Violence In Areas Research Articles

Individual and contextual characteristics of indoor and outdoor falls in older residents of São Paulo, Brazil

Purpose of the studyTo analyze a representative sample of older individuals of São Paulo, Brazil, according to outdoor fallers, indoor fallers and non-fallers, and to identify biological and socioeconomic (individual and contextual) factors associated with the occurrence and place of falls. Materials and methodsA cross-sectional study was conducted using data (n = 1345) from the 2010 wave of the Health, Wellbeing and Aging (SABE) Study, a representative sample of older residents (60 years and older) of São Paulo, Brazil. Multinomial logistic analysis was performed to identify individual factors associated with the occurrence and place of falls, and multilevel multinomial analysis to identify contextual effects (green areas, violence, presence of slums and income inequality). Results29% had a fall in the last 12 months, with 59% occurring in indoor spaces. Individuals who had outdoor falls were overall not statistically different from non-fallers; on the other hand, those who had the last fall indoor had worse health status. Moderate homicide rate was a factor associated with increased presence of indoor falls, compared with non-fallers. ImplicationsOur results describe the importance of falls, a common problem in active and community-dwelling older adults of São Paulo, Brazil. Transforming outdoor spaces into walk-friendly areas is essential to allow socialization and autonomy with safety. Creating strategies that take into account the most vulnerable populations, as those who live in violent areas and the oldest older adults, will be a growing challenge among developing countries.

Whose Gun Was It? Long-Term Effects of Wartime Violence on the Public Perception of Participating States

How does experience with war affect people’s attitudes toward participating states in the long run? Public attitudes toward the state and foreign countries are critical in forming foreign policy in democracies. In this paper, we examine whether wartime violence against civilians during the Korean War affects people’s current attitudes toward South Korea and other involved countries. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) approach that com- pares the cohorts born before and after the war, we find that direct exposure to wartime violence induces negative perceptions regarding the perpetrator countries. As many of the civilian massacres were committed by the South Korean armed forces, prewar cohorts living in violence-ridden areas demonstrate significantly less pride in South Korea and less hostility toward North Korea. In contrast, postwar cohorts in violent areas, who were exposed to intensive anti-communist campaigns and incentivized to differentiate themselves from the victims, show significantly greater pride in South Korea, greater hospitality toward the United States and greater hostility to North Korea, compared to prewar cohorts in the same areas and to the same cohorts born in non-violent areas.

A History of Violence: The Impact of Early Violence Exposure on Financial Risk Preferences

This paper examines whether growing up in areas with high homicide rates affects financial risk preferences. Our key conjecture is that individuals who have grown up in violent areas possess more risk averse financial preferences. We find support for this hypothesis using a unique dataset of mutual fund investors from one of Colombia’s largest stock brokers alongside Colombian official data on homicide rates.

The Unintended Consequences of the U.S. Adversarial Model in Latin American Crime

During the 1990s, Latin America experienced a criminal procedural revolution (LACPR) when approximately 70% of its countries abandoned their inquisitorial system and adopted the U.S. adversarial model. Followed the LACPR, the region experienced a dramatic increase in crime, consolidating it as one of the most violent areas in the world. Despite previous empirical evidence indicating that procedural law affects criminal behavior, the effects of the LACPR continue highly unexplored. In this paper, we use the Latin American case to evaluate the impact of an adversarial reform on crime rates. Exploiting the quasi-experimental implementation in one key country— Colombia—we use an event study approach combined with a difference-in-difference with variation in treatment timing to estimate the reform’s consequences on criminal activity. Despite the opposite incentives the reform created, we find an increase associated with the procedural transformation in overall crime rates (22%), violent crime (15%), and property crime (8%). However, we observe a dramatic decrease in drug offenses associated with lower arrest rates. Our findings contribute to the literature on Latin American crime and the link between procedural law and criminal behavior.

Climate change and interpersonal violence: a “global” estimate and regional inequities

This study estimates the predicted impact of climate change on levels of violence in a sample of 57 countries. We sample western and non-western countries and perform a multilevel ARFIMA regression to examine if warmer temperatures are associated with higher levels of homicide. Our results indicate that each degree Celsius increase in annual temperatures is associated with a nearly 6 % average increase in homicides. Regional variation in this predicted effect is detected, for example, with no apparent effects in former Soviet countries and far stronger effects found in Africa. Such variation indicates that climate change may acutely increase violence in areas that already are affected by higher levels of homicides and other social dislocations.

The Empire Strikes Back: Ethnicity, Terrain, and Indiscriminate Violence in Counterinsurgencies*

ObjectiveThe literature on indiscriminate violence has emphasized how information shapes state capacity and determines whether and where the government employs collective targeting. This article investigates the conditions that influence the government's ability to obtain intelligence in counterinsurgencies. Specifically, it suggests that the government is more likely to use indiscriminate violence in areas characterized by indigenous ethnic homogeneity and forested terrain. These features increase the cost of acquiring information about the insurgents, and reduce state capacity, thereby increasing the likelihood of indiscriminate violence.MethodWe examine district‐level data on the Russian government's use of indiscriminate violence and disaggregated data on ethnicity and terrain across the North Caucasus from 2000 to 2011.ResultsThe results indicate that ethnically homogeneous and forested areas are significantly more likely targets of indiscriminate violence, and that the effect of ethnicity is markedly stronger when the district is densely forested.ConclusionThis finding expands on previous studies by testing the observable implications of theories linking information to indiscriminate violence, and by providing new micro‐level evidence for important human and physical constraints on counterinsurgencies.

The Fatal Attraction of Civil War Economies: Foreign Direct Investment and Political Violence, A Case Study of Colombia

Civil war acutely inhibits economic growth, according to a prominent set of civil war literature. However, recent scholarship observes that foreign direct investment (FDI), considered a central vehicle of growth, is entering countries with internal armed conflicts unabated. Furthermore, some civil war economies exhibit substantial increases in FDI during conflict. According to this scholarship, FDI enters conflict zones in spite of violence. This article contrastingly adopts a critical framework acknowledging the often violent characteristics of globalized capitalism. By analyzing Colombia's oil industry (the country's largest sector of FDI), this article suggests that civil war violence can create conditions that facilitate FDI inflows. More specifically, this article posits that violence perpetrated by armed groups sympathetic to the interests of the oil industry—namely the public armed forces and right-wing paramilitaries—has facilitated FDI in Colombia's oil sector. In particular, processes of forced displacement and violence against civilian groups have served to protect economically important infrastructure and have acquired land for oil exploration. Moreover, civilian groups deemed inimical to oil interests have been violently targeted. By using disaggregate-level data on the conflict in Arauca, an important oil-producing region of Colombia, this case study indicates that intensifying levels of civil war violence in areas of economic interest are followed by increases in oil production, exploration, and investment.

Enclaves of opportunity or “ghettos of last resort?” Assessing the effects of immigrant segregation on violent crime rates

A growing body of research indicates that immigration to the U.S. has crime-reducing effects on aggregate levels of violence, which researchers have often attributed to the protective and revitalizing effects of immigrants settling in spatially concentrated neighborhoods. However, recent scholarship suggests that growing shares of the foreign-born population are bypassing these segregated immigrant enclaves and are dispersing more widely to other urban neighborhoods. Moreover, some scholars suggest that spatially isolating immigrant populations may not always be protective, but could actually contribute to social problems like crime, particularly in disadvantaged contexts. The current study offers one of the first analyses exploring the way that segregation of immigrant populations (relative to the U.S.-born) is related to year 2000 violent crime rates for nearly 500 census places in California and New York. Results of our analysis reveal no direct link between immigrant segregation and macro-level violence, but instead show that these effects are highly contextualized and depend on the resources present in locales. Specifically, immigrant segregation contributes to violence in highly disadvantaged places but is linked to lower violence in areas with greater resources.

Long-term environmental change and geographical patterns of violence in Darfur, 2003–2005

This paper investigates spatial associations between environmental change and violence in Darfur. Long-term variations in the geographical distribution of water and vegetative resources can foster migration from areas with decreasing levels of resource availability to areas with increasing levels. Rising ethnic diversity and resource competition can, in turn, escalate the risk of violence in areas of high in-migration. This paper employs a multimethod approach to investigate this hypothesis. Qualitative evidence is used to demonstrate the plausibility of the argument for the case of Darfur. The quantitative analysis is based on information retrieved from satellite imagery on long-term vegetation change and the spatial distribution of attacks on villages in the early phase of the civil war (2003–2005). The findings indicate that violence has been more likely and intense in areas that experienced increasing availability of water and vegetative resources during the 20 years prior to the civil war.

The Dynamics of Conflict in Southern Thailand

The prolonged insurgency in Southern Thailand has claimed thousands of victims since the outbreak of major violence in 2004. Drawing on a unique data set covering all violent incidents since 2004, a hotspot analysis shows that the bulk of the violence is concentrated in clusters of sub-districts forming hotbeds of conflict. Drivers of conflict are identified through a comparative analysis of the hotspots of violence with less violent areas. The analysis shows that identity manifested in language use and religious practices (rather than international borders, infrastructure, and physical geography) influence the prevalence and patterns of violence.

Dispatching community-based first responders via text message in violent areas of the Western Cape Province, South Africa

Welcome to Annals of Global Health,Annals of Global Health is a peer-reviewed, fully open access, online journal dedicated to publishing high quality articles dedicated to all aspects of global health. The journal's mission is to advance global health, promote research, and foster the prevention and treatment of disease worldwide. Its goals are to improve the health and well-being of all people, advance health equity, and promote wise stewardship of the earth's environment.Annals of Global Health is supported by the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College. It was founded in 1934 by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai as the Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine. It is a partner journal of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health.Authors of articles accepted for publication in Annals of Global Health will be asked to pay an Article Publication Charge (APC) to cover publication costs. This charge can normally be sourced from your funder or institution. We are committed to supporting authors from all countries to publish their work in Annals of Global Health regardless of national income level, and to achieve this goal, we waive the Article Publication Charge for manuscripts where all authors are from low-income or lower-middle-income countries (as defined by the World Bank). From time to time, Annals of Global Health publishes Special Collections, a series of articles organized around a common theme in global health. Recent Special Collections have included "Human Health and Ocean Pollution", "Building Health Research Capacity in Rwanda; A Multi-Year Journey", and "2020 Year of the Nurse". Global health workers interested in developing a Special Collection are strongly encouraged to contact the Managing Editor in advance to discuss the project.

Multi-View Distributed Video Coding Based on Discrete Cosine

To investigate the allocation scheme of the multi-view distributed video coding (DVC), the corresponding improvements are proposed correspondingly for traditional multi-view DVC. Traditional multi-view DVC (Wyner-Ziv DVC) encodes for all areas of Wyner-Ziv frame indiscriminately based on Turbo or LDPC. In this kind of encoding process, with regard to violent motor area, decoder can't decode violent motor area accurately and also send more solicited message to feedback channel, which lowers the code efficiency and decodes inaccurately for violent motor area, it causes a part of area distortion in the image. In this paper, a distributed video encryption algorithm is proposed which based on discrete cosine transform (DCT). The algorithm combines decision criteria of ROI to get violent motor area and non-violent motor area. For violent motor area, to extract low frequency coefficient of DCT as DCT-R algorithm to assist decoder end to decode, decoder utilizes low frequency coefficient of DCT which has already been decoded to carry on bi-directional movement evaluation. Simulation experiment tests and verifies the improved algorithm effectiveness of proposed multi-view DVC in this paper.

Fabry-Perot spectroscopy: a powerful method for detecting superbubbles in galaxy discs

AbstractWe present a new method for the detection and characterization of large scale expansion in galaxy discs based on Hα Fabry-Perot spectroscopy, taking advantage of the high spatial and velocity resolution of our instrument (GHαFaS). The method analyses multi-peaked emission line profiles to find expansion along the line of sight on a pixel-by-pixel basis. At this stage we have centred our attention on the large scale structures of expansive gas which show a coherent gradient of velocities from their centres as a result of both bubble shape and projection effect. The results show a wide range of expansion velocities in these superbubbles, ranging from 30-150 km/s, with the expected trend of finding the higher velocities in the more violent areas of the galaxies. We have applied the technique to the Antennae and M83, obtaining spectacular results, and used these to investigate to what extent kinematically derived ages can be found and used to characterize the ages of their massive star clusters.

SINGLE HERBAL DRUG THERAPY FOR TAMAKA SWASA (BRONCHIAL ASTHMA): A REVIEW

Research in respiratory medicine and associated expertise is in an highly developed period now a day but, respiratory diseases are still a challenge in front of healthcare workers and are extending their violent area with every momentary. Unlike many disea ses, which can be attributed to the life style of modern man, Tamaka swasa (Bronchial asthma) is one such condition which is life threatening . A ccording to the clinical course of the disease both Kapha and Vata seems to be pr edominant . Vata holds prime imp ortance in the management. As disease is considered to be yapya therefore , proper planning of treatment and implementation of excellent life style is necessary for better quality of life. Ayurveda can offer promising results in management of Tamaka swasa t hrough a set of treatment modalities. Shodhana and Shamana are some of such modalities. Currently, an attempt has been made to explore the knowledge of single herbal drug therapy mentioned in Ayurvedic classics which may helpful to the traditional healers as well as common people in prevention of Tamaka swasa

Socio-spatial violence prevention: Inhibiting violence in Caracas, Venezuela through spatial planning

Contemporary urban growth in many cities in Latin American and Africa has been accompanied by unprecedented levels of urban violence. Latin America epitomizes this trend as three of the world's most dangerous cities, Ciudad Juarez, San Pedro Sula, and Caracas, are located within this region (JACOME; GRATIUS, 2011, p. 2). Of these three, Caracas is notable because its exorbitant homicide rate cannot be explicitly attributed to the illicit drug trade-cartel wars that consume Mexico, nor is it represented by the civil conflict-gang violence that afflicts Central America. Moreover, the Venezuelan context is further distinguished as inequality, which is consistently cited as the primary catalyst for the emergence of everyday reactionary violence, is not overtly characteristic of the contemporary situation. Rather, caraqueno insecurity has largely been attributed to the exacerbation of social factors that perpetuate violence as an end in itself or a [mechanism] to injure/eliminate another person in order to resolve an interpersonal conflict [...] (SANJUAN, 2002, p. 95). Based on this reality, this work proposes the inclusion of socio-spatial interventions into contemporary prevention initiatives. Spatial interventions have shown a significant capacity to prevent the occurrence of violence in areas that are either totally or partially excluded from economic development and larger society [...] (DIAZ; MELLER, 2012, p. 23). Implications of this work have the capacity to augment predominantly technical violence prevention precedent and enhance knowledge on alternative mechanisms to prevent insecurity. This study employs a comprehensive literature review in conjunction with data analyses in the development of a spatial proposal for Caracas.

Assessment of Social Support and Its Association to Depression, Self-Perceived Health and Chronic Diseases in Elderly Individuals Residing in an Area of Poverty and Social Vulnerability in Rio de Janeiro City, Brazil

ObjectivesSocial support (SS) influences the elderly ability to cope with the losses of ageing process. This study was aimed at assessing SS among elderly users of a primary healthcare unit in a poor and violent area of Rio de Janeiro City, and at verifying its association with depression, self-perceived health (SPH), marital status and chronic illnesses.MethodsA cross-sectional study was performed based on a convenience sample of 180 individuals aged 60 years or older. SS was measured with part of the Brazilian version of Medical Outcomes Study's SS scale, and SPH and depression were assessed, respectively, through one question and the Brazilian version of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders. SS medians were calculated for the categories of SPH, depression, marital status and chronic illnesses variables, and differences were evaluated with the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests. Additionally, Pearson's chi-square test and logistic regression were employed to identify unadjusted and adjusted associations between SS and those variables.ResultsThe participant’s mean age was 73 years old, and level of education was 3 years of school education on average. They were predominantly females (73.3%), and non-married (55.0%). Among them, 74.4% perceived their SS as satisfactory, 55.0% perceived their health as good, 27.8% were diagnosed with major depression and 83.3% had hypertension. Especially for those depressed and with bad SPH, the medians of SS measure were much lower than for others, reaching an unsatisfactory level. Moreover, controlling for other factors, non-depressed individuals were more likely (OR = 2.32) to have satisfactory SS.Conclusionin the violent and poor area explored in this research low SS is highly prevalent in the elderly. Depressed individuals are more likely to have low SS and this condition should be investigated in depressed elderly. The reduced scale is useful for low education individuals.

Sexual and gender-based violence in areas of armed conflict: a systematic review of mental health and psychosocial support interventions.

BackgroundSexual and other forms of gender-based violence are common in conflict settings and are known risk factors for mental health and psychosocial wellbeing. We present findings from a systematic review of the academic and grey literature focused on the effectiveness of mental health and psychosocial support interventions for populations exposed to sexual and other forms of gender-based violence in the context of armed conflicts.MethodsWe searched the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Controlled Trials Register, PubMed/ Medline, psycINFO, and PILOTS, as well as grey literature to search for evaluations of interventions, without date limitations.ResultsOut of 5,684 returned records 189 full text papers were assessed for eligibility. Seven studies met inclusion criteria: 1 non-randomized controlled study; 3 non-controlled pre- post-test designs; 1 retrospective cohort with a matched comparison group; and 2 case studies. Studies were conducted in West and Central Africa; Albania; UK and USA, included female participants, and focused on individual and group counseling; combined psychological, medical, social and economic interventions; and cognitive behavioral therapy (two single case studies).ConclusionsThe seven studies, while very limited, tentatively suggest beneficial effects of mental health and psychosocial interventions for this population, and show feasibility of evaluation and implementation of such interventions in real-life settings through partnerships with humanitarian organizations. Robust conclusions on the effectiveness of particular approaches are not possible on the basis of current evidence. More rigorous research is urgently needed.

Design and validation of a self-administered test to assess bullying (bull-M) in high school Mexicans: a pilot study.

BackgroundBullying (Bull) is a public health problem worldwide, and Mexico is not exempt. However, its epidemiology and early detection in our country is limited, in part, by the lack of validated tests to ensure the respondents’ anonymity. The aim of this study was to validate a self-administered test (Bull-M) for assessing Bull among high-school Mexicans.MethodsExperts and school teachers from highly violent areas of Ciudad Juarez (Chihuahua, México), reported common Bull behaviors. Then, a 10-item test was developed based on twelve of these behaviors; the students’ and peers’ participation in Bull acts and in some somatic consequences in Bull victims with a 5-point Likert frequency scale. Validation criteria were: content (CV, judges); reliability [Cronbach’s alpha (CA), test-retest (spearman correlation, rs)]; construct [principal component (PCA), confirmatory factor (CFA), goodness-of-fit (GF) analysis]; and convergent (Bull-M vs. Bull-S test) validity.ResultsBull-M showed good reliability (CA = 0.75, rs = 0.91; p < 0.001). Two factors were identified (PCA) and confirmed (CFA): “bullying me (victim)” and “bullying others (aggressor)”. GF indices were: Root mean square error of approximation (0.031), GF index (0.97), and normalized fit index (0.92). Bull-M was as good as Bull-S for measuring Bull prevalence.ConclusionsBull-M has a good reliability and convergent validity and a bi-modal factor structure for detecting Bull victims and aggressors; however, its external validity and sensitivity should be analyzed on a wider and different population.

ENTREPRENEURS RESILIENCE IN VIOLENT AREAS: A COGNITIVE TRIAD APPROACH

ABSTRACT This article explores the cognitive factors affecting the entrepreneur’s resilience in the face of violent environments and hardships. In order to understand the mechanism by which entrepreneurs adapt to the daily stressors of a violent area, we proposed a theoretical model that may explain the linkage between resilience and well-being. Using the theory of emotions as a framework, the authors designed and proposed a theoretical model that explains the manner in which such entrepreneurs can develop social, cognitive, and financial resilience in violent areas. Keywords International Entrepreneurship; Resilient Entrepreneurs; Violent; Cognitive Triad; Resilience

WikiLeaks and Iraq Body Count: the Sum of Parts May Not Add Up to the Whole—A Comparison of Two Tallies of Iraqi Civilian Deaths

Introduction The number of civilians killed in Iraq following the 2003 invasion has proven difficult to measure and contentious in recent years. The release of the Wikileaks War Logs (WL) has created the potential to conduct a sensitivity analysis of the commonly-cited Iraq Body Count's (IBC's) tally, which is based on press, government, and other public sources. Hypothesis The 66,000 deaths reported in the Wikileaks War Logs are mostly the same events as those previously reported in the press and elsewhere as tallied by iraqbodycount.org. A systematic random sample of 2500 violent fatal War Log incidents was selected and evaluated to determine whether these incidents were also found in IBC's press-based listing. Each selected event was ranked on a scale of 0 (no match present) to 3 (almost certainly matched) with regard to the likelihood it was listed in the IBC database. Of the two thousand four hundred and nine War Log records, 488 (23.8%) were found to have likely matches in IBC records. Events that killed more people were far more likely to appear in both datasets, with 94.1% of events in which ≥20 people were killed being likely matches, as compared with 17.4% of singleton killings. Because of this skew towards the recording of large events in both datasets, it is estimated that 2035 (46.3%) of the 4394 deaths reported in the Wikileaks War Logs had been previously reported in IBC. Passive surveillance systems, widely seen as incomplete, may also be selective in the types of events detected in times of armed conflict. Bombings and other events during which many people are killed, and events in less violent areas, appear to be detected far more often, creating a skewed image of the mortality profile in Iraq. Members of the press and researchers should be hesitant to draw conclusions about the nature or extent of violence from passive surveillance systems of low or unknown sensitivity.