Skeleton find from Roman times suspected as an homicide victim

A human skeleton was found during construction work on the concrete foundations of a fence built 17 years before. The situation seemed to suggest that a corpse had been disposed of 17 years ago. Forensic and osteological examinations showed that death had been caused by semi-sharp and blunt craniocerebral trauma. However, there were morphological findings which indicated that the body had been buried in soil for at least 50 years. Several additional objects found nearby and the proximity to the Limes pointed to a Roman context. With the help of the radiocarbon method, the time of death could be dated to about 245-263 AD. A recent act of violence could hence be ruled out. According to the situation at the scene, it had to be assumed, however, that the skeleton must have been discovered already during the construction work done 17 years before and that the find had not been reported. Such behaviour is a phenomenon quite often encountered in practice.     

Persistence and desistance: Examining the impact of re-integrative shaming to ethics in Taiwan juvenile hackers

The Internet community has been addressing the unethical behavior of juvenile delinquents for years. Nevertheless, the concepts of hacker shame and ethics have received little empirical study from a theoretical perspective in the field of cyber criminology. Braithwaite's re-integrative Shaming Theory posits that it can restrain individuals from committing future offenses, and that those who participate in this shaming process are less likely to consider breaking the law in the first place. Among the abundance of criminological theories, the re-integrative Shaming Theory may be the most suitable theory to restrain hacker activities. This study focuses on the working relationship between nine juvenile delinquents and the shaming mechanism applied to them. However, applying this approach to reduce recidivism among computer hackers requires a great deal of time and effort. It is proposed that the state of shame or remorse is associated with the compounded affective processes of hacker ethics. The proposed solution creates a code of ethics for hackers, distinguishes right from wrong, and ensures a greater success for Braithwaite's re-integrative shaming methods. This paper discusses the problems and solutions related to the Shaming Theory, as well as their usefulness in the context of community-based restorative justice. It is argued that re-integrative shaming, without appropriate consideration for the offender's personal code of ethics, is insufficient when handling hacking offenses committed by juveniles. Our main concern is to find out how to help or encourage the offender's reintegration and re-entering into the community, and how s/he can avoid failure. It is hoped that our proposed strategy can prevent future offending behaviors by these juveniles. Implications drawn from the findings are discussed, and suggestions are offered to ensure the success of this theory when applied to juvenile hackers.     

The Application of the Polyvagal Theory to High Conflict Co‐Parenting Cases

Families, litigants, lawyers, advisors embroiled in cases of complex divorce with child contact issues, manage many stressors at once. Participants involved with these types of cases are often exhausted and burned‐out from the long‐term battles of prolonged litigation. The inability to problem‐solve or even communicate effectively reflects the chaos and traumatic stress of the experience and can be seen as a hallmark of this population. When people are consistently stressed, there is a breakdown of communication skills that can create an immunity to receiving help from any direction. Often all parties involved appear to be both hyper‐alert to potential threat, and hyper‐reactive to one another: no one feels safe. Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory is premised on the idea that neuroception plays a key role in the nervous system's ability to assess danger in the environment. Neuroception is a neurophysiological response that does not involve cognitive processing. When cognitive processing is not involved, the result may lead to misinterpretation of, and an inability to accurately assess situations: executive functioning including rational thinking and communication skills are lost to physiological response. Rather than evaluating families and individuals involved in the aforementioned complex divorce cases through the lens of pathology, Polyvagal Theory explains their behavior as an adaptive stress reaction. Utilizing Polyvagal Theory offers a promising path to treatment with these families and diminishing the poor communication and the heightened emotion, assisting practitioners in understanding the impact of neurobiological response in managing stress and trauma. Applying Polyvagal Theory to court involved populations can help both litigants and practitioners recognize the role of the autonomic nervous system, providing the opportunity to understand, to self‐regulate, and to improve communication and decision making.     

Hypothermia-related Deaths: A 10-year Retrospective Study of Two Major Metropolitan Cities in the United States*

Hypothermia-related deaths affect vulnerable populations and are preventable. They account for the vast majority of weather-related deaths in the United States. The postmortem diagnosis of hypothermia can be challenging, as there are no pathognomonic signs. The electronic databases of the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner and Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences were searched for all fatalities where the primary cause of death included hypothermia, between January 2009 and July 2019. There were 139 hypothermia deaths in New York City (NYC) with an average annualized rate of 1.7 per million. During this same time, there were 50 hypothermia deaths in Houston with an average annualized rate of 2.4 per million. Males were more likely to die of hypothermia compared to females in both cities. The rate ratio (RR) in NYC was 3.55 (95% CI 2.40, 5.25), while the RR in Houston was 2.83 (95% CI 1.50, 5.32). Age- and sex-specific standardized hypothermia mortality rates were 18.2 (95% CI 15.1, 21.2) per million in NYC and 30.1 (95% CI 21.7, 38.6) per million in Houston. The comparative hypothermia death ratio was 1.66 (95% CI 1.19, 2.30), indicating hypothermia mortality in Houston was 66% higher than in NYC. There was no correlation between zip code poverty rates and hypothermia-related deaths. The most consistent autopsy finding was Wischnewski spots (56.6%), and ethanol was the most common toxicological finding (36.5%). Local agencies can use this data to target these higher-risk populations and offer appropriate interventions to try to prevent these deaths.     

Incognizance and Perceptual Deviation: Individual and Institutional Sources of Variation in Citizens’ Perceptions of Party Placements on the Left–Right Scale

In this paper we use comparative study of electoral systems data to understand the variation in citizens’ perceptions of political party placements on the left–right scale. We estimate multilevel models to assess the extent to which individual characteristics, party characteristics, and institutional designs contribute to variability observed in citizens’ perceptions of party placements. Because lack of information on the part of the citizens may be revealed through failure to respond to the left–right scale questions or through random components to actual placements, we develop models that include assessments of both types of responses to reduce bias from considering only one source. We find that individual-, party-, and institutional-level variables are relevant to understanding variation in citizens’ perceptions of party placements. Finally, we demonstrate that an inability to cognize the left–right scale (incognizance) and a deviation in the perceptions of party positions (perceptual deviation) have important consequences for citizens’ thermometer evaluations of political parties.     

Self-respect and public reason

In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argues that self-respect is ‘perhaps the most important’ primary good, and that its status as such gives crucial support to controversial ideas like the lexical priority of liberty. Given the importance of these ideas for Rawls, it should be no surprise that they have attracted much critical attention. In response to these critics I give a defense of self-respect that grounds its importance in Rawls’s moral conception of the person. I show that this understanding of self-respect goes well beyond giving support to the lexical priority of liberty, also supporting Rawls’s still more controversial view of public reason. On my account, taking self-respect seriously requires the coercive enforcement of public reason. This is a novel argument for public reason, in that it grounds the idea in justice as fairness and mandates its coercive enforcement.     

Not All Bad News After All? Exploring the Relationship Between Citizens’ Use of Online Mass Media for Government Information and Trust in Government

Mass media coverage of government is often blamed for inciting anti-public sector sentiment. Yet there have been few empirical assessments of these claims. To address this gap in the literature, this study examines whether relationships between citizens’ expectations of public sector performance, satisfaction with public services, and levels of trust in government vary according to their use of online mass media for information about government. Using data collected in 2012 from a survey of 1,100 Seoul citizens, we find that greater use of online mass media to obtain information about government reinforces negative relationships between (1) expectations of public sector performance and satisfaction with public services, and (2) expectations of public sector performance and trust in government. Moreover, the size and strength of the negative indirect relationship between expectations of public sector performance and trust in government increase as respondents use online mass media more frequently for information about government.     

Network development for non-state health providers: African Christian health associations

ABSTRACT

Substantial effort has been put into forming and strengthening national networks of non-state, non-profit health providers in lower- to middle-income contexts. Christian health associations (national umbrella networks of faith-inspired health providers) were first established in the 1950s, and are currently present in an estimated 23 of the 54 countries in Africa. The establishment of CHAs was equally encouraged by faith-based health providers, governments, and external stakeholders. CHAs look different in each context, but perform similar roles: networking diverse institutions and facilities together into a loose system; and establishing a more cohesive sector to simplify and strengthen advocacy and engagement with the government.