Public Assistance of Police during Criminal Investigations: Russian Experience

This study examines the high levels of public unwillingness to assist police in criminal investigations in Russia. Variables of public trust of police, fear of crime, victimization, and prior contact with police are used to explain this phenomenon. Also included in the study are variables of police fear and avoidance of police. The findings suggest that higher levels of distrust in, as well as fear and avoidance of police are strong predictors of citizens’ unwillingness to assist police in Russia. The paper discusses potential implications of these findings for the 2011 police reform in Russia

Death Penalty Politics and Symbolic Law in Russia

In contemporary Russia there is widespread support for the death penalty. Recent Russian presidents have endorsed the nation’s entry into the European Community (EC). The dilemma is that the price of membership into the EC is total abolition of capital punishment. The Russian Duma is much less popular than the president, even though it sides with public opinion in supporting capital punishment. Since 1997, these conflicting political positions have been temporarily neutralized by leaving capital punishment legislation in place but allowing the Russian president to offer clemency to all sentenced to death. In 1999, the Constitutional Court of Russia placed a moratorium on all death sentences until jury trials are re-introduced throughout the nation

New properties and representations for members of the power-variance family. II

This is the continuation of [V. Vinogradov, R.B. Paris, and O. Yanushkevichiene, New properties and representations for members of the power-variance family. I, Lith. Math. J., 52(4):444–461, 2012]. Members of the powervariance family of distributions became popular in stochastic modeling which necessitates a further investigation of their properties. Here, we establish Zolotarev duality of the refined saddlepoint-type approximations for all members of this family, thereby providing an interpretation of the Letac–Mora reciprocity of the corresponding NEFs. Several illustrative examples are given. Subtle properties of related special functions are established.An erratum to this article is available at 10.1007/s10986-014-9240-1

The Spanish Regional Policy: an assessment of economic incentives during the period 1988-2003

Two main challenges influence the design of regional policies carried out by European, National and Regional policy makers. The first is the shift towards a knowledge-based economy, where enterprise competitiveness is increasingly linked to intangible assets. The second is the enlargement of the European Union that means important changes in the European Union marketplace and the possibilities of intervention in some less favoured regions. Until today, Regional Policy in many European Union countries has principally been founded on incentives for the creation of employment and investment in tangible assets. In this context, Spanish Regional Policy has been formulated, on the one hand, to achieve decentralisation of the entities responsible for its promotion and, on the other, to foster co-ordination and integration of Community, National and Autonomous Region interventions. Moreover, the design of this policy has taken into consideration the classical conflict between equity and efficiency. The objective of this paper is to assess the results and the gradual changes in regional incentive policy applied in Spain over the last 15 years and to identify the elements in which public intervention could be improved in order to adapt this policy to the demands laid out within the new environment previously defined. This assessment includes: firstly, a brief analysis of the evolution of public intervention; secondly, a study of the spatial distribution of the incentives over the period considered; and thirdly, a comparison of the economic performance of the different areas depending on the awards received. The analysis of this policy is based on a database comprising over 16 000 items referring to award decisions to applications for Regional Investment Grants (Law 50/1985 of 22 December 1985) gathered from the Official State Bulletin (Boletín Oficial del Estado, BOE) during the period 1988-2003. KEY WORDS: Spain, Regional policy, Regional incentive, Employment, Investment, Policy assessment

Mechano-electric heterogeneity of the myocardium as a paradigm of its function

Myocardial heterogeneity is well appreciated and widely documented, from sub-cellular to organ levels. This paper reviews significant achievements of the group, led by Professor Vladimir S. Markhasin, Russia, who was one of the pioneers in studying and interpreting the relevance of cardiac functional heterogeneity

Determining the Neutrino Mass Hierarchy and CP Violation in NOvA with a Second Off-Axis Detector

We consider a Super-NOvA-like experimental configuration based on the use of two detectors in a long-baseline experiment as NOvA. We take the far detector as in the present NOvA proposal and add a second detector at a shorter baseline. The location of the second off-axis detector is chosen such that the ratio L/E is the same for both detectors, being L the baseline and E the neutrino energy. We consider liquid argon and water-Cherenkov techniques for the second off-axis detector and study, for different experimental setups, the detector mass required for the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy, for different values of theta13. We also study the capabilities of such an experimental setup for determining CP violation in the neutrino sector. Our results show that by adding a second off-axis detector a remarkable enhancement on the capabilities of the current NOvA experiment could be achieved.Comment: 20 p