Her Majesty's Protected Subjects: The Mishaqa Family in Ottoman Damascus

The protégé system that the Ottoman Empire encountered as the result of diplomatic relations with European powers later became a clear threat to the very existence of the empire. Among these powers, Britain, until the nineteenth century, executed its consular affairs via the Levant Company in the Middle East, but later employed local people, mostly non-Muslim Ottomans, as dragomans, consular agents and vice-consuls to execute its services in the region. The dragomans not only translated treaties and official documents, but also commented on the messages to and from the authorities and this gave them much more important roles. In this regard, members of the Mishaqa family served the British and later American interests under different posts ranging from dragoman, to consular agent and vice-consul. As they gained confidence, they were accorded British consular protection which provided them considerable privileges, and passed their duties to their sons. Unlike similar Levantine families who assumed dragomanship in the imperial centre as a household tradition, members of the Mishaqa family were deeply embedded in the local society and therefore could give insights on social and political changes in the Ottoman province of Damascus. After attaining British protection in 1840, members of the family served in British and American consulates until the beginning of the First World War. However, the protégé status of the family members paved the way for continued debates over their nationality and citizenship. This article attempts to present the basic codes of consular protection and Ottoman responses within the context of the story of Mishaqa family.     

Comparative lobbying research: advances,shortcomings and recommendations

This review article suggests that there is a new school of comparative lobbying emerging. However, this development is taking place only gradually. Unlike the earlier studies, which studied corporatism/pluralism, outside lobbying and lobbying regulations, the new comparativists are mainly focusing on inside lobbying strategies and success as a function of country‐level factors. Yet, the literature still suffers from underdeveloped theories. I stress that our knowledge can be improved with better theorizing. Better theories, in turn, can be formulated by improving the use of quantitative data gathering, qualitative research, formal models and better communication between researchers working with different methodologies in different disciplines. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fear of Crime or Fear of Life? Public Insecurities in Chile

Chile is regarded as one of the safest countries in Latin America. Crime rates are extremely low when compared to the rest of the region, and the police are widely considered to be efficient and trustworthy. Despite these objective trends, fear of crime is widespread throughout Chile. Why are Chileans so fearful when their country is so safe? We argue that fear of crime in Chile does not reflect fear of criminal acts per se, but is rather a manifestation of a wide range of daily insecurities. That is, fear of crime is rooted in other economic, social, and political insecurities featuring prominently in Chilean life today. To substantiate this argument, we test the ability of these “other” insecurities to predict fear of crime using a recent survey conducted by the International Labor Organization in 2001. We test our hypothesis alongside counterhypotheses prominent in the literature: social identity characteristics, victimization, trust in the media, urbanization, and community participation. We find that political, social, and economic insecurities best predict fear of crime; however, victimization, urbanization, and trust in the media are also significant. Our results suggest that scholars should study fear of crime not only as it relates to victimization and criminalization, but also in a context of insecurities generated by increasing rates of unemployment and poverty.     

Optimization of recovery of human DNA from envelope flaps using DNA IQ™ System for STR genotyping

An optimized protocol based on the DNA IQ™ System has been tested for the extraction of DNA from envelope flaps. DNA is extracted directly without the need for opening and swabbing the flaps. The method is repeatable with <10% R.S.D. (relative standard deviation). The results of a systematic study show that it is an equilibrium extraction, and a small sample volume as well as high lysis buffer content in sample contribute to high extraction efficiency. The extracted DNA requires no further purification steps following its extraction with the DNA IQ™ System. Complete but skewed 15-locus short tandem repeat (STR) profiles, which is typical of degraded of DNA, have been generated from the DNA extracted from 6 to 9 years old casework envelope samples.     

Policy integration: placing the spatial dimension in the health agenda. Evidence from Portugal

The significance of spatial policies for health and well-being is well recorded. While there has been an increasing body of literature illustrating the importance of including a territorial perspective in health decision-making processes, evidence shows that policy integration between spatial and health policies is still scarce. This paper aims to develop a deeper understanding of how this integration can be considered in conceptual terms and how it is actually embraced in practice by health decision-makers. Drawing upon the concept of territorial cohesion, the paper presents and discusses the results of a research held in Portugal aiming to understand this topic.     

The Pandora’s box: democratization and rule of law in Turkey

A prominent question in the literature on democracy is concerned with the role of external factors in stimulating the process of democratization and uploading rule of law. This paper tackles the following questions: How does the political conditionality of an international organization—the EU in this case—stimulate democracy in third countries? Equally important, does conditionality always have a positive impact and could it be possible to witness the EU undermining democracy in an unexpected manner? This paper addresses these questions through an analysis of the Turkish democracy in the light of its accession to the EU and through an application of the EU membership conditionality by looking at rule of law in Turkey. The general contention in the political conditionality literature is that the EU enables an acceding country to adopt its democratic principles, and facilitates transition to democracy, while strengthening rule of law. However, the Turkish transformation seems to challenge this contention. This paper proposes that the EU’s political conditionality in bringing about political transformation in Turkey as a membership precondition unexpectedly illuminated the underlying anti-democratic tendencies and tensions in Turkish politics. The democratization process in Turkey since 1999, partly stimulated by the EU, has opened up a Pandora’s box releasing the conflict between the secularists and religious conservatives in Turkey that has long been suppressed. This paper analyzes these cleavages through the prism of EU political conditionality with regards to rule of law.     

Deep learning for sex determination: Analyzing over 200,000 panoramic radiographs

The objective of this study is to assess the performance of an innovative AI-powered tool for sex determination using panoramic radiographs (PR) and to explore factors affecting the performance of the convolutional neural network (CNN). The study involved 207,946 panoramic dental X-rays and their corresponding reports from 15 clinical centers in São Paulo, Brazil. The PRs were acquired with four different devices, and 58% of the patients were female. Data preprocessing included anonymizing the exams, extracting pertinent information from the reports, such as sex, age, type of dentition, and number of missing teeth, and organizing the data into a PostgreSQL database. Two neural network architectures, a standard CNN and a ResNet, were utilized for sex classification, with both undergoing hyperparameter tuning and cross-validation to ensure optimal performance. The CNN model achieved 95.02% accuracy in sex estimation, with image resolution being a significant influencing factor. The ResNet model attained over 86% accuracy in subjects older than 6 years and over 96% in those over 16 years. The algorithm performed better on female images, and the area under the curve (AUC) exceeded 96% for most age groups, except the youngest. Accuracy values were also assessed for different dentition types (deciduous, mixed, and permanent) and missing teeth. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of an AI-driven tool for sex determination using PR and emphasizes the role of image resolution, age, and sex in determining the algorithm's performance.     

An island unmixed: European military intervention and the displacement of Crete's Muslims, 1896–1908

This article examines the displacement of the majority of Crete's Muslim population after an upheaval led to the establishment of an autonomous regime on the island in 1898, following the military intervention by a coalition of European powers (Britain, France, Italy and Russia). By drawing a connection between Cretan topography and the type of intervention, I argue that the coalition's policies played a central role in Muslim emigration from the greatest Ottoman island. The article highlights the sectarian lens through which the European decision-makers regarded relations between the island's Christian and Muslim populations. In so doing, it makes a contribution to the history of European intervention in the Ottoman Empire. The final section offers a glimpse into the diminished Muslim minority under the autonomous regime, which was established after Abdülhamid II withdrew his soldiers from Crete, signifying de facto termination of Ottoman sovereignty on the island.