Book review

Wildavsky, Aaron. Speaking Truth to Power: the art and craft of policy analysis, little, Brown, and Company, Boston and T oronto, 1979, 431 pp. $12.00.     

The Logic of Terrorist Target Choice: An Examination of Chechen Rebel Bombings from 1997–2003

The current article seeks to add to the quantitative approach to understanding terrorism by examining the logic underlying terrorist choice of targets and timing within the context of the Chechen–Russian conflict. Using data on Chechen rebel bombings in Chechnya and Russia from 1997–2003, the analysis revealed support for a logic underlying terrorist choice of targets. The results indicated that civilian targets were more likely to be targeted in Russia than in Chechnya, illustrating the importance of examining contextual effects within quantitative approaches to terrorism. The results also implicated an affect of weather and urbanization. Implications of the results and future directions for research are discussed.     

Portable high‐resolution automated 3D imaging for footwear and tire impression capture

The forensic science community raised the need for improved evidence recognition, collection, and visualization analytical instrumentation for field and laboratory use. While the 3D optical techniques for imaging static objects have been extensively studied, there is still a major gap between current knowledge and collecting high‐quality footwear and tire impression evidence. Among optical means for 3D imaging, digital fringe projection (DFP) techniques reconstruct 3D shape from phase information, achieving camera‐pixel spatial resolution. This paper presents a high‐resolution 3D imaging technology using DFP techniques dedicated to footwear and tire impression capture. We developed fully automated software algorithms and a graphical user interface (GUI) that allow anyone without training to operate for high‐quality 3D data capture. We performed accuracy evaluations and comparisons comparing with the commercial high‐end 3D scanner and carried out qualitative tests for various impressions comparing with the current practices. Overall, our technology achieves similar levels of accuracy and resolution with a high‐end commercially available 3D scanner, while having the merits of being (1) more affordable; (2) much easier to operate; and (3) more robust. Compared with the current practice of casting, our technology demonstrates its superiority because it (1) is non‐destructive; (2) collects more evidence detail than casts, especially when an impression is fragile; (3) requires less time and money to collect each piece of evidence; and (4) results in a digital file that can easily be shared with other examiners.