Female entrepreneurs and poverty reduction: hair craft SMEs in Tanzania

This study attempts to link poverty alleviation with specific sectors and gender in the context of a developing country, focusing on, female hairstylists in Tanzania. Using the absolute definition of poverty based on income/consumption in relation to specific nationally and internationally defined living standards, the study examined the income and consumption patterns of 230 women engaged in the hairstyling business in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Findings suggest that female entrepreneurs in the business earn more relative to conventionally defined indicators. Their earnings have improved their consumption, investments and savings, and enabled them to fulfil their dependents’ basic needs.     

What Exactly Have We Learned from Decades of Applying “Business Solutions” to Public Organizations?

Editor's Note: The Perspectives in this issue are from prominent higher education leaders with roots in public administration and public policy. I asked the contributors to reflect upon experiences or principles grounded in our field that they have found meaningful during the course of their careers. My thanks to Rebecca Blank, Michael Crow, Mark Emmert and Kenneth Ruscio for their thoughtful and stimulating essays. JLP     

The Universal Adversary will attack: pigs,pirates, zombies,Satan and the class war

This article explores a category to have recently emerged out of the national security state: the Universal Adversary. The category appears in emergency planning documents and suggests a new way of thinking about the enemy that is becoming embedded in the logic of security and emergency. However, the radical expansiveness of the category offers new possibilities for thinking about the “universality” with which the enemy of bourgeois order has historically been considered and offers new ways of connecting this universality with a particular figure: the disgruntled worker.     

Preparation of a Ytterbium‐tagged Gunshot Residue Standard for Quality Control in the Forensic Analysis of GSR

Preparation of a ytterbium‐tagged gunshot residue (GSR) reference standard for scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X‐ray spectroscopic (SEM‐EDS) microanalysis is reported. Two different chemical markers, ytterbium and neodymium, were evaluated by spiking the primers of 38 Special ammunition cartridges (no propellant, no projectile) and discharging them onto 12.7 mm diameter aluminum SEM pin stubs. Following SEM‐EDS microanalysis, the majority of tri‐component particles containing lead, barium, and antimony (PbBaSb) were successfully tagged with the chemical marker. Results demonstrate a primer spiked with 0.75% weight percent of ytterbium nitrate affords PbBaSb particles characteristic of GSR with a ytterbium inclusion efficiency of between 77% and 100%. Reproducibility of the method was verified, and durability of the ytterbium‐tagged tri‐component particles under repeated SEM‐EDS analysis was also tested. The ytterbium‐tagged PbBaSb particles impart synthetic traceability to a GSR reference standard and are suitable for analysis alongside case work samples, as a positive control for quality assurance purposes.     

Morphoscopic Trait Expression in “Hispanic” Populations

This study evaluates population variation of eight cranial morphoscopic traits using samples of known southwest Hispanics (n = 72), Guatemalans (n = 106), American Blacks (n = 146), and American Whites (n = 218). We applied the support vector machine (SVM) method to build a prediction model based on a subsample (20%) of the data; the remainder of the data was used as a test sample. The SVM approach effectively differentiated between the four groups with correct classification rates between 72% (Guatemalan group) and 94% (American Black group). However, when the Guatemalan and southwest Hispanic samples were pooled, the same model correctly classified all groups with a higher degree of accuracy (American Black = 96%; American White = 77%; and the pooled Hispanic sample = 91%). This study also identified significant differences between the two Hispanic groups in six of the eight traits using univariate statistical tests. These results speak to the unique population histories of these samples and the current use of the term “Hispanic” within forensic anthropology. Finally, we argue that the SVM can be used as a classification model for ancestry estimation in a forensic context and as a diagnostic tool may broaden the application of morphoscopic trait data for the assessment of ancestry.     

The Potential of High-throughput Metagenomic Sequencing of Aquatic Bacterial Communities to Estimate the Postmortem Submersion Interval

Human remains can be discovered in freshwater or marine ecosystems, circumstances where insects and other invertebrates have infrequently been used for understanding the time of postmortem submersion. In this study, the identification and succession of epinecrotic bacterial communities on vertebrate remains were described during decomposition in a temperate headwater stream during two seasons (summer and winter). Bacterial communities were characterized with 454 pyrosequencing and analyzed at phyletic and generic taxonomic resolutions. There was a significant increase in genera richness over decomposition during both seasons. Additionally, multivariate statistical modeling revealed significant differences in bacterial communities between seasons at both taxonomic resolutions and siginificant genera differences among sampling days within each season, suggesting a succession of these communities. These data are the first to describe aquatic bacterial succession using high-throughput metagenomic sequencing on vertebrate remains submerged in a freshwater habitat, and provide initial evidence for their potential use in forensic investigations.