A refined version of general E-unification

Transformation--based systems for general E-unification were first investigated by Gallier and Snyder. Their system extends the well--known rules for syntactic unification by Lazy Paramodulation, thus coping with the equational theory. More recently, Dougherty and Johann improved on this method by giving a restriction of the Lazy Paramodulation inferences. In this paper, we show that their system can be further improved by a stronger restriction on the applicability of Lazy Paramodulation. It turns out that the framework of proof transformations provides an elegant and natural means for proving completeness of the inference system

Deportations and the Roots of Gang Violence in Central America

El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala count among today’s most violent countries of the world. Qualitative research has claimed that large-scale deportations of Central American convicts have played an important role for the spread of gangs and rampant violence in the region. Using a novel identification strategy, this paper provides the first econometric evidence for this hypothesis from the case of El Salvador. Regarding the dependent variable, the policy experiment of a truce between rivaling gangs in 2012 allows to single out gang-related killings from overall homicide rates. The explanatory variable exploits subnational variation in the exposure of migrant communities to exogenous conditions in the host country. Violence spilled over to migrants’ places of origin when migrant corridors developed around US destinations with high pre-existing levels of violent crime. The cross-sectional evidence is backed by panel data analysis dating back to 1999. The annual inflow of convicts translated into rising homicides mainly in those municipalities whose migrants were exposed to high pre-existing crime at destination, whereas deportations of non-convicts did not have the same effect. These finding are in line with evidence on the origin of Central American gangs in US cities and convicts’ return to their places of birth after massive deportations since the mid-1990s

Carrying the financial burden of health shocks in national and transnational households

The assumption that remittances are a substitute for credit has been an implicit or explicit theoretical foundation of many empirical studies on remittances. This paper directly tests this assumption by comparing the response to health-related shocks among national and transnational households using panel data from Mexico for 2002 and 2005. While the occurrence of serious health shocks that required hospital treatment doubled the average debt burden of exposed households compared to the control group, households with nuclear family members (a parent, child, or spouse) in the US did not increase their debts due to health shocks. This finding is consistent with the view that remittances respond to households’ demand for financing emergencies and make them less reliant on debt-financing

Evidence from Mexican household data

In policy discussions, it has frequently been claimed that migrants’ remittances could function as a ‘catalyst’ for financial access among receiving households. This paper provides empirical evidence on this hypothesis from Mexico, a major receiver of remittances worldwide. Using the Mexican Family Life Survey panel (MxFLS) for 2002 and 2005, the results from the fixed effects logit model show that receiving remittances is strongly correlated with the ownership of savings accounts and, to some degree, with the availability of borrowing options. These effects are more important for rural households than for urban households and are more important for microfinance institutions, than for traditional banks

With a subarachnoid haemorrhage, the outcome is never enough

Introduction. In the current edition, Nastasovic et al. present the results of a prospective study on patients with aneurysm subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH) regarding the association of selected variables and outcomes three months after the incident.Clinical reflections. The independent predicting factors of an unfavourable aneurysm SAH outcome are aneurysm re-rupture, high systolic blood pressure (SBP), and increased heart rate.Clinical implications. The article findings confirm easily monitored parameters that could be potentially useful in clinical approaches to this critical illness

Antisemitism Today and Its Relationship to Jewish Identity and Religious Denomination

The purpose of this research study was to answer the following three research questions: 1) What is the relationship between Jewish identity (religious and ethnic) and experiences of antisemitism? 2) What is the relationship between Jewish religious affiliation and experiences of antisemitism? 3) What, if any, type of antisemitism (e.g., ethnic or religiously based antisemitism or anti-Zionism) do Jewish individuals experience most often? Antisemitism continues to be a pervasive issue in the United States (U.S.) and can be based on ethnic prejudice, religious bias, or anti-Israel attitudes. The final sample for this study included 279 participants who self-identified as Jewish. The results of correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis suggest that there is a significant relationship between experiences with antisemitism and Jewish ethnic identity and religious identity, and that both play a vital part in predicting experiences with antisemitism. This dissertation includes an overview of the study, a literature review, a description of the methodology, an analysis of the results, as well as a discussion about the implications for counselors and counselor educators

Semi-unification

Semi-unifiability is a generalization of both unification and matching. It is used to check nontermination of rewrite rules. In this paper an inference system is presented that decides semi-unifiability of two terms s and t and computes a semi-unifier. In contrast to an algorithm by Kapur, Musser et al, this inference system comes very close to the one for ordinary unification

Presidential candidates in 2016 should not underestimate the power of urban identity—it allowed Obama to halve Bush’s urban victories

In 2008, Barack Obama was elected as America’s first urban president, with large victories in the biggest urban centers. What lessons should 2016’s potential candidates be taking from these victories? In new research which examines election results in 92 ‘core’ counties – which accounted for 35 million votes in 2012 – Joshua D. Ambrosius finds that President Obama identified with urban voters in the way that Republicans could not. He argues that this is not likely to change in the near future, as the urban electorate is identifying less and less with the Republican Party, which is doing little to claim cities as their own

Clinton performed very well in most urban areas relative to Obama, despite losin the Rustbelt — and the Presidency with it

Despite talk of collapsed Democrat support for Clinton, her performance in urban areas was very strong this presidential election. As Joshua D. Ambrosius argues however, her loss to Donald Trump highlights the weakness of Democrats’ urban-centric appeal, given the new-found GOP capacity to mobilise masses of rural working class and suburban Americans