Innovation or Inertia: The U.S. Military and the Learning of Counterinsurgency

Following its encounter with insurgent violence in Iraq, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has sought to improve the U.S. military's ability to conduct counterinsurgency. This effort suggests a potential turning-point in the history of the U.S. military, which has traditionally devoted its attention and resources to “high-intensity” or “conventional” combat. Given this institutional culture, what are now the prospects of the U.S. military ‘learning counterinsurgency’? In many ways, the ongoing reorientation is promising and targeted, informed directly by the U.S. campaign in Iraq. At the same time, Pentagon priorities still reveal a remarkable resistance to change, and this in spite of the radically altered strategic environment of the War on Terror. Given this intransigence - and the eventual fall-out from the troubled Iraq campaign - the ongoing learning of counterinsurgency might very well fail to produce the type of deep-rooted change needed to truly transform the U.S. military.     

A novel histological technique for distinguishing between epithelial cells in forensic casework

There are a number of forensic cases in which the identification of the epithelial cell type from which DNA originated would provide important probative evidence. This study aimed to develop a technique using histological staining of fixed cells to distinguish between skin, buccal and vaginal epithelium. First, 11 different stains were screened on formalin-fixed, wax-embedded cells from five women. Samples were analysed qualitatively by examining staining patterns (colour) and morphology (absence or presence of nuclei). Three of the staining methods – Dane's, Csaba's and Ayoub-Shklar – were successful in distinguishing skin epithelial cells from buccal and vaginal. Second, cells were smeared directly onto slides, fixed with one of five fixatives and stained with one of the three stains mentioned above. Methanol fixation, coupled with the Dane's staining method, specific to keratin, was the only technique that distinguished between all three cell types. Skin cells stained magenta, red and orange and lacked nuclei; buccal cells stained predominantly orange–pink with red nuclei; while vaginal cells stained bright orange with orange nuclei and a blue extracellular hue. This staining pattern in vaginal cells was consistent in samples collected from 50 women aged between 18 and 67. Identification of cell type from unlabelled micrographs by 10 trained observers showed a mean success rate of 95%. The results of this study demonstrate that histological staining may provide forensic scientists with a technique for distinguishing between skin, buccal and vaginal epithelial cells and thus would enable more conclusive analyses when investigating sexual assault cases.     

Judging Bias: Juror Confidence and Judicial Rulings on Challenges for Cause

The judge in a jury trial is charged with excusing prospective jurors who will not be impartial. To assess impartiality, prospective jurors are typically asked whether they can be fair. Using an experimental paradigm, we found that small changes in jurors' self‐reported confidence in their ability to be fair affected judges' decisions about bias but did not affect the judgments of either attorneys or jurors. We suggest why a judge's role and unique relationship with jurors is likely to foster a decision strategy based on reported juror confidence, and we discuss the implications of our analysis for current legal debates over jury selection practices. Unexpected patterns in our results also highlight the ways in which perceptions of impartiality are affected, in part, by the social characteristics of the observer.     

History, War, and the Future

This article aims to delineate several issues raised by an historically based approach to understanding the present and the future. Beginning with a discussion of the profound impact that drastic changes have had on the international environment, the article then outlines what history suggests about human nature's influence on the course of future events; the future of war; the nature of governance and the United States. This essay does not attempt to provide answers, but rather suggests how policy makers, strategists, and military leaders might think through the complex political and cultural questions they need to be asking in the making of strategy. This is the essential first step for Americans. If they fail to ask the right questions, most answers will prove irrelevant to the challenges of the future.     

Two examples of null alleles at the D19S433 locus due to the same 4 bp deletion in the presumptive primer binding site of the AmpFlSTR Identifiler kit

Two cases of allelic loss at the D19S433 locus after multiplex PCR with the AmpFlSTR Identifiler kit (Applied Biosystems) are described. In both cases the failure of PCR resulted in genetic inconsistencies due to opposite homozygosity. After singleplex PCR with published primers additional alleles were observed and Mendelian inheritance was restored. These PCR products were sequenced and in both cases the same 4 bp deletion near the 3′ end of the repeat region was detected in two alleles of different length. The frequency of these null alleles (two events in 1026 allelic transfers) amounts to 0.0019 (95% confidence limits: 0.0002-0.0070).     

Educational challenges after year 2007 post election violence in Kenya

This paper sorts to examine the effects of post election violence on education in Kenya, after the presidential election results were disputed over by the two main presidential candidates. The rationale of the paper is due to the fact that among many other aspects of society that were affected in such a case is education. All levels of education were affected, and particularly primary and secondary education could not proceed on schedule as had earlier been planned. Other issues raised in this paper include the trauma experienced by students, loss of parents and guardians among others. The objectives of this paper therefore include： （1） To determine the effects of political violence on the education system in Kenya; （2） To establish the challenges facing students in Kenya after the post election violence; （3） To analyze individual attitudes of students towards the role of education in promoting national unity; （4） To determine how to re-imagine the role of education in promoting peace and peaceful coexistence in Kenya.     

Interrogation of short tandem repeats using fluorescent probes and melting curve analysis: A step towards rapid DNA identity screening

Current forensic DNA profiling methods rely on the analysis of samples at specialised laboratories with an average turnaround time of several days. The ability to rapidly determine a partial profile of short tandem repeats at the point-of-arrest would be of great benefit to police forces around the world, for example enabling a suspect to be rapidly included or excluded from an investigation. We have developed a homogeneous PCR method for the interrogation of STR loci utilising fluorescent oligonucleotide probes and melting curve analysis. Alleles of the D18S51, TH01 and D8S1179 loci were differentiated and identified on the basis of target length and probe melting temperature. Assay performance was evaluated by comparing melting peak data with the AmpFlSTR^® SGM Plus^® system. The method is compatible with direct analysis of unpurified buccal swab samples, enabling a partial STR profile to be generated within 1 h.