‘My Neighbour Drinks Clean Water,While I Continue To Suffer’: An Analysis of the Intra-Community Impacts of a Rural Water Supply Project in Mozambique

Rural water planners assume the positive impacts of community water projects are spread evenly across the population. We test this assumption by looking at the distribution of benefits within communities that received handpumps in rural Mozambique. Using survey and qualitative data we analyse the characteristics of those groups who benefited from the handpumps and also explore household decision-making processes. Handpump use was determined by distance, availability of other sources, perceptions of water quality, political affiliation, and wealth. We argue that the handpumps reinforced existing social divisions related to income and political affiliation and created new geographic divisions within communities.     

How policies become contested: a spiral of imagination and evidence in a large infrastructure project

This article investigates how framing processes lead to polarization in the public debate on a large infrastructure project. Drawing on an analysis of newspaper articles about the “Oosterweel connection” in Antwerp (Belgium), it concludes that imaginative framing (appeals to emotions via symbolic language) and framing through evidence (appeals to rationality via factual language) mutually reinforce each other. Because of the mutual reinforcement, we talk of a spiralling motion. When evidence backs up appeals to the imagination, such as when facts back up metaphors, these appeals are endowed with authority and hence legitimacy. While this strengthens appeals that have been “proven” to be true, it also makes actors backing these appeals increasingly frustrated with other parties that still refuse to accept them. Because of their frustration, the former are spurred to launch new imaginative appeals conveying their anger and to seek new evidence to substantiate these new appeals. Going back and forth between imaginative appeals and appeals to evidence, all parties in a conflict develop their own vision of the contested issue and their own evidence base for the policy position. Over time, their tolerance for ambiguity decreases and the debate polarizes.     

Quantitative indices for anti-human trafficking policies: based on reports of the U.S. State Department and the Council of Europe

Quantitative ratings of policies of national governments are an important tool for the monitoring of compliance with international standards in many domains. In this article we present a global index of anti-human trafficking policies developed by a research consortium using the TIP country reports of the U.S. State Department (the 3P index) and an index based on the reports of the monitoring body of the Council of Europe Convention against Human Trafficking (GRETA). Although the global 3P index gives more favorable ratings to most European countries than the GRETA-based index, a moderately strong correlation was found between the two indices. This is an encouraging result lending support to the validity of the assessments of both monitoring mechanisms as well as to their transformation into quantitative scores. We also demonstrate that the detailed GRETA-based index can be used to identify best practices in anti-trafficking policies and specific areas where these policies are most in need of improvement, e.g. legal aid and compensation for victims. Our analyses of the relationships between the various items of the index revealed positive correlations between the existence of units of specialized prosecutors and the numbers of convictions of traffickers. Our paper, then, demonstrates the potential of quantitative indices of counter human trafficking policies as tools for both effective monitoring of the implementation of international standards and for analytical purposes.     

Legal aspects of text mining

“Text mining” covers a range of techniques that allow software to extract information from text documents. It is not a new technology, but it has recently received spotlight attention due to the emergence of Big Data. The applications of text mining are very diverse and span multiple disciplines, ranging from biomedicine to legal, business intelligence and security. From a legal perspective, text mining touches upon several areas of law, including contract law, copyright law and database law. This contribution discusses the legal issues encountered during the assembly of texts into so-called “corpora”, as well as the use of such corpora.     

Elemental analysis of bone: proton-induced X-ray emission testing in forensic cases

Proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) is a spectroscopic technique that provides the researcher with the elemental composition of a given target material. In this paper, we illustrate the utility of PIXE analysis in two forensic contexts: (1) case of cremation in which the nature of the remains is questioned and (2) cases of death by gunshot wound. In the first case, elemental analysis by PIXE reveals that the purported cremated remains are not bone. The last two cases show that radiopaque metallic residue embedded in bone is composed of lead from a projectile.     

FHA: Recent History and Future Prospects

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) deserves considerable credit for helping support the housing market during the recent financial crisis by increasing its own market share. However, as the recovery continues, the FHA can gradually return to its “traditional” role as an insurer of low-down-payment home mortgages for low-to-moderate-income and first-time homebuyers. A major concern going forward is susceptibility to increased adverse selection if it continues in nontraditional markets. Indeed, the modest market share of the FHA going into the housing collapse was important both in limiting its losses and in allowing it to maintain the market when other traditional secondary market makers failed.     

Self-Focus and Procedural Fairness: The Role of Self-Rumination and Self-Reflection

This article examined the differential role of self-rumination and self-reflection on the psychological influence of procedural fairness. Study 1 induced self-rumination and self-reflection relative to an outward-focused control. Self-rumination increased the perceived importance of procedural fairness, whereas self-reflection decreased it. Study 2, assessing individual differences in self-rumination and self-reflection, showed that a standard procedural fairness manipulation (voice vs. no voice) predicted future interaction preferences with the enactment source among those high (but not low) in self-rumination and among those low (but not high) in self-reflection. The findings validate a multiple process approach to understanding the role of the self in procedural fairness.