Commercializing academic research: a social network approach exploring the role of regions and distance

The Journal of Technology Transfer - Relationships between firms and universities have been centre stage for some time. However, empirical studies on firms contracting research to universities...     

A Quasi-Experimental Analysis of Schoolwide Violence Prevention Programs

Violence prevention programs are commonplace in today’s schools, though reviews of the literature reveal mixed empirical findings on their effectiveness. Often, these programs include a variety of components such as social skills training, student mentoring, and activities designed to build a sense of school community that have not been tested for individual effectiveness. To fill this gap, we wanted to determine the relationships between specific violence prevention program components and aggression and violence outcomes. Using the U.S. Department of Education’s School Survey on Crime and Safety, we estimated the effects of components of violence prevention programs through analyses with proportional odds logistic regression and Poisson regression models. We found significant relationships between three violence prevention program components (individual attention, mentoring, tutoring, and/or coaching; recreational, enrichment, or leisure activities; and involving students in resolving student conduct problems) and aggression and violence outcomes.     

When benefitting a patient increases the risk for harm for third persons — The case of treating pedophilic Parkinsonian patients with deep brain stimulation

This paper investigates the question whether it is ethically justified to treat Parkinsonian patients with known or suspected pedophilia with deep brain stimulation — given increasing evidence that this treatment might cause impulse control disorders, disinhibition, and hypersexuality. This specific question is not as exotic as it looks at a first glance. First, the same issue is raised for all other types of sexual orientation or behavior which imply a high risk for harming other persons, e.g. sexual sadism. Second, there are also several (psychotropic) drugs as well as legal and illegal leisure drugs which bear severe risks for other persons. We show that Beauchamp and Childress' biomedical ethics fails to derive a veto against medical interventions which produce risks for third persons by making the patients dangerous to others. Therefore, our case discussion reveals a blind spot of the ethics of principles. Although the first intuition might be to forbid the application of deep brain stimulation to pedophilic patients, we argue against such a simple way out, since in some patients the reduction of dopaminergic drugs allowed by deep brain stimulation of the nucleus subthalamicus improves impulsive control disorders, including hypersexuality. Therefore, we propose a strategy consisting of three steps: (1) risk assessment, (2) shared decision-making, and (3) risk management and safeguards.     

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS … BOEKAANKONDIGINGS

SUMMARY

• In this article a number of general principles and practical tasks awaiting South African publishers are discussed by Andries Walter Oliphant, editor of Staffrider. Some of the points discussed are:

• the need for all South African publishers to underwrite non-racist democratic values;

• the need for South African publishers to advocate and defend the right of the reading public to have access to all published material and information;

• the need for publishers to counter the history of injustice, ignorance, racial prejudice and oppression by exposing and criticising any manifestation of it in society, the state and the media; and

• to give space to subordinate classes, such as workers and gender groups, to articulate their interests and conceptions of what freedom and social justice might mean to them.

     

Confronting Progressive Retreatism and Minimalism: The Role of a New Left Realist Approach

Left realists continue to offer progressive ways of studying and solving various types of crime in the streets, in the “suites,” and in intimate relationships. This article briefly describes the central themes, assumptions, and concepts of left realism and charts new directions in research, theory, and policy. Special attention is devoted to using new electronic technologies and to responding to the rabid corporatization of institutions of higher learning.     

From developmental to regulatory state? Japan's new financial regulatory system

Abstract

Recent financial reforms in Japan and elsewhere in Asia represent, for various authors, a fundamental shift in financial governance and in state–business relations in the region. The old ‘developmental’ state in East Asia has supposedly made way for a neoliberal ‘regulatory’ state, with its emphases on agency independence and the non-discretionary enforcement of rules. I show in this paper that this interpretation exaggerates the extent of the transformation in the important case of Japan. Although the outward institutional forms of economic governance in Japan, as with many Asian developing countries, has changed dramatically since the mid-1990s, discretion still remains at the core of economic and financial policy. In the area of Japanese banking regulation and supervision, I show how this highly discretionary application and enforcement has been consistent with domestic political pressures. The result is a substantial divergence between superficial convergence upon international regulatory standards and underlying behaviour. I also give reasons why globalization does not mean that this hybrid regulatory model is unsustainable.     

Separation/Divorce Sexual Assault in Rural Ohio: Survivors' Perceptions

Since the 1970s, many studies have enhanced a social scientific understanding of the lethal and non-lethal physical abuse of women during and after separation and divorce, but less than a handful have examined sexual assaults on rural women who want to leave, are trying to leave, or who have left spouses or live-in male partners. Further, none of the work done so far on this problem has examined the role of collective efficacy. The results presented here help fill these research gaps and call into question the common assumption that there is more collective control on criminal behavior in rural settings. Moreover, our exploratory qualitative data show that collective efficacy can take many shapes and forms, and often what is perceived as the “common good” may actually be behaviors and discourses that threaten the health and well-being of women seeking freedom from abusive male partners.     

Preventive servicing is good for business and affordable homeownership policy

Abstract

This article documents the growing importance of preventive servicing—business practices that emphasize early intervention in delinquency and default management practices that also help financially troubled borrowers avoid foreclosure. We suggest that the loan servicing side of the affordable housing delivery system may be underappreciated and undercapitalized.

We use a database of more than 28,000 affordable housing loans to test several preventive servicing‐related propositions and find that after we control for loan and borrower characteristics, the likelihood that a delinquent mortgagor within this universe will ultimately default varies significantly across servicers. This suggests that loan servicing is an important factor in determining whether low‐ and moderate‐income borrowers who fall behind in their mortgage payments will end up losing their homes through foreclosure. It also suggests a need for policy makers to incorporate preventive servicing into affordable homeownership programs.