A new approach in the identification of degraded paternity samples

DNA extraction from bone is an important issue particularly in paternity cases when bones are the only remaining material to obtain and analyze DNA. The difficulties arising from bacterial damages, taphonomic factors and diagenesis might negatively affect the extraction and the amplification of DNA. This makes the laboratory procedure a hard and time-consuming process, and the analysis can fail. Analyzing mini-STRs in this type of degraded samples is highly recommended. In this study a new extraction technique was carried on bone samples which were then typed for mini-STRs. The aim was to differentiate two genetically related skeletons found in the same familial grave for a paternity test. The analysis revealed that this new extraction technique along with mini-STR analysis can properly be an effective way to obtain and analyze DNA in bones in the field of forensic sciences.     

Killing the Messenger: Mark Lilla’s “End of Identity Liberalism” and its Critics

Decades of mind-numbing political correctness on the academic far-left robbed the humanities and social sciences of their legitimacy, generated the alt-right as its very own dialectial alter-ego, and provided an essential catalyzing ingredient in Donald Trump's electoral victory—understood as the clearest expression of a weary nation's revulsion at p. c.'s intolerable moralizing. The illiberal, antisemitic, white nationalist alt-right and the illiberal, antisemitic, anti-American alt-left mirror one another perfectly! Faced with competing totalitarianisms at both extremes, the liberal center should defend itself first of all by forthrightly reclaiming the univeristy as a space for education and not indoctrination. Yet the politically correct professoriate do not want to hear this—and their over-the-top hostile overreactions to the news that they are to blame for what they hate most prove that it's so. Time to repeal and replace political correctness.     

Can Jurors Recognize Missing Control Groups,Confounds, and Experimenter Bias in Psychological Science?

This study examined the ability of jury-eligible community members (N = 248) to detect internal validity threats in psychological science presented during a trial. Participants read a case summary in which an expert testified about a study that varied in internal validity (valid, missing control group, confound, and experimenter bias) and ecological validity (high, low). Ratings of expert evidence quality and expert credibility were higher for the valid versus missing control group versions only. Internal validity did not influence verdict or ratings of plaintiff credibility and no differences emerged as a function of ecological validity. Expert evidence quality, expert credibility, and plaintiff credibility were positively correlated with verdict. Implications for the scientific reasoning literature and for trials containing psychological science are discussed.     

城市新贫困:近20年来全球性、区域性以及阿根廷的动因

本文分析了20世纪80年代和90年代"新贫困"的不同范围.先介绍欧洲、美国和拉美几个国家对新贫困的不同定义,而后把重点放在阿根廷,介绍20世纪70年代中期至2001年危机期间,中产阶级在不同时期所遭受的贫困化过程.     

Tuning knowledge ecosystems: exploring links between hotels’ knowledge structures and online government services provision

The development of knowledge-based business opportunities in many economic sectors worldwide is often conceived through a silo-mentality, whereby efforts are focused in either industry or government entities in isolation. Without a systemic or holistic understanding of connections between these, any present or future project evaluation becomes either input- or output-based instead of having a comprehensive understanding of its impact. In order to address such a challenge, this empirical study focuses on the Spanish hospitality sector, which currently thrives by continuously accessing external and internal sources of knowledge, thus offering opportunities to conceptualise it as a knowledge ecosystem. Lessons learned from the Spanish hospitality sector have the potential to inform the design of online government services as part of a knowledge ecosystem. This can, in turn, yield further opportunities for innovation in the hospitality sector. A structural equation model validated by factor analysis of 130 hotels is used to assess the extent to which hotels currently benefit from online government services. This study concludes that online government services can be better fostered by nurturing external communities while also setting up internal working communities and practices. The model and its implications can also inform initiatives which seek to pursue ecosystem-oriented research and practice, as well as future policy and technology transfer initiatives.     

Last Insurer Standing: Accounting for Policyholder Settlements in an “All Sums” World

Abstract

In 2016, New York became the latest state to interpret insurance policies with prior insurance or non-cumulation of liability clauses as permitting a policyholder to recover damages under “all sums” for long-tail liabilities, including environmental liabilities. But two major questions were left unanswered in New York, as in many other states, when a policyholder seeks all sums recovery from a non-settled insurer after the policyholder settles with other insurers: first, how to account for a policyholder’s prior settlements—through set-off, contribution, or both. Second, how to calculate any set-off or contribution—should it be pro tanto, pro rata, or something else. This article examines the arguments on both sides of these issues and looks ahead to how courts may resolve these questions going forward.     

Mainstream medicine versus complementary and alternative medicine in the witness box: resolving the clash of ideologies

Mainstream medical philosophy and practice differ in many respects from those of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), differences which are explored in this article. Because of a resurgence of CAM therapies, courts and tribunals will scrutinise CAM in more and more contexts in the future. Such court cases may require the resolution of conflicts between opinions of CAM and medical experts. This article considers how courts evaluate such opinions where experts hold conflicting ideologies or philosophical approaches, and addresses the following questions: Do the opinions of CAM practitioners qualify as "expert" opinions in court? How do the courts examine the basis of such opinions? Are they systematically given less weight than the opinions of mainstream medical practitioners? Will recent procedural reforms for hearing expert evidence make it easier for courts to resolve these issues?     

Student Protest and the Nueva Mayoría Reforms in Chile

Chile's Nueva Mayoría government (2014–2018) responded more forcefully to student demands for a more assertive public role in education than any of its post‐authoritarian predecessors. Existing scholarship suggests that this change reflected the success of the 2011 student protests in tapping into latent public discontent with neoliberalism and the politics of consensus. This article argues that it is also crucial to understand how the wave of protest interacted with the dynamics of party politics at the elite level. Public support translated into substantive policy and institutional changes because it contributed to a coalition and platform shift that favoured more extensive reform.