Two strategies in Serbian politics in Croatia and Hungary before the first world war*

Ritchie Robertson and Edward Timms, eds, The Habsburg Legacy: National Identity in Historical Perspective. [Austrian Studies V] Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994.

Richard B. Spence and Linda L. Nelson, eds, Scholar, Patriot, Mentor: Historical Essays in Honor of Dimitrije Djordjevic. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1992.

David M. Crowe, A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994, xvii, 317 pp. + map, bibliography, and index.

Paul Hockenos, Free to Hate: The Rise of the Right in Post Communist Eastern Europe. New York: Routledge, 1993/1994, 330 pp. $35.00 cloth; $17.95 paper.

Adrian Hyde‐Price, The International Politics of East Central Europe. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996, xviii, 300 pp. + maps, index.

Gordon Skilling, T. G. Masaryk: Against the Current, 1882–1914. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994, xv, 248 pp.

David Kelly, The Czech Fascist Movement 1922–1942. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1995, 236 pp. + index.

Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995, xvi, 350 pp. + maps, index.

Francine Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims: Denial of a Nation. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, xvii, 275 pp. + bibliography, index.

Levon Chorbajian, Patrick Donabedian and Claude Mutafian, The Caucasian Knot: The History and Geopolitics of Nagorno‐Karabagh. London: Zed Books, 1994, xx, 173 pp., appendices and index.

Manoug J. Somakian, Empires in Conflict: Armenia and the Great Powers 1895–1920. London: I. B. Tauris, 1995, xi, 276 pp. + maps, index.

Vahak N. Dadrian, German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity. Watertown, MA: Blue Crane Books, 1996, xvi + 271, illustrations, bibliography, index.

Theodore R. Weeks, Nation and State in Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863–1914. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996, xiii, 297 pp. + maps, bibliography, index.

John L. H. Keep, Last of The Empires: A History of the Soviet Union, 1945–1991. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, xiii, 477 pp.

Brian McNair, Glasnost, Perestroika, and the Soviet Media. New York and London: Routledge, 1991, xii, 231 pp., $49.95.

Don C. Rawson, Russian Rightists and the Revolution of 1905. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, xvi, 283 pp. + maps, illustrations, tables, bibliography, index.

Anna Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894–1917. Princeton: Princeton University, 1993, xii, 365 pp. + photographs, index.

Robert W. Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934–1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996, xxi, 295 pp.

Vitaly V. Naumkin, ed., Central Asia and Transcaucasia. Ethnicity and Conflict. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1994, xiii, 242 pp.

D. A. Amanzholova, Kazakhskii Avtonomizm i Rossiia: Istoriia dvizheniia Alash (Kazak Autonomy and Russia: The History of the Alash Movement). Moscow: Rossiia Molodiia, 1994, 216 pp.

Boris Rumer, ed., Central Asia in Transition: Dilemmas of Political and Economic Development. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, xx, 280 pp. + index.

Martha Brill Olcott, The Kazakhs, 2nd edn. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1995, 388 pp.

Stephen Kotkin and David Wolff, Rediscovering Russia in Asia. Siberia and the Russian Far East. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995, xxiii, 356 pp. + maps, photographs, tables, index.     

Towards an Emancipatory International Law: the Bolivarian reconstruction

In this article, we argue that a unique South American treaty known as ALBA—the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas—puts forward a cohesive counter-vision of international law rooted in notions of complementarity and human solidarity. We further argue that Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholars might use this initiative as a springboard to push forward a long-overdue reform of the international legal regime. While, on its own, ALBA is unlikely to pose much of a challenge to the structural imbalances that permeate global society, when juxtaposed alongside the many initiatives of the Bolivarian Revolution, it appears to possess significant democratic potential. With both scholarly and popular support, ALBA may even have the capability of sparking a renewal of a united Third World movement.     

A Set of Handwriting Features for Use in Automated Writer Identification,

A writer's biometric identity can be characterized through the distribution of physical feature measurements (“writer's profile”); a graph‐based system that facilitates the quantification of these features is described. To accomplish this quantification, handwriting is segmented into basic graphical forms (“graphemes”), which are “skeletonized” to yield the graphical topology of the handwritten segment. The graph‐based matching algorithm compares the graphemes first by their graphical topology and then by their geometric features. Graphs derived from known writers can be compared against graphs extracted from unknown writings. The process is computationally intensive and relies heavily upon statistical pattern recognition algorithms. This article focuses on the quantification of these physical features and the construction of the associated pattern recognition methods for using the features to discriminate among writers. The graph‐based system described in this article has been implemented in a highly accurate and approximately language‐independent biometric recognition system of writers of cursive documents.     

Economic Crime and China’s High-Speed Railway: a Case Study of the Wenzhou Crash

Asian Journal of Criminology - China’s current structural dynamic of rewarding officials for generating vigorous and unprecedented growth is a double-edged sword: such a strategy assures...     

Fighting America’s Highest Incarceration Rates with Offender Programming: Process Evaluation Implications from the Louisiana 22nd Judicial District Reentry Court

Reentry programs, when adequately funded and delivered with fidelity, can render recidivism reduction and other positive outcomes such as abstinence and employment stability. This paper reports process evaluation findings for the Louisiana 22nd Judicial District Reentry Court program, a joint SAMHSA/BJA-sponsored multiphase programming intervention for high-risk/high-need offenders featuring job readiness training in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and transition services during reentry, including program engagement, job placement, and treatment services continuation in the community under strict judicial supervision. Research procedures entailed 1) observation of court appearances, treatment team meetings, educational activities, and counseling sessions, 2) review of all program participant case files enabling progress tracking, and 3) in-depth and focus group interviews with program stakeholders both at Angola and post-release in community settings. Findings relate the evidence based nature and quality of services delivery to date, as well as fidelity demonstrated across major programmatic domains. Program improvement opportunities, outcome evaluation implications, and performance measures signaling early success center discussion around vanguard elements of the court and evaluation design, respectively.     

Identification through X-ray fluorescence analysis of dental restorative resin materials: a comprehensive study of noncremated, cremated, and processed-cremated individuals

Tooth-colored restorative materials are increasingly being placed in the practice of modern dentistry, replacing traditional materials such as amalgam. Many restorative resins have distinct elemental compositions that allow identification of brand. Not only are resins classifiable by elemental content, but they also survive extreme conditions such as cremation. This is of significance to the forensic odontologist because resin uniqueness adds another level of certainty in victim identification, especially when traditional means are exhausted. In this three-part study, unique combinations of resins were placed in six human cadavers (total 70 restorations). Simulated ante-mortem dental records were created. In a blind experiment, a portable X-ray fluorescence (XRF) unit was used to locate and identify the resin brands placed in the dentition. The technique was successful in location and brand identification of 53 of the restorations, which was sufficient to enable positive victim identification among the study group. This part of the experiment demonstrated the utility of portable XRF in detection and analysis of restorative materials for victim identification in field or morgue settings. Identification of individuals after cremation is a more difficult task, as the dentition is altered by shrinkage and fragmentation, and may not be comparable with a dental chart. Identification of processed cremains is a much greater challenge, as comminution obliterates all structural relationships. Under both circumstances, it is the nonbiological artifacts that aid in identification. Restorative resin fillings can survive these conditions, and can still be named by brand utilizing elemental analysis. In a continuation of the study, the cadavers were cremated in a cremation retort under standard mortuary conditions. XRF was again used to analyze retrieved resins and to identify the individuals based on restorative materials known to exist from dental records. The cremains were then processed and the analysis was repeated to determine whether restorative resins could be found under this extreme condition. Under both circumstances, sufficient surviving resin material was found to distinguish positively each individual in the study group. This study showed the utility of XRF as an analytical tool for forensic odontology and also the significance of the role of restorative resins in victim identification, even after cremation.     

Allele frequencies of 15 autosomal STR loci in the Iraq population with comparisons to other populations from the middle-eastern region

Allele frequencies for the 15 autosomal STR loci included in the AmpFlSTR((R)) IdentifilerTM PCR Amplification Kit panel from Applied Biosystems (D3S1358, vWA, FGA, D8S1179, D21S11, D18S51, D5S818, D13S317, D7S820, TH01, TPOX, CSF1PO, D19S433, D2S1338, D16S539) and several statistical parameters were estimated from a sample of 103 unrelated individuals, mostly Shia and Sunni Arabs, living in most of central and southern Iraq provinces. We compared the allele frequency spectrum detected in the Iraqi population to allele frequencies from 11 other data sets from published studies of individuals from Turkey, Iraqi-Kurdistan, Saudi Arabia, Arab Emarates, Oman, Iran, Syria, and Jordan. Significant global differences in allele frequencies were detected in 9 of the 11 comparisons following sequential Bonferroni corrections. Comparisons with the two independent panels from Saudi Arabia were not significant after applying Bonferroni corrections, however, low P-values (P<0.05) associated with these two contrasts nonetheless suggested that at least slight genetic differences between populations may exist.     

An Assessment of Judges’ Self‐Reported Experiences of Secondary Traumatic Stress

Many judges experience occupation‐specific stress, such as secondary traumatic stress (STS), burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious traumatization. A content analysis of 762 judges’ open‐ended responses to a survey asking whether they had suffered from STS revealed that judges moderately experienced most types of stress. Some case types (e.g., family court) and some job aspects (e.g., gruesome evidence) were particularly stressful. Judges reported both positive (e.g., social support) and negative (e.g., distractions) coping mechanisms. Interventions should be tailored to judges’ characteristics, (e.g., gender), job (e.g., family court), beliefs (e.g., that STS does not exist), and level of distress.