Palestinian state‐building: police and citizens as test of democracy

This article explores police‐society relations by assessing the impact of current state‐building efforts by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank. The article presents an outline of the emerging civilian policing model and its wider implications for citizens’ rights and the dominant political order. The specific focus of the paper rests on an examination of the potential tensions associated with the perceived need for strong coercive security structures (including the civil police) as part of state‐building efforts and the desire by the population for increased freedom and pluralism. This issue is further complicated by the ambiguous nature of the current experiment in limited autonomy underway in those areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip where Israeli redeployment has taken place.     

The Shi'a of Saudi Arabia: a minority in search of cultural authenticity

This article focuses on the transformation of Saudi Shi'a resistance from one which centred on military confrontation in the 1980s to one which invokes searching for cultural authenticity (al‐asala al‐shi'iyya) in the 1990s. Today the struggle of the Shi'a for equal status among the Sunni majority draws attention to the attempts of Shi'a intellectuals to write their own regional history. Shi'a intellectuals and opposition leaders deconstruct official representations of themselves and provide alternative historical narratives which anchor their community in Saudi history and society, thus dismissing suggestions that they are a non‐indigenous community. This article examines Shi'a historical narratives in an attempt to understand the transformation in their struggle against discrimination in Saudi Arabia.     

迟发性外伤性脑内血肿脑组织GFAP、S-100和NSE的免疫组织化学研究

应用免疫组织化学ABC法和S－P法，对6例伤后1．5天至2年发生的迟发性外伤性脑内血肿（DTICH）脑组织标本进行神经胶质细胞内胶质纤维酸性蛋白（GFAP）、S－100蛋白（S－100）和神经元细胞内特异性烯醇化酶（NSE）变化和应用价值的研究。尸检和组织学检查发现有脑挫伤等病变。6例DTICH脑组织挫伤及周围区均有明显的GFAP、S－100阳性的细胞变化，细胞数目增多，胞体肥大、增生，免疫组化反应产物增多、深染；神经元细胞NSE免疫组化染色均呈阴性改变。结果表明：6例DTICH脑组织中GFAP、S－100的NSE的免疫组织化学变化是有一定时间间隔的外伤性陈旧性改变，在DTICH的病理诊断上具有重要价值，可作为DTICH法医学鉴定的一个辅助手段。     

北京地区尸生性蝇类研究及其在法医鉴定中的应用

为提供法医学尸体死亡时间鉴定的准确性，对北京地区人尸上蝇类区系进行了系统调查（1994～1996）。发现本地区共有双翅目尸生性蝇类3科、12属、14种。其中常见种有红头丽蝇、丝光绿蝇、大头金蝇、肥须亚麻蝇、急钓亚麻蝇、棕尾别麻蝇和家蝇7种。对其常见种的幼虫进行不同温度和湿度下培养，观察常见环境因素，如日历期、风雨天气等因素对其生长发育速率的影响。结果表明，蝇类幼虫在其适宜生长发育的温度范围内，随着温度的升高发育速率加快，历期缩短；在同一温度和同一饲养条件下，发育速率因种而异；平均温度在28℃左右时，蝇类幼虫发育最快，尤其是1～2龄幼虫，时间为1天左右，且较稳定。这些数据对法医学推断死亡时间具有参考价值。     

Risk management for targeting customs controls in developing countries: a risky venture for revenue performance?

Customs authorities in developing countries are often reluctant to forget systematic inspections for fear of risking revenue loss. Such physical inspections however, impede rather than facilitate trade. Control selectivity is therefore a key issue in customs administration reform. This paper shows how a sophisticated risk management method can facilitate trade by automatically and rationally selecting transactions, with the end result of actually enhancing revenue performance. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Portable high‐resolution automated 3D imaging for footwear and tire impression capture

The forensic science community raised the need for improved evidence recognition, collection, and visualization analytical instrumentation for field and laboratory use. While the 3D optical techniques for imaging static objects have been extensively studied, there is still a major gap between current knowledge and collecting high‐quality footwear and tire impression evidence. Among optical means for 3D imaging, digital fringe projection (DFP) techniques reconstruct 3D shape from phase information, achieving camera‐pixel spatial resolution. This paper presents a high‐resolution 3D imaging technology using DFP techniques dedicated to footwear and tire impression capture. We developed fully automated software algorithms and a graphical user interface (GUI) that allow anyone without training to operate for high‐quality 3D data capture. We performed accuracy evaluations and comparisons comparing with the commercial high‐end 3D scanner and carried out qualitative tests for various impressions comparing with the current practices. Overall, our technology achieves similar levels of accuracy and resolution with a high‐end commercially available 3D scanner, while having the merits of being (1) more affordable; (2) much easier to operate; and (3) more robust. Compared with the current practice of casting, our technology demonstrates its superiority because it (1) is non‐destructive; (2) collects more evidence detail than casts, especially when an impression is fragile; (3) requires less time and money to collect each piece of evidence; and (4) results in a digital file that can easily be shared with other examiners.     

Estimating Individual Contributions to Complex DNA SNP Mixtures.,

High‐throughput sequencing (HTS) of large panels of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) provides an alternative or complimentary approach to short tandem repeats (STRs) panels for the analysis of complex DNA mixture forensic samples. For STRs, methods to estimate individual contribution concentrations compare capillary electrophoresis peak heights, peak areas, or HTS allele read counts within a mixture. This article introduces three approaches (mean, median, and slope methods) for estimating individual DNA contributions to forensic mixtures for HTS/massively parallel sequencing (MPS) SNP panels. For SNPs, the major:minor allele ratios or counts, unique to each contributor, were compared to estimate contributor proportion within the mixture using the mean, median, and slope intercept for these alleles. The estimates for these three methods were typically within 5% of planned experimental contributions for defined mixtures.