A tale of two capitalisms: preliminary spatial and historical comparisons of homicide rates in Western Europe and the USA

This article examines comparative homicide rates in the United States and Western Europe in an era of increasingly globalized neoliberal economics. The main finding of this preliminary analysis is that historical and spatial correlations between distinct forms of political economy and homicide rates are consistent enough to suggest that social democratic regimes are more successful at fostering the socio-cultural conditions necessary for reduced homicide rates. Thus Western Europe and all continents and nations should approach the importation of American neo-liberal economic policies with extreme caution. The article concludes by suggesting that the indirect but crucial causal connection between political economy and homicide rates, prematurely pushed into the background of criminological thought during the ‘cultural turn’, should be returned to the foreground

Clinical mastitis in cows treated with sometribove (recombinant bovine somatotropin) and its relationship to milk yield.

Effect of sometribove (methionyl bovine somatotropin) on mastitis in 15 full lactation trials (914 cows) in Europe and the US and 70 short-term studies (2697 cows) in eight countries was investigated. In full lactation studies, sometribove (500 mg/2 wk) was given for 252 d, commencing 60 d postpartum. Although herds varied considerably, incidence of clinical mastitis within a herd was similar for cows receiving control and sometribove treatments. Relative risk analyses indicated no treatment effect, and percentage of mastitis during treatment was similar for control and sometribove groups. A positive linear relationship existed between peak milk yield and mastitis incidence (percentage of cows contracting mastitis or cases per 100 cow days); sometribove treatment did not alter this relationship. Increases in mastitis related to milk yield increase from sometribove or related to genetic selection were similar. When expressed per unit of milk, mastitis incidence declined slightly as milk yield increased; this relationship was not altered by sometribove. No effect on clinical mastitis was observed in 70 commercial herds utilizing sometribove for 84 d. However, effects were significant for stage of lactation and milk yield. Overall, studies represented a wide range of research and commercial situations demonstrating that sometribove had no effect on incidence of clinical mastitis during the lactation of treatment. Furthermore, sometribove did not alter typical relationships between milk yield or herd factors and incidence of clinical mastitis

Data from a pre-publication independent replication initiative examining ten moral judgement effects

We present the data from a crowdsourced project seeking to replicate findings in independent laboratories before (rather than after) they are published. In this Pre-Publication Independent Replication (PPIR) initiative, 25 research groups attempted to replicate 10 moral judgment effects from a single laboratory's research pipeline of unpublished findings. The 10 effects were investigated using online/lab surveys containing psychological manipulations (vignettes) followed by questionnaires. Results revealed a mix of reliable, unreliable, and culturally moderated findings. Unlike any previous replication project, this dataset includes the data from not only the replications but also from the original studies, creating a unique corpus that researchers can use to better understand reproducibility and irreproducibility in science

The pipeline project: Pre-publication independent replications of a single laboratory's research pipeline

This crowdsourced project introduces a collaborative approach to improving the reproducibility of scientific research, in which findings are replicated in qualified independent laboratories before (rather than after) they are published. Our goal is to establish a non-adversarial replication process with highly informative final results. To illustrate the Pre-Publication Independent Replication (PPIR) approach, 25 research groups conducted replications of all ten moral judgment effects which the last author and his collaborators had “in the pipeline” as of August 2014. Six findings replicated according to all replication criteria, one finding replicated but with a significantly smaller effect size than the original, one finding replicated consistently in the original culture but not outside of it, and two findings failed to find support. In total, 40% of the original findings failed at least one major replication criterion. Potential ways to implement and incentivize pre-publication independent replication on a large scale are discussed

School-to-work transition services: marginalising ‘disposable’ youth in a state of exception?

Disadvantaged young people often inhabit a dangerous space: excluded from education, training and employment markets; constructed as disposable; and cast out as ‘human waste’ (Bauman, 2004). There are many macro-level analyses of this catastrophic trend, but this article provides insights into some of the everyday educational micro-practices which contribute to such marginalisation. It presents findings from a study of a national school-to-work transition service in England, in a context not only of neo-liberal policies but also of severe austerity measures. The data reveal processes of triage, surveillance and control – driven by governmental and institutional targets – which denied many young people access to the service, including some of the most vulnerable. Beneath a rhetoric of social inclusion, the service in fact acted as a conduit into a dangerous space of exclusion. Drawing on the work of Butler and of Agamben, the article argues innovatively that such practices may represent an encroaching state of exception, in which more or less subtle forms of governmentality are gradually being supplanted by the more overt exercise of sovereign power

Building on Weber to understand governance: exploring the links between identity, democracy and 'inner distance'

The paper builds up a conceptual picture of two types of governance - network and organic. In this process it highlights the legitimacies of co-ordination (interior authority and democracy) that lie outside Weber's typology of domination and are relatively neglected in governance literature. The exploration of interior authority, through discussion of identity and substantive liberty, reflects a perspective on human agency that acknowledges the interconnection of the social and non-social and links sociological understanding of agency with political philosophy. It is suggested that this theoretical work gives some necessary content to Weber's concept of inner distance. In turn, this also has implications for our understanding of what is involved in democratizing governance