Harriet Clisby’s ‘Sketches of Australia’: travel writing and colonial refigurations in Boston’s Woman’s Journal

During the late nineteenth century, the British-born Australian physician Harriet Clisby became involved in the vibrant social reform circles of Boston, Massachusetts. Her ‘Sketches of Australia’, a journalistic series of travel writings, were published in the reform-oriented Woman’s Journal in 1873. This series provides insight into the discursive construction of Australian colonial society in a transnational context. Thematically, the ‘Sketches’ explored questions of geography, culture, class, labor, ethnicity, race, and gender, often embracing popular scientific discourses about race and universalist visions of women’s rights. While such perspectives were common among Anglophone social reformers of the era, Clisby also portrayed Australia as a multiracial nation of immigrants rather than as a collection of white settler colonies. By making colonial Australia accessible for a specifically American readership, the ‘Sketches’ also established a sense of a budding international relationship between Australia and the United States prior to the twentieth century.     

Evaluating the forensic informativeness of mtDNA haplogroup H sub-typing on a Eurasian scale

The impact of phylogeographic information on mtDNA forensics has been limited to the quality control of published sequences and databases. In this work we use the information already available on Eurasian mtDNA phylogeography to guide the choice of coding-region SNPs for haplogroup H. This sub-typing is particularly important in forensics since, even when sequencing both HVRI and HVRII, the discriminating power is low in some Eurasian populations. We show that a small set (eight) of coding-region SNPs resolves a substantial proportion of the identical haplotypes, as defined by control-region variation alone. Moreover, this SNP set, while substantially increasing the discriminating efficiency in most Eurasian populations by roughly equal amounts, discloses population-specific profiles.     

Prevalence of co-occurring disorders among juveniles committed to detention centers

The Practical Adolescent Diagnostic Interview (PADDI), a structured diagnostic interview designed to gather basic information about substance use disorders, mental health conditions, and related experiences, was used in routine evaluation of all adolescents committed to two juvenile detention centers. Anonymous data from 252 consecutively admitted adolescents were analyzed to assess the prevalence and severity of problem areas and to provide a preliminary exploration of interrelationships among those problems. Results demonstrated that a majority of adolescents manifested multiple problems. Whereas prevalence rates were high across gender, females displayed significantly greater mental health problems and maltreatment histories.     

Y chromosome STR polymorphisms in a Serbian population sample

Eight Y chromosome short tandem repeat (STR) polymorphisms (DYS19, DYS385, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393) were analyzed in the sample of 114 unrelated males living in Serbia. A general STR allelic frequency pattern in Serbians corresponds to other European populations with the exception of loci DYS19, DYS389II and DYS385. Out of ninety identified haplotypes, 74 (64.91%) appeared in single copies. The most frequent haplotypes (DYS19-DYS385-DYS389I-DYS389II-DYS390-DYS391-DYS392-DYS393) 16-14/15-13-31-24-11-11-13 and 15-15/19-12-28-23-10-12-12 were found in four copies (3.51%). Total haplotype diversity was 0.9947+/-0.0021.     

Resilient Peace: Exploring the Theory and Practice of Resilience in Peacebuilding Interventions

ABSTRACT

This introduction provides a conceptual and theoretical background to the more detailed analyses contained in the articles of the Special Section. The introduction firstly presents a critical overview of the rise of resilience and its increasing role in shaping the terms of international interventions. It identifies a set of interrelated conceptual themes relevant to theorising the relationship between resilience and peacebuilding and evaluates how appropriate a resilience approach might be in promoting sustainable peace and what might be its main dangers and pitfalls.     

Prison sentences: last resort or the default sanction?

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the sentencing purposes for penal penalties, judges’ perceptions of sentencing purposes and prison sentences, and the effects of penal sanctions. We examine judges’ positions towards different penalties, with a focus on imprisonment, since their views on the different penalties are related to their sentencing decision-making. Understanding these views is then critical for several practical and political purposes, including bridging the gap between academic discourse and legal practice. We accessed judges’ views on penal sanctions through a questionnaire and an interview. Our sample is compounded by the judges of the criminal courts from the three major cities in Portugal. Despite the most recent criminological empirical knowledge, judges valued imprisonment as the most adequate sentence, both for different crimes and for different judicial purposes. This result is not consistent with viewing imprisonment as a ‘last resort’ solution. Indeed, we did not find this ‘last resort’ position in our data, and it is not apparent in the judicial statistics on imprisonment rates. Our data highlight the importance of increasing judges’ training on criminological and sociological issues as well as the importance of changing the influence of their personal beliefs regarding penal sanctions into research-based positions.     

Do Changes in the Labour Market Take Families Out of Poverty? Determinants of Exiting Poverty in Brazilian Metropolitan Regions

Abstract

Using survival models, we test whether short-term changes in the labour market affect poverty duration. Data are from the Brazilian Monthly Employment Survey. Such a monthly dataset permits more accurate estimations of events than using annual data, but its panel follows households for a short period. Then methods that control for both right- and left-censoring should be used. The results are as follows: households with zero income are not those with the lowest chances of exiting; changes in aggregate unemployment do not affect poverty duration; and increasing wages in the informal sector has a negative effect on poverty duration.