Adaptive and maladaptive personality traits as predictors of violent and nonviolent offending behavior in men and women

he aim of this study was to assess both violent and nonviolent offending behavior in a single, mixed-sex population. The rationale for this is that the two types of offending are usually researched separately, despite evidence that they overlap. A comprehensive measure of general violence, intimate partner violence (IPV), and nonviolent offending behavior was administered to 116 men and 181 women, together with measures of personality and personality disorder (PD) traits, to investigate whether predictors of violent and nonviolent offending were similar or different for men and women. Men were found to perpetrate higher levels of general violence and nonviolent offenses than women, but women perpetrated significantly more IPV than men. Cluster B PD traits predicted all three offense types for women and also men's general violence and nonviolent offending. Women's general violence and men's non-violence also had one unique risk factor each, low agreeableness, and low conscientiousness, respectively. The main difference was for IPV, where men's IPV was predicted by cluster A PD traits, indicating that men's and women's risk factors for IPV may be different, although their risk factors for the other offense types were fairly consistent

Close communications: Hedge funds, brokers and the emergence of herding

We examine how communication, evaluation and decision-making practices among competing market actors contribute to the establishment of herding and whether this has impact on market wide phenomena such as prices and risk. Data is collected from interviews and observations with hedge fund industry participants in Europe, the United States and Asia. We examine both contemporaneous and biographical data, finding that decision making relies on an elaborate two-tiered structure of connections among hedge fund managers and between them and brokers. This structure is underpinned by idea sharing and development between competing hedge funds leading to ‘expertisebased’ herding and an increased probability of over-embeddedness. We subsequently present a case study demonstrating the role that communication between competing hedge funds plays in the creation of herding and show that such trades affect prices by introducing an additional risk: the disregarding of information from sources outside the trusted connections

Essays on transforming security and development in an unequal world

These two papers add further dimensions to the discussions in IDS Bulletin 40.2 (March 2009) on ‘Transforming Security and Development in an Unequal World’ edited by Robin Luckham, Niagalé Bagayoko, Lucia Dammert, Claudio Fuentes and Michael Solis. Like the contributions to the latter, they were first discussed at the founding Colloquium of the Global Consortium for Security Transformation held at Kandalama, Sri Lanka in September 2007. Niagalé Bagayoko’s paper on ‘State, Non-State and Multilateral Logics of Action in Post-Conflict Environments’ considers the complexities of Northern policymaking and their impacts in post-conflict countries. It thus differs from but complements IDS Bulletin 40.2, which focuses mostly on security and development from a Southern perspective. She argues that a number of different policy logics are at work in the security, development, humanitarian and media etc domains, which are sometimes coordinated – but often in tension with – each other. Her approach thus differs from that of certain critical voices in the NGO and academic worlds, which hold that there is a danger that Northern security priorities might ‘securitise’ the humanitarian and development agendas, particularly in post-conflict environments. While these dangers are real, nevertheless one should not stereotype all international actors as ‘Northern’ or as promoting Northern security (e.g. anti-terrorist) agendas. It is instead more fruitful to view such actors as diverse players with conflicting interests that operate according to different policy logics. Lyndsay McLean Hilker’s paper on ‘Why Identity Politics Matters for Security and What Follows for Research and Policy’ spells out a general framework for analysis of identity-based violent conflict, drawing upon empirical examples, including Rwanda, where she has focused her own research. It is unique in its focus on the implications of analysis and research on identity politics for development policy. She contends that identity politics matter both to the persistence of insecurity and to the achievement of greater security. Evidence from multiple contexts demonstrates that identity provides an effective basis for group mobilisation into collective action – both violent and non-violent in nature. If we are to work to combat insecurity at the local as well as the global level, we need to look in more depth at the processes leading to violence in the name of identity in specific contexts, and explore the types of interventions that can prevent and respond to such violence. It is especially important to understand under what circumstances identity politics can be exercised in ways that are inclusive and empowering rather than exclusionary or violent. Keywords: security; conflict; ethnicity; identities; post-conflict reconstruction; humanitarianism; peace-building

Mainstreaming domestic and gender-based violence into sociology and the criminology of violence

Sociological and criminological views of domestic and gender-based violencegenerally either dismiss it as not worthy of consideration, or focus on specificgroups of offenders and victims (male youth gangs, partner violence victims). Inthis paper, we take a holistic approach to violence, extending the definition fromthat commonly in use to encompass domestic violence and sexual violence. Weoperationalize that definition by using data from the latest sweep of the CrimeSurvey for England and Wales. By so doing, we identify that violence is currentlyunder-measured and ubiquitous; that it is gendered, and that other forms of violence (family violence, acquaintance violence against women) are equally ofconcern. We argue that violence studies are an important form of activity forsociologists

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio