Reform of Licensing for Marine Works: Improvement and Clarification Under the Marine and Coastal Access Bill 2008

Important legislative change is underway in the marine environment. In relation to the licensing of activities which are carried out in this zone the need for change is significant for many interested sectors such as: energy generation; the extractive industries; port and harbour developments; fisheries; and bodies involved with the conservation of both natural and archaeological/cultural resources. This article considers the main aspects of the existing legislative situation in relation to marine licensing and then goes on to describe and evaluate the proposed new system to be substituted through the Marine and Coastal Access Bill (the Bill). In order to provide some basis for evaluation, the protection of underwater cultural heritage (UCH) provides a backdrop against which to assess the developments. The means by which interventions in the marine environment are currently regulated are complex, in some situations overlapping, and in others questionable as to the overall coherence of their regulatory effects. Parties which might be considered to be ‘interested’ are often excluded from formal deliberations, guidance is patchy, although proliferating, and voluntary agreements (BMAPA 2003; COWRIE 2007) on best practice within sectors have been developed in the absence of official provision—while these are undoubtedly useful, they lack the rigour of systematic legislative underpinning, which it is hoped that the Bill will address.     

Women leadership in Oxford House: examining their strengths and challenges

This study examined the perspectives and definition of leadership by women and mothers with children (n = 40) affiliated with Oxford Houses, a communal mutual-help recovery setting. Participants were asked questions relating to their experiences living in an Oxford House including the strengths and challenges encountered and how leadership impacted the stability in their house. Results illustrated the value of female leadership and highlighted the characteristics deemed important for women leaders in Oxford House, as well as some differences between these women's perception of leadership and the standard definition of leadership. The implications of the findings and how they may be useful to women's and mothers' with children houses are discussed.     

A comparison study of hair examination methodologies

A study was conducted to investigate the accuracy between two methods of hair analysis: PCR-STR DNA analysis and microscopic comparison analysis. Standard sets of pubic hairs were collected from volunteers, and unknown sets were generated from these samples. Three out of five (60%) of the hairs analyzed produced full DNA profiles that were correctly matched to the standard sets. DNA analysis was inconclusive (partial or no DNA profile) for two out of five (40%) of the samples. In contrast, the microscopic comparison analysis correctly matched four out of five (80%) of the samples to the standard sets but mis-identified one out of five (20%) of the samples. These results reinforce the practice of preliminary microscopic hair examination in narrowing down a set of hairs for DNA analysis. Microscopic comparison analysis is sufficiently reliable to remain a rapid and inexpensive method for forensic hair analysis.     

Interim Legality: A Mistaken Assumption?--An Analysis of Depleted Uranium Munitions under Contemporary International Humanitarian Law

Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions are the latest, and perhapsmost effective, in a long line of armour-piercing projectilesused by military powers the world over. DU is a very dense material,allowing it to pack a lot of kinetic energy into its "punch",which makes it remarkably good at puncturing (enemy) armour.However, DU is also radioactive waste. Although DU does notactually employ radiation for its primary purpose—andhas negligible radioactive output compared to the more (in)famous fissile uranium isotopes—it has been alleged, withsome scientific support, that this radiation plays an insidioussecondary role, causing superfluous injury and unnecessary sufferingamong combatants; while also indiscriminately "attacking" (i.e.seriously adversely affecting) local civilians living in ornear combat zones. The purpose of the present paper is to analyse these allegationsand to consider their effects—whether true, false, orinconclusive—within the framework of contemporary internationallaw. To this end, the allegations of proponents will be summarisedand the supporting and negating scientific data considered.Then the current rules of international humanitarian law (IHL)will be examined and applied within a systemic context intendedto highlight the implicit assumptions and theoretical misunderstandingswhich generally plague their application. The scientific data pertaining to DU illustrates the complexityof the instant problem, and perhaps more importantly, helpsto demonstrate the degree to which even a superficially obviousclaim—i.e. dumping radioactive material is bad—canin fact form the basis of protracted, and ultimately inconclusiveargument, especially if the contentions of each side shouldprove in some way incommensurate. This is a problem which can be exaggerated in internationallaw by the absence of a court of compulsory jurisdiction, andfurther exacerbated in IHL by the use of relatively imprecisevariables to construct the matrices within which decisions areto be made. These problems, however, also serve, positively,to emphasise the importance of understanding the legal realityof the interim period before definitive conclusions to suchdisputes are constructed or discovered. Elucidation of the legalregime in force in this interim period thus forms an importantfocus of the present inquiry.     

Russian Authoritarian Pluralism: a Local and Global Trend?

Russia is a country that has witnessed increasingly authoritarian governance over the last decade. Civil liberties have been curtailed; local and regional political power has been usurped by the Kremlin. Russia remains a democracy insomuch as elections are conducted, but increasingly those elections are so heavily influenced by state control over the media and fiscal elements of social power that substantive Western notions of democracy have greatly atrophied. However, the decline in substantive democracy has received solid support from the Russian electorate. As such, under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, Russia has become an ‘authoritarian pluralist’ state that now expresses long-standing cultural affinity for a strong authoritarian rule under an increasingly thin veneer of democratic principles. Furthermore, variations of this new Russian model seem to be spreading globally.

Democracy is the dictatorship of the law. The stronger the state is, the freer the individual.

Vladimir Putin     

The successful DNA typing of samples following a thermal cycler power loss

An approach for generating DNA profiles when critical samples have been consumed and a power outage occurs during the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification reaction is described. This study demonstrates that a complete and accurate DNA short tandem repeat profile can be obtained: (1) when single source DNA samples are amplified for 26, 27, or 28 cycles using the Profiler Plus and COfiler Amplification Kits after an interruption in amplification, (2) from mock samples when PCR amplification has been interrupted early (after five cycles) or late (after 18 cycles) and the sample is subjected to an additional round of amplification, even after incubation of the sample at room temperature overnight, and (3) from nonprobative casework samples interrupted after approximately 18 cycles of amplification, an overnight incubation at room temperature and subjected to one or two additional rounds of PCR amplification for approximately 26 total cycles. Samples interrupted before five completed cycles and subjected to additional PCR cycles yielded variable results.     

Mitochondrial DNA sequence alterations observed between blood and buccal cells within the same individuals having betel quid (BQ)-chewing habit

There are hundreds of millions of betel quid (BQ) lovers widely spreading around the world. Compositions in BQ may generate reactive oxygen species, which would induce DNA damage. However, oral epithelial cells as well as blood have often been used as reference samples in comparison with the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence of hairs. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the extent of mtDNA sequence variation in regular BQ-chewers' oral epithelial cells, and thus to evaluate the forensic availability of the buccal cells from BQ-chewers using the mtDNA markers. The hypervariable segments I and II in the D-loop control region of mtDNA between paired samples of blood and buccal scrape cells from 75 non-BQ-chewers (to be a control group), 60 BQ-chewers, and 67 oral cancerous patients were DNA sequenced and compared. Among the three groups, the alteration rates of 1.3% (1 out of 75), 10% (6 out of 60), and 61% (41 out of 67) were identified from the control, BQ-chewers, and the cancerous group, respectively. In the cancerous group, as expected, high rate of DNA alteration between blood and buccal samples was found. In the BQ-chewers, one and five individuals had the length and point alterations, respectively. Interestingly, most of point alteration sites, e.g., mtDNA positions 153, 16189, 16093 identified from BQ-chewers, were also observed in previous literatures. As for the control subjects, one case with point alteration, and none with length alteration, was identified. For all the three groups, not only the oral cells but also the normal blood samples exhibited high frequency (>55%) of length heteroplasmy at poly-(C)n track. Statistical analyses revealed that significance was observed between the severity of mtDNA alteration in BQ-chewers' oral epithelial cells and the history of BQ-chewing (p = 0.02), with a tendency of positive association. Based on the guidelines by Carracedo et al., we suggest that the interpretation of mtDNA variations between criminal evidences and the oral epithelial cells (as a reference or known sample) from BQ-chewers should be performed with particular caution using the PCR-based mtDNA sequencing. Our findings would be valuable in mtDNA analysis of hair evidence, especially for those countries where the habit of BQ-chewing is popular.