War-related Deaths in the 1992–1995 Armed Conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Critique of Previous Estimates and Recent Results

In this article, we provide a critique of previous estimates of war-related deaths from Bosnia and Herzegovina and propose an analytical framework and a new estimate of such deaths. Our assessment is concentrated on civilian victims, whose death (or disappearance) can in a straightforward manner be linked with war operation. The estimate is based on carefully selected sources analysed jointly at the level of individual records, allowing for identity verification of victims, elimination of duplicates within the sources and exclusion of records overlapping between the sources. Although we can argue that our estimate is much better founded than any other estimate ever obtained, it is still incomplete and should be seen as work in progress.     

Demography of Conflict and Violence: An Emerging Field

This introductory article focuses on a new field in demography, the Demography of Conflict and Violence. A research programme on this field is proposed as a result of activities of the IUSSP Working Group on Demography of Conflict and Violence, in particular the Group’s seminar in Norway in November 2003. The articles in this special issue of EJP are a selection of papers presented at the seminar. The first article presents new estimates of combat deaths in the world since 1946, whereas the second article looks at the role of demographic estimates in war crime proceedings at international criminal courts. The rest of the articles are concerned with the mortality consequences of political conflict in various settings. Another set of articles from the seminar is published in a special issue of the Journal of Peace Research. The articles are summarised and reviewed using the broader framework of issues inherent in the Demography of Conflict and Violence.     

Mediatization: Conceptual developments and research domains

Mediatization is nowadays considered an influential theory explaining societal, political, and cultural alterations driven by media technologies. Mediatization research, initiated almost 20 years ago (with its precursory ideas placed in the first half of the 20th century), witnesses at present dynamic theoretical, methodological, and empirical developments, obtaining a status as one of the most essential and ambitious research fields within the social sciences. Mediatization theory deals with (meta)process in which media communication is becoming increasingly complex, takes place more often, covers a growing number of topics, and lasts longer. The goal of this study is to contribute to our understanding of mediatization as well as to make the theory more familiar to non‐media scholars by presenting the state of the art and the most promising research lines of scientific inquiry. Starting from conceptualization and operationalization, we also aim to sketch the dimensions, fields, and forms of mediatization as well as to present examples of different domains where mediatization is most advanced, that is, mediatization of culture, society, and politics, or most promising, that is, mediatization of journalism.     

Flattening topologically spherical surface

The problem of optimal surface flattening in 3-D finds many applications in engineering and manufacturing. However, previous algorithms for this problem are all heuristics without any quality guarantee and the computational complexity of the problem was not well understood. In this paper, we prove that the optimal surface flattening problem is NP-hard. Further, we show that the problem of flattening a topologically spherical surface admits a PTAS and can be solved by a (1+ε)-approximation algorithm in O(nlog n) time for any constant ε>0, where n is the input size of the problem.     

Developing a framework for identifying individual and organizational risk factors for the prevention of violence in the health-care sector

The problem of violence at work has received considerable attention in recent years. According to Swedish statistics, personnel in the health-care sector are the most affected. The purpose of this paper is to present a framework or model for studies of workplace violence, and to demonstrate its application to the analysis of violence in health-care settings. The model treats violence as a process comprising of several stages/sub-events, and shows how this process is influenced by underlying structural (rather permanent) and situational (generally temporary) risk factors. Understanding the diversity in the process provides a basis for analysis of connections between interacting factors at different stages. Risk management (hazard identification, risk analysis, and preventive counter-measures) should be integrated into the work situation and operations of an organization.     

历史学的未来:后人文主义的挑战

在过去10年里,由于与自然科学,尤其是生物学联系加深,人文科学和社会科学发生了巨大的变化。这些变化包括:解释范式或建构主义范式的象征化;在新唯物主义和新经验主义方面,出现了不同的甚至互相矛盾的趋势,它们主张"脱离文本"和"返归质料"。与这些变化相伴随的是,对人文主义和人类中心论的批评(后人文科学)。     

Improving Overall Mortality Forecasts by Analysing Cause-of-Death, Period and Cohort Effects in Trends

The major goal of this study is to propose improvements in the methods for forecasting overall mortality. In order to reach this goal, three types of trend-oriented forecasts have been studied. Each type of forecast is conditional on developments in one of the three factors, period, cohort and cause of death, which are known to represent symptomatic measures of certain causal mechanisms. Mortality projections have been made for four developed European countries: France, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway. The projections are based on observed mortality data over the years 1950--1994 and cohorts born in the nineteenth and twentieth century. The results of the analyses do not show a best solution, though the cause-of-death approach looks the most promising. However, the period and cohort approaches certainly have additional value in the forecasting process. The cause-of-death approach should ideally be used jointly with the overall mortality period (or overall mortality cohort) approach. However, the cause-of-death approach is not optimal for forecasting the mortality of the oldest-old. Another modelling method, for instance parameterization of overall mortality, should be considered for that purpose. The cohort approach can be used to improve forecasting of period mortality.