Telling the Difference: Nineteenth-Century Legal Narratives of Racial Taxonomy

Telling the Difference focuses on two legal opinions from the nineteenth century that carefully distinguish between those who should be racially marked as nonwhite and those who should not. In the first instance, a Michigan judge decides the appropriate blood fraction of African-American heritage that would prohibit a free man from voting. In the second, a New Mexico judge rules that the Native Americans of Cochiti Pueblo are not legally Indians, and therefore not entitled to federal protection of their land. The oracle uses these examples to advance two central claims: that we must pay close attention to the narrative logic of racial identification in order to understand the powerful contradictions still at the heart of our conversations about race, and that in doing so we should consider that race has always been multiply constructed in the United States.     

Purple Pasts: Color Codification in the Ancient World

While developments in intellectual property have opened the door for trademarking color alone or color per se, it is important to observe that color codification is not a new phenomenon. This article outlines the quest to metaphorically trademark purple in antiquity and to provide it with clear "secondary meaning." It highlights how language, literature, and sumptuary law was deployed to infuse purple with the appropriate symbolism, and it links contemporary debates to some of the historic moves to sequester color.     

A case of fatal poisoning with the aconite plant: quantitative analysis in biological fluid.

In recent years recorded cases of plant poisoning have become rare, this may in part be due to the possibility of plant ingestion not being indicated at the beginning of an investigation. Aconitum napellus (aconite, Wolfsbane, Monkshood) is one of the most poisonous plants in the UK. It contains various potent alkaloids such as aconitine, isoaconitine, lycaconitine and napelline. Ingestion of Aconitum plant extracts can result in severe, potentially fatal toxic effects. This paper describes the analytical findings in a recent death in the UK. resulting from deliberate ingestion of Aconitum napellus extract. The concentrations of aconitine measured by HPLC-DAD in the post mortem femoral blood and urine were 10.8 micrograms/L and 264 micrograms/L, respectively. The aconitine concentration in the ante mortem urine was 334 micrograms/L and was estimated to be 6 micrograms/L in the ante mortem serum. Hence, accidental, suicidal or homicidal poisoning due to the ingestion of plant material remains a possibility and should be borne in mind when investigating sudden or unexplained death.     

Preliminary evaluation of the use of pharmacological treatment with convicted sexual offenders experiencing high levels of sexual preoccupation,hypersexuality and/or sexual compulsivity

The current study presents the preliminary evaluation of the impact of pharmacological treatment (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors and anti-androgens) on hypersexuality, sexual preoccupation and sexual compulsivity. The participant pool comprised 64 convicted UK sexual offenders who had been voluntarily referred for pharmacological treatment to reduce their hypersexual arousal, 51 of whom agreed to take the medication (with a further five individuals on hold or under assessment at the time of data extraction). The preliminary findings were very encouraging; analysis on measures assessing sexual preoccupation, hypersexuality and sexual compulsivity indicated a significant reduction between pre- and post-medication, across both types of medication. Limitations of the current research are discussed.     

The Reversal of Fortune Thesis Reconsidered

Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson have claimed that the world income distribution underwent a ‘Reversal of Fortune’ from 1500 to the present, whereby formerly rich countries in what is now the developing world became poor while poor ones grew rich. We question their analysis with regard to both of their proxies for pre-modern income, namely urbanisation and population density. More specifically, an alternative measure of urbanisation with more observations generates a positive (but not significant) correlation between pre-modern and contemporary income, while a better measure of population density on arable land no longer produces a robust relationship.     

Raising wages in the controlled sector: A general equilibrium analysis

The likelihood of the possibility pointed out by Stewart and Weeks, that a rise in wages in the ‘controlled’ sector of an underdeveloped country might raise total employment, is reexamined using an alternative model which facilitates consideration of the impact of such a wage rise on output and potential welfare as well as on employment. It is argued that Stewart and Weeks may have been overly sanguine in their appraisal of the impact of a controlled sector wage rise: the impact of this on real income and employment looks more likely to be adverse than not.