first confronted as a discrete subject matterof international law by the international community in the mid-1930s,following the assassination of a Yugoslavian king and a Frenchforeign minister by ethnic separatists. The League's attemptto generically define terrorism in an international treaty prefiguredmany of the legal, political, ideological and rhetorical disputeswhich plagued the international community's attempts to defineterrorism in the 50 years after the Second World War. Althoughthe treaty never entered into force following the dissolutionof the League itself, the League's core definition has beenhighly resilient and has influenced subsequent legal effortsto define terrorism. While the League's 1937 Convention forthe Prevention and Punishment of Terrorism is often referredto obliquely in international legal discussions of terrorism,the drafting of the Convention has seldom been intensively analysed.By closely examining its drafting, this article elucidates howthe drafters of the Convention agreed on a definition of terrorism,and why they rejected alternative definitions. In doing so,it hopes to refresh and enliven current international debatesabout definition in the wake of the United Nation's 60th anniversaryyear, which saw renewed emphasis placed on the quest for definition.