A minimally destructive technique for sampling dentin powder for mitochondrial DNA testing

The purpose of this paper is to present the horizontal sectioning technique used by odontologists at the Central Identification Laboratory to sample dentin for mtDNA analysis. From the perspective of DNA testing, anthropologists and odontologists at the Central Identification Laboratory work with ancient remains. In many instances, the lack of comprehensive antemortem records, the potential for fragmentation and commingling, and environmental exposure makes the use of traditional forensic identification techniques difficult or impossible. Teeth are highly resistant to environmental degradation and are an excellent source of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). This technique is simple, quick, and relatively conservative, allowing for preservation of the majority of the external portion of the tooth structure.     

SCIENCE IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND PUBLIC POLICY

In recent years a number of important science policy issues have rentered on questions about the social utility of science. The field of knowledge systems accounting has evolved as a special form of social impact assessment to observe and measure the impact of science on society. A system of social impacts of science (SIS) indicators has been developed as an attempt to represent these complex patterns and relationships. In the final analysis, the causal relevance of science to social performance depends on our capacity to link the complex knowledge system of modern science to the achievement of social goals.     

State and Corporate Cash Management: A Comparison

Public and private sector portfolio managers pursue similar goals even though they perform their portfolio management responsibilities in significantly different environments. This article compares and contrasts corporate cash management with state government practices. The comparison and analyses are based on data drawn from a survey of state government portfolio managers and an earlier study which reviewed corporate cash management practice.
The comparison and analyses consider investment objectives, permissible assets, assets held, and asset holding period, among other factors. The results suggest that portfolio management practices are quite similar even though the cash management environment is significantly different.     

Value orientations,life transitions,and desistance: Assessing competing perspectives

Laub and Sampson (2003) and Paternoster and Bushway (2009) offered opposing explanations of desistance from crime. Yet, extant research has failed to test the key theoretical differences that distinguish these perspectives: 1) the temporal ordering of internal changes in identity/values and life transitions and 2) the impact of values/life transitions on offending conditional on key predictors from the opposing theory (e.g., whether marriage contributes to desistance among individuals who already hold prosocial values). We assess competing claims using data from the Pathways to Desistance. We find that within-person changes in prosocial value orientations are significantly related to within-person changes in one's likelihood of entering into serious romantic relationships and becoming employed. Conversely, life transitions are unrelated to changes in one's values. The results derived from fixed-effects Poisson models indicate high or increasing prosocial value orientations help explain offending patterns among those who enter into serious romantic relationships/get employed and help explain changes in offending among those who do not experience structural “turning points.” Marriage/cohabitation is unrelated to within-person changes in offending, whereas the impact of employment has an inconsistent relationship. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.     

A ‘Life-Style Choice’ or a Philosophical Belief?: The Argument for Veganism and Vegetarianism to be a Protected Philosophical Belief and the Position in England and Wales

Liverpool Law Review - The recent judgment in Casamitjana Costa v The League Against Cruel Sports in England and Wales held that ethical veganism was a protected philosophical belief under...     

Useful ignorance: The benefits of uncertainty during power shifts

This paper develops a formal model exploring how declining states allocate scarce military resources across multiple commitments under uncertainty. The model reveals that under certain conditions, states might actually benefit from their own uncertainty. In the model, a declining state’s uncertainty creates incentives for a revisionist rising power to misrepresent its intentions. But importantly, this misrepresentation requires the rising state to act cooperatively, implementing policies that immediately benefit the declining state. The model reveals how declining states can exploit these incentives in order to maximize the short-term benefits of their counterpart’s cooperation. Under some conditions, the benefits of this deceptive cooperation can outweigh the long-term costs of being deceived. These dynamics do not operate when the declining state is certain of the rising state’s type. I illustrate this logic through a case study of Great Britain’s pre-WWI naval withdrawal from East Asia.