Ancestry Assessment Using Random Forest Modeling, ,

A skeletal assessment of ancestry relies on morphoscopic traits and skeletal measurements. Using a sample of American Black (n = 38), American White (n = 39), and Southwest Hispanics (n = 72), the present study investigates whether these data provide similar biological information and combines both data types into a single classification using a random forest model (RFM). Our results indicate that both data types provide similar information concerning the relationships among population groups. Also, by combining both in an RFM, the correct allocation of ancestry for an unknown cranium increases. The distribution of cross‐validated grouped cases correctly classified using discriminant analyses and RFMs ranges between 75.4% (discriminant function analysis, morphoscopic data only) and 89.6% (RFM). Unlike the traditional, experience‐based approach using morphoscopic traits, the inclusion of both data types in a single analysis is a quantifiable approach accounting for more variation within and between groups, reducing misclassification rates, and capturing aspects of cranial shape, size, and morphology.     

Navigating the principle of open court in the digital age: The more things change,the more they stay the same

The belief that courts should be open to the public is a guiding principle of the Canadian legal system. This article examines the principle of open court in the digital age by analyzing policies governing live text‐based communication in Canadian courtrooms. We argue that courts have and have not responded to the changing digital landscape. While Canadian journalists have the ability to use live text‐based communication in courts, the general public does not despite new affordances provided to them by digital technologies. This article explores the tensions between administrative judicial independence, open court, and digital technology.     

Disability and the legal profession in the United States

There are more people with disabilities than any other minority group in the United States. However, little attention is paid to lawyers and potential lawyers with disabilities. This article examines difficulties faced by people with a disability as law students through to participation in the legal profession. Aspects of discrimination and issues relating to discipline of lawyers and disabilities are canvassed. The legal profession in the United States is taking steps to increase representation of people with a disability in its ranks but it is a slow process.     

Lifetime sexual victimization and poor risk perception: does emotion dysregulation account for the links?

The present study examined whether and which facets of emotion dysregulation serve an intervening role in the association between prior victimization and risk perception in an analogue sexual assault vignette. Participants were 714 university women who completed self-report measures of sexual victimization, emotion dysregulation, and a computer-administered written vignette of a college party scene that culminates in acquaintance rape. Approximately 42% of the sample reported lifetime sexual victimization during childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. Two individual aspects of emotion dysregulation, limited access to emotion regulation strategies and impulse control difficulties, mediated the association between lifetime victimization and leaving the scenario later. Findings suggest the importance of emotion dysregulation in predicting risk perception among victims and of improving victims' emotion regulation skills in revictimization risk reduction interventions.     

Can a perceptual peer deviance measure accurately measure a peer's self-reported deviance?

Purpose

Social learning theory and self-control theory differ considerably in their interpretation of what qualifies as a “valid” measure of peer deviance. While the two theories are epistemological opposites in regards to how to operationalize the peer deviance construct, their differences are reconcilable. The current study seeks to identify a set of perceptual items that accurately measure a peer's self-reported deviance. This measure would satisfy the preferences of both learning and control theories because the measure is perceptual but also accurate.

Methods

Using data from 2,154 individuals in friendship pairs where each respondent perceived 26 peer behaviors and self-reported the same behaviors, regression, item-response, and mean difference tests are used to perform item deletion.

Results

Five perceptual peer deviance items are identified which are not significantly different from the peer's self-reported deviance. When scaled together and inserted into multivariate regressions, however, the perceptual peer deviance items are still related to the respondent's deviance more strongly than the peer's self-reported deviance.

Conclusions

We are unable to identify a set of perceptual items that is interchangeable with a peer's self-reported deviance. Accordingly, the theoretical debate between Akers and Gottfredson and Hirschi regarding the measurement of differential association may not be empirically resolvable.     

Donor conception legislation in Victoria, Australia: the "Time to Tell" campaign, donor-linking and implications for clinical practice

The State of Victoria in Australia was one of the first jurisdictions in the world to introduce legislation regulating donor conception. Under the Infertility (Medical Procedures) Act 1984 (Vic), donor-conceived people, aged 18 years and over, parents of children under 18 years, and donors gained the right to apply for the release of identifying information about each other recorded in a Central Register. As a result, of this and subsequent legislation, services providing donor treatment were obliged to change clinical practice relating to recruitment of donors, counselling of donors and recipients and recordkeeping. Since this legislation was introduced in 1988, over 5,000 donor-conceived children have been born and in 2006 the first 100 of these children reached the age of 18. The Victorian Infertility Treatment Authority (ITA) conducted a public education campaign to provide information and support to people affected by the legislation. This article describes clinical practice changes prompted by legislation, the 'Time to Tell" campaign and the service model developed for linking parties on the donor registers. The Victorian experience demonstrates that laws allowing the parties involved in donor conception access to information about each other must be accompanied by changes to clinical practice, public education about the implications of the laws, and services to meet the needs of those seeking information relating to donor conception and those contacted as a result.