Moral Disengagement: Exploring Support Mechanisms for Violent Extremism among Young Egyptian Males

This study applied Bandura’s (1986) eight mechanisms of moral disengagement to a sample of young, Egyptian Muslim males (N=660). Findings uncovered two distinct scoring groups, likewise a statistically significant (p\u3c.01) relationship between higher reported levels of moral disengagement and age. For this sample, younger individuals were likewise more apt to possess higher levels of moral disengagement. Findings argue for additional analyses exploring these relationships, likewise employing counter-violence, communication interventions derived specifically from Bandura’s identified mechanisms

Quantifying the land footprint of Germany and the EU using a hybrid accounting model

Footprint analysis reveals the appropriation of land resources from a consumer’s perspective. We here present a novel hybrid land-flow accounting method for the calculation of land footprints, employing a globally consistent top-down approach and combining physical with environmental economic accounting. Physical accounting tracks food products from ‘field to plate’ and non-food from ‘field to industrial use’ using the large harmonized FAO data to track biomass flows and related land use in physical volumes (tons of biomass). Environmental-economic accounting is used to further track non-food commodities in monetary values to final consumption. The hybrid methodology has been applied annually between 1995 and 2010 for 21 regional markets globally and including major economies separately (e.g. USA, China, India). Per capita extents and composition of cropland footprints vary widely across the world. Detailed results for Germany and the EU28 highlight the higher land demand of livestock-based diets compared to crop-based diets, the growing integration in international markets, and the growing importance of the non-food sector since 2000. Today the land footprint of each Germany citizen appropriates on average 2693 m2 cropland (about one half for livestock-based diets, one quarter for crop-based diets and one quarter for non-food products). Additional 1655 m2 of grassland per capita are used for the consumption of ruminant livestock products. Germany is a major and increasing trading partner with current net ‘cropland imports’ of 10.6 Mha. Overall, half of Germany’s 22 Mha cropland footprint relies on domestic cultivation and half on land resources abroad. Albeit large uncertainties in the calculation of grassland footprints, results point towards Germany being a significant net importer of grassland embedded in ruminant livestock products

Mapping global extraction of abiotic and biotic raw materials

Reducing global environmental and social impacts related to final consumption is a significant societal as well as scientific challenge, especially as production and consumption are increasingly geographically disconnected via complex supply chains. Tracing the interlinkages between consumption and production as well as related impacts in a spatially explicit way can contribute to overcoming this challenge. Currently, the spatial resolution of global models of raw material extraction, trade and consumption is limited to the national level. Thus, they fail to link specific supply chains to the actual geographical location of production and related impacts. Detailed global spatiotemporal datasets would allow tracing the heterogeneity of environmental and social conditions within producing countries. In this contribution, we present our preliminary results mapping global biotic and abiotic raw materials extraction in 5-arc-minutes (around 10 km x 10 km at the equator) grid cell level, starting from the year 2000. Our datasets will include around 60 different raw materials, covering crops, fishery, fossil energy resources, metal ores and non-metallic minerals. In the future, our database will also include spatially explicit data on environmental and social impacts related to the extraction of these raw materials. The new database, methods, and algorithms will be openly available to the research community and the wider public, supporting open and reproducible science. Our novel database will allow developing new methods to assess the interlinkages between consumption and various environmental and social impacts related to extraction on a grid cell level. It can boost the spatially explicit assessments of supply chains and consumption patterns in both developed and developing countries, which is crucial for the design of international policy instruments to achieve sustainable production and consumption patterns

Effects of magnetic field and disorder on electronic properties of Carbon Nanotubes

Electronic properties of metallic and semiconducting carbon nanotubes are investigated in presence of magnetic field perpendicular to the CN-axis, and disorder introduced through energy site randomness. The magnetic field field is shown to induce a metal-insulator transition (MIT) in absence of disorder, and surprisingly disorder does not affect significantly the MIT. These results may find confirmation through tunneling experimentsComment: 4 pages, 6 figures. Phys. Rev. B (in press