POLITICS, INSTITUTIONS, CONSTRUCTIVISM and the EMERGING INTERNATIONAL REGIME for FINANCIAL REGULATION

This article examines the growing number of interconnected international groupings that have been built to regulate global finance over the past quarter century. It suggests that the rationalistic approaches focusing on egoistic actors that have dominated scholarly study of this issue area have contributed to the understimation of the strenght of the regime for regulating global finance. It examines, as an alternative, constructivist approaches that stress the importance of institution.     

A strategy for accelerating the use of energy conserving building technologies

To accelerate the use of energy-conserving building technologies in the farflung, decentralized buildings industry, a strategy for more directed transfer of government research to public- and private-sector users has been implemented. The strategy involves a cycle of four sets of activities: (1) Needs assessment; (2) development of transferable information; (3) outreach activities; and (4) feedback and evaluation. By employing this iterative technology transfer cycle and emphasizing trade and professional organizations as communication channels to and from users, it is hoped that research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy's Building Systems Division will be responsive to the industry's needs and accessible to its diverse participants.     

The Effect of Time and Temperature on the Persistence and Quality of Latent Fingerprints Recovered from 60-Watt Incandescent Light Bulbs

To understand how time and temperature could affect latent fingerprints, wooden pallets were used to construct five units that each housed ten 60-watt incandescent light bulbs. Fingerprints were deposited on the top, middle, and base of the globes. The bulbs were powered on (except the control bulb in each unit) for 18, 48, 72, 120, 168, 336, 504, and 672 h. Fingerprints recovered from the bulbs by tape lift after black powder processing were given a quality score. A thermal imaging camera determined temperatures on three areas of the bulbs. Fingerprints on the top of the globe (156.3°C) had the lowest quality score, and fingerprints on the middle of the globe (112.6°C) had the highest quality score. The mean quality scores of the three temperature classes were within one standard deviation of one another, meaning there is no way to estimate fingerprint age based on its quality after heat exposure.     

Substantiated Childhood Maltreatment and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization in Young Adulthood: A Birth Cohort Study

Little is known about the associations between various types of childhood maltreatment and multiple forms of intimate partner violence victimization in early adulthood. This study examines the extent to which childhood experiences of maltreatment increase the risk for intimate partner violence victimization in early adulthood. Data for the present study are from 3322 young adults (55?% female) of the Mater Hospital-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy with the mean age of 20.6 years. The Mater Hospital-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy is a prospective Australian pre-birth cohort study of mothers consecutively recruited during their first antenatal clinic visit at Brisbane’s Mater Hospital from 1981 through to 1983. Participants completed the Composite Abuse Scale at 21-year follow-up and linked this dataset to agency recorded substantiated cases of childhood maltreatment. In adjusted models, the odds of reporting emotional intimate partner violence victimization were 1.84, 2.64 and 3.19 times higher in physically abused, neglected and emotionally abused children, respectively. Similarly, the odds of physical intimate partner violence victimization were 1.76, 2.31, 2.74 and 2.76 times higher in those children who had experienced physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect and emotional abuse, respectively. Harassment was 1.63 times higher in emotionally abused children. The odds of severe combined abuse were 3.97 and 4.62 times greater for emotionally abused and neglected children, respectively. The strongest associations involved reports of child emotional abuse and neglect and multiple forms of intimate partner violence victimization in young adulthood. Childhood maltreatment is a chronic adversity that is associated with specific and multiple forms of intimate partner violence victimization in adulthood.     

Effects of storage time on DNA profiling success from archived latent fingerprint samples using an optimised workflow

Due to recent improvements in forensic DNA testing kit sensitivity,there has been an increased demand in the criminal justice community to revisit past convictions or cold cases.Some of these cases have little biological evidence other than touch DNA in the form of archived latent fingerprint lift cards.In this study,a previously developed optimised workflow for this sample type was tested on aged fingerprints to determine if improved short tandem repeat(STR)profiles could be obtained.Two-year-old samples processed with the optimised workflow produced an average of approximately five more STR alleles per profile over the traditional method.The optimised workflow also produced detectable alleles in samples aged out to 28 years.Of the methods tested,the optimised workflow resulted in the most informative profiles from evidence samples more representative of the forensic need.This workflow is recommended for use with archived latent fingerprint samples,regardless of the archival time.