Integrating Growth Variability of the Ilium,Fifth Lumbar Vertebra,and Clavicle with Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines Models for Subadult Age Estimation

Subadult age estimation should rely on sampling and statistical protocols capturing development variability for more accurate age estimates. In this perspective, measurements were taken on the fifth lumbar vertebrae and/or clavicles of 534 French males and females aged 0–19 years and the ilia of 244 males and females aged 0–12 years. These variables were fitted in nonparametric multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) models with 95% prediction intervals (PIs) of age. The models were tested on two independent samples from Marseille and the Luis Lopes reference collection from Lisbon. Models using ilium width and module, maximum clavicle length, and lateral vertebral body heights were more than 92% accurate. Precision was lower for postpubertal individuals. Integrating punctual nonlinearities of the relationship between age and the variables and dynamic prediction intervals incorporated the normal increase in interindividual growth variability (heteroscedasticity of variance) with age for more biologically accurate predictions.     

Keeping the Family Together: Why New York Must Amend Evidence Rules to Protect a Parent's Right to be a Parent

In New York, hearsay statements made by children may be admissible in a child protective proceeding. Under Article 10 of the Family Court Act, an out‐of‐court statement only requires corroboration to support the statement's reliability. The Family Court has the choice to determine what evidence will be sufficient for corroboration. In comparison to other statutes from different states, New York's statute is very broad. This Note proposes amending the current evidence statute under Article 10 of the Family Court Act to strengthen the standard for admitting hearsay statements in child protective proceedings.     

Cashless Welfare Transfers for ‘Vulnerable’ Welfare Recipients: Law,Ethics and Vulnerability

This article aims to contribute to literature on the conceptualisation of ‘vulnerability’ and its use by neo-liberal welfare regimes to demean, stigmatize and responsibilize welfare recipients. Several conceptions of ‘vulnerability’ will be explored and utilised in the context of welfare reforms that purport to regulate social security recipients as highly risky ‘vulnerable’ subjects. However, as this article will make clear, ‘vulnerability’ is a somewhat slippery concept and one susceptible to abuse by powerful interests intent on increasing coercive surveillance, discipline and disentitlement for those designated as ‘vulnerable’. Legislation enacted ostensibly to address the ‘vulnerability’ of welfare recipients can foster intensive regulation and it must be asked who benefits most from such arrangements and the rhetoric that supports them.     

European security and early warning systems: from risks to threats in the European Union’s health security sector

This article critically examines a poorly understood aspect of the European security landscape: early warning systems (EWSs). EWSs are socio-technical systems designed to detect, analyse, and disseminate knowledge on potential security issues in a wide variety of sectors. We first present an empirical overview of more than 80 EWS in the European Union. We then draw on debates in Critical Security Studies to help us make sense of the role of such systems, tapping into conceptual debates on the construction of security issues as either “threat” or “risk” related. Finally, we study one EWS – the Early Warning and Response System for infectious diseases – to understand how it works and how it reconciles risk – versus threat-based security logics. Contrary to assumptions of a clear distinction between risk- and threat-based logics of security, we show that EWSs may serve as a “transmission belt” for the movement of issues from risk into threats.     

Land expropriation and displacement in Bangladesh

This paper examines land grabbing in Bangladesh and views such seizures through the lens of displacement and land encroachment. Two different but potentially interacting displacement processes are examined. The first, the char riverine and coastal sediment regions that are in a constant state of formation and erosion, are contested sites ripe for power plays that uproot small producers on their rich alluvial soils. The second examines new patterns of land capture by elites who engage gangs, corrupted public servants and the military to coerce small producers into relinquishing titles to their ever more valuable lands in and near urban areas. These historically specific and contingent land grabs draw attention to in situ displacement, where people may remain in place or experience a prolonged multi-stage process of removal. This contrasts with ex situ displacement, a decisive expulsion of people from their homes, communities and livelihoods. In both the char and peri-urban case, we signal new forms of collective action in response to involuntary alienation of land resources in a rapidly and violently transforming political economy. We conclude with a caution against naturalizing displacement, casting it as an ‘inevitable’ consequence of changing weather conditions in the former and population dynamics in the latter.     

Using Local Government Corporate Plans in Victoria

The Victorian state government has required local governments to publish their corporate plans and this paper explores the information provided by their corporate plans. These plans demonstrate diversity in the form and content, but several themes emerge. First, despite the purpose of corporate plans being to demonstrate accountability to the local community, the lack of performance targets reduces the usefulness of these plans for accountability purposes. It also explores objectives which are of major importance to the sector, such as local economic development, which is an issue difficult to control in the local area, being largely determined by federal and state policy. Other important objectives include financial and asset management together with emphases on the local community and accountability, issues which were the drivers of the state government's reform agenda. This article assists those who want to enhance the practice of corporate (strategic) planning in local government.     

Lines of sight: on the visualization of unknown futures

This article considers the specific mode of visualization that is at work in contemporary border security practices. Taking inspiration from art historian Jonathan Crary's genealogies of attention, it situates homeland security visuality in a particular economy of attention or attentiveness to the world. How is it that we come to focus on some elements of our way of life, establish them as normal and designate deviations from the norm? How does this algorithmic attentiveness break up the visual field, ‘pixelating’ sensory data so that it can be reintegrated to project a picture of a person? The pre-emptive lines of sight emerging in contemporary security practice become precisely a means of visualizing unknown futures. The article concludes with reflections on the creative artistic forms of attention that flourish even where the lines of sight of the consumer, the citizen, the border guard, the traveller, the migrant appear ever more directed and delimited. It is in these more creative modes of attention that we find one of the most important resources to contemporary political life – the capacity to question the ‘better picture’, to disrupt what we see as ordinary or out of the ordinary and confront the routines of our lives anew.