Russia and the Kyoto Protocol: The Long Road to Ratification

The Russian Federation played a crucial role in the Kyoto Protocol's ratification. Indeed, after the United States withdrawal, its ratification turned out to be indispensable for the Protocol to become legally binding. In early 2002, Russia decided to initiate the ratification process. However, the country long hesitated to fulfil its promises, and for the last two years it sent numerous contradictory signals with respect to its position on climate policy. Consequently, the factors that shape Russia's behaviour in the context of climate negotiations have received increasing attention. The main focus has been on the economic and international aspects motivating the Russian strategy. This paper attempts to complete this analysis by concentrating on a further feature that significantly contributed to Russia's final decision, namely, domestic forces. These factors have often been overlooked in the discussion of the Russian strategy. In order to fill this gap, this paper reconstructs the Russian ratification process, trying to identify the main domestic players and their role.     

An ergonomic comparison between mechanical and manual patient transfer techniques

Multiple studies have concluded that manual patient transfer and repositioning techniques are a significant cause of low back injuries. The objective of this study was to compare the low back stresses resulting from the use of two different mechanical patient transfer assist devices with the use of traditional manual transfer techniques. The mechanical transfer systems used were the Barton Patient Transfer System and a Sling-Suspension Lift similar to a "Hoyer Lift". The back compressive forces derived using the Michigan 3D Static Strength Model (Version 4.0) and electromyography (EMG) of the muscles of the low back were compared. This study found that the mechanical assist devices placed less stress on the low back and were more desirable to use than the traditional manual techniques. The Barton System was found to be, in general, less hazardous and more preferred than the Sling Suspension Lift.     

Synesthesia,transformation and synthesis: toward a multi-sensory pedagogy of the image

Clinical synesthesia is commonly defined as the experience of having perceptions in one sensory modality triggered by a stimulus from another. This paper adopts a particular orientation toward synesthesia, exploring it as a cultural phenomenon common to us all, as an ability that can be learnt instead of an accidental neurological condition. If synesthesia is both a capacity that we are not fully aware of and a way to access what is stored in memory even at the unconscious level, can art help us to bring this awareness back? Bearing upon a close reading of selected artworks created by Johannes Deutsch, a multi-media artist who has been experimenting with synesthesia, the paper argues that synesthesia can become a tool in the hands of contemporary artists to revitalize the Wagnerian ideal of a “total work of art”. This is to be understood as a politics of the senses based on communality rather than individualism, not as an ideology of totalitarian tendencies. Ultimately, the transformative potential of certain art resides in its capacity to foster a pedagogy of the image that is based upon multi-sensoriality, memory and history.     

Reminiscing Style During Conversations About Emotion‐laden Events and Effects of Attachment Security Among Italian Mother–Child Dyads

Previous research has established that mothers' and children's elaborative/evaluative styles during conversations about emotion‐laden events are associated with a range of social‐cognitive accomplishments, and this has prompted researchers to identify factors that predict stylistic differences in conversation styles. The study explored whether patterns and variations in reminiscing styles reported in other cultures would be observed in an Italian sample (N = 40 dyads). Attachment security, assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview for mothers and the Q‐Sort for children, were tested as possible sources of variation in conversation style. The two reminiscing styles identified through a clustering procedure were consistent with those displayed by dyads from other cultural groups; moreover, these were significantly related to both mothers' and children's attachment security. These results extend knowledge on reminiscing conversations during early childhood to a different cultural context and contribute to an understanding of how individual differences in attachment affect partners' participation in such conversations.     

Are time and money equally substitutable for all commodity groups in the household’s domestic production?

Review of Economics of the Household - This article uses time-use and household expenditure data to measure the substitutability between time and money within the Beckerian household production...     

Correction to: The impact of parental illness on children’s schooling and labour force participation: evidence from Vietnam

Review of Economics of the Household - The original version of this article unfortunately contained some errors in reference citations and in significance indicators in some of the tables. These...     

The impact of job loss on family dissolution

The impact of involuntary job displacements on the probability of divorce is analysed using discrete duration models. The analysis uses the sample of couples from the British Household Panel Survey and distinguishes between types of displacements. Results show that couples in which the husband experiences a job loss are more likely to divorce. Redundancies have small, positive, often insignificant and short-lived effects while dismissals and temporary job endings have larger positive impacts. This is consistent with the interpretation of redundancies as capturing negative income shocks while other types of job loss also convey new information about potential future earnings and match quality.     

Measuring Regional Performance in the Italian NHS: Are Disparities Decreasing?

Social Indicators Research - Given the regional disparities that historically characterize the Italian context, in this paper we propose a framework to evaluate the regional health care...     

Maximum entropy simulation for microdata protection

The paper proposes a new disclosure limitation procedure based on simulation. The key feature of the proposal is to protect actual microdata by drawing artificial units from a probability model, that is estimated from the observed data. Such a model is designed to maintain selected characteristics of the empirical distribution, thus providing a partial representation of the latter. The characteristics we focus on are the expected values of a set of functions; these are constrained to be equal to their corresponding sample averages; the simulated data, then, reproduce on average the sample characteristics. If the set of constraints covers the parameters of interest of a user, information loss is controlled for, while, as the model does not preserve individual values, re-identification attempts are impaired-synthetic individuals correspond to actual respondents with very low probability.Disclosure is mainly discussed from the viewpoint of record re-identification. According to this definition, as the pledge for confidentiality only involves the actual respondents, release of synthetic units should in principle rule out the concern for confidentiality.The simulation model is built on the Italian sample from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS). The approach can be applied in more generality, and especially suits quantitative traits. The model has a semi-parametric component, based on the maximum entropy principle, and, here, a parametric component, based on regression. The maximum entropy principle is exploited to match data traits; moreover, entropy measures uncertainty of a distribution: its maximisation leads to a distribution which is consistent with the given information but is maximally noncommittal with regard to missing information.Application results reveal that the fixed characteristics are sustained, and other features such as marginal distributions are well represented. Model specification is clearly a major point; related issues are selection of characteristics, goodness of fit and strength of dependence relations.     

Forthcoming in Sociological Forum

Forthcoming in Sociological Forum