Development of a Computer‐Assisted Forensic Radiographic Identification Method Using the Lateral Cervical and Lumbar Spine

Medical examiners and coroners (ME/C) in the United States hold statutory responsibility to identify deceased individuals who fall under their jurisdiction. The computer‐assisted decedent identification (CADI) project was designed to modify software used in diagnosis and treatment of spinal injuries into a mathematically validated tool for ME/C identification of fleshed decedents. CADI software analyzes the shapes of targeted vertebral bodies imaged in an array of standard radiographs and quantifies the likelihood that any two of the radiographs contain matching vertebral bodies. Six validation tests measured the repeatability, reliability, and sensitivity of the method, and the effects of age, sex, and number of radiographs in array composition. CADI returned a 92–100% success rate in identifying the true matching pair of vertebrae within arrays of five to 30 radiographs. Further development of CADI is expected to produce a novel identification method for use in ME/C offices that is reliable, timely, and cost‐effective.     

American murder mystery revisited: do housing voucher households cause crime?

This paper reviews the current state of the housing market, particularly in the shadow of the foreclosure crisis, the collapse of the financial system, and persistent unemployment. The authors outline the policy priorities necessary to facilitate the recovery of the housing market in general and to encourage comprehensive revitalization of the hardest hit communities.     

Ripple effects: the groundnut scheme failure and railway planning for colonial development in Tanganyika, 1947–1952

While the reasons for the failure of the groundnut scheme are well understood, its effects on colonial development in Tanganyika are not. Drawing from the voluminous paper trail that development planning leaves in its wake, this paper traces the effects of the groundnut scheme demise on a contemporaneous plan to build a railway across Tanganyika to the Northern Rhodesian copperbelt. Tensions arose among the railway planners – civil servants, politicians, and consultants from Britain, Africa, and the United States – when, midway through the planning process, the scale of the groundnut scheme collapse became public. I demonstrate how this revealing crisis prompted planners to eschew the project's production-oriented impetus and embrace a welfare-oriented conclusion. By demonstrating the interlinked nature of development projects, this paper proposes a new angle for studying the history of development in an era characterised by the rapid proliferation of projects.     

Civil Servants on the Silver Screen: The Depiction of Government in American and Australian Cinema

With the prevalence of government, it is unsurprising to find it frequently represented on the silver screen. But, with the ability of film to influence perceptions and attitudes, questions arise, including: how is government portrayed on the silver screen? Are government bureaucrats berated or praised? This research examines the representation of government—and civil servants in particular—in a comparative setting. The top 100 box office grossing films of all time in the United States and Australia were selected to address the question: how do these films in the United States and Australia depict government? This study analyzes these 200 films and the more than 400 government characters in these films and suggests that government in both American and Australian films does not fare well. However, despite the generally negative—or at best mixed—depictions of government overall, individual government characters fare better.     

Substance Use Among African American Adolescents in the Midwest

The purpose of this article is to examine the attitudes and substance use behaviors of African American adolescents living in the Midwest. A baseline survey was administered to 463 African American teens between the ages of 11–19. The article examines the relationship between attitudes toward drugs and drug-using behavior in this African American sample. Drug use will be compared to national drug use norms established by the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey. Overall participants had fairly negative attitudes toward drugs. Sixty percent of the sample reported that they were committed to a drug-free life, 74% had made a decision to stay away from marijuana, 79% reported making a decision not to smoke cigarettes, and 71% reported they would not get drunk in the next year. Females were more likely to stay away from marijuana than males. In this current study there is cause for alarm; participants reported higher percentages of ever smoking cigarettes and marijuana than the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey. This study shows there is a need to provide substance abuse prevention programs for African American adolescents. Limitations and future directions are also discussed.     

Culture,Institutions and Campaign Effects: Explaining the Outcome of Malta's EU Accession Referendum

This survey examines the background to and the campaign preceding Malta's EU accession referendum. The result of the referendum, which was held on 8 March 2003, and which was the first of the EU accession referendums of 2003, was a 53.65% vote in support of membership, on a turnout of close to 91%. Explaining both the relatively low support for EU accession and the high turnout on referendum day involves weighing up the relative impact of distinctive features of Malta's political culture and institutional framework against more immediate campaign effects. While the conclusion is that the high turnout in the Maltese EU accession referendum can be traced to Malta's political culture, the relatively low but positive vote in favour of membership can only be fully understood by focusing on a range of factors, including campaign-related factors, such as the credibility of the arguments presented by the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ camps and the balance of resources available. The most important factor explaining the result of the Maltese referendum are, however, the cues provided by the political parties prior to and over the course of the referendum campaign.     

Identity,Insecurity, and Great Power Politics:The Tragedy of German Naval Ambition Before the First World War

Why did Germany pursue naval expansion at the turn of the twentieth century? This question has long puzzled scholars of international security, who consider German naval ambition to be an instance of suboptimal arming—a decision that decreased Germany's overall security and risked the survival of the German state. This article argues that the social desire to be recognized as a world power guided Germany's decision to challenge British naval hegemony. From the beginning of its naval planning, Germany had one clear aim: a powerful fleet of battleships stationed in the North Sea would alter the political relationship with Britain in such a way that it could no longer ignore Germany's claim to world power status. Reconceptualizing Germany's naval ambition as a struggle for recognition elucidates the contradictions at the center of German naval strategy, explaining how the doomed policy could proceed despite its certain failure. The article concludes that the power-maximizing practices of great powers should be seen as an important component of identity construction and an understudied dimension of contemporary security practice.     

When Screams Are Not Released: A Study of Communication and Consent in Acquaintance Rape Situations

This study examines the importance of modes of communication in the context of acquaintance rape, using 96 reported cases of acquaintance rape from a southeastern law enforcement agency. Through the demographic characteristics of each acquaintance rape, as well as the testimonies of the complainants and—in some cases—the accused, this research reveals the way in which victims communicate their responses to these attacks. A typology of modes of communication clearly emerges from these qualitative data. The patterns of communication further underscore the likelihood of passive responses, particularly the complete lack of communication when the victim “freezes.” The implications of such response modes are considered.     

The Fault of (European) Law in (Political and Social) Economic Crisis

It is a commonplace that the discipline of economics has contributed to the current crisis, above all, because economic methodologies are charged with fatally inflating debt risk, such that collapse was the inevitable result. But what might be said of the role of law within this constellation? Much ink has been consumed detailing legal shortcomings within regulatory regimes for the financial services. However, a full accounting has yet to be made of the broader fault which may also be attributed to the premises of modern and increasingly post-national law, especially as they coalesce with a broader abdication of political responsibility for crisis. This contribution begins this accounting, investigating the processes by which law has transformed itself into an economic technology within post-national regimes in its contemporary quest for material legitimacy. Above all, in its idolatry of the factual, law has itself become a power locus—especially within the European Union—that similarly pre-empts the politics within which social and economic stability might be defined and achieved.     

Two Truths and a Lie: In re John Z. and Other Stories at the Juncture of Teen Sex and the Law

Laws governing adolescent sexuality are incoherent and chaotically enforced, and legal scholarship on the subject neither addresses nor remedies adolescents’ vulnerability in sexual encounters. To posit a meaningful relationship between the criminal law and adolescent sexual encounters, one must examine what we know about adolescent sexuality from both the academic literature and the adults who control the criminal justice response to such interactions. This article presents an in‐depth study of In re John Z., a 2003 rape prosecution involving two seventeen‐year‐olds. Using this case, I explore the implications of the prosecution by interviewing a variety of experts and analyzing the contemporary literature on sexual norms among youth. I also relate a series of interviews conducted with the major players in the prosecution. Examining this case from a variety of perspectives permits a deeper understanding of how the law regulates adolescent sexual encounters and why it fails.