Transparency Mechanisms: Building Publicness into Public Services

Recent changes in patterns of public service provision, sometimes associated with the 'regulatory state', have been said to have eroded citizenship and diminished accountability. This paper responds to these challenges by outlining a toolbox of four transparency mechanisms – information, choice, representation, and voice – as alternative devices that can be built into the architecture of public service regimes, to increase responsiveness and answerability. Using insights drawn from cybernetics and transaction cost analysis, this paper looks at the consequences of different choices of combinations of mechanisms in allocating authority in line with competing administrative doctrines of fiduciary trusteeship and consumer sovereignty. Attention is drawn to differences in 'cost profiles' between different public services that can facilitate or inhibit consumer choice as a basis for understanding the suitability of different combinations of mechanisms to specific public services. A contingency model determining the suitability of particular mechanisms to particular services of different 'cost-profiles' is presented. Given the variety of public services and among different public service architectures in the regulatory state, it is argued that this differentiated approach to transparency and accountability provides a more effective response to holding public services accountable than narrower traditional notions of political accountability.     

A new approach to amino acid racemization in enamel: testing of a less destructive sampling methodology

Aspartic acid racemization has been found to be an accurate measure of age at death for recent forensic material. This paper examines the practicality of using acid etching of the tooth surface to extract amino acids from the enamel for racemization analysis. By serial etching of the tooth and contamination of the teeth with bovine serum albumin prior to etching, the ability of etching to remove contamination was assessed. The destructiveness of the method was visualized and quantified using micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). By bleaching the teeth and by deeper etching it was possible to obtain more consistent values. While etching had little effect on the enamel at the macroscale, it did have an impact at the microscale. The quantities of enamel removed varied depending upon the tooth morphology, but were not large. Acid etching of enamel thus appears to be a promising new method for extracting proteins for amino acid racemization age estimation noninvasively.     

Investigating Investigators: Examining the Impact of Eyewitness Identification Evidence on Student-Investigators

This research examined the impact of eyewitness identification decisions on student-investigators. Undergraduates played the role of police investigators and interviewed student-witnesses who had been shown either a good or poor view of the perpetrator in a videotaped crime. Based on information obtained from the witness, student-investigators then chose a suspect from a database containing information about potential suspects and rated the probability that their suspect was the culprit. Investigators then administered a photo lineup to witnesses, and re-rated the probability that their suspect was guilty. Student-investigators were highly influenced by eyewitness identification decisions, typically overestimating the information gained from the identification decision (except under conditions that led witnesses to be very accurate), and were generally unable to differentiate between accurate and inaccurate witnesses.

Sexual victimization and health-risk behaviors: a prospective analysis of college women

The present study utilizes the National College Health Risk Behavior Survey to examine the relationship between health-risk behaviors and sexual victimization among a sample of college women. A prospective design is utilized to examine the relationship between health-risk behaviors as measured at baseline and sexual victimization during a 3-month follow-up period. After controlling for age and parents' education, a history of adolescent sexual victimization was associated with the following health-risk behaviors as measured at pretest: increased likelihood of cigarette smoking, marijuana use, suicidal ideation, experience of physical violence within a dating relationship, use of diet pills and vomiting or laxatives to lose weight, multiple sexual partners, and early sexual intercourse. Prospectively, women's history of adolescent sexual victimization was the strongest predictor of sexual victimization during the 3-month follow-up. Implications of univariate associations between early sexual intercourse, suicidal ideation, and problematic weight loss behaviors and subsequent experience of sexual victimization are discussed.     

Suicidal Fatality from Azide Ingestion

A 35-year-old man ingested an unknown amount of sodium azide and died within 2 h. The postmortem interval was 3 days. No alcohol or drugs were found in the blood and urine. Azide was derivatized in the peripheral blood, urine, and vitreous fluid with propionic anhydride. A portion of the headspace was injected onto a gas chromatograph with a nitrogen–phosphorus detector. Azide was quantitated in the peripheral blood (1.1 μg/mL), urine (7.5 μg/mL), and vitreous (43 μg/mL). The vitreous appears to be a better fluid for azide screening because of slower degradation.     

Aligning National Bank Priorities with the Public Interest: National Benefit Banks and a New Stakeholder Approach

Banks have particular characteristics that set them apart from other business entities, including being more highly leveraged, benefiting from government safety nets, and generating massive negative externalities when they fail. These attributes mean that in addition to shareholder interests, bank directors should be allowed to carefully consider the interests of nonshareholders, such as creditors, taxpayers, and the overall economy, when making decisions. While directors of banks in states that have enacted constituency statutes may be allowed to consider nonshareholder interests, no federal act expressly allows directors of federally chartered banks to consider such interests. Moreover, to date, thirty‐seven states have enacted legislation to allow for the formation of public benefit corporations that require directors to consider the interests of nonshareholders. No federal law provides a clear path for federally chartered banks to do this. This article proposes dual federal legislation that would (1) enable directors of all federally chartered banks to expressly consider nonshareholder constituents when making decisions and (2) allow for the formation of national benefit banks that would require directors to consider nonshareholder interests in their decision‐making.