UP Links 29 April 2013

+ Brandon Fuller

Center for Global Development’s Kimberly Ann Elliott on the Factory Collapse in Bangladesh 

A lot of developing countries have laws on the books that are up to international standards but enforcement is a problem. In this particular case, apparently it was so bad that inspectors had gone in and said, “This building is dangerous, you need to evacuate.” Several other businesses in the building heard that and did, but the garment factory owners there said, “Oh, it’s fine, you need to go to work.” So they had both the laws and the enforcement, which at least was there in theory, but these guys ignored it with very tragic results.

Bumblebees Can Learn from One Another

The most reasonable explanation, Dr Goulson argues, is that each year a few bumblebees which have learnt the trick of nectar robbery in the previous season come out of hibernation and start robbing flowers again. By chance, they make more holes on one side of the flowers than the other, and as the habit is picked up by other, newly hatched bees, a preference for left or right spreads by a process of positive feedback. The bees have, in other words, created a simple culture. It is a criminal culture, admittedly. But no one ever said that nature was pretty.

Additional H7N9 Analysis

Who’s gotten it. 73 percent of the bird flu cases are men; 84 percent are urban residents; 76 percent have medical conditions like diabetes, heart disease, chronic bronchitis, hepatitis, arthritis, and asthma. Most of the patients with bird flu appear to be people under the age of 5 or over the age of 65, who are most vulnerable to health complications from influenza. The median age of patients is 63.

Wonkblog on Crime Reduction

As criminologist Mark Kleiman told me last month, “Any sentence about drug policy that doesn’t end with ‘raise alcohol taxes’ is an incoherent sentence.” He’s hardly the only one with that view. Economics, criminology and public health literature are rife with studies finding that raising the price of alcohol reduces violence, not to mention other causes of injury and death. Indeed, every self-reported survey of incarcerated criminals suggests that 36.8 percent of state-level violent offenders, and 20.8 percent of federal violent offenders, were drinking when they committed the crime for which they’re incarcerated.
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