Suchergebnisse

Prologue: The Parable of the Devil's Toy Box -- Future Shock Visits the Subway: The 1995 Aum Shinrikyo Sarin Gas Assault as a Prototypical Promethean Terror Strike -- Made in Japan? Or "Overeducated and Underemployed"? -- Promethean Technologies: Adding Accelerants to the Spreading Fire -- Promethean Technology's Mind-Bending Challenge to Homeland Security -- Selecting the Tools to Build a Promethean Spyglass: A Brief Survey of Seventy Years' Worth of Forecasting Methods -- The Core of a "Devil's Toy Box" Analytical Team? Science Fiction Writers -- The Promethean Spyglass: Doing a "Devil's Toy Box" Analysis Right -- Conclusion: Buy That Fire Insurance Policy!

Andrew Fox shows how to predict and assess the most dangerous terrorist threats likely to emerge in the near future in order to focus on countering them.

AbstractEven with developments in supporting people with enduring psychosis, some people living with these difficulties still require specialised care in inpatient rehabilitation facilities. To optimise the support provided a service evaluation was conducted for people admitted to a Long-term High Dependency Unit service. Data collected routinely with the Short-Term Assessment for Risk and Treatability tool was used to identify dynamic risk factors for the residents. Completed assessments were analysed for frequency and severity of risk behaviours; historic prevalence of risk behaviours; judgements on future risk; and strengths and vulnerabilities. The evaluation indicated a picture of a group of people who have a variety of historic risks and currently engage regularly in aggression and self-neglect, whilst experiencing limited insight, social exclusion, and limited coping abilities. Strengths and vulnerabilities linked to risk behaviours were also grouped into conceptually similar domains to aid intervention. Recommendations are made for using such data to enhance recovery.

Conventional wisdom holds that friends protect against depression through the social support they provide; however, depression likely has a role in structuring friendship networks. In particular, we investigate friend selection mechanisms responsible for similarity in depression among friends (i.e., homophily). Preference is one explanation, yet several correlates of depression make homophilous selection among depressed individuals unlikely. We propose two alternative mechanisms—avoidance and withdrawal—that can produce depression homophily in the absence of preference. These alternative mechanisms create homophily indirectly by limiting friendship partners available to depressed individuals. We test the preference, avoidance, and withdrawal mechanisms using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and a dynamic network model. Results provide support for the withdrawal mechanism. These findings help explain how depression affects friend selection and have broader implications for understanding selection mechanisms responsible for network patterns such as homophily.

AbstractPublic knowledge and awareness about radiation (both natural and manmade) tend to be low, while perceived risk of radiation tends to be high. High perceptions of risk associated with radiation have been linked to the affect heuristic and general feelings of dread, which are often not proportionate to actual risk. For example, studies routinely show that members of the public rate the risk of radiation from nuclear power plants as significantly higher (and riskier) than radiation from medical X‐rays. This disconnect can have implications for adoption of protective actions during a potential radiation emergency and the perceived efficacy of these actions. This study explores how risk communication efforts influence public risk perceptions, intended protective action, and perceived efficacy of those actions. Using unique data from a survey of New York City adults, we analyze how information provision using different formats—no information, an infographic, an informational video—impact perceptions and response to a hypothetical radiation emergency. We hypothesize that respondents who receive some information, either through the infographic or the video, will have higher perceived efficacy and are more likely to take protective action. Findings suggest that providing information about what to do during a radiation emergency has a statistically significant impact on both perceived efficacy and adoption of protective action. Respondents who saw the informational video were most likely to say that they would take the correct protective actions and had the highest perceived efficacy, followed by those who saw the infographic.

While the existence of a 'Democratic Peace' (DP) is widely accepted, the various DP theories that seek to explain why democracies rarely fight one another are highly contested. A 'commercial/capitalist peace' counterargument maintains that the relationship between democratic politics and peace is spurious: the actual driver is greater trade among democracies. Meanwhile, Realists counter that it is alliances among democratic states, not their democratic nature, that causes peace among them. This research note utilizes novel country feeling thermometer data to explore the debate's micro-foundations: the underlying drivers of international amity and enmity among democratic citizens in the US, UK, France, and Germany. Utilizing Freedom House and other quantitative measures of freedom, trade, military strength, and racial and cultural difference, it pits the micro-foundations of the DP against its rivals to explain attitude formation among a group of Western democratic publics. Given the resurgence of authoritarianism around the world today, a better understanding of the role of regime type in shaping public opinion – and subsequently war and peace – is urgently needed.

While the existence of a 'Democratic Peace' (DP) is widely accepted, the various DP theories that seek to explain why democracies rarely fight one another are highly contested. A 'commercial/capitalist peace' counterargument maintains that the relationship between democratic politics and peace is spurious: the actual driver is greater trade among democracies. Meanwhile, Realists counter that it is alliances among democratic states, not their democratic nature, that causes peace among them. This research note utilizes novel country feeling thermometer data to explore the debate's micro-foundations: the underlying drivers of international amity and enmity among democratic citizens in the US, UK, France, and Germany. Utilizing Freedom House and other quantitative measures of freedom, trade, military strength, and racial and cultural difference, it pits the micro-foundations of the DP against its rivals to explain attitude formation among a group of Western democratic publics. Given the resurgence of authoritarianism around the world today, a better understanding of the role of regime type in shaping public opinion – and subsequently war and peace – is urgently needed.