寻求韩国预防大国在东北亚冲突中的作用

随着中国在地区事务中的作用与责任与日俱增,中国在解决地区安全、贸易及环境问题等方面的合作日益至关重要。美国总统奥巴马曾说,美中关系是美国在国际事务中最重要的关系。但东北亚地区有许多问题会经常引发中美两国产生争议和冲突。本文将论证朝鲜半岛问题本身对这种中美合作关系的负面影响。天安舰事件证明了中美两国合作关系的脆弱性;包括核问题在内旷日持久的＂朝鲜问题＂影响中美关系。美国和中国在如何看待与解决朝鲜问题方面存在分歧。特别是在过去两年内,两个大国之间的分歧已经扩大。因此,本文最后将论述韩国对改善美中关系的作用。为避免冷战格局重现,韩国在朝鲜半岛及东北亚地区应该能够发挥更大的作用。     

Do Traffic Tickets Reduce Motor Vehicle Accidents? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

This paper analyzes the effect of traffic tickets on motor vehicle accidents. Ordinary least squares (OLS) estimate may be upward biased because police officers tend to focus on areas where and periods when there is heavy traffic and thus higher rates of accidents. This paper exploits the dramatic increase in tickets during the Click‐it‐or‐Ticket campaign to identify the causal impact of tickets on accidents using data from Massachusetts. I find that tickets significantly reduce accidents and nonfatal injuries. I provide suggestive evidence that tickets have a larger impact at night and on female drivers.     

FETAL TESTOSTERONE AND CRIMINALITY: TEST OF EVOLUTIONARY NEUROANDROGENIC THEORY

Evolutionary neuroandrogenic (ENA) theory asserts that criminality is a crude form of competitive behavior over resources, status, and mating opportunities. Theoretically, males have been selected for resource acquisitiveness as a result of female preferences for mates who are successful at resource provisioning. ENA theory also asserts that brain exposure to both prenatal and postpubertal androgens (particularly testosterone) promotes all forms of competitiveness, including those that victimize others. The present study was undertaken to test ENA theory by correlating 14 self‐reported measures of offending with a biomarker for fetal testosterone exposure based on the ratio of the 2nd and 4th digits of the right hand (r2D:4D), in a nonrepresentative sample of 445. Both Spearman correlations and negative binomial regressions produced results that largely supported the hypothesized connection between offending and high prenatal androgen exposure, even when findings were analyzed separately by sex. Also, offending was significantly associated with r2D:4D for both males and females. Overall, this study supports the view that exposing the brain to high levels of testosterone and other androgens prenatally elevates the probability of offending later in life.     

Civil Legal Aid and Domestic Violence: a Review of the Literature and Promising Directions

This note summarizes extant research on civil legal aid, which includes provision of legal services for indigent and low-income individuals, and its applications for DV and IPV victims, and concludes with suggestions for improving service delivery and research in the field. Results of searches of online databases for peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed articles, reports, analyses, and evaluations of civil legal aid in the United States were analyzed and critically assessed. Civil legal aid is a promising but underfunded and underexplored avenue for responding to and reducing domestic violence (DV), intimate partner violence (IPV), and their devastating effects. Providing civil counsel in divorce, custody, and protective order proceedings can significantly improve outcomes for DV and IPV victims and their children as well as serve as a cost-effective strategy for reducing violence and generating positive social returns.     

GMOs in the Internal Market: New Legislation on National Flexibility

In an area where until now national autonomy has been tenaciously resisted, new EU legislation provides Member States with ‘flexibility to decide whether or not they wish to cultivate GMOs on their territory’. This forces attention on to the subtle, and not so subtle, ways in which internal market law constrains political actors in the EU. But it is similarly suggestive of how political actors might contribute to the evolution of the internal market. As well as exploring this relationship between the new legislation and internal market law, this article reflects on the ways in which lessons from the past have been addressed by legislators. Whilst it takes somewhat seriously the politics of GMOs, the new legislation simultaneously reinforces some of the limitations of our dominant models for generating knowledge, including the EU's problematic dichotomy between facts and values, risk assessment and risk management.     

Do cigarette pictorial warnings really work for Korean smokers?

According to previous research, cigarette pictorial warnings are effective in not only preventing smoking but also in inducing smoking cessation. In Korea, however, the smoking rate has not changed much despite implementing pictorial warnings on cigarette packaging. Thus, in this study, I focused on how smokers perceive cigarette pictorial warnings. To do this, I conducted in-depth interviews with cigarette buyers at a convenience store where real cigarettes were purchased, and I observed their behaviors at the same time. Thirty buyers responded to the interview. During the interviews, respondents said that when they first saw a tobacco warning picture, they were affected by it at the moment, but it did not help at all to quit smoking. Rather, they justified smoking by considering the warning picture as a picture or a cigarette company logo. They also had a positive illusion of, “It will never happen to me” about the smoking-related illnesses presented in the warning pictures. Above all, cigarette warning pictures were not effective in reducing rates of smoking. This means that the tobacco warning picture policy did not properly influence smokers' perceptions. Further research on the usefulness of cigarette pictorial warning is needed.