Wetgeving over spreekrecht voor slachtoffers: een ‘voortdenderende trein’?:Over de benutting van empirisch onderzoek bij de totstandkoming van wetgeving

Het NSCR, de Universiteit van Amsterdam en de Open Universiteit hebben gezamenlijk onderzoek gedaan naar de empirische basis voor het spreekrecht en de uitbreidingen ervan. De onderzoekers concluderen onder andere dat de voorgenomen verschijningsplicht voor verdachten – zodat een slachtoffer zich rechtstreeks tot de verdachte kan wenden in de rechtszaal – onvoldoende empirisch is onderbouwd. De oplossing kan liggen in het vooraf opstellen van een relevant overzicht van empirisch-juridisch onderzoek

A Comparison of Methods for Poverty Estimation in Developing Countries

Small area estimation is a widely used indirect estimation technique for micro-level geographic profiling. Three unit level small area estimation techniques-the ELL or World Bank method, empirical best prediction (EBP) and M-quantile (MQ) - can estimate micro-level Foster, Greer, & Thorbecke (FGT) indicators: poverty incidence, gap and severity using both unit level survey and census data. However, they use different assumptions. The effects of using model-based unit level census data reconstructed from cross-tabulations and having no cluster level contextual variables for models are discussed, as are effects of small area and cluster level heterogeneity. A simulation-based comparison of ELL, EBP and MQ uses a model-based reconstruction of 2000/2001 data from Bangladesh and compares bias and mean square error. A three-level ELL method is applied for comparison with the standard two-level ELL that lacks a small area level component. An important finding is that the larger number of small areas for which ELL has been able to produce sufficiently accurate estimates in comparison with EBP and MQ has been driven more by the type of census data available or utilised than by the model per se

CO2 budgeting at the regional scale using a Lagrangian experimental strategy and meso-scale modeling

An atmospheric Lagrangian experiment for regional CO2 budgeting with aircraft measurements took place during the CarboEurope Regional Experiment Strategy campaign (CERES) in south-west France, in June 2005. The atmospheric CO2 aircraft measurements taken upstream and downstream of an active and homogeneous pine forest revealed a CO2 depletion in the same air mass, using a Lagrangian strategy. This field experiment was analyzed with a meteorological meso-scale model interactively coupled with a surface scheme, with plant assimilation, ecosystem respiration, anthropogenic CO2 emissions and sea fluxes. First, the model was carefully validated against observations made close to the surface and in the atmospheric boundary layer. Then, the carbon budget was evaluated using the numerous CERES observations, by upscaling the surface fluxes observations, and using the modeling results, in order to estimate the relative contribution of each physical process. A good agreement is found between the two methods which use the same vegetation map: the estimation of the regional CO2 surface flux by the Eulerian meso-scale model budget is close to the budget deduced from the upscaling of the observed surface fluxes, and found a budget between −9.4 and −12.1μmol.m−2.s−1, depending on the size of the considered area. Nevertheless, the associated uncertainties are rather large for the upscaling method and reach 50%. A third method, using Lagrangian observations of CO2 estimates a regional CO2 budget a few different and more scattered, (−16.8μmol.m−2.s−1 for the small sub-domain and −8.6μmol.m−2.s−1 for the larger one). For this budgeting method, we estimate a mean of 31% error, mainly arising from the time of integration between the two measurements of the Lagrangian experiment. The paper describes in details the three methods to assess the regional CO2 budget and the associated error

What works: Psychosociale dienstverlening Slachtofferhulp Nederland

Samenvatting Het doel van dit onderzoek is drieledig. Ten eerste een inventarisatie maken van de beleidstheorie van het huidige slachtofferbeleid met focus op beleid dat gericht is op de psychische gezondheid van slachtoffers. Ten tweede inzicht verkrijgen in het emotionele/psychische hulpaanbod vanuit Slachtofferhulp Nederland (SHN) aan slachtoffers van ernstige geweld- en zedendelicten (EGZ), inclusief doorverwijzing naar bijvoorbeeld psychologische zorgverlening. Tenslotte is het doel te inventariseren wat in de wetenschappelijke literatuur bekend is over het type behandeling- gericht op psychische klachten- dat effectief is voor EGZ-slachtoffers. Summary The aim of this study was to determine what type of psychosocial support is offered by Victim Support Netherlands (Slachtofferhulp Nederland; SHN) to victims of serious violent and sexual crimes (EGZ cases); together with any theories underlying its policy, and to investigate whether the support offered is in line with what is known in current scientific literature. We divided the research into a number of sub-studies, in which various methods were used: desk research; interviews with SHN employees; interviews with victims; a survey among former clients; and research in SHN's registration systems

Genome-wide diversity and global migration patterns in dromedaries follow ancient caravan routes

Dromedaries have been essential for the prosperity of civilizations in arid environments and the dispersal of humans, goods and cultures along ancient, cross-continental trading routes. With increasing desertification their importance as livestock species is rising rapidly, but little is known about their genome-wide diversity and demographic history. As previous studies using few nuclear markers found weak phylogeographic structure, here we detected fine-scale population differentiation in dromedaries across Asia and Africa by adopting a genome-wide approach. Global patterns of effective migration rates revealed pathways of dispersal after domestication, following historic caravan routes like the Silk and Incense Roads. Our results show that a Pleistocene bottleneck and Medieval expansions during the rise of the Ottoman empire have shaped genome-wide diversity in modern dromedaries. By understanding subtle population structure we recognize the value of small, locally adapted populations and appeal for securing genomic diversity for a sustainable utilization of this key desert species

Geo-additive models of Childhood Undernutrition in three Sub-Saharan African Countries

We investigate the geographical and socioeconomic determinants of childhood undernutrition in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, three neighboring countries in Southern Africa using the 1992 Demographic and Health Surveys. We estimate models of undernutrition jointly for the three countries to explore regional patterns of undernutrition that transcend boundaries, while allowing for country-specific interactions. We use semiparametric models to flexibly model the effects of selected so-cioeconomic covariates and spatial effects. Our spatial analysis is based on a flexible geo-additive model using the district as the geographic unit of anal-ysis, which allows to separate smooth structured spatial effects from random effect. Inference is fully Bayesian and uses recent Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques. While the socioeconomic determinants generally confirm what is known in the literature, we find distinct residual spatial patterns that are not explained by the socioeconomic determinants. In particular, there appears to be a belt run-ning from Southern Tanzania to Northeastern Zambia which exhibits much worse undernutrition, even after controlling for socioeconomic effects. These effects do transcend borders between the countries, but to a varying degree. These findings have important implications for targeting policy as well as the search for left-out variables that might account for these residual spatial patterns