Public preferences regarding police facebook posts: a macro-level analysis

ABSTRACT

Police agencies have adopted social media quite widely, but researchers have paid relatively little attention to the phenomenon. To date few studies have explored public reaction to police use of social media. The current study uses a purposive sample with 7,116 police Facebook posts collected from 14 different police agencies during a one-year period to answer two principal research questions: (1) with respect to the number of likes, number of shares, or number of comments regarding different themes present in police Facebook posts, are there differences among police agencies corresponding to differences in the thematic content in their postings? and (2) What factors are related to the public reaction (i.e., likes, shares, comments) to a police Facebook post? The findings from ANOVA and negative binomial regression models clearly indicate that citizens do have definite preferences on police Facebook posts – they are more likely to like and make comments on posts of police personnel and police-public relations, but less likely to share posts of Social Networking Sites. Also, they are more prone to like posts with narratives and pictures, but less likely to favor posts containing hyperlinks. Policy implications and practice guidelines, study limitations, and future research are also discussed.     

Discrimination and ethnic conflict: a dyadic analysis of politically-excluded groups in sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT

The literature on political exclusion and conflict tends to treat grievance-based mechanisms with broad-brush strokes and does not differentiate between types of political exclusion. This study disaggregates politically-excluded groups into two subgroups: groups that experience political discrimination from the state, and groups without political power that are not explicitly discriminated against. We posit that discriminated groups are more likely to experience grievances and therefore are more prone to conflict than excluded groups that are not actively discriminated against. We further posit that the effect of discrimination on conflict is moderated by interactions with economic inequalities and the share of elites. Using dyadic data for 155 ethnic groups in 28 Sub-Saharan African countries, we find that among politically-excluded groups it is indeed discriminated groups that are responsible for most of the association between political exclusion and conflict. Groups that face active, intentional, and targeted discrimination by the state are significantly more likely to be involved in conflict than excluded groups who do not face this explicit form of discrimination. Additionally, we find that discriminated groups who also experience economic inequalities are less likely to engage in conflict, whilst an increased presence of elites within discriminated groups can precipitate the chances of conflict.     

“UNUSUAL” TISSUES AND SAMPLE COLLECTION STRATEGIES ON EXHUMED BODIES

The choice of soft or hard tissues to be sampled in case of exhumation of corpses for identification purposes or family relationship testing is based on the degradation conditions of the corpse: the more the corpse is degraded, the less DNA is expected to be retrieved from soft tissue. Therefore, the choice of the "best" tissue samples usually falls on teeth and bones in these “difficult” cases, even though the DNA extraction procedure requires time and effort and it can often result in unexpected, negative results.We here present the results of a daily practice survey that shows that it is possible to obtain good results even on DNA extracted from tissues that appear to be less “appealing” to the examiner by performing “simple” corneal/scleral swabs along with cartilage.While DNA extracted from cartilage has been already described, to our knowledge there is no evidence of publications in the scientific literature dealing with cornea/sclera as a source of DNA in the forensic laboratory.The obtained results demonstrate that it may be advisable to consider other tissues which bear the potential of returning good profile results despite not appearing particularly useful and better control of contamination.     

Population genetics of 25 Y-STR loci in Chinese Han population from Liaoning Province,Northeast China

In this study, we investigated the genetic characteristics of 25 Y-chromosomal short tandem repeat loci in 305 unrelated Chinese Han male individuals from Liaoning Province, using AmpFISTR® Yfiler® Plus amplification kit. A total of 293 different haplotypes were observed at the 25 Y-STR loci; among them, 281 were unique and 12 were occurred twice. The overall haplotype diversity was 0.9997 and the discrimination capacity was 0.9607. The gene diversity values ranged from 0.4525 (DYS391) to 0.9617 (DYS385). Population relationships between our data and other published populations were measured by Rst and visualized in two multi-dimensional scaling plots. The results showed that the 25 Y-STR loci in Liaoning Han population are valuable for forensic application and human genetics.     

以共同育儿为业:跨越儿童抚育的家庭边界——以一个城市社区的“抱团养娃”实践为例

本文聚焦于城市化背景下的"抱团养娃"实践,深入探讨在抚育职责被"家庭化"的当下,抚育实践如何在一定程度上重新跨越"家庭"的边界。以社区共育为基点,妈妈们的努力既从私人层面上为在陌生城市中资源不足的小家庭找到更多社会支持,又在公共层面上带动孩子们以温度和情感重塑社区认同、黏合社会转型带来的制度缝隙,体现出独特的现实意义与支持力量。"以共同育儿为业"背后,是女性试图在既有的结构约束下找到被私人化的抚育照料重担与公共生活之间的连接点,在本研究中体现为共育支持网络的形成、共育友好空间的营造、亲子活动内容的生产和共育文化的建构四个方面。这为思考如何将"社会"重新带回抚育实践中提供了想象,也拓宽了对女性主体性的理解。     

Time for a haircut: political regimes and sovereign debt restructurings

ABSTRACT

Conventional wisdom claims that reputation leads sovereign states to full debt repayment. However, defaults are recurrent, some debtor countries take a lot of time to end them, and some extract costly concessions from investors. This article argues that these differences are largely explained by the political regimes in the borrowing countries. While previous research examines whether democracies make more credible commitments, we analyze how democracies affect bargaining with foreign investors after a default occurs. Democracies, with their institutional checks, electoral uncertainty, greater transparency, and public deliberation, make swift decision-making harder, create incentives to pander and posture, and give leverage to minimize the win set of viable agreements. We test our theory on a comprehensive dataset of debt restructurings with private creditors in the period 1975–2017. The event history analysis indicates that democracies experience longer restructurings and the double-hurdle regression analysis shows that democracies obtain larger creditor losses. Further, there is interesting variation among democracies and autocracies. Our findings suggest that political regimes are crucial to explaining why cooperation fails in international debt markets.     

(Re)Productive Discourses: Media Coverage of Children Born of War in Colombia

Children born as a result of wartime sexual violence have not gained a place in the stories covered by the Colombian media. Based on an extensive content analysis (using the software MAXQDA 12) of newspaper articles published between 1990 and 2015, ethnographic content analysis, and drawing upon feminist critical discourse analysis, this paper explores how information about these children is presented as part of storylines that use the explanatory framework of sexual violence as a weapon of war. In those storylines, children emerge not as independent subjects but as part of social representations of female victims of wartime sexual violence and male perpetrators.     

Chasing ghosts: An investigation of the ghosting phenomenon in footprints

Ghosting is a phenomenon that has been identified in dynamic (walking) footprints. There is sparse research on the occurrence of ghosting; however, due to the forensic value of footprints and their use in other scientific fields, the phenomenon of ghosting warrants further study. Ghosting can be used to determine if a footprint is static (standing) or dynamic, which can help forensic investigators create a sequence of events at a crime scene. Furthermore, this can help in footprint comparisons from this determination, as “like versus like” comparisons of dynamic or static footprints can be made. The purpose of this research was to determine the prevalence and locations of the ghosting phenomena in dynamic footprints.136 dynamic footprints from 68 volunteers were collected using an inkless collection system. Each footprint was visually inspected for ghosting as well as examined using software.Ghosting was present on at least one location in all footprints. The highest prevalence occurred at the tip of the great toe, followed by the second digit and the heel. To a lesser extent, ghosting appeared at the tips of the other three digits. Ghosting often occurred at two or more areas in a given footprint.     

管理视角下的公安民警休息权保障对策研究

在当前社会形势下,公安工作日益趋于繁重,社会环境更加复杂,违法犯罪问题日益严重,这使公安工作面临着更大的挑战和压力。为了维护社会稳定,他们普遍长时间、高强度地工作,对身心健康造成了严重损害。本文在对警察休息权的现状、休息权的重要意义,民警休息权无法得到保障的原因等问题进行分析的基础上,用管理学的视角提出有效保障警察休息权的对策建议,希望有助于公安民警休息权的保障,也有利于提高公安工作效率。     

APK Auditor: Permission-based Android malware detection system

Android operating system has the highest market share in 2014; making it the most widely used mobile operating system in the world. This fact makes Android users the biggest target group for malware developers. Trend analyses show large increase in mobile malware targeting the Android platform. Android's security mechanism is based on an instrument that informs users about which permissions the application needs to be granted before installing them. This permission system provides an overview of the application and may help gain awareness about the risks. However, we do not have enough information to conclude that standard users read or digital investigators understand these permissions and their implications. Digital investigators need to be on the alert for the presence of malware when examining Android devices, and can benefit from supporting tools that help them understand the capabilities of such malicious code. This paper presents a permission-based Android malware detection system, APK Auditor that uses static analysis to characterize and classify Android applications as benign or malicious. APK Auditor consists of three components: (1) A signature database to store extracted information about applications and analysis results, (2) an Android client which is used by end-users to grant application analysis requests, and (3) a central server responsible for communicating with both signature database and smartphone client and managing whole analysis process. To test system performance, 8762 applications in total, 1853 benign applications from Google's Play Store and 6909 malicious applications from different sources were collected and analyzed by the system developed. The results show that APK Auditor is able to detect most well-known malwares and highlights the ones with a potential in approximately 88% accuracy with a 0.925 specificity.