Causal Attributions and Affective Responses to Provocative Female Partner Behavior by Abusive and Nonabusive Males

The present study examined the effects of the degree of female partner provocation on cognitive attributions and affective responses in verbally abusive and nonabusive college males. In Phase 1 (N = 116), subjects listened to audiotapes of hypothetical dating situations in which the female partner's behavior was nonprovocative or moderately provocative; in Phase 2 (N = 105), the female partner's behavior was nonprovocative or highly provocative. The major hypothesis was that abusive males would make greater negative intent and responsibility attributions and report more powerful feelings of jealousy, rejection, and abandonment in response to moderately and highly provocative partner behavior but not in response to nonprovocative partner behavior than would nonabusive males. Results from Phase 1 showed that abusive males reported reliably greater negative attributions and feelings of jealousy, rejection, and abandonment in response to moderately provocative partner behavior than did nonabusive males. No group differences were associated with nonprovocative partner behavior. Results from Phase 2 showed that abusive males attributed greater negative intent and feelings of rejection and abandonment to both highly provocative and nonprovocative partner behavior than did nonabusive males. Negative attributions and feelings of jealousy, rejection, and abandonment increased reliably from moderately provocative to highly provocative female behavior for abusive and nonabusive males, who differed reliably from each other. Implications for the assessment and treatment of abusive men were discussed.     

The recovery of latent fingermarks and DNA using a silicone-based casting material

There are many techniques available for the recovery of fingermarks at scenes of crime including the possibility of taking casts of the marks. Casts can be advantageous in cases where other destructive recovery techniques might not be suitable, such as when recovering finger marks deposited on valued or immobile items. In this research, Isomark (a silicone-based casting material) was used to recover casts of finger marks placed on a variety of substrates. Casts were enhanced using cyanoacrylate fuming. Good quality marks were successfully recovered from a range of smooth, non-porous surfaces. Recovery from semi-porous surfaces was shown to be inefficient. DNA was subsequently extracted from the casts using QIAamp Mini extraction kits, amplified and profiled. Full DNA profiles were obtained 34% of samples extracted.     

Evaluation and quantification of nuclear DNA from human telogen hairs

Nuclear DNA was extracted from human telogen hairs from 60 individuals. Six to nine hairs from each individual were individually extracted. The amount of DNA recovered from each individual varied greatly, and most samples yielded a quantity of 550 pg or less per hair. A selective extraction buffer was used to remove epithelial cell DNA and the amount of exogenous DNA was determined. DNA was also quantified by real time PCR using three different sized amplicons targeting an Alu sequence. The results were used to determine the state of degradation of the extracted DNA. Different quantities of sample (<100 pg, 100-500 pg, >500 pg) were amplified with the Miniplex kits to determine the minimum DNA template required for successful amplification. DNA recovered from hair showed degradation; however, partial profiles were obtained for those samples containing at least 60 pg using MiniSTRs.     

A Method for Estimating Sex Using Metric Analysis of the Scapula*

Abstract: The most accurate and precise methods for the assessment of age and stature often require knowledge of sex. Thus, being able to correctly identify sex from skeletal remains is critical in the forensic context. The presence of the os coxae or skull can never be guaranteed, making the development of reliable methods of sex estimation using other skeletal elements necessary. Using a 724 individual calibration sample from the Hamann‐Todd collection, this study identifies sexual dimorphism in the human scapula, and presents a new five‐variable discriminant function for sex estimation. The overall accuracy of this method proved to be 95.7% on the cross‐validated calibration sample, 92.5% on an 80 individual test sample from the Hamann‐Todd collection, and 84.4% on a 32 individual test sample from the skeletal collection of the Wichita State University Biological Anthropology Laboratory. Additionally, a slightly less accurate two‐variable model was developed and has cross‐validated accuracy of 91.3%.     

Deconstructing Criminology’s Origin Stories

The global production of knowledge is grossly skewed to the northern Anglophone world (Hogg et al. in International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 6(1), 1–7, 2017; Connell 2007). It should be no surprise therefore that criminology’s origin stories are derivative of northern experiences, yet generalised as universal theories of crime causation. In this article, we argue that the origin stories of criminological theory translated the ‘darker’, ‘hairier’ and ‘muscular’ masculinities of the global south into prototypes of dangerousness. These prototypes were first articulated as scientific claims in the nineteenth century works of Lombroso, but have been refined and embedded in mainstream criminological discourses well into the present, mainly through the quantitative study of social disorganisation, ‘race’ and racialised masculinities as variables in crime causation. The paper concedes that while deeply troubling expressions of violent masculinity exist now and in the past in the global south, it is mistaken to conceive this violence simply as expressions of atavism or social disorganisation associated with a less civilised world. On the contrary, this paper argues that the violence of colonality itself has had, and continues to have, a criminogenic impact on the present.     

The Right to Be Racist in College: Racist Speech,White Institutional Space,and the First Amendment

Throughout the post–civil rights era, colleges and universities across the United States have periodically experienced explicitly racist incidents on their campuses. From the hurling of racial slurs at students of color, to the hanging of nooses on campus, to students donning Ku Klux Klan outfits or throwing “ghetto” parties that caricaturize communities of color, these incidents challenge the notion that modern racism has changed to a more subtle form, referred to as color‐blind racism. We place these incidents within a broader context of race and institutions, suggesting a connection between overt racist expressions and the more covert elements of neoliberal color‐blind racism. Through a critical discourse analysis of news stories about these incidents, the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the controlling legal cases involving racist expression on campuses, we suggest that explicitly racist incidents operate in tandem with neoliberal educational policies and color‐blind racism to mark and reinscribe colleges and universities as white institutional spaces.     

Taphonomic Effects of Mechanical Plowing on Buried Juvenile‐Sized Remains

Agricultural activity is a worldwide taphonomic process and can present unique challenges in the recovery of buried remains. Previous research has been mostly within the realm of site formation processes of archeological sites utilizing only surface material. This research expands upon the previous research by incorporating the distribution of subsurface material by the use of archeological excavation techniques. An experiment was conducted utilizing juvenile pig (Sus scrofa) skeletons buried in relative anatomical position at two different depths (15 cm below the surface [cmbs] and 22 cmbs). The burials were then subjected to different intervals of mechanical plowing: one, three, five, seven, or 10 plow passes. The skeletal material was recovered using pedestrian survey followed by hand excavation and screening of all sediments. This research shows that there is a significant relationship between the degree of plowing and the distance skeletal material is distributed and the percentage of material recovered undamaged.     

Determination of cocaine and its metabolites in brain tissue using high-flow solid-phase extraction columns and high-performance liquid chromatography.

A new solid-phase extraction procedure for the determination of cocaine and some of its metabolites in brain tissue, using high-flow co-polymeric sorbents is reported as a substantial improvement on our recently reported procedure. The recovery of cocaine, norcocaine and cocaethylene was excellent as was the reproducibility of the extraction. The use of high-flow sorbents allowed the easy extraction of tissue without the need for a time-consuming lipase digestion, regardless of sample viscosity or physical nature. The use of these solid-phase columns provided many advantages over the more commonly used solvent extraction, including an increase in extraction speed and efficiency, reduced operator time, reduced solvent use and disposal volumes and exceptional extract quality. The procedure was successfully applied to rabbit brains spiked with cocaine, benzoylecgonine, norcocaine and cocaethylene.