Shifting Domestic Politics and Security Policy in Japan and Taiwan: The Search for a Balancing Strategy between China and the US

This article examines the impact of the changed domestic political environment in Japan and Taiwan in the second half of the 2000s, namely the arrival of administrations with a more moderate China policy, on their respective relations with Beijing and Washington. It seeks to find out the extent to which Japan under the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and Taiwan under the Kuomintang (KMT) may have attempted a policy shift towards accommodation of China at the expense of their respective security ties with America. The article also examines how much impact upon security policy can be traced to the changes in domestic politics in the two cases. The discussion suggests that, irrespective of the altered domestic political situation, the concern that China's growing military power may adversely affect national interests has largely trumped the political will for seeking accommodation, more so in the Japanese case than in the Taiwanese case. While both Tokyo and Taipei have avoided deferring to Beijing's interests, each has sought to strike a delicate balance between engaging China and maintaining defense ties with the US.     

The structures of uncertainty: performativity and unpredictability in economic operations

Abstract

The paper reflects on the presuppositions and consequences of the concept of performativity (understood as the involvement of the observer in the objects and projects he/she describes). The paper proposes a broader notion of performativity, one that not only concerns theory but is also extended to the entire economy, which observes itself in all of its operations. This conception has the advantage of being connected with critical approaches inside economics, which highlight the central role of uncertainty and surprise. It can explain how and why performativity turns into counter-performativity and how financial operators exploit uncertainty when orienting their behaviour, expecting and using the unpredictability of the future.     

Market Instruments for a Sustainable Economy: Environmental Fiscal Policy and Manifest Divergences

The introduction of environmental taxation policies had reached most European countries by the late 1990s. The pricing of activities considered harmful to the environment has given rise to the design of various economic instruments, such as environmental taxes, aimed at promoting environmental responsibility and at enabling the Kyoto Protocol targets to be met, and at the same time generating a marked increase in tax revenues. The aim of this article is to examine whether convergence in environmental taxation has taken place among 27 EU countries, doing so by analyzing time series and applying unit root tests. Our findings show there has been no such convergence, overall, despite the existence of groups of countries with common patterns of behavior.     

Ideology in brick and tile: Timurid architecture of the 21st century

This study analyses the impact of politics on urban development and, in particular, on Timurid heritage in present-day Uzbekistan. It outlines the problem of landscape manipulation for the advancement of a political ideology. After presenting a brief overview of Tsarist and Soviet restoration practices, the article focuses on the post-Soviet nation-building schemes through public iconography, urban renewal measures and heritage construction. Architectural and epigraphic restorations of Timurid monuments in Samarqand and new constructions in Tashkent provide a valuable illustrative framework. As world heritage sites, the Samarqand monuments are examined both in their historical and current socio-political contexts; the role of UNESCO is also analysed. The study benefits from and contributes to critical heritage studies and urban development as a narrative of power-making and relational space.     

The Status of Forensic Anthropology in Europe and South Africa: Results of the 2016 FASE Questionnaire on Forensic Anthropology

One of the goals of the Forensic Anthropology Society of Europe (FASE) is to map the existing education and practice opportunities in the field of forensic anthropology in order to support the development of the discipline and to optimize the training courses provided by the Society. To address this goal, an online questionnaire was sent to European and South African practitioners of forensic anthropology and related disciplines in 2016. The results of the questionnaire showed that the status and roles of forensic anthropologists vary depending on the national legal systems, education, and employment status of the practitioners. Despite the fact that the expertise of forensic anthropologists has been increasingly requested in a variety of investigations and the spectrum of tasks has become broader, including identification of living persons, specialized education in forensic anthropology is still restricted to a few graduate and postgraduate programs in European countries and to annual FASE courses.     

Sexual dimorphism of the scapula and the clavicle in a contemporary Greek population: applications in forensic identification

Sex estimation is the grounds for an accurate identification of unknown human skeletal elements. The need for reliable methods distinguishing males from females based upon various skeletal elements is evident in cases of commingled, eroded and/or missing remains. The aim of this work lays on establishing criteria for sex estimation from the scapula and the clavicle in modern Greeks. A total of 147 left scapulae and 147 clavicles (66 females and 81 males) were used in the study. Eight and six measurements were taken on the scapula and clavicle respectively and data were subjected to principal components analysis (PCA) and discriminant function analysis (DFA). Posterior probabilities for the classification of each individual are also calculated. Statistical analysis was carried out using the software PAST (Paleontological Statistics) and SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) 18. The results supported the existence of pronounced sexual dimorphism, which was mainly attributed to size differences among the two groups. Univariate and multivariate methods of statistical classification showed high accuracy for all scapular and most clavicular measurements, verifying their value as sex indicators in the under study population. We recommend the use of this method for sex assessment from the scapula and the clavicle in cases exhibiting over 95% probability of correct classification. This is regardless of the overall high degree of accuracy reported here, as the method of choice in forensic contexts should always be case-driven.     

Discrimination between human and animal DNA: application of a duplex polymerase chain reaction to forensic identification

Identification of a report's species is one of the basic analyses in forensic laboratories. The authors report the case of 6 bone fragments recovered in a wooded area, which were not attributable to 1 animal species on the basis of morphologic examination. The aim of this study was to develop a duplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to discriminate human and animal origin of bone fragments. The method is based on the PCR amplification of cytochrome b and a 16S ribosomal mitochondrial DNA fragment, which has never been tested up to now. Our protocol combines a single-round PCR with direct visualization of amplicons in agarose gel, without sequencing analysis of the PCR products. The presence of a single band (359 bp) indicates a nonhuman origin of the sample, whereas 2 bands (157 and 359 bp) indicate a human biologic sample.This method revealed to be useful for forensic purposes because the 16S ribosomal mitochondrial DNA is a small human-specific fragment that is easily amplifiable even with degraded DNA from biologic materials such as old bones.     

‘In fabrorum potestate’: Plautus and the Mother's Power in Ancient Rome

Plautus’ Mostellaria contains the first attestation of the attribution of potestas over children to both parents, the mother as well as the father, in ancient Rome. Such an early analogy between pater and mater regarding their social status as parentes, along with a certain correlation between the parents’ duties and their power over their children, seems to suggest that a new social conception of the Roman family was already spreading in Plautus’ day, concurrently with the progressive recognition of natural kinship (cognatio). Set in the framework of the legal and literary sources on this matter, the excerpt brings under discussion the traditional motionless view of the patria potestas and appears to be particularly significant in reconstructing not only the real social and legal status of the Roman mater but also the historical development of the legal system in ancient Rome.