Antemortem records of forensic significance among edentulous individuals

The identification of edentulous individuals is problematic due to poor provision of labelled dental prostheses. Dental records may still provide useful information for odontologists in the comparative identification process. The purpose of this study was to determine the level of forensically significant information contained within the dental records of a population of denture wearers attending the University of Manchester School of Dentistry. Two hundred and two dental records were examined and a proforma completed. The mean age of the patients was 72 years. Medical history were absent in 4% of all records and only 67.8% of the written records were rated as good. Thirty-two percent of the records contained one or more panoramic radiographs but 30% of these were over 3 years old rendering their usefulness in identification procedures questionable. In total only 18% of the examined records contained antemortem information that would enable identification. These data suggest that the process of denture marking is an essential in order to ensure that the identification of this population can be undertaken expediently by dental means.     

Denture marking--patient preference of various methods

Dental forensic organizations world wide have recommended that dental prostheses should be labeled with at least the patient's (wearer's) name and preferably with further unique identifiers such as social security number. A range of methods are available and the purpose of this study was to determine, via the means of a visual questionnaire, which are the most preferable to those patients who wear complete dentures. One hundred edentulous patients attending the Manchester Dental Hospital were shown a range of denture labeling methods and asked to rank these according to their preference. The most preferred method was that of an embedded radio frequency identification microchip (38% rated this as first) and the second was an inclusion technique using onion paper (24% rated this as first). The least preferred method was the use of a groove cut into the denture flange with 71% of patients rating this as the poorest in terms of esthetics. The study demonstrates that the method of denture labeling is important to patients and to ensure that denture labeling is performed routinely esthetic preferences must be considered.     

Misleading by Example: The Effects of a Manager’s Unfair Customer Treatment on Service Employee Performance and Perceived Managerial Trustworthiness

We explore service worker reactions to a supervisor’s fair treatment of customers (i.e., customer-directed fairness), utilizing the group-value model of fairness to formulate two distinct predictions: (1) a status cuing effect, in which employees internalize social cues from the supervisor’s behavior to determine the social value of customers, and adapting their own customer-oriented behaviors to reflect the supervisor’s cue, and (2) a character indictment effect, in which employees use customer-directed fairness to assess the trustworthiness of the supervisor’s character. Results from experimental and field data provide evidence for these dual effects and show how each ultimately affects the employee’s in-role and extra-role customer service behavior. Implications are discussed with regard to the group-value model of fairness, alternative theories of fairness, and practical applications.     

Backloading to extinction: Coping with values conflict in the administration of Australia's federal biodiversity offset policy

Policy-makers are frequently required to consider and manage conflicting public values. An example of this in the environmental domain is biodiversity offset policy, which governments worldwide have adopted as a mechanism to balance environmental protection with socio-economic development. However, little work has examined administrative practices underpinning biodiversity offset policy implementation, and how the adoption of coping strategies to manage value conflicts may influence resulting policy outcomes. This study fills this research gap using a case study of Australia's federal biodiversity offset policy under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999. Using data from 13 interviews of federal policy administrators, I show that the introduction of a new policy in 2012 enabled a shift from the use of precedent to a technical approach for setting offset requirements under the EPBC Act. Yet, multiple sources of policy ambiguity remain, and administrators have adopted post-approval condition-setting, or ‘backloading’—a form of cycling, facilitated by structural separation—to defer detailed assessments of offset requirements until after biodiversity losses are approved. Backloading thus undermines the effectiveness of environmental policy and will persist as coping strategy unless policy ambiguity is reduced via legislative amendments and adequate resourcing of biodiversity conservation.

Points for practitioners

• Biodiversity offset policy requires administrators to manage conflicting environmental and socioeconomic values.
• Technical decision tools reduce reliance on case-by-case decision-making, but multiple ambiguities persist.
• Backloading (post-approval condition-setting) defers values conflict, but reduces transparency, accountability, and policy effectiveness.
• Policy ambiguity must be reduced at the political level to facilitate effective biodiversity conservation.