Women’s Right to Asylum: Protecting the Rights of Female Asylum Seekers in Europe?

Criticisms have been made against international laws and conventions on asylum and refugees, arguing that these have been based on a male model of definition, which have ignored women’s persecutions. This article will argue that recent developments in European asylum policy have the potential to deepen this discrimination and to further reduce the rights of female asylum seekers. Although there have been some positive developments in jurisprudence that have recognised that gender-specific persecution may be the basis for granting asylum, these advances remain relatively sporadic and are undermined by the operation of random and discretionary exercises of power by bureaucrats and decision makers in many cases. Further, although new developments in asylum policy are in theory “gender neutral,” differences in the material circumstances of men and women who arrive to seek asylum may mean in effect that the implications of these policies are deeply gendered.

Analysis of thin-layer chromatograms of paint pigments and dyes by direct microspectrophotometry

The Nanospec 10S microspectrophotometer has been used to produce reflectance spectra over the 380–900 nm range from coloured thin-layer chromatography spots. The method has been applied to extracted paint pigments and to dyes from other materials examined in forensic science.     

Construing Motive in Videotaped Killings: The Role of Jurors' Attitudes Toward the Death Penalty

Death-qualified jurors are generally able to impose the death penalty, whereas excludable jurors are generally either unable or unwilling to do so. A long line of research studies has shown that the former are more likely than the latter to convict criminal defendants. Ellsworth (1993) argues that jurors' attitudes toward the death penalty predict verdicts because they are embedded in a cluster of beliefs and theories about the criminal justice system. Her studies show that jurors interpret ambiguous conduct based on these belief structures. The present study examines the possibility that death penalty attitudes also influence jurors' conceptions of criminal intent. We showed mock jurors the filmed murder of a convenience store clerk and examined the inferences they drew from this evidence. Jurors who favored the death penalty tended to read criminal intent into the defendant's actions and jurors who opposed the death penalty were less likely to do so. These data provide further explanation of the conviction-proneness of death-qualified jurors.     

Beyond the ownership question: who will till the land? The new debate on China’s agricultural production

A high-profile debate is taking place in China concerning the organization of agricultural land and production, with profound implications for China’s countryside. This debate is between those advocating for agricultural production to be taken over by large-scale agribusinesses, and those against this. Proponents regard agribusinesses as embodying modernity and progress, while those against forewarn of the channeling of profits out of peasant hands, the loss of peasants’ autonomy over labor and land, and the destruction of rural life. Recent English language publications on China’s agrarian change highlight the growing power of agribusiness and related processes of depeasantization, implying the Chinese debate on “who will till the land?” is futile. But this view obscures efforts by Chinese scholars and policymakers to promote forms of agricultural organization conducive to maintaining peasant livelihoods. By examining the Chinese debates on agribusinesses, family farms, and cooperatives, this article highlights points of contestation among policymakers and alternative possibilities, which may yet shape the course of China’s agrarian change. This article contributes to scholarship on China’s agrarian change, broader questions concerning depeasantization, and developmental possibilities under collective ownership.