ABSTRACT
Law sets out the rules for society and the economy, particularly important for interactions between strangers. Legal code is a form of non-rival infrastructure, a public good important for investment and innovation. This paper investigates whether legal code complexity scales with population size in US localities. We analyse a corpus of municipal codes from 3259 cities and measure legal complexity using various metrics, including number of words, bytes, and compressed bytes. We find that legal complexity scales geometrically with jurisdiction population, with a scaling parameter of approximately 0.2 and an [Formula: see text] of approximately 0.2. The estimated scaling parameter is similar to gross domestic product per capita, consistent with an interpretation of legal codes as regulating social interactions per capita in cities. This article is part of the theme issue 'A complexity science approach to law and governance'.
ABSTRACT
A national survey was conducted to obtain information about the use of image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT) techniques and IGRT dose measurement methods being followed at Indian radiotherapy centers. A questionnaire containing parameters relevant to use of IGRT was prepared to collect the information pertaining to (i) availability and type of IGRT delivery system, (ii) frequency of image acquisition protocol and utilization of these images for different purpose, and (iii) imaging dose measurement. The questionnaire was circulated to 75 hospitals in the country having IGRT facility, and responses of 51 centers were received. Survey results showed that among surveyed hospitals, 86% centers have IGRT facility, 78% centers have kilo voltage three-dimensional volumetric imaging. 75% of hospitals in our study do not perform computed tomography dose index measurements and 89% of centers do not perform patient dose measurements. Moreover, only 29% physicists believe IGRT dose is additional radiation burden to patient. This study has brought into focus the need to design a national protocol for IGRT dose measurement and development of indigenous tools to perform IGRT dose measurements.
ABSTRACT
Small-scale human societies range from foraging bands with a strong egalitarian ethos to more economically stratified agrarian and pastoral societies. We explain this variation in inequality using a dynamic model in which a population's long-run steady-state level of inequality depends on the extent to which its most important forms of wealth are transmitted within families across generations. We estimate the degree of intergenerational transmission of three different types of wealth (material, embodied, and relational), as well as the extent of wealth inequality in 21 historical and contemporary populations. We show that intergenerational transmission of wealth and wealth inequality are substantial among pastoral and small-scale agricultural societies (on a par with or even exceeding the most unequal modern industrial economies) but are limited among horticultural and foraging peoples (equivalent to the most egalitarian of modern industrial populations). Differences in the technology by which a people derive their livelihood and in the institutions and norms making up the economic system jointly contribute to this pattern.
