A new approach to amino acid racemization in enamel: testing of a less destructive sampling methodology

Aspartic acid racemization has been found to be an accurate measure of age at death for recent forensic material. This paper examines the practicality of using acid etching of the tooth surface to extract amino acids from the enamel for racemization analysis. By serial etching of the tooth and contamination of the teeth with bovine serum albumin prior to etching, the ability of etching to remove contamination was assessed. The destructiveness of the method was visualized and quantified using micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). By bleaching the teeth and by deeper etching it was possible to obtain more consistent values. While etching had little effect on the enamel at the macroscale, it did have an impact at the microscale. The quantities of enamel removed varied depending upon the tooth morphology, but were not large. Acid etching of enamel thus appears to be a promising new method for extracting proteins for amino acid racemization age estimation noninvasively.     

Beyond fear: the role of peritraumatic responses in posttraumatic stress and depressive symptoms among female crime victims

This study examines peritraumatic (and posttrauma) responses in a sample of female crime victims who had been sexually or physically assaulted within the previous 2 months. Women were interviewed about their emotional and behavioral responses during the trauma and assessed for posttraumatic stress disorder and depression symptomatology. Results indicate that women experience a wide range of behavioral and emotional responses during a traumatic event and that these responses have implications for posttrauma adjustment. Women who experienced behaviors typical of a freeze response are more likely to have a greater degree of symptomatology after the assault. Peritraumatic emotions, other than fear, such as sadness, humiliation, and anger, also appear to be related to posttrauma depression symptoms. These findings highlight the necessity of exploring the full range of possible reactions during a trauma.     

Depoliticising the personal : A feminist slogan in feminist therapy

One of the great insights of second wave feminism was the recognition that “the personal is political.” Many feminist psychologists (both practitioners and researchers) claim a strong commitment to this slogan and attempt to implement it through their theory and practice. This article explores four interpretations of “the personal is political” in feminist psychological writing. It is argued that far from achieving radical feminist goals, psychological interpretations serve: (1) to personalise the political, translating social, economic, and ecological concerns into individual psychological matters; (2) to foster revolution “from within” at the expense of political change in the outside world; (3) that insofar as it aims uncritically to “validate women's experience,” it ignores the social and political factors which shape experience; and (4) that the concept of “empowerment” depends upon a radical split between the “personal” and the “political”. In sum, it is concluded that femenist acknowledgement that the personal really is political means rejecting psychology.     

Social Struggles in Present Day Argentina

Since the mid 1970s, Argentine society has gone through a period characterised as counterrevolutionary. The conservative social forces, led by the financial oligarchy, seized power and government by means of the coup d'état of 1976, and imposed an economic and social policy towards the working class, based on wage cuts and a lengthening of the working day. When the military governments were replaced by civilian ones, physical coercion was replaced by economic coercion, through market laws with unemployment and wage cuts reaching unprecedented levels. Although the popular forces were weakened by the unfavourable development of social struggles since the mid–1970s, during the 1990s government policies were confronted by the people through different forms of struggle.
This article presents the results of research on the different forms of social struggle carried out by the working class and other popular classes since the end of the 1980s until today. It aims to conceptualise the forms of rebellion (foot riot, riot, strikes and roadblocks), to determine the different moments of social struggle and the likely trends of its development.     

The impact of distributive and procedural justice on correctional staff job stress, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment

Correctional staff are the heart and soul of any correctional facility. While there was a significant body of research on the impact of the work environment on correctional staff, this study sought to expand that knowledge by examining the effects of distributive and procedural justice on correctional staff job stress, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Multivariate models were estimated. Both forms of organizational justice had negative effects on job stress and organizational commitment; however, only procedural justice, but not distributive justice, had a significant impact on job satisfaction.     

Comparing females acquitted by reason of insanity,convicted, and civilly committed in Florida 1977–1984

Females who had been acquitted by reason of insanity (N=41), convicted of comparable offenses (N=41), and involuntarily hospitalized without criminal involvement (N=41) were matched for age and race. The psychiatric histories of the acquitted and civilly committed women were similar, and significantly more extensive than the convicted group. The acquitted women had been arrested significantly more often than the civilly committed women but less frequently than the convicted women. Total length of stay (hospitalization or imprisonment) reflected a similar pattern, with civilly commited women hospitalized for the shortest period, acauitted women an intermediate period, and convicted women the longest. Regression-based prediction of length of stay reflected a number of common predictors for the acquitted and convicted women, with offense type one of the most powerful for both groups.     

Women Law Professors – Negotiating and Transcending Gender Identities at Work

This paper reports a research project on womenlaw professors in the U.K. Despite theirsimilar social and educational backgrounds,successful women legal academics disclosemarked differences in their perceptions of theinfluence of gender on their work identities.Many emphasise the caring and pastoral rolesthey adopt, or are expected to adopt.Organisational cultures also emerge as asignificant factor in determining the genderexperiences of women law professors. The fewwith experience as head of school downplay thesignificance of gender while simultaneouslyacknowledging the influence of genderconstructions and expectations.     

The Effect of Previous Traumatic Injury on Homicide Risk

Research has reported that a strong risk factor for traumatic injury is having a previous injury (i.e., recidivism). To date, the only study examining the relationship between recidivism and homicide reported strong associations, but was limited by possible selection bias. The current matched case–control study utilized coroner's data from 2004 to 2008. Subjects were linked to trauma registry data to determine whether the person had a previous traumatic injury. Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) for the association between homicide and recidivism. Homicide risk was increased for those having a previous traumatic injury (OR 1.81, 95% CI 1.09–2.99) or a previous intentional injury (OR 2.53, 95% CI 1.24–5.17). These results suggest an association between homicide and injury recidivism, and that trauma centers may be an effective setting for screening individuals for secondary prevention efforts of homicide through violence prevention programs.     

Shattering crystals: The role of ‘dream time’ in extreme right-wing political violence

This article prepares the conceptual ground for a new heuristic approach to understanding acts of political violence that consciously incur the risk of death to their perpetrators. It focuses on the deep-seated human drive to escape the futility and emptiness induced by clock-time (chronos), and the way a sense of being ‘chosen’ for a mission of destruction can precipitate the experience of being reborn in a new supraindividual dimension (‘dream time’). At this point the etymological connotations of ‘self-sacrifice’ and ‘fanatic’ acquire a new significance, since the personal palingenesis experienced by the soldier or terrorist confronting death may rehearse archetypal patterns of mystic purification and immortality. This ‘chrono-ethological’ perspective on extreme political violence is elaborated by considering the devastating impact that Western modernity has had on the access to states of ‘self-transcendence’ available in traditional religious culture. It is then applied to examples of inter-war fascist paramilitarism and contemporary ‘lone-wolf’ terrorism.