Court improvement of foster care and adoption projects:Ncjfcj Survey Report

Officials from 48 states and the District of Columbia in 1994 accepted federal funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to help improve courts' handling of cases involving child abuse, neglect, foster care and adoption. Through a survey of participating states, members of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges have been analyzing common themes found in state Court Improvement of Foster Care and Adoption Projects. This article examines key survey results.     

And the clocks were striking thirteen: The termination of war

Military analysts have focused on the problems of war initiation and conduct while largely ignoring the problem of how to terminate war on acceptable terms. This paper attempts to define the necessary conditions for war termination and proposes a framework for assessing alternative strategies.Deterrence and limited war theories suggest three war termination strategies: (1) attrition of warfighting capabilities; (2) protracted stalemate; and (3) coercive threats of unacceptable damage. A review of recent armed conflicts indicates the limitations on effective pursuit of these strategies and reveals an alternative formulation of the conditions necessary for effective war termination strategies. Based on these notions, current U.S. force posture and force employment doctrines are evaluated in terms of their consistency with war termination requirements. Finally, an agenda of issues related to the development of war termination strategies is proposed.     

Promoting Accountability in Municipalities

Local government financial reporting reforms in Australia in the late 1980s and early 1990s were promoted on the basis of usefulness for decision making and for enhanced accountability purposes. Persistent criticisms of these reforms continue to be made, including those made by councillors and other ratepayers who often appear to find such information to be too narrow, too complex and often bewildering. A case is made for rethinking the present mentality, requirements and practices, especially with respect to the contrived recognition of ‘community assets’. Instead, an emphasis is placed on advancing broad‐scope accountability and meaningful financial reporting. To this end, the disclosure of a set of factual, reliable and interpretable indicators is proposed to enable a broader, more functional notion of accountability to be applied in Australian local government within prevailing social and organisational contexts. This contribution seeks to present a series of views, questions and proposals that are strictly concerned with ‘promoting accountability in municipalities’ (PAM).     

Biomechanics of knife stab attacks

In the past it has been assumed that the fingerprints of women tend to have "fine" epidermal ridge detail while men have "coarse" ridge detail. Past studies have examined this hypothesis but have not clearly demonstrated if observed differences are statistically significant. The goal of this study is to determine if women have significantly higher ridge density, hence finer epidermal ridge detail, than men by counting ridges that occur within a well defined space. If significant gender differences do exist then the likelihood of inferring gender from given ridge densities will be explored. This study focused on 400 randomly picked ten-print cards representing 400 subjects. The demographic composition of this sample population represents 100 Caucasian males, 100 African American males, 100 Caucasian females and 100 African American females all within the age range of 18-67. Results show that women tend to have a significantly higher ridge density than men and that this trend is upheld in subjects of both Caucasian and African American descent (F = 81.96, P < 0.001). Application of Bayes' theorem suggests that a given fingerprint possessing a ridge density of 11 ridges/25 mm2 or less is most likely to be of male origin. Likewise a fingerprint having a ridge density of 12 ridges/25 mm2 or greater is most likely to be of female origin, regardless of race.