Ancillary Relief: Complicating the Search for Principle

Calls have been made for clarification of ancillary relief law in England and Wales. The judicially created objective of fairness is said by many to be indeterminate and to lack a principled foundation. This paper examines judicial discourse in four recent decisions made by the highest courts of appeal and suggests that a principle of equality may be taking shape in the law. It goes on to suggest that while equality is important in ancillary relief, there are both risks and advantages associated with it, given that there is no clear consensus on its meaning either in family life or family law.     

Musculoskeletal stress marker (MSM) differences in the modern American upper limb and pectoral girdle in relation to activity level and body mass index (BMI)

Obesity is a widespread condition affecting modern Americans. The prevalence of obesity has led to questions of how it can affect the skeleton, and if so can it be identified in unknown skeletal material. This study attempts to decipher the effects of activity level and body mass in modern Americans by employing musculoskeletal stress markers (MSM) to estimate osseous responses to workload and body weight. A total sample of 108 skeletons of known activity level and body mass index (BMI) was observed for MSM in the upper extremity (excluding hands). The entheses selected included arm muscles used during the sit-to-stand transition, which is common in most persons, regardless of activity level and BMI. Using the three categories: normal, active, and obese, logistic regression was calculated on MSM to ascertain which markers were the best indicators of these three categories. Numerous muscles of the upper limb were significant predictors of activity level and body mass, although they did not perform much better than chance. MSM may be used as predictors of activity level and/or BMI in forensic contexts; however, they should be used in conjunction with other indications of workload and/or BMI.     

Identity crisis: Global challenges of identity protection in a networked world

Modern identity is valuable, multi-functional and complex. Today we typically manage multiple versions of self, made visible in digital trails distributed widely across offline and online spaces. Yet, technology-mediated identity leads us into crisis. Enduring accessibility to greater and growing personal details online, alongside increases in both computing power and data linkage techniques, fuel fears of identity exploitation. Will it be stolen? Who controls it? Are others aggregating or analysing our identities to infer new data about us without our knowledge or consent? New challenges present themselves globally around these fears, as manifested by concerns over massive online data breaches and automated identification technologies, which also highlight the conundrum faced by governments about how to safeguard individuals' interests on the Web while striking a fair balance with wider public interests. This paper reflects upon some of these problems as part of the inter-disciplinary, transatlantic ‘SuperIdentity’ project investigating links between cyber and real-world identifiers. To meet the crisis, we explore the relationship between identity and digitisation from the perspective of policy and law. We conclude that traditional models of identity protection need supplementing with new ways of thinking, including pioneering ‘technical-legal’ initiatives that are sensitive to the different risks that threaten our digital identity integrity. Only by re-conceiving identity dynamically to appreciate the increasing capabilities for connectivity between different aspects of our identity across the cyber and the physical domains, will policy and law be able to keep up with and address the challenges that lie ahead in our progressively networked world.     

Liberalization and ethnic conflict in Latin America

Most contemporary analysts explain ethnic identity as a socially rooted phenomenon which can be catalyzed by changes in both economic and political conditions. Taking the 1982 debt crisis as a main triggering event, this article analyzes the relationship between economic adjustment and increasing levels of indigenous mobilization in Latin America. Through a comparison of the Bolivian, Peruvian, and Mexican cases,the analysis reveals wide variation in the types and levels of ethnic conflict in the region. Explanations for these differences center on the timing and content of economic adjustment policies, and on the institutional opportunities available for expressing and channeling economic and political demands. The article concludes that political and economic liberalization are likely to clash when shrinking the state also removes channels for popular participation; moreover, when those that bear most of the adjustment burden are also challengers to national identity, states ignore this challenge at their peril. Alison Brysk is assistant professor of politics at the University of California at Irvine. Her book,The Politics of Human Rights in Argentina, was published by Stanford University Press. Various aspects of her current research on Latin American indigenous rights movements have appeared inComparative Political Studies, Latin American Perspectives, andPolity. Carol Wise is assistant professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. She has published articles on Latin American political economy inInternational Organization, Latin American Research Review, and theJournal of Latin American Studies; she is the editor of a forthcoming collection entitledThe Post-NAFTA Political Economy: Mexico and the Western Hemisphere.     

Reality bites--A ten-year retrospective analysis of bitemark casework in Australia

Criticism of forensic science, particularly that of bitemark analysis, has become increasingly common in the last decade. Much of the criticism directed at forensic odontology cites cases where miscarriages of justice have occurred when erroneous, over-confident or even false bitemark evidence has been tendered by odontologists. Despite Australia's own experience with such cases in the past, it is postulated that this does not represent the true nature of bitemark analysis as practiced by odontologists today-at least in this country. A review of 119 cases from the last 10 years confirms that 'identification' of a suspect is rarely, if ever, offered, and that conclusions reached by odontologists with respect to bitemark analysis are generally conservative. However, the results of this study also indicate that in a small but significant proportion of cases, there is still some tendency to reach conclusions that could be considered over-confident when considering the overall quality of the physical evidence offered. It is suggested that odontologists should avoid making conclusive remarks regarding the origin of the mark, or the identification of a perpetrator, when such comments are realistically precluded, given the low evidentiary value of the mark itself.     

Scientist entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia

This paper examines scientist entrepreneurship at universities in Saudi Arabia. It is the first paper to examine scientist research in the context of the Middle East and, in particular, Saudi Arabia. In this paper we hypothesize that scientist entrepreneurship is positively influenced by experience, gender, social capital, human capital, and university and other institutional policies encouraging commercialization activities. To test our hypotheses, we use data from a unique survey of scientists from three universities in Saudi Arabia. The paper finds that there are key elements to scientist entrepreneurship that provide a sharp contrast to what has been established in the literature based on studies from the OECD countries. Finally, managerial implications are discussed and future research is recommended.     

The application of anodic stripping voltammetry to forensic science I. The construction of a low-cost polarograph

Intended for forensic gunshot residue analyses and other applications, a low-cost (about $250.00) polarograph was constructed. This instrument is essentially' an operational amplifier version of a three-electrode potentiostat containing a voltage ramp generator, a scan amplifier, an amplifier and a current-to-voltage converter, two voltage followers and an electrolysis cell. An anodic stripping procedure was developed for the simultaneous determination of a zinc, cadmium, lead, antimony and copper mixture, and used for testing the instrument. Effects of pre-electrolysis time, concentration changes, presence of other species and overlapping were also studied.