394 research outputs found
The Work of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch: Evidence from Colombia
We process the main written output of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on Colombia covering the period 1988-2004, recording all numerical conflict information and accounts of specific conflict events. We check for internal consistency and against a unique Colombian conflict database. We find that both organizations have substantive problems in their handling of quantitative information. Problems include failre to specify sources, unclear definitions, an erratic reporting template and a distorted portrayal of conflict dynamics. Accounts of individual events are fairly representative and much more useful and accurate than the statistical information. We disprove a common accusation that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch rarely criticize the guerrillas, but do find some evidence of anti-government bias. The quantitative human rights and conflict information produced by these organizations for other countries must be viewed with scepticism along with cross-country and time series human rights data based on Amnesty International reports.
Masters of Disasters? An Empirical Analysis of How Societies Benefit From Corporate Disaster Aid
Corporations are increasingly influential within societies worldwide, while the relative capacity of national governments to meet large social needs has waned. Consequentially, firms face social pressures to adopt responsibilities that have traditionally fallen to governments, aid agencies, and other types of organizations. There are questions, though, about whether this is beneficial for society. We study this in the context of disaster relief and recovery, in which companies account for a growing share of aid, as compared to traditional providers. Drawing on the dynamic capabilities literature, we argue that firms are more able than other types of organizations to sense areas of need following a disaster, seize response opportunities, and reconfigure resources for fast, effective relief efforts. As such, we predict that, while traditional aid providers remain important for disaster recovery, relief will arrive faster and nations will recover more fully when locally active firms account for a larger share of disaster aid. We test our predictions with a proprietary data set comprising information on every natural disaster and reported aid donation worldwide from 2003 to 2013. Using a novel, quasi-experimental technique known as the “synthetic control method,” our analysis shows that nations benefit greatly from corporate involvement when disaster strikes
Conical defects in growing sheets
A growing or shrinking disc will adopt a conical shape, its intrinsic
geometry characterized by a surplus angle at the apex. If growth is slow,
the cone will find its equilibrium. Whereas this is trivial if , the
disc can fold into one of a discrete infinite number of states if is
positive. We construct these states in the regime where bending dominates,
determine their energies and how stress is distributed in them. For each state
a critical value of is identified beyond which the cone touches itself.
Before this occurs, all states are stable; the ground state has two-fold
symmetry.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, LaTeX, RevTeX style. New version corresponds to
the one published in PR
The Model Minority Myth and The Mental Well-Being of Academically Struggling Asian Americans
This dissertation investigates relationships between pressures Asian Americans experience to be academically successful and their feelings of depression and stress. The model minority myth (MMM) stereotype characterizes Asian Americans as industrious, intellectually-gifted, assimilating to U.S. values of meritocracy, and achieving higher academic and employment success levels compared to other racial groups in the general population. While many consider MMM a positive stereotype, it also comes with a cost. Prior research demonstrates the tensions that exist among Asian Americans who do not uphold the MMM stereotype and its corollary, the Asian Academic Success Frame. Those unable to meet academic success standards often feeling tensions with their Asian identity. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) Survey 1994-2018, this study looks at the factors contributing towards Asian American Academic Achievement such as acculturation, social capital, and parental expectations to succeed, as well as measuring the perceived depression and stress among the Asian Americans who struggle to complete college and with poor grades in Math, English, History, and Science. The results support and extend prior work by showing how deviating from the success frame can have a further cost in mental well-being among Asian Americans
Black swans and the social value of corporate disaster giving
First author draf
Gravity or turbulence? -III. Evidence of pure thermal Jeans fragmentation at ~0.1 pc scale
We combine previously published interferometric and single-dish data of
relatively nearby massive dense cores that are actively forming stars to test
whether their `fragmentation level' is controlled by turbulent or thermal
support. We find no clear correlation between the fragmentation level and
velocity dispersion, nor between the observed number of fragments and the
number of fragments expected when the gravitationally unstable mass is
calculated including various prescriptions for `turbulent support'. On the
other hand, the best correlation is found for the case of pure thermal Jeans
fragmentation, for which we infer a core formation efficiency around 13 per
cent, consistent with previous works. We conclude that the dominant factor
determining the fragmentation level of star-forming massive dense cores at 0.1
pc scale seems to be thermal Jeans fragmentation.Comment: accepted in MNRA
Geolocators reveal an unsuspected moulting area for Isle of May common guillemots Uria aalge
Data from geolocators deployed on adult Common Guillemots from a colony in southeast Scotland indicated that they normally winter in the North Sea up to 1000 km southeast of the colony. However, one bird unexpectedly moved 3000 km northeast to moult in the Barents Sea
Masters of disasters? An empirical analysis of how societies benefit from corporate disaster aid
Corporations have become increasingly influential within societies around the world, while the
relative capacity of national governments to meet large social needs has waned. Consequentially,
firms are being asked to adopt responsibilities that have traditionally fallen to governments, aid
agencies, and other types of organizations. There are questions, though, about whether or not this
is beneficial for society. We study this in the context of disaster relief and recovery; an area
where companies account for a growing share of aid as compared to traditional providers.
Drawing on the dynamic capabilities literature, we argue that firms are better-equipped than
other types of organizations to sense areas of need following a disaster, seize response
opportunities, and reconfigure resources for fast, effective relief efforts. As such, we predict
that—while traditional aid providers are important for disaster recovery—relief will arrive faster,
and nations will recover more fully when locally active firms account for a larger share of
disaster aid. We test our predictions with a proprietary dataset comprising information on every
natural disaster and reported aid donation worldwide from 2003 to 2013. Our analysis uses a
novel, quasi-experimental technique known as the synthetic control method and shows that
nations benefit greatly from corporate involvement when disaster strikes.Accepted manuscrip
Zooming into local active galactic nuclei: The power of combining SDSS-IV MaNGA with higher resolution integral field unit observations
Ionised gas outflows driven by active galactic nuclei (AGN) are ubiquitous in
high luminosity AGN with outflow speeds apparently correlated with the total
bolometric luminosity of the AGN. This empirical relation and theoretical work
suggest that in the range L_bol ~ 10^43-45 erg/s there must exist a threshold
luminosity above which the AGN becomes powerful enough to launch winds that
will be able to escape the galaxy potential. In this paper, we present pilot
observations of two AGN in this transitional range that were taken with the
Gemini North Multi-Object Spectrograph Integral Field Unit (IFU). Both sources
have also previously been observed within the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-IV
(SDSS) Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey.
While the MaNGA IFU maps probe the gas fields on galaxy-wide scales and show
that some regions are dominated by AGN ionization, the new Gemini IFU data zoom
into the centre with four times better spatial resolution. In the object with
the lower L_bol we find evidence of a young or stalled biconical AGN-driven
outflow where none was obvious at the MaNGA resolution. In the object with the
higher L_bol we trace the large-scale biconical outflow into the nuclear region
and connect the outflow from small to large scales. These observations suggest
that AGN luminosity and galaxy potential are crucial in shaping wind launching
and propagation in low-luminosity AGN. The transition from small and young
outflows to galaxy-wide feedback can only be understood by combining
large-scale IFU data that trace the galaxy velocity field with higher
resolution, small scale IFU maps.Comment: 14 pages, accepted for publication in MNRA
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