Reviews

Allan K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army: The Old Army and the Soldiers’ Revolt (March‐April 1917). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980. 402 pp. £13.70.

Adam Zwass, Money, Banking and Credit in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, translated by Michel C. Vale. New York: M. E. Sharpe Inc. London: Macmillan, 1979. 233 pp. £12.00.

Jan Adam, Wage Control and Inflation in the Soviet Bloc Countries. London: Macmillan, 1979. i‐xx+243 pp. £15.00.

Robert A. Lewis and Richard H. Rowland, Population Redistribution in the USSR. Its Impact on Society, 1897–1977. New York: Praeger Publishers (Praeger Special Studies), 1979. xx + 485 pp. £22.50.

Michael Bourdeaux, The Land of Crosses, Chulmleigh, Devon: Augustine Publishing Company, 1979, xviii + 339 pp. £3.00.

V. Stanley Vardys, The Catholic Church, Dissent and Nationality in Soviet Lithuania. Boulder: East European Quarterly. Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1978. 336 pp. $18.00.

Richard Taylor, The Politics of the Soviet Cinema 1917–1929. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, xvi + 214 pp. £9.50.     

The age at death assessment in a multi-ethnic sample of pelvic bones using nature-inspired data mining methods

Recently published studies showed that age assessment methods are population specific. Authors analyse the senescence changes in pubic symphysis and sacro-pelvic surface of a pelvic bone using data mining methods. The multi-ethnic data set consists of 956 adult individuals ranging from 19 to 100 years of age derived from 9 different populations with known age and sex. The results show that accurate and reliable age assessment is possible to three age classes (less than 30, 30-60, 60 and more). The study confirms that population specificity of the methods exists and the variable "sex" is not important in age classification.     

Settled Borders and Regime Type: Democratic Transitions as Consequences of Peaceful Territorial Transfers

Research arguing that external threats determine regime type has generally failed to provide systematic evidence in favor of the peace‐to‐democracy hypothesis. We suspect that the lack of confirmatory findings is likely driven by conflating the concepts of negative (absence of conflict) and positive (mutual trust and cooperation) peace. By focusing on territorial issues and the phenomenon of peaceful state‐to‐state territorial transfers (i.e., peaceful alteration of borders), we are able to observe the effects of replacing territorial threat stemming from negative territorial peace (or territorial rivalry) with the positive territorial peace associated with legitimate, mutually accepted borders. Our findings support the expectations that peaceful territorial transfers remove active and latent territorial threat and lead to demilitarization and democratization. Importantly, peaceful territorial transfers are not endogenous to regime type. Our study therefore supports an alternative explanation for the democratic peace: both democracy and peace may be a function of settling territorial threats.     

Dental Age Assessment in Children: A Comparison of Four Methods in a Recent French Population

The aim of this study was to analyze the accuracy and the reliability of four methods of dental age estimation (Demirjian, Willems I, Willems II, and Chaillet standards) in a French population. Orthopantomograms of 743 children aged between 4 and 15 years were used. The Demirjian standards gave a consistent overestimation of dental age compared with chronological age (+0.45 and +0.46 years for girls and boys, respectively). We found that three modified methods were more accurate for both sexes than Demirjian's method: the Willems I method appeared to be more suitable when the sex and ethnicity are both known (?0.09 and +0.14 years for girls and boys, respectively); the Willems II method was more accurate for children of unknown sex (mean difference = 0.00 years), and the Chaillet method was found to be more accurate than the Demirjian method, but less accurate than the Willems I method (?0.59 and ?0.18 years for girls and boys, respectively).     

Comparison of methods to determine sex by evaluating the greater sciatic notch: Visual, angular and geometric morphometrics

Sex estimation is the first step for biological profile reconstruction of an unknown skeleton (archaeological or contemporary) and consequently for positive identification of skeletal remains recovered from forensic settings. Several tools have been developed using different osseous structures. With the intention to provide an objective method comparison, we reported the analysis of three different methods (visual, metric and geometric morphometrics) for sex assessment of the greater sciatic notch. One hundred and thirty pelvic bones (45.4% females and 54.6% males) from the National Autonomous University of Mexico Skeletal Collection pertaining to the contemporary Mexican population were analyzed. We used the ROC-analysis to test between desired false positive thresholds (1-specificity) and expected true positive rates (sensitivity) in order to predict the best approach to sex assessment. The comparison of the area under the ROC-curves shows significant differences among visual and metric methods. At the same time, the analysis suggested that higher morphological variation among the sexes is independent of the methodological approach. The results indicate that the metric (angle), with a high percent of indeterminate cases (34.6%), and visual, with 26.2% of the cases allocated as intermediate cases, were poorly accurate; we cannot recommend these techniques for sexing an unknown specimen. On the other hand, the geometric morphometrics approach improves sex estimation in 82.3% of correctly classified individuals with more than 95% of posterior probability. In addition to the method comparison, the major sexual variation of the greater sciatic notch was determined to be located on its posterior border.     

A Test of the DSP Sexing Method on CT Images from a Modern French Sample

The hip bone is considered to be one of the most reliable indicators in sex determination. The aim of this study was to test the reliability of the DSP method for the hip bone proposed by Murail et al. (Bull Mem Soc Anthropol Paris, 17, 2005, 167) on a sample from a present‐day population in France (52 males and 54 females). Ten linear measurements were collected from three‐dimensional models derived from computed tomography images (CTI). To quantify the proportions of correct sex determinations, a more rigorous posterior probability threshold of 0.95 was applied. Using all 10 measurements, 92.3% of males and 97.2% of females were sexed correctly. The percentage of undetermined specimens varied depending on the used combination of measurements; however, all sexes were assigned with a 100% accuracy. This study proves that DSP is an appropriate and reliable tool for sex determination, based on dimensions obtained from CTI.     

Analytical Characterization of Erythritol Tetranitrate,an Improvised Explosive

Erythritol tetranitrate (ETN), an ester of nitric acid and erythritol, is a solid crystalline explosive with high explosive performance. Although it has never been used in any industrial or military application, it has become one of the most prepared and misused improvise explosives. In this study, several analytical techniques were explored to facilitate analysis in forensic laboratories. FTIR and Raman spectrometry measurements expand existing data and bring more detailed assignment of bands through the parallel study of erythritol [¹⁵N₄] tetranitrate. In the case of powder diffraction, recently published data were verified, and ¹H, ¹³C, and ¹⁵N NMR spectra are discussed in detail. The technique of electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry was successfully used for the analysis of ETN. Described methods allow fast, versatile, and reliable detection or analysis of samples containing erythritol tetranitrate in forensic laboratories.