Viewpoint: Look Before Taking Another Leap for Mankind—Ethical and Social Considerations in Rebuilding Society in Space

Commercial space travel is looking more like a real possibility than science fiction, but tied to that ambition we may be held back by the gravity of emerging ethical dilemmas. This viewpoint article surveys a range of social, economic, and political questions, and critically evaluates reasons why we should explore space. The usual ethical issues related to environmental and safety concerns are just the beginning, as there are other interesting questions, such as: what would be a fair process for commercializing or claiming property in space; how likely would a separatist movement be among space settlements who want to be free and independent states; and are reasons to explore space, like for adventure, wanderlust, or “backing up the biosphere,” good enough to justify our exploration of space? The point here that we should explore space; and if we are to move forward with our journey, which may be unstoppable anyway, then we should seriously consider these issues. At the least, this would give the public more confidence—amid questions of misplaced priorities and wasteful spending, along with an increased focus on ethics in science—that we are looking ahead before we take another leap for mankind.     

Funding Global Public Goods: The Dark Side of Multilateralism

The funding of global public goods, such as climate mitigation, presents a complex strategic problem. Potential recipients demand side payments for implementing projects that furnish global public goods, and donors can cooperate to provide the funding. We offer a game‐theoretic analysis of this problem. In our model, a recipient demands project funding. Donors can form a multilateral program to jointly fund the project. If no program is formed, bilateral funding remains a possibility. We find that donors rely on multilateralism if their preferences are relatively symmetric and domestic political constraints on funding are lax. In this case, the recipient secures large rents from project implementation. Thus, even donors with strong interests in global public good provision have incentives to oppose institutional arrangements that promote multilateral funding. These incentives have played an important role in multilateral negotiations on climate finance, especially in Cancun (2010) and Durban (2011).     

Technical efficiency measurement within the manufacturing sector in Côte d'Ivoire: A stochastic frontier approach

This article analyses the productive performance in four manufacturing sectors of the Ivorian economy: textiles and garments, metal products, food processing, wood and furniture. To appraise the productive performance, econometric production frontier models are estimated, illustrating the maximum output attainable from a given quantity of inputs. The frontier and firm efficiency scores are derived from stochastic production functions estimated on cross-sectional data. The stochastic specification of the models allows for the decomposition of the error term into two components, one the normal random effect and the other to account for technical inefficiency that we explain by various exogenous variables describing the economic and institutional environment. Firm size proves to be a statistically significant determinant of the productive performance. Across the four sectors, the positive impact of being large compensates the negative effect of a formal institutional status in an environment where government regulations still prevail.     

Are Peripapillary Intrascleral Hemorrhages Pathognomonic for Abusive Head Trauma?*

Abstract: The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect, Section on Ophthalmology, acknowledges that searching for retinal hemorrhages (RHs) in infants only in cases of suspected of abuse creates selection bias. However, they also recommend that postmortem eye removal might not be indicated “in children who have clearly died from witnessed severe accidental head trauma or otherwise readily diagnosed systemic medical conditions.” Although infrequently described in the child abuse literature, peripapillary intrascleral hemorrhages (bleeding in the sclera at the optic nerve insertion)—putatively from severe repetitive acceleration/deceleration forces with or without blunt head trauma—have been considered essentially pathognomonic for abusive head trauma (shaken baby syndrome). We present two neonates who sustained accidental, severe in utero head injuries and had associated extensive RHs and optic nerve sheath hemorrhages with peripapillary intrascleral hemorrhages detected at autopsy. Neither neonate had a documented clinical fundal examination in the intensive care unit.     

Age Differences Among Homeless Individuals: Adolescence Through Adulthood

The present study examines differences between homeless adolescents, young adults, and older adults served by homeless shelters or food programs to inform service provision. Four homeless studies using the same sampling and measurement methods were pooled to permit comparisons across age groups. Results showed that homeless adolescents demonstrated greater resilience than younger and older adults. Adolescents reported the shortest duration of homelessness, lowest number of life stressors, fewest physical symptoms, largest social networks, and fewest clinically significant mental health problems. Adolescents also received fewer alcohol and drug abuse diagnoses than younger and older adults. Younger adults reported less time homeless and fewer physical symptoms than older adults, but more life stressors. Younger adults also endorsed higher levels of hostile and paranoid psychological symptoms. Implications for service provision and policy are discussed.     

Do Belgian parties undermine the democratic chain of delegation?

The Belgian party-archy violates the ideal-type chain of parliamentary delegation in many ways, insofar as political parties play a predominant role at each stage. They channel the delegation of power from voters to MPs, from Parliament to the cabinet, from the collective cabinet to individual ministers, and from ministers to their civil servants. Hence, they can be considered the effective principals in the polity, and many actors of the parliamentary chain of delegation, such as MPs, ministers, and civil servants have been reduced to mere party agents. The extreme fragmentation of the Belgian party system in combination with its increasing need for multilevel coordination have further enhanced the position of political parties in the Belgian polity. Yet, at the same time (since the early 1990s), Belgium has also witnessed a gradual decline in the informal system of partitocratic delegation and clientelistic excesses, thereby giving back part of their autonomy to some formal agents, such as the cabinet, top civil servants and some MPs. Still, one can wonder whether these corrections are sufficient to counter the strong outburst of public dissatisfaction with the way parties have run the country in past decades.     

Combining large-n and small-n strategies: The way forward in coalition research

Current research on coalition formation is plagued by two serious problems. First, we cannot predict more than about one-third of the Western European governments, and, second, we do not have a good understanding of the causal mechanisms that explain the effects found in large-n coalition studies. This article illustrates that by combining statistical and case study analyses we can solve these problems. Since statistical analyses are well equipped for measuring and isolating effects, we argue that a coalition study should start with such an analysis. Predictions made in this analysis are then used to select cases. In order to study the mechanisms underlying effects found in large-n coalition studies, we argue for selecting cases that are predicted, and then applying the method of process verification. In order to find new explanatory variables, we argue for selecting cases that are deviant, and then applying the method of process induction. Substantive results of our analysis for coalition theory point to the importance of party strategies based on parties' past experiences, which aim at curtailing present and future costs of competing and governing with other parties.