AEPF 10-A Meeting to Enhance Understanding and Cooperation

正Milan,a city endowed with the perfect mixture of fashion,antiquity,romance and simplicity.I had the honor to come to this world-renowned city for the 10thAsia-Europe People’s Forum(AEPF)held on 10-12 October on behalf of the Chinese Association for International Understanding(CAFIU)with representatives of other Chinese     

Building A Bridge of Youth Exchanges between China and Japan through Kyudo

正On the early morning of November 30th,I departed from smog-covered Beijing by the first flight and arrived in Zhuhai 3 hours later.I spent another hour on the bus and finally arrived at Beijing Normal University Zhuhai(BNUZ).On behalf of CAFIU,I attended the activities organized by the University marking the 20-year teaching of Mr.Takashi Naito in China,including "My Life—for Japan-China Friendship" Photographic Exhibition.     

Quantifying Uncertainty in Estimations of the Total Weight of Drugs in Groups of Complex Matrices

In case practice at forensic drug departments, multiple items from one seizure are sometimes sent in with the question: what is the total amount of drugs in the seizure? This may be complicated especially if impregnated material is involved such as clothes or rubber. Measurement uncertainty is typically stable on drug percentages, not weights, and subsampling may take place. It is recognized more and more that determination and reporting of uncertainty on estimators are an essential part of obtaining scientifically sound results in the forensic field. Methodology is described to quantify uncertainty on estimations of the total drug weight in groups of complex matrices, given simple statistical models, along a subdivision of five types of cases. Given each of these types, case examples are given where uncertainty is quantified in estimations of drug weights, by means of confidence intervals. The described models are statistically sound and relatively easy to implement.     

论文化软实力建设的“中国自信”

中国语境下的文化软实力与其初始概念有本质区别,在多元社会思潮涤荡、传播和持续扩散的时代背景下,坚守中华民族共同的精神家园和思想高地,增强中华文化的凝聚力、感染力和创新力,持续提升国家文化软实力,就要进一步坚定国家文化软实力建设的自信心,这种自信体现在国家文化软实力建设的道路自信、理论自信和制度自信三个方面。     

Opposition party policy shifts in response to no‐confidence motions

No‐confidence motions (NCMs) are attempts by opposition parties to publicise the government's failings in a salient policy arena, and previous research has shown that they often negatively affect citizens' evaluations of governing parties' competence and damage their electoral prospects. Yet currently there is a lack of understanding of how opposition parties respond ideologically to these NCMs. It is argued in this article that opposition parties should distance themselves from the government challenged by NCMs to show that they are different from the incompetent government and to compete for the votes that the government is likely to lose. Using a sample of 19 advanced democracies from 1970–2007, empirical evidence is presented that NCMs encourage political parties to move their positions away from the government's position, especially in the presence of reinforcing negative signals about government performance. These results have important implications for our understanding of opposition party policy change, for the economic voting literature, and for the spatial and valence models of party competition.     

中国境内德昂族汝买支系族群语言关系与语言自信研究

中国境内德昂族主要有布雷、汝买、梁三个支系。以往德昂族研究主要以布雷支系为主体研究对象,而其中偏居国境线一隅的点状散布居住的汝买人由于浸没于傣族、景颇族之中,几乎不被外界所熟知。以语言为核心对汝买支系族群语言关系与语言自信的研究不仅有利于解决当下境内濒危小语言现实社会处境、命运和语言归属问题,而且也是对濒危小语言活态的有利保护。     

To P or not to P? The Usefulness of P‐values in Quantitative Political Science Research

This contribution gives a short overview over the mechanics of significance testing in inferential statistics, in particular linear models, and tries to put the discussion about the usefulness of p‐values into a broader perspective of scientific practise. This discussion needs to be embedded into the larger debate about the credibility crises faced by empirical social science research. In particular, it seems of utmost importance to discuss what the profession as a whole, journals, publishers, as well as editors can do to encourage better research practise that generates reliable and useful empirical findings.     

Punitive Restoration and Restorative Justice

Criminal justice policy faces the twin challenges of improving our crime reduction efforts while increasing public confidence. These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that at least some measures popular with the public are counterproductive to greater crime reduction. How to achieve greater crime reduction without sacrificing public confidence? While restorative justice approaches offer a promising alternative to traditional sentencing with the potential to achieve these goals, they suffer from several serious obstacles, not least their relatively limited applicability, flexibility, and public support. Punitive restoration is a new and distinctive idea about restorative justice modeled on an important principle of stakeholding, which states that those who have a stake in penal outcomes should have a say about them. Punitive restoration is restorative insofar as it aims to achieve the restoration of rights infringed or threatened by criminal offences. Punitive restoration is punitive insofar as the available options for this agreement are more punitive than found in most restorative justice approaches, such as the option of some form of hard treatment. Punitive restoration sheds new light on how we may meet the twin challenges of improving our efforts to reduce reoffending without sacrificing public confidence, demonstrating how restorative practices can be embedded deeper within the criminal justice system.     

Prior knowledge influences interpretations of eyewitness confidence statements: ‘The witness picked the suspect,they must be 100% sure%

When an eyewitness identifies a suspect from a lineup, it is important to know how certain they are about the decision. Even though eyewitnesses are likely to express certainty with words, past research shows that verbal confidence statements (e.g. ‘I’m pretty sure’) are prone to systematic misinterpretation. Until now, no one has examined how an evaluator's prior knowledge, such as which lineup member is the police suspect, influences their interpretation of eyewitness confidence about a lineup identification. Experiments 1 and 3 show that participants perceived the identical statement of confidence as meaning a higher and lower level of certainty, respectively, when the eyewitness's selection either matched or mismatched the police's suspect. Experiment 2 shows that these effects generally persist when the bias manipulation is manipulated between-subjects. Finally, Experiment 3 finds that clarifying the witness's statement with numeric information (e.g. I’m 80% sure) does not eliminate the influence of biasing information.     

Public confidence in the police: tests of instrumental and expressive models in a developing country city

This paper examines the effect of instrumental and expressive concerns on public confidence in the police in three different residential areas in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana’s third largest city. The study was important because of the knowledge vacuum that existed in regard to the empirical validity of the instrumental and expressive theoretical framework within the Ghanaian context. Data for the study was drawn from a baseline survey conducted in three residential areas in the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis. The findings revealed that instrumental factors played a more significant role in influencing confidence in the police in the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis compared to expressive factors. More importantly, instrumental factors played a more significant role in influencing confidence in the police at Anaji compared to the other two residential areas used in the study. The paper recommends that there should be more investment in police infrastructure and services to enhance police effectiveness and efficiency. Additionally, the authors also suggest that interventions aimed at improving security at the community level should be guided by periodic safety audits since this will provide a better understanding of the criminogenic problems within these residential settlements.