Distribution of the Minutiae in Hypothenar Palm Prints in Slovak Adults: Indications for Personal Identification

Minutiae are small distinguishing features found along every ridge flow, which make each friction ridge print unique. The most common friction ridge prints found at the crime scene are fingerprints; therefore, the most of the minutiae studies are focused exactly on this kind of prints. The authors believe that further examination and enlargement of the palm print database could result in better use of the palm prints for personal identification. We analyzed a total of 160 palm prints from 40 females and 40 males aged between 18 and 70 years from Slovakia. For the evaluation of the minutiae, the area of the hypothenar had to be marked out. The classification of the minutiae used for this study was based on a modified version of the classification system using the total of 13 types of minutiae. The frequency of every minutiae type was calculated and, using the chi-square test with Yates's correction, bilateral and sex differences were assessed. The relationship between the different types of minutiae was examined with Pearson's correlation test. During the initial phases of the identification process, the focus should be on the least common types of minutiae (Y or M and return), which were found not to correlate; thus, their mutual occurrence is random (e.g., overlap—Y or M, crossbar—return, or Y or M—dock). The results of the present study show which specific minutiae types are the most suitable for personal identification. These findings may be beneficial in more effective outcome of the identification process.     

Transformative Illegality: How Condoms ‘Became Legal’ in Ireland, 1991–1993

This paper examines Irish campaigns for condom access in the early 1990s. Against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis, activists campaigned against a law which would not allow condoms to be sold from ordinary commercial spaces or vending machines, and restricted sale to young people. Advancing a conception of ‘transformative illegality’, we show that illegal action was fundamental to the eventual legalisation of commercial condom sale. However, rather than foregrounding illegal condom sale as a mode of spectacular direct action, we show that tactics of illegal sale in the 1990s built on 20 years of everyday illegal sale within the Irish family planning movement. Everyday illegal sale was a long-term world-making practice, which gradually transformed condoms’ legal meanings, eventually enabling new forms of provocative and irreverent protest. Condoms ‘became legal’ when the state recognised modes of condom sale, gradually built up over many years and publicised in direct action and in the courts.     

Structural reform histories and perceptions of organizational autonomy: Do senior managers perceive less strategic policy autonomy when faced with frequent and intense restructuring?

Through recurrent structural reform programmes governments are on a quest to design public organizations that will stand the test of their environment. One of the approaches to uncertain or sensitive issues has been to create various forms of (semi‐)autonomous organizations with substantial strategic discretion. However, while governments repeatedly experiment with designs, one might simultaneously expect that such interference through repeated structural change may limit the degree of strategic policy autonomy perceived by senior managers. More specifically, we propose that intense structural reforms may inadvertently reduce strategic policy autonomy perceptions through two mechanisms. First, intense sequences of structural reforms may lead to perceptions of relatively controlling political principals. Second, they may reduce an organization's ability to accrue resources beneficial to autonomy, such as a strong internal culture, network embeddedness and expertise. Results indicate that strategic policy autonomy perceptions will indeed be detrimentally affected for organizations that experience intense sequences of structural reform.     

Relationships Between Family Connectedness and Body Satisfaction: A Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Girls and Boys

The present study examined the longitudinal links between perceptions of family connectedness and body satisfaction in 1,774 (52% female) adolescents. Participants (10–15 years of age at Time 1) completed self-report measures at three measurement occasions separated by 1 year each. Mean group difference results showed that both body satisfaction levels and perceived levels of family connectedness decreased over 2 years for the whole sample. As expected, girls were generally less satisfied with their bodies than boys, particularly in the older cohort. Structural equation modelling was used to assess stability coefficients and cross-lagged effects, and longitudinal bidirectional effects between perceptions of family connectedness and body satisfaction were found for girls, but not for boys. This result suggests that adolescent girls’ body satisfaction is both affected by and a predictor of perceived family connectedness.     

fairies and fighters: gendered tactics of the alter-globalization movement in Prague (2000) and Genoa (2001)

This paper examines gender aspects of tactics of the alter-globalization movement. Focusing mainly on two transnational collective actions in Prague in 2000 and in Genoa in 2001, the research draws on participant observation, interviews with activists and analysis of the movement's alternative media. The feminist activism within the movement, the gendered tactics and their representation in the alternative media are analysed using the concept of diffusion. Although feminists are involved in the protests, and local Czech feminist activism was incited by the international mobilizations in Prague in 2000, they are often marginalized because of the emphasis on masculine confrontational and violent tactics used in demonstrations. The movement's alternative media further reproduce gender stereotypes. The visual representations of the tactics are traditionally gendered – women are depicted as fairies, men as fighters; this is because the movement does not want to appear weak and feminine, and seeks to be effective.     

Perceptions of Problem Behavior in Adolescents’ Families: Perceiver,Target, and Family Effects

Considerable research has focused on the reliability and validity of informant reports of family behavior, especially maternal reports of adolescent problem behavior. None of these studies, however, has based their orientation on a theoretical model of interpersonal perception. In this study we used the social relations model (SRM) to examine family members’ reports of each others’ externalizing and internalizing problem behavior. Two parents and two adolescents in 69 families rated each others’ behavior within a round-robin design. SRM analysis showed that within-family perceptions of externalizing and internalizing behaviors are consistently due to three sources of variance; perceiver, target, and family effects. A family/contextual effect on informant reports of problem behavior has not been previously reported.     

A ‘pivot’ that never existed: America’s Asian strategy under Obama and Trump

This article argues that Donald Trump’s Asian strategy hardly marks a radical transformation from Barack Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’. This is because the ‘pivot to Asia’ never really existed. Although Obama was successful in building legitimacy for the strategy through international norms, he failed to translate his lofty rhetoric into practice. Much of his original pivot components (building a constructive relationship with China, coordinating with Asian allies and multilateralism in the Association of South East Asian Nations and the Trans-Pacific Partnership) has either failed or did not live up to expectations. Donald Trump was adamant that the Asian pivot was a bad strategy and that he would not follow it. But although he completely discarded Obama’s legitimization of the rebalance (as Trump speaks pragmatically and does not care about international norms), in actuality he has followed many of Obama’s policies, and even improved on some of them. That being said, Trump’s ‘pivot actions’ appear to be erratic, pragmatic short-term actions rather than a meticulously planned long-term strategy similar to Obama’s rebalance (which did not materialize). Thus, while Obama failed to transform the pivot into an effective strategy, neither is Trump’s effectiveness backed by a coherent Asian strategy.     

Sleep Quantity and Problems as Mediators of the Eveningness-Adjustment Link during Childhood and Adolescence

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Chronotype, or morningness/eveningness, has been associated with adjustment in both children and adolescents. Specifically, eveningness has been linked to...     

The Interplay of Adolescents’ Aggression and Victimization with Friendship and Antipathy Networks within an Educational Prosocial Intervention

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - How the interplay between peer relationships and behaviors unfolds and how this differs between classrooms is an understudied topic. This study examined whether...