We extend existing research on police use of coercive mechanisms of social control against racial/ethnic minority populations by testing three structural hypotheses regarding excessive force. The minority threat hypothesis maintains that the greater the proportion of minority residents in a city, the greater the use of coercive crime control mechanisms. The place hypothesis argues that spatiall...

Strategies for controlling invasive species can be aimed at any or all of the stages in the life cycle. In this paper, we show how to combine biological data on population dynamics with simple economic data on control costs options to determine the least costly set of strategies that will prevent an established invader from continuing to increase. Based on biological data alone (elasticities of...

The prevalence of myopia among students has reached epidemic proportions in east Asia. Indian data also suggests a high prevalence, especially in the southeast. We examined the trend locally, in 148 first MBBS students at a medical college in Pune, located in Maharashtra, a western state of India. We report a prevalence of 45% and compare it to that reported globally as well as from different r...

Tags and other characteristic features that are consistent among groups of animals or humans can be used to determine appropriate response strategies in societies. This usage of tags can be extended to artificial environments, where agents can significantly reduce cognitive effort by reusing strategies for new interaction partners based on their tags. Strategy selection mechanisms developed bas...

Electronic government (e-government) is a phenomenon that is linked to the information society and the advantages associated with it. E-government allows government departments to network and integrate their services using information and communication technologies (ICTs) in order to improve service delivery and enhance the relationship between the government and the public. The major ingredien...

This thesis investigates thresholds in an epidemic, heterogenenous model and how they are influenced by the heterogeneity. First aepidemical models is introduced, where it could be optimal to treat at a maximal possible level or not to treat at all, depending on the particular parameters and initial state. Therefore an homogeneous epidemiological model is presented, whose heterogeneity is intro...

The paper analyses the economic payoffs from marine reserves using a stochastic optimal control model. The results show that even if the reserve and harvested populations face the same negative shocks, harvesting is optimal, the population is persistent and with no uncertainty over current stock size, a reserve can increase resource rents. Using actual fishery data we demonstrate that the payof...