Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Review Of Genetically Engineered Crops: Interim Policies, Uncertain Legislation. Edited By Lain E.P. Taylor, Rene C. Van Acker

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Taylor has compiled a range of informed perspectives on ways to advance the regulation of GE crops, with examples from around the world. M. Korthals argues in chapter 6 for mechanisms that would allow for a coevolution of society and GE development, since the broadest benefits from GE crops, he holds, can only be realized if the fundamental basis for their regulations resides in societal participation. Tn chapter 7, Taylor echoes this call and asks what traits society might seek in GE crops and to what extent social desires would differ from the agroindustrial traits currently available or being developed. …

Book Review: Slipping Backward: A History Of The Nebraska Supreme Court By James W. Hewitt., Cloyd Clark

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

James W. Hewitt answers that question and many more in his history of the Nebraska Supreme Court, Slipping Backward, which covers the court and its judges from 1938 through 1995. It is the first history of the Nebraska Supreme Court and the first book-length study of a Great Plains supreme court. Hewitt approached his task by reading each of the 14,335 cases decided by the Nebraska Supreme Court during those years, then artfully organizing his history around four Chief Justices of the court: Robert G. Simmons (1938-63), Paul W. White (1963-78), Norman Krivosha (1978-87), and William C. Hastings (1987-95). This …

Assessment Of Conservation Reserve Program Fields Within The Current Distribution Of Lesser Prairie-Chicken, Dana Ripper, Megan Mclachlan, Theodore Toombs, Tammy Vercauteren

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Populations of lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) have declined by more than 90%, due primarily to the conversion of sand-sage and mixed-grass prairie to agriculture, overgrazing by domestic livestock, juniper encroachment, and fossil-fuel development. Degradation of native habitats has made restored cropland through the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) potentially one ofthe best management options for lesser prairie-chicken. An estimated 1.4 million hectares of CRP exist within the lesser prairie-chicken range. We assessed 1,019 CRP fields representing more than 51,000 hectares within the current distribution of the lesser prairie-chicken. We sampled various grassland plantings including Farm Service Agency conservation practices …

Book Review: America: Our Next Chapter: Tough Questions, Straight Answers By Chuck Hagel With Peter Kaminsk, Charlyne Berens

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

In America: Our Next Chapter, Hagel presents his take on where the nation stands and where he thinks it is-and should be-headed. The volume reflects his interest in history, his Nebraska heritage, and the insider knowledge he's gained as a member of the Senate and its Foreign Relations Committee. More than half the book addresses international relations and U.S. foreign policy, one of Hagel's longtime and most intense interests. It criticizes America's invasion of Iraq and the way the Bush administration handled the war. Hagel voted for the resolution authorizing the invasion but writes that the president and his …

Mapping Agricultural Land Cover For Hydrologic Modeling In The Platte River Watershed Of Nebraska, Patti R. Dappen, Ian C. Ratcliffe, Cullen R. Robbins, James W. Merchant

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Throughout the western United States, natural resources managers are attempting to address the growing, and often competing, demands that municipal, agricultural and environmental interests have for water. The Platte River Cooperative Hydrology Study (COHYST) is a multi-agency effort that seeks to improve understanding of the ecology, geology, and hydrology of the Platte River watershed in central and western Nebraska. Information regarding the types, areal extent, and locations of crops (especially irrigated crops) is critical for estimating consumptive use of water. Digital land-cover and land-use datasets of the central and western Platte River valley have been prepared for four years: 1982, …

Book Review: The Liberals' Moment: The Mcgovern Insurgency And The Identity Crisis Of The Democratic Party By Bruce Miroff, William D. Anderson

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Bruce Miroff's The Liberals' Moment uses rich historical research and a trove of interviews with nearly 50 McGovern campaign staffers and activists to argue similarly that the campaigns of 1968 and particularly 1972 shaped the Republican Party's resurgence in American politics. Miroff's rationale for why this is so is entirely different, however: South Dakota Senator George McGovern's 1972 presidential election defeat exposed an ideologically fractured Democratic Party that, nearly 40 years later, is still struggling to find its identity.

Miroff supports his argument by carefully documenting McGovern's campaign and the efforts of his staff of upstart politicos that included Gary …

Introducing A ‘Different Lives’ Approach To The Valuation Of Health And Well-Being, Matthew D. Adler, Paul Dolan

Faculty Scholarship

We introduce a new "different lives" survey format, which asks respondents to rank hypothetical lives described in terms of longevity, health, happiness, income, and other elements of the quality of life. In this short paper, we show that the format is of policy relevance whether a mental state, preference satisfaction or extra-welfarist account of well-being is adopted and discuss some of the advantages the format has over standard formats, such as contingent valuation surveys and QALY-type methods. An exploratory survey indicates that the format is feasible and that health and happiness might be more important than income and life expectancy.

Foreword: Making Sense Of Information For Environmental Protection, James Salzman, Douglas A. Kysar

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the ubiquity of information, no one has proposed calling the present era the Knowledge Age. Knowledge depends not only on access to reliable information, but also on sound judgment regarding which information to access and how to situate that information in relation to the values and purposes that comprise the individual's or the social group's larger projects. This is certainly the case for wise and effective environmental governance. A regulator needs accurate information to understand the nature of a problem and the consequences of potential responses. Likewise, the regulated community needs information to decide how best to comply with …

Hedonic Adaptation And The Settlement Of Civil Lawsuits, John Bronsteen, Christopher J, Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines the burgeoning psychological literature on happiness and hedonic adaptation (a person's capacity to preserve or recapture her level of happiness by adjusting to changed circumstances), bringing this literature to bear on the probability of pretrial settlement in civil litigation. The existing economic and behavioral models of settlement are incomplete because they do not incorporate the effect of adaptation on the sum for which a plaintiff is willing to accept an offer. When an individual first suffers a serious injury, she will likely predict that the injury will greatly diminish her future happiness. However, during the time that …

Nothing But The Truth? Experiments On Adversarial Competition, Expert Testimony, And Decision Making, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

Many scholars debate whether a competition between experts in legal, political, or economic contexts elicits truthful information and, in turn, enables people to make informed decisions. Thus, we analyze experimentally the conditions under which competition between experts induces the experts to make truthful statements and enables jurors listening to these statements to improve their decisions. Our results demonstrate that, contrary to game theoretic predictions and contrary to critics of our adversarial legal system, competition induces enough truth telling to allow jurors to improve their decisions. Then, when we impose additional institutions (such as penalties for lying or the threat of …

For Whom The Tel Tolls: Can State Tax And Expenditure Limits Effectively Reduce Spending?, Thad Kousser, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Ellen Moule

Faculty Scholarship

Can voters stop state governments from spending at high rates through the enactment of tax and expenditure limits (TELs), or do these laws become dead letters? We draw upon the principal-agent literature to theorize that TELs – one of the most frequent uses of the initiative process across the country – may be circumvented by the sorts of elected officials who would inspire their passage.

In order to investigate our claim, we conduct an event study. First, we test for the effectiveness of TELs across states using a differences-in-differences model. Second, we dissect our treatment variable using different legal provisions …

When Voters Make Laws: How Direct Democracy Is Shaping American Cities, Elizabeth Garrett, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Agenda Power In The Italian Chamber Of Deputies, 1988-2000, Gary W. Cox, William B. Heller, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

We find strong evidence that governing coalitions in Italy exercise significant negative agenda powers. First, governing parties have a roll rate that is nearly zero, and their roll rate is lower than opposition parties’ roll rates, which average about 20% on all final passage votes. Second, we find that, controlling for distance from the floor median, opposition parties have higher roll rates than government parties. These results strongly suggest that governing parties in Italy are able to control the legislative agenda to their benefit. We also document significantly higher opposition roll rates on decree-conversion bills and budget bills that on …

Vote-Trading In International Institutions, Ofer Eldar

Faculty Scholarship

There is evidence that countries trade votes among each other in international institutions on a wide range of issues, including the use of force, trade issues and elections of judges. Vote-trading has been criticized as being a form of corruption, undue influence and coercion. Contrary to common wisdom, however, I argue in this paper that the case for introducing policy measures against vote-trading cannot be made out on the basis of available evidence. This paper sets out an analytical framework for analyzing vote-trading in international institutions, focusing on three major contexts in which vote-trading may generate benefits and costs: (1) …

Lessons From India In Organizational Innovation: A Tale Of Two Heart Hospitals, Barak D. Richman, Krishna Udayakumar, Will Mitchell, Kevin A. Schulman

Faculty Scholarship

Recent discussions in health reform circles have pinned great hopes on the prospect of innovation as the solution to the high-cost, inadequate-quality U.S. health system. But U.S. health care institutions--insurers, providers and specialists--have ceded leadership in innovation to Indian hospitals such as Care Hospital in Hyderabad and the Fortis Hospitals around New Delhi, which have U.S.-trained doctors and can perform open heart surgery for $6000 (compared to $100,000 in the United States). The Indian success is a window into America's stalemate with inflating costs and stagnant innovation.

Users 2.0: Technology At Your Service, Darcy C. Del Bosque, Kimberly Chapman

Library Faculty Research

It is exciting, as practicing librarians, to find a singular voice that stands out as a strong influence on the profession. Anne Grodzins Lipow provided one such voice, inspiring us to evaluate our philosophy of patron service and helping us define our professional values. Lipow’s body of work encompasses many contemporary library issues, involving myriad aspects of customer service. Lipow addressed issues including patron-friendly catalogs and reference service in both traditional face-to-face and newer virtual settings, recognized the importance of training staff as part of continuous improvement in customer service, and emphasized the power of using technology to improve delivery …

How Does A Pre-Assessment Of Off-Campus Students' Information Literacy Affect The Effectiveness Of Library Instruction?, Lana Ivanitskaya, Susan Duford, Monica Craig, Anne Marie Casey

Publications

This study investigates the impact that pre-tests have on the effectiveness of library instruction when students are given feedback on their pre-test performance. Librarians and academic faculty partnered to measure library instruction outcomes in two Master's degree classes. The Research Readiness Self-Assessment (RRSA) was used as a pre-test (before instruction) and a post-test (after instruction) in Class 1 and as a post-test only in Class 2. Students who completed both tests performed significantly better on a post-test, earning higher scores on obtaining information and overall information literacy. They reported greater library/research experience and less reliance on browsing. Compared to …

Analysis Of Information Remaining On Hand Held Devices Offered For Sale On The Second Hand, Andy Jones, Craig Valli, Iain Sutherland

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The ownership and use of mobile phones, Personal Digital Assistants and other hand held devices is now ubiquitous both for home and business use. The majority of these devices have a high initial cost, a relatively short period before they become obsolescent and a relatively low second hand value. As a result of this, when the devices are replaced, there are indications that they tend to be discarded. As technology has continued to develop, it has led to an increasing diversity in the number and type of devices that are available, and the processing power and the storage capacity of …

Healing The Wounds Of War: The Peacebuilding Work Of Silvie Maunga Mbanga Of The Democratic Republic Of The Congo, Jennifer Freeman

Kroc IPJ Research and Resources

In the following pages, you will find these narrative stories along with supplemental information to provide a deep understanding of the conflict and one person’s journey within it. These supplements include a brief biography of the peacemaker, a historical summary of the conflict, a timeline integrating political developments in the country with personal history of the peacemaker, a question-and-answer transcript of select interviews, and a table of best practices in peacebuilding as demonstrated by the peacemaker.

Sylvie Maunga Mbanga, a lawyer by training, works with local organizations in the fight against sexual violence against women in the eastern region of …

Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane

Economics

Burkina Faso's rich civic institutions are rooted in the history of the precolonial Mossi kingdoms, the traditions of stateless societies in the southwest, the Islamic brotherhoods that structure the lives of Muslims, the hundred-year presence of the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant missionary societies, and popular struggles for representation during the colonial and postindependence periods. This heritage is a constant feature of contemporary political discourse, with critics accusing the current regime of betraying the country's political traditions. The regime's defenders emphasize its continuity with the past and its efforts to restore civic life after the excesses of the revolutionary period …

Information Literacy Support For Off-Campus Students By Academic Libraries In The Republic Of Ireland, Philip Russell

Support services (Former ITT) - Articles

This study investigates the perceptions of academic librarians to the development and delivery of information literacy support programmes for off-campus students.

Methodology / approach: The approach was predominantly quantitative, with a self completed questionnaire being designed and disseminated to a purposive sample of academic librarians in Ireland with responsibility for information literacy development at their institution, to determine their approach in supporting off-campus students, and how this relates to their role in developing information literacy. The questionnaire also examines current practice in terms of library teaching methods and library support for remote students. Institutions chosen were from the university and …

Changes In Poverty And Educational Attainment, 2000 To 2007 Poverty Rates Increasing For Those With College Education, Too, Mark Salling

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

No abstract provided.

Hispanics And Asians Increase In Numbers In Cuyahoga County An Analysis Of 2007 County Population Estimates, Mark Salling

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

No abstract provided.

Comprehensive Study Of Regionalism: Tools For Comparison And Evaluation, George A. Erickcek, Jason M. Preuss, Brad Watts, Claudette Robey, Kevin E. O'Brien

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of World Social Forum Vii, Karides, Ponniah Thomas

Societies Without Borders

The article argues that the overall World Social Forum (WSF), the annual meeting held by members of the anti-globalization or alter-globalization movement, process embodies an uneven, often contradictory, but evolving democratization with WSF advancing this agenda thru its presence in Nairobi, Kenya. It focuses on the WSF held in Nairobi, which is described as one of the most peripheralized countries. It begins by presenting the roots of the WSF and eventually concludes with the achievements of the addition of the WSF held in Nairobi.

Another Structure Of Knowledge Is Possible: The Social Forum Process And Academia, Sherman

Societies Without Borders

The author highlights how the World Social Forum (WSF), the annual meeting held by members of the anti-globalization or alter-globalization movement, has unexpected consequences for epistemology. He considers the possibilities opened by the emergence of the social forum process for the reconstruction of the structures of knowledge. By structures of knowledge, he means following the disciplinary organization and hegemonic approaches since the late nineteenth century in the social sciences.

Moving Forward: Tackling Stigma In A Tanzanian Community, Laura Nyblade, Kerry Macquarrie, Gideon Kwesigabo, Aparna Jain, Lusajo Kajula, Fausta Philip, William Henerico Tibesigwa, Jessie K. Mbwambo

HIV and AIDS

The International Center for Research on Women, the Muhimbili University College of the Health Sciences, the Population Council, and Family Health International conducted an evaluation of a community-based effort to reduce stigma surrounding HIV infections in a peri-urban community in Tanzania. Results presented a mixed, but hopeful, picture for a way forward in tackling stigma at the community level. Tackling stigma requires that the individuals tasked with doing this undergo personal change. Programs can start by focusing stigma-reduction efforts on a smaller, more manageable geographical area and adding specific anti-stigma components to their portfolio of activities. Engaging community opinion leaders …

Population Aging, Human Capital Accumulation, And Productivity Growth, Alexia Prskawetz, David E. Bloom, Wolfgang Lutz

Population Policy and Demographic Analysis

This supplement to Population and Development Review covers the broad economic significance of global population aging, with chapters on the historical evidence of the effects of human capital accumulation; age variation in production and consumption; methods of population projection by educational attainment; and country case studies of age-productivity relationships (Austria, Japan, Sweden).

Economic Growth In Kentucky: Why Does Kentucky Lag Behind The Rest Of The South?, Christopher Jepsen, Kenneth Sanford, Kenneth R. Troske

CBER Research Report

Excerpts from the executive summary:

Kentucky has consistently been one of the poorest states in the country between 1939 and the present. On top of this already low level of income, Kentucky has experienced fairly slow growth in output in recent years. Between 1997 and 2004, Kentucky had an average annual growth in real gross state product (GSP) of 1.6 percent, ranking 43 rd in terms of growth in GSP relative to the rest of the states.

In contrast to Kentucky’s relatively stagnant growth, many of Kentucky’s neighbors, especially to the south, have experienced relatively rapid growth in average earnings …

Feasibility, Acceptability, Effect, And Cost Of Integrating Counseling And Testing For Hiv Within Family Planning Services In Kenya, Wilson Liambila, Charlotte E. Warren, Saiqa Mullick, Ian Askew, Rick Homan, Ibrahim Mohammed, Robert Ayisi, Margaret Gitau, Josephine Kibaru, Mary W. Gathitu, Judith Maua, Helton Jilo, Juma Mwangi, John Njoroge, Anthony K. Wanyoro, Peter Mohammed Njuguna, Andrew Mboche

Reproductive Health

FRONTIERS supported the Division of Reproductive Health and the National AIDS and STI Control Program of the Kenya Ministry of Health to design, implement, and compare two models of integrating counseling and testing (CT) for HIV within family planning (FP) services in terms of their feasibility, acceptability, cost, and effect on the voluntary use of CT, as well as the quality of FP services. The study demonstrated that both models were feasible and acceptable to providers and to clients as means of integrating and linking HIV prevention counseling, condom promotion, and counseling and testing with FP services, and are effective …