Identification of animal species by protein radioimmunoassay of bone fragments and bloodstained stone tools

In forensics and archaeology, it is important to distinguish human from animal remains and to identify animal species from fragmentary bones and bloodstains. We report blind tests in which a protein radioimmunoassay (pRIA) was used to identify the species of six bone fragments lacking morphological specificity and 43 bloodstained lithic tools, knapped experimentally and soaked in blood of known animal and human origin. The submitters of the bone fragments and the bloodstained tools each listed a number of possible species, from which the testers selected the best match with the pRIA results. All six bone fragments were correctly identified: three humans, a deer, a dog, and a cow. Forty-three tools were stained with blood from a wide variety of species including ungulates, carnivores, a fish, and a bird. On 40 of these 43, at least one species (or blood-free control) was identified correctly. Some of the tools were stained with blood of two different species. A mixture of sheep and musk ox blood was correctly identified; in several other mixtures, only a single species was detected. Two tools with human blood and one with human sweat were correctly reported as human. There was a single false positive (one of three controls reported as weakly bovine) and no false negatives. We conclude that the pRIA technique shows a high degree of accuracy in discriminating human from animal bone fragments and bloodstains and in identifying animal species.     

Who’s the Party of the People? Economic Populism and the U.S. Public’s Beliefs About Political Parties

Some observers of American politics have argued that Republicans have redrawn the social class basis of the parties by displacing the Democrats as the party of the common person. While others have addressed the argument by implication, we address the phenomenon itself. That is, we examine whether the populist rhetoric used by conservatives has reshaped the American public??s perceptions about the social class basis of American political parties. To this end, we used NES data and created novel survey questions for examining the class-based images of the parties. We examine whether the public holds populist images of the Republican Party and whether the working class and evangelical Christians are especially likely to hold this belief. Contrary to this argument, most Americans view the Democrats as the party of the people. Furthermore, working class and evangelical Christians are no less likely to hold this belief.     

International Humanitarian Law: Theory,Practice, Context

Netherlands International Law Review -     

Enforcing the Law and Being a State

Many anarchists believe that a stateless society could and should feature laws. It might appear that, in so believing, they are caught in a contradiction. The anarchist objects to the state because its authority does not rest on actual consent, and using force to secure compliance with law in a stateless society seems objectionable for the same reason. Some people in a stateless society will have consented to some laws or law-generating mechanisms and some to others – while some will have consented to none. Someone’s obedience to a legal requirement could be justly enforceable absent the state, nonetheless, given either her actual consent to the requirement or to a mechanism responsible for generating it or the coextensiveness of the legal requirement with a moral requirement. And it could thus be just on the anarchist’s own terms to enforce a narrow range of positive legal requirements even against outlaws who had declined to consent to them.     

Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Terrorist Attacks by ETA 1970 to 2007

Rational choice perspectives maintain that seemingly irrational behavior on the part of terrorist organizations may nevertheless reflect strategic planning. In this paper we examine spatial and temporal patterns of terrorist attacks by the Spanish group ETA between 1970 and 2007. Our analysis is guided by a public announcement by ETA in 1978 that the group would shift from emphasizing attacks in the Basque territory to instead launch attacks more widely in the hopes of exhausting the Spanish government and forcing it to abandon the Basque territory. This announcement suggests that prior to the end of 1978 ETA attacks were based mostly on controlling territory in the Basque region that they hoped to rule; and after 1978 the organization decided to instead undertake a prolonged war of attrition. Accordingly, we argue that before the end of 1978 ETA was mostly perpetrating control attacks (attacking only within the Basque territories) and that the diffusion of attacks between provinces was mostly contagious (spreading contiguously). After the 1978 proclamation, we argue that the attack strategy shifted toward attrition (attacking in areas outside of the Basque territories) and that the attacks were more likely to diffuse hierarchically (spreading to more distant locations). As predicted, we find that after ETA moved toward a more attrition based attack strategy, subsequent attacks were significantly more likely to occur outside the Basque region and to target non-adjacent regions (consistent with hierarchical diffusion). We also find that hierarchical diffusion was more common when a longer time elapsed between attacks (a likely consequence of the fact that more distant attacks require more resources and planning) and that attacks against Madrid were unlikely to be followed immediately by more attacks on Madrid or surrounding provinces. After ETA announced a shift in policy, they maintained a highly dispersed attack strategy even during their period of decline. Using information about where and when prior attacks occurred could provide useful information for policy makers countering groups like ETA.     

Rethinking police education in the United States

ABSTRACT

Higher education for police in the United States began as police science and police administration in the early-to-middle 1900s but morphed into criminal justice starting in the 1960s, continuing in that mold to the present. This paper examines curricula at a handful of universities to provide a snapshot of U.S. police education today, illustrating that modern criminal justice programs do not focus very much on police at either the undergraduate or graduate level. The paper then considers alternative models that could provide students a more in-depth encounter with the now-robust policing body of knowledge, something that barely existed 50 years ago but could, at this point, serve as the foundation for a respectable and relevant academic and professional education.