Political determinants of population dynamics

The hypothesis that political development, involving a massive transformation of the political system, is responsible for the movement from high to low birth and death rates in national populations is discussed. The nature of the relationship between political change and changes in vital rates is first described, and a new empirical measure of the capacity and effectiveness of political systems is presented.     

Informing Jurors of Their Nullification Power: A Route to a Just Verdict or Judicial Chaos?

The current studies sought to test whether explicitly informing jurors of their power to nullify the law does invite chaos, defined by jurists as undisciplined and biased juror judgment. A series of four studies examined juror biases predicated on defendant status, remorse, gender, national origin, penalty severity, and extenuating circumstances. None, however, were amplified by nullification instructions, providing little evidence that such instructions invite chaos with respect to the biases examined in these studies. To the contrary, several results suggested that nullification instructions simply encourage jurors to nullify when the strict application of the law would result in an unjust verdict. Limitations of the studies and public policy issues are discussed.     

A large-scale statistical analysis of barefoot impressions

In an earlier paper, outlines of footprints of persons walking normally were studied to determine whether different people make verifiably distinct footprints. Our basic null hypothesis is: given a footprint outline trace made by Subject A (Alice), then Subject B (Bob), a distinct person, cannot produce a footprint outline trace indistinguishable from that of Alice. We showed in the previous work that the probability of a chance match is less than 10(-8). In this paper we report two new advances in our research. First, we establish a rigorous mathematical framework for calculating worstcase and average chance-match probabilities. Second, we repeat the previous experiment to substantiate the earlier results, but with an expanded population sample size and a more representative and significantly bigger repeated sample. These improvements and a new automated tracing procedure for extracting all numerical measures lead to a sharpened accuracy with average chance match probabilities of 7.88 x 10-(10) for a general population. In other words, the odds of a chance match are one in 1.27 billion.     

A week in the life of a hospital

The same urgency and intellect that America's teaching hospitals apply to saving lives is now also going into saving the institutions themselves. All across the country, academic medical centers are trying to figure out how to marry progress with profits. At the Duke University Medical Center, TIME visits the front line in the war between money and medicine.     

C: Reviews: short review articles

BRITAIN'S TWO WARS WITH IRAQ 1941, 1991. By Raghid El‐Solh. Reading, Ithaca Press, 1996. 289 pp. £35.00 (hb).

FIGHTING WORLD WAR THREE FROM THE MIDDLE EAST: ALLIED CONTINGENCY PLANS, 1945–1954. By Michael J. Cohen. London, Frank Cass Publishers, 1997. 349 pp. 5 maps. £37.50 (hb).

VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE IN SOUTHERN YEMEN

A YEMEN REALITY. ARCHITECTURE SCULPTURED IN MUD AND STONE. By Salma Samar Damluji. Reading, Garnet Publishing Limited. 1991. 355 pp., 677 colour plates.

THE VALLEY OF MUD BRICK ARCHITECTURE. SHIBAM, TARIM & WAADI HADRAMUT. By Salma Samar Damluji. (Ancient to Contemporary Design). Reading, Garnet Publishing Limited, 1992. xxi, 472 pp, c.500 plates and 85 line drawings.

CALLIGRAPHIC SIGNIFICANCES : CATALOGUES OF THE NASSER D. KHALILI COLLECTION OF ISLAMIC ART

THE ABBASID TRADITION: QUR'ANS OF THE 8TH TO THE 10TH CENTURIES AD. By François Déroche (The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, General Editor Julian Raby, Vol. I), The Nour Foundation in Association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press, 1992. 192pp.

THE MASTER SCRIBES: QUR'ANS OF THE 10TH TO 14TH CENTURIES AD. By David James (The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, General Editor Julian Raby, Vol. II,) The Nour Foundation in Association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press, 1992. 240pp.

AFTER TIMUR: QUR'ANS OF THE 15TH AND 16TH CENTURIES AD. By David James (The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, General Editor Julian Raby, Vol. III,) The Nour Foundation in Association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press, 1992. 256pp.

THE ART OF THE PEN: CALLIGRAPHY OF THE 14TH TO 20TH CENTURIES AD. By Nabil Safwat (The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, General Editor Julian Raby, Vol. V,) The Nour Foundation in Association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press, 1996. 248pp.

BILLS, LETTERS AND DEEDS: ARABIC PAPYRI OF THE 7TH TO THE 11TH CENTURIES AD. By Geoffrey Kuan (The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, General Editor Julian Raby, Vol. VI,) The Nour Foundation in Association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press, 1993. 292pp.