Revenue Diversification in Public Higher Education: Comparing the University and Polytechnic Sectors

Financial stringency has been an increasing concern in the higher education sector, especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis. As a result, public higher education institutions have been under increasing pressure to diversify their funding sources through tuition fees and other nonpublic revenues. This article reflects on the institutional impact of those changes by analyzing a panel of 30 higher education institutions from the Portuguese public university and polytechnic sectors for the period between 2003 and 2009. The authors explore the relevance of institutional characteristics such as enrollments in undergraduate and postgraduate programs, the qualifications of academic staff, and the regional environment where institutions are located. Results suggest that certain institutional characteristics related to mission differentiation and the path of development of binary systems are important determinants of higher education institutions’ ability to earn income from tuition fees and other nonpublic sources.     

Exchange rates in nineteenth‐century Brazil: An econometric model

This paper develops a model for the exchange rate in Brazil during the second half of the nineteenth century. The exchange rate discussion has a bearing in the sources of industrialization in Brazil. Two explanations stem from a primary export base. Whereas the ‘adverse shock argument’ links industrialization to unfavorable conditions in the external sector and exchange devaluations, the alternative approach views industrialization from the standpoint of the growth of income brought by the rise in exports. Those mechanisms are discussed. Also considered are the effects of monetary policy and the behavior of wages. The evidence shows that purchasing power parity is not enough to explain the exchange rate behavior, which clearly responded to coffee export revenues.     

Evaluation of the composition of street cocaine seized in two regions of Brazil

This work evaluates cocaine purity and the concentration ranges of adulterants and inorganic constituents for 31 street cocaine samples seized in two different regions of Brazil from July 2008 to May 2010. Cocaine and adulterants, such as caffeine, lidocaine and benzocaine, were quantified by Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), and the inorganic constituents were determined by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES) and ion chromatography (IC). The cocaine concentrations in the samples seized in the Amazonas state (AM samples) ranged from 154 to 978 mg g^? 1, and these samples did not contain any of the adulterants studied. The cocaine concentrations in the samples seized in the Minas Gerais state (MG samples) ranged from 63.9 to 753 mg g^? 1. Caffeine was the main adulterant found in 76% of the MG samples, ranging in concentration from 5.5 to 645.3 mg g^? 1. Lidocaine was found in 66.7% of the MG samples, with concentrations ranging from 16.3 to 576.7 mg g^? 1. Benzocaine was found in only one MG sample, at a concentration of 84.8 mg g^? 1. Fourteen elements were identified by ICP-OES, and a wide variation was observed in the concentrations of Ca, Mg, Na, P, Al, Fe, Mn and Zn. Pearson Product–moment Correlations between the analytes allowed the constituents to be associated with the chemicals used in the manufacturing of cocaine and with some common diluents. The study of the purity of cocaine and the presence and concentration of adulterants and inorganic constituents is important because the latter can have deleterious effects on health.     

Comparing Known and Reconstructed Circumstances of Death Involving a Blunt Force Trauma Mechanism through a Retrospective Analysis of 21 Skeletonized Individuals

Little is known about to what extent the events surrounding death can be reliably reconstructed from blunt force trauma analysis alone. In this study, we reconstruct circumstances of death from a blind blunt force trauma analysis using a sample of 21 individuals of known death circumstances, obtained from two identified skeletal collections in Portugal. Fresh versus dry bone trauma and probable mechanism of fracture production were identified. The overall pattern of injuries was then used to reconstruct the most likely circumstances of death. Results show an agreement between the proposed and the reported circumstances for 13 individuals (68.4%), disagreement for 3 (15.8%), and similarity in 3 cases (15.8%). Although the significant amount of agreement highlights the potential of trauma analysis, the cases with disagreement draw attention to the pitfalls and shortcomings of attempting to reconstruct the death circumstances from skeletal trauma analysis alone.     

A Reappraisal of Developing Permanent Tooth Length as an Estimate of Age in Human Immature Skeletal Remains

This study expands on existing juvenile age prediction models from tooth length by increasing sample size and using classical calibration. A sample of 178 individuals from two European known sex and age skeletal samples was used to calculate prediction formulae for each tooth for each sex separately and combined. Prediction errors, residuals, and percentage of individuals whose real age fell within the 95% prediction interval were calculated. An ANCOVA was used to test sex and sample differences. Tooth length for age does not differ between the samples except for the canine and second premolar, and no statistically significant sex differences were detected. The least prediction error was found in the incisors and the first molar, and the highest prediction error was found in the third molar. Age prediction formulae provided here can be easily used in a variety of contexts where tooth length is measured from any isolated tooth.     

Hydrocarbon and Fatty Acid Composition from Blowfly Eggs Represents a Potential Complementary Taxonomic Tool of Forensic Importance,

One of the most important contributions of forensic entomology is to assist criminal expertise to determine the postmortem interval, which depends on the duration of the immature stages of insects of forensic interest. On the other hand, the time of development of the different stages varies according to the species; therefore, its identification is essential. Currently, few studies have investigated the use of cuticular hydrocarbons, and none regarding fatty acids, as complementary taxonomic tools to expedite species identification. Therefore, we evaluated whether cuticular hydrocarbons together with fatty acids of eggs of flies of the family Calliphoridae, main group of forensic interest, can be used to distinguish species. The analyses were performed by chromatographic techniques. The results show that there are significant differences between the composition of cuticular hydrocarbons and fatty acids between species and, therefore, they can be used to provide a complementary taxonomic tool to expedite the forensic expertise.     

Genotyping of DNA samples under adverse conditions of Low Copy Number—LCN (formolisados tissue samples and embedded in paraffin)

This paper aims to describe and evaluate a protocol for extraction of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) in formalinized tissues and embedded in paraffin for forensics genetic analysis. In outline the method is the removal of paraffin with an organic solvent in 0.3–0.5 mg of the sample of the tissue under study, followed by removal of formaldehyde, rehydration and soon after the extraction of genomic DNA. The extraction is achieved through the stages of cellular lysis, enzymatic digestion of proteins and DNA precipitation in ethanol medium. With the research we can conclude that even when the DNA is present in small quantities in conditions of extreme difficulties in its extraction, as formalinized tissues and embedded in paraffin, the technique of optimizing the extraction of DNA used both to organic extraction as Chelex, for use in the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and possible the investigation of different samples of human tissue, biological samples, or was obtained under the conditions tested, a DNA with good quality and concentration. The samples were amplified for the mini-STRs loci using the product marketed in multilocus, using a methodology recommended by the supplier and validated for analysis of forensic DNA. Commercial kit was used MiniFiler from Applied Biosystems. The DNA fragments amplified by PCR showed that the extracted DNA had good amplification.     

3D forensic facial approximation: Implementation protocol in a forensic activity

The primary objective of this paper is to report on the successful implementation of forensic facial approximation in a real case in the forensic context. A three‐dimensional (3D) facial approximation protocol of the skull was performed with free software, applying techniques in a virtual environment that have already been consolidated in the literature. The skull was scanned with the photogrammetry technique, the digital replica was imported in the Blender software (Blender Foundation, Amsterdam) and individualized model sketches of the face were traced with the MakeHuman software (MakeHuman Org) according to the anthropological profile of the victim. The face created was imported in Blender, where it was adapted, modeled, and sculpted on the 3D skull and its soft tissue markers, using an American open‐source application of the technique in the digital environment. The face created in a virtual environment was recognized and legal identification procedures were started, resulting in the more agile delivery of the disappeared body to its next of kin. It is therefore concluded that facial approximation may not be a primary method of human identification, but it can be satisfactorily applied in the forensic field as an individual recognition resource. It has great value in narrowing the search, reducing the number of alleged victims, and leading to identification tests, therefore significantly reducing the number of genetic DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) tests—which are considered costly for the State or Federation—and consequently reducing the waiting time before delivery of the body to its family.     

Do Risky Microfinance Borrowers Really Invest in Risky Projects? Experimental Evidence from Bolivia

Abstract

This paper reports the results of an experiment testing a fundamental assumption in Stiglitz and Weiss’ (1981) model of credit rationing: that defaulting borrowers are associated with investment in risky projects. Through an artefactual field experiment with 200 Bolivian microfinance borrowers, we observe that subjects from real-world delinquent borrowing groups do not prefer risky projects to safer ones significantly more than subjects from repaying groups. Instead, our results support more recent behavioural theories of credit market failure. Implications are that defaulting microfinance borrowers may be those who take too little investment risk rather than those who take too much.