The U.S. homicide rate increases of 2015-2016 occurred within a longer recorded history of trend variations. This article examines the place of the 2 years within this history and considers if they ...were unusual. An analysis of more than five decades of panel data finds that 2015 and 2016 were, in fact, somewhat unusual, but not far outside the normal range of variation. The analysis also provides no evidence that changes like those in 2015-2016 can predict future trends. As a more general matter, this article argues for increased attention to the typical characteristics of crime rate changes.
The German state permitted about one million refugees to enter Germany in 2015-2016, although many were subsequently denied refugee status. Germany adopted an 'integration' and 'welcome' politics, an ...important, if imperfect, model for a European refugee policy. The integration of refugees required the joint activity of state, of civil society, of the public sphere and of refugees themselves. Civil society initiated a vast amount of essential care work and solidarity with refugees pursued especially, but not only, by women, yet civil society and refugees had no say in refugee policies. German refugee policy and practice raised many normative issues, producing an intense and vigorous national debate about them, in which philosophers and theorists were active. Among the questions debated were whether Germany had accepted 'too many' refugees, the acceptability of the costs of the policy, the risks of harm to the least well off, the purported risks to safety, security and the social order and the purported threats to German culture. I first describe German state policies, practices and civil society efforts and then turn to normative debates. I discuss the limits of the German discourse and suggest how it needs to be expanded.
In Texas, local taxpayers fund the majority of educational facilities construction and maintenance costs, with local wealth influencing facilities outcomes. The traditional school districts that ...comprise the predominantly Latino and segregated San Antonio area vary considerably in property wealth as well as district capacity and expertise. We conducted an analysis of 12 San Antonio area school districts to address the questions: 1) To what extent do state and local investments vary by district? 2) How do district actions and constraints affect facilities quality and equitable investment? Methods include descriptive quantitative analysis of facilities investment data and qualitative interviews with school district leaders, staff, and school finance experts. Examining Texas school finance data demonstrated the variance in school district investments in educational facilities. Despite some districts with lower property wealth exerting higher levels of tax effort, they were able to raise less money per student for educational facilities through interest and sinking taxes. Interview findings revealed that several districts acknowledge lacking the capacity to maintain high-quality facilities for all students. Respondents frequently criticized current state policies and funding for educational facilities as inadequate, inequitable, and inefficient and expressed a need for policy improvements in an era of increasing state disinvestment.
As a result of anthropogenic activities, it has been predicted that the ocean will be challenged with rising temperature, increased stratification, ocean acidification, stronger more frequent ...tropical storms, and oxygen depletion. In the tropical Pacific off central Mexico all these phenomena are already occurring naturally, providing a laboratory from which to explore ocean biogeochemical dynamics that are predicted under future anthropogenic forcing conditions. Here, seasonally anomalous surface tropical waters were detected as a result of the developing "Godzilla El Niño 2015-2016". The incursion of this oxygenated water modified the local structure of an intense and shallow oxygen minimum zone, partially eroding and intensifying the oxycline while having an associated impact on the carbon maximum zone. The core of the oxygen minimum zone (<4.4 μmol kg-1) was centered around 474 m, with a variant upper level between 50 and 360 m depth. Below the dominance of Tropical Surface Waters, the thickness of the oxycline varied between 10 and 325 m, with intensity values up to 11 μmol kg-1 m-1. The change in dissolved inorganic carbon and apparent oxygen utilization yielded a molar ratio of δDIC=0.98×δAOU during June 2015 and of δDIC=1.08×δAOU for March 2016. A further decrease in the average content of dissolved inorganic carbon was observed in the carbon maximum zone for 2016. Traditionally, different explanations have been proposed to account for changing oxygen concentrations in the ocean rather than considering the interactions between multiple forcing factors. Our results highlight the significance of an episodic event like El Niño in the distribution and concentration of O2 and dissolved inorganic carbon and as a plausible mechanism of ventilation and increased oxygen availability in the upper oxygen minimum zone of the tropical Pacific off central Mexico.
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