Comment on the recent Grokster judgment by the US Supreme Court

The Supreme Court handed down its decision in MGM v Groksteron 27 June 2005, reversing the decision of the lower courtsand holding that peer-to-peer software services may be heldliable for inducing copyright infringement.     

Gendering the Rwanda Defence Force: A Critical Assessment

Over the past five years the Government of Rwanda has placed renewed emphasis on increasing the number of female military personnel and gender mainstreaming the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF). This article examines the efforts made by the RDF since 2007 to meet these strategic requirements and integrate women into the national security organ. It is suggested that, in spite of Rwanda's success in bringing women into the political sphere, women are still reluctant to join the military. It is argued that prevailing societal values and attitudes, conflicting narratives within official discourse about the role of women as security actors, resource constraints and the RDF's emphasis on ‘gender equality’ are barriers to achieving RDF goals. Drawing on in-depth interviews with RDF military personnel and government officials, as well as documentary research, the article first provides an overview of the Rwandan government's approach to mobilizing women to securitize the state, before examining how the RDF aims to progress the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda nationally and within local communities. The article then reflects on some of the factors that are hindering the recruitment and retention of female military personnel.     

Go to Switzerland, young women, if you want to study medicine

During the second half of the nineteenth century women from all over the world went to Swiss universities to study medicine. The first female doctors to practice in most European countries received their medical education in Switzerland. This article examines possible reasons to explain why Switzerland opened its doors to female medical students when universities in other countries rejected women. Cultural, political and economic motivations are suggested.     

Atypical autoerotic death: part II

Autoerotic fatalities encompass a wide array of means and mechanisms used to attain sexual gratification. The most commonly encountered autoerotic practice, specifically, autoerotic asphyxia, denotes death resulting from failure of a release mechanism of the apparatus designed to attain cerebral hypoxia for heightened arousal. Historically, the majority of victims of autoerotic death are Caucasian males under the age of 30. While autoerotic death is most often associated with a constrictive cervical ligature tied to either other parts of the victim's body or to an inanimate object such as a door, several other methods have been reported. These modalities include ligature around the thorax or abdomen, plastic bags covering the face, electrical current, inhalation of a toxic gas or chemicals, or partial or total submersion, known as aquaerotic asphyxiation. This study highlights 11 cases of atypical autoerotic death, including asphyxia with a plastic bag, electrocution, and inhalation of butane and nitrous oxide (N2O). Whereas the manner of death in the majority of autoerotic death cases is deemed accidental, we present and analyze unique and equivocal cases representing 4 different manners of death: accident, natural, suicide, and homicide. The 11 victims were all Caucasian and between the ages of 17 and 55. Ten decedents were males, 1 female. A comprehensive investigation incorporating a thorough scene analysis, gathering of the victim's history, and complete postmortem examination is necessary to elucidate both the cause and manner of death in these atypical cases.     

The effectiveness of various strategies to improve DNA analysis of formaldehyde-damaged tissues from embalmed cadavers for human identification purposes

Formalin-fixed tissues provide the medical and forensic communities with alternative and often last resort sources of DNA for identification or diagnostic purposes. The DNA in these samples can be highly degraded and chemically damaged, making downstream genotyping using short tandem repeats (STRs) challenging. Therefore, the use of alternative genetic markers, methods that pre-amplify the low amount of good quality DNA present, or methods that repair the damaged DNA template may provide more probative genetic information. This study investigated whether whole genome amplification (WGA) and DNA repair could improve STR typing of formaldehyde-damaged (FD) tissues from embalmed cadavers. Additionally, comparative genotyping success using bi-allelic markers, including INDELs and SNPs, was explored. Calculated random match probabilities (RMPs) using traditional STRs, INDEL markers, and two next generation sequencing (NGS) panels were compared across all samples. Overall, results showed that neither WGA nor DNA repair substantially improved STR success rates from formalin-fixed tissue samples. However, when DNA from FD samples was genotyped using INDEL and SNP-based panels, the RMP of each sample was markedly lower than the RMPs calculated from partial STR profiles. Therefore, the results of this study suggest that rather than attempting to improve the quantity and quality of severely damaged and degraded DNA prior to STR typing, a more productive approach may be to target smaller amplicons to provide more discriminatory DNA identifications. Furthermore, an NGS panel with less loci may yield better results when examining FD samples, due to more optimized chemistries that result in greater allelic balance and amplicon coverage.     

The role of the Asia Pacific Partnership in discursive contestation of the international climate regime

After withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol, the US Bush Administration and the Australian Howard Government pursued an international climate change policy focussed on voluntary international agreements outside the UN climate negotiations. This strategy included the formation of several climate agreements directed at technology development, including the 2005 Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP). The APP provides a model for international climate change policy directed at voluntary national greenhouse gas intensity targets, technology development through sectoral public–private partnerships and technology diffusion through trade. This article situates the APP within these US and Australian inspired climate agreements formed outside the UN negotiations. Bäckstrand and Lövbrand’s (in M. Pettenger (ed.) The social construction of climate change: power knowledge norms discourses, 2007) discourse analysis in relation to the international climate negotiations is used to explore differences between the APP and UN climate treaties. We find the APP embodies a discourse of what we call ‘deregulatory ecological modernisation’ that promotes limited public funding to ease informational failures in markets for cleaner technologies and management practices. The deregulatory ecological modernisation discourse is a deeply intensive market liberal approach to international climate change policy, which contests binding emission reduction targets and the development of a global carbon market. The USA, Australia, Japan and Canada represented a core group of countries that used the APP to promote the deregulatory ecological modernisation discourse and thereby contest any deepening of developed nations' emission reduction targets for the post-2012 period. However, with changes of leadership and new parties in power in the USA and Australia, it appears that the deregulatory ecological modernisation discourse has lost ground compared to a reengagement with discourses supportive of developed country emission reduction targets and equity-based adaptation and technology transfer assistance for developing nations.     

Autonomy as a disposition to non-domination in the work of Mary Wollstonecraft

ABSTRACT

In this paper I argue that there is a notion of autonomy which can be extrapolated from Wollstonecraft’s work: central to this notion is the need for us all to adopt a disposition to non-domination.Thus, an individual is autonomous when she is not dominated but also, how she behaves towards others is significant, for she is only truly autonomous if she does not dominate others. I argue that such a disposition can be read in Wollstonecraft as something which cuts across the public/private divide. It is based on the notion that individuals are always capable of being rational in both of these spheres. There must be a disposition to non-domination because Wollstonecraft demonstrates how domination is corrupting, and when this disposition is lost we find ourselves faced with myriad concerns from slavery to multiple forms of social oppression. Domination creates relations of dependency. It is arbitrary and contingent and makes us relate to each other with a marked lack of compassion. Instead, Wollstonecraft stresses we have a duty to treat others as equals and key to this duty is the need to not dominate others. Finally, I highlight how Wollstonecraft suggests such a disposition is to be gained through education.