Bequests to widows and their property in early modern England

This paper analyses those wills made by persons with the surname Farrer between 1500 and 1849 that mention both a widow and children in order to see how different testators divided their property when the interests of more than one family member had to be considered. It is argued that the economic position of women following widowhood was weaker in the eighteenth century than it had been earlier. In the eighteenth century, fewer widows were appointed executrix of their husband's estate and fewer received a share of the residue of the estate. Relatively more bequests of houses and land went to children and not to the widow. These trends occurred in all regions we examined and were experienced by all social groups who made wills. However, while husbands in the eighteenth century were relatively less generous to their widows in their wills than their predecessors, their widows were far from destitute, often receiving some land, cash and goods in addition to a house.     

Technologies, Security, and Privacy in the Post-9/11 European Information Society

Since 11 September 2001, many 'hard' and 'soft' security strategies have been introduced to enable more intensive surveillance and control of the movement of `suspect populations'. Suicide bombings have since generated a step-change in asymmetric threat analysis and public perceptions of risk. This article reviews how post-9/11 'security' issues intersect with existing and emerging technologies, particularly those relating to identity, location, home, and work that will form the backbone of the European Information Society. The article explores the complexities generated by the way that these technologies work, sites of nationalist resistance, and formal bureaucratic roles. Many of the planned surveillance methods and technologies are convergence technologies aiming to bring together new and existing data sources, but are unable to do so because of poor data quality and the difficulty of using the integrated data to reduce serious crime risks. The delay may enable legal compliance models to be developed in order to protect the principles of privacy that are set out in the ECHR and the EC Data Protection Directive. Though (moral) panics produce changes in law, the article emphasizes the constraining effects of law.     

Symbolic racism in candidate evaluation: An experiment

The authors explored the symbolic racism construct to determine whether discrimination in the evaluation of political candidates can be attributed to a combination of traditional values and antiblack affect as suggested by Sears. Using an experimental design where candidate race was manipulated in three conditions, they found that differential racial attributions do operate in the evaluation of political candidates. Contrary to expectations, however, no antiblack affect was found to be at work in the evaluation of the black candidate. Findings are discussed in the framework of contemporary assumptions of research on racial reasoning.     

Namibia and nuclear proliferation

This article offers a discussion of the probable effects of a Worldwide Patent System for developing countries. It draws upon insights from the ongoing processes in the World Intellectual Property Organization and elsewhere relevant for the global patent system and discusses these features from a developing country perspective. For scientifically advanced developing countries the effect in their most advanced and most global enterprises is potentially positive as they will benefit as much as other multinational companies. In areas of research and development where these most advanced developing countries do not possess a high level of technological capacity, a Worldwide Patent System is unlikely to create any benefits for them. For countries with the ability to copy and produce inventions made by others a Worldwide Patent System will have a negative effect as inventors will have little opportunity to utilise the system, whereas they will be bound by a larger number of exclusive rights narrowing down their space for innovation. For the least developed countries an additional problem arises: it might become even more difficult to import essential goods because patents will be in force in these countries even though there is no production of that product in the country.     

Political morality and constitutional settlements

This paper presents a way of thinking about how to respond to the pluralism of modern societies that avoids any commitment to contractualist norms of political justification. The argument developed appeals to the notion of a constitutional settlement. Constitutional settlements are complex on-going social practices that both express certain values to which political societies are committed and establish procedures for resolving disputes among members of these societies. As such, they are a product of both moral commitment and the balance of power. The paper shows how constitutional settlements relate to issues of stability and non-subjugation in politics, and explains how they can ground a distinction between justice and legitimacy.     

Flight activity of the blowflies, Calliphora vomitoria and Lucilia sericata, in the dark

Many species of insects are able to fly at night or in very low light intensities. The question of whether calliphorid blowflies are also able to do this to locate a corpse and oviposit nocturnally is of considerable forensic importance. However, to date studies of this behaviour have been contradictory. Here, the activity and number of Calliphora vomitoria L. and Lucilia sericata (Meigen) (Diptera: Calliphoridae) caught on sticky-traps were examined in a slow-speed wind tunnel, at different intensities of artificial light. The traps were either unbaited or baited-with liver. The number of both species caught, decreased incrementally as light intensity was reduced. While the responses of the two species were broadly similar, L. sericata were significantly more active than C. vomitoria, especially at higher light intensities. The number of flies of both species that were caught was higher in the presence of liver bait, but the presence of the liver bait did not change the shape of the relationship between catch and light intensity. Hence, light intensity acts as an independent exogenous stimulus for activity and although liver volatiles increase activity levels, they are not necessary as an activation stimulus. Comparison of the numbers caught in small or large enclosures suggests that any flies caught in darkness probably alighted on the trap by chance and that in darkness, while flies may be activated by carrion odours, they do not appear to be able to navigate effectively to the source of that odour. The results presented here suggest that in darkness, the probability of oriented flight leading to oviposition on a corpse by either species, is relatively low.     

Palynological Investigation of Mummified Human Remains

Pollen analysis was applied to a mummified homicide victim in Nebraska, U.S.A., to determine the location of death. A control sample showed the normal ambient pollen in the garage crime scene. Ambient windborne types, common in the air of the region, dominated the control. Internal samples were analyzed from the sacrum, intestine, and diaphragm. Microfossils were recovered from the rehydrated intestine lumen. The intestinal sample was dominated by Brassica (broccoli). The sacrum sample was high in dietary types but with a showing of ambient types. The pollen from the diaphragm was dominated by ambient pollen similar to the control samples. The discovery of diverse pollen spectra from within a single mummy was unexpected. They show that ingested and inhaled pollen mixed in the corpse. The data linked the decedent to a specific crime scene in her Nebraska home in the southern tier of eastern counties on the border with Kansas.