A 'cyanoacrylate case' for developing fingerprints in cars.

A portable case has been developed by which cyanoacrylate (super glue) fuming can be used inside a vehicle suspected of being involved in serious crime. The car itself serves as a fumigation chamber and the cyanoacrylate vapours are fed into the car via a hose. Connected to the hose and suspended inside the car is a vapour diffuser. The cyanoacrylate originates from a portable case where there is a sealed heater and also a command panel with hygrometer and thermometer for a technician to control the process. There is also space inside the case for other necessary equipment.     

The bureaucracy and public policy: Canadian merger policy and the Combines Branch, 1960–71

Abstract. This paper investigates the implications for public policy in general and merger sections of the Combines Act in particular of the hypothesis that bureaus, when carrying out their administrative duties, attempt to maximize their private utility functions rather than the social utility function expressed in the legislation. The analytical procedure, given alternative utility goals of power, prestige, convenience, and security and the appropriate constraints, is to predict the behaviour of the Combines Branch (from 1960–71) and to test these predictions against actual Branch behaviour. The evidence on the Branch's behaviour (all cases prosecuted and discontinued) suggests that its conduct can be better explained by security maximization than by any alternative private or altruistic goal. However, it is not clear that this was a bad thing for public policy because it can be argued that the Branch's behaviour brought public policy in this area closer to the social welfare function implied in the legislation than would have been the case if the government had successfully maximized its private utility function. Sommaire. L'auteur de cet exposé enquête sur les implications, pour la politique publique en général et les articles sur le fusionnement de la loi sur les coalitions en particulier, de l'hypothèse suivant laquelle es bureaux, dans l'exercice de leurs responsabilités administratives, essaient de maximiser leurs fonctions privées plutôt que leur fonction sociale, telle qu'elle est indiquée dans la législation. La procédure analytique, étant donné le choix des buts: pouvoirs, prestige, commodité et sécurité, avec Ies limites appropriées, consiste à prédire le comportement du service chargé des coalitions (de 1965 à 1971) et à vérifier ces prédictions à la lumière de son comportement réel. Les faits relatifs au comportement de ce service (tous les cas amenés en justice et ceux qui ont été abondonnés) indiquent qu'il s'explique plus par une maximisation de la sécurité que par tout autre motif privé ou altruiste. Il ne semble pas cependant que cela ait été néfaste à la politique publique parce que l'on peut argumenter que le comportement du service a fait jouer à la politique publique un rôle plus orienté vers le bien-être social, comme cela était sous-entendu dam la législation, que ce n'aurait été le cas si le gouvernement avait maximisé avec succès sa fonction privée.     

Civil liability of private security: Enforcer of moral obligations to right legal wrongs

The private security industry in the United States now has approximately twice as many personnel as does the public police. Private Security personnel have authority over the liberty, and sometimes the lives, of customers and employees. Often they exercise this awesome responsibility with little if any background and training. In most instances private security personnel are not considered law officers or peace officers and are, therefore, not bound by the same rules and regulations that apply to public police. More and more frequently, untrained or minimally trained, and basically unqualified security officers are taking actions against customers and employees which are excessive and unreasonable. Without the Constitutional protections which would be available if the act were committed by a public police officer, the only recourse for a private individual against reckless and wanton conduct on the part of private security personnel is a civil action, seeking compensation for the inconvenience caused or injuries received. The courts have found that companies and their security personnel have an obligation to be reasonable in their investigations of suspected criminal violations by employees and customers. Failure to conduct a proper and reasonable investigation will open the individual directing the investigation, and the company authorizing it, to liabililty for the injury their improper actions have caused. Civil liability suits have become the moral enforcer for improper and excessive conduct by private security personnel.     

Inferring ancestral origin using a single multiplex assay of ancestry-informative marker SNPs

Tests that infer the ancestral origin of a DNA sample have considerable potential in the development of forensic tools that can help to guide crime investigation. We have developed a single-tube 34-plex SNP assay for the assignment of ancestral origin by choosing ancestry-informative markers (AIMs) exhibiting highly contrasting allele frequency distributions between the three major population-groups. To predict ancestral origin from the profiles obtained, a classification algorithm was developed based on maximum likelihood. Sampling of two populations each from African, European and East Asian groups provided training sets for the algorithm and this was tested using the CEPH Human Genome Diversity Panel. We detected negligible theoretical and practical error for assignments to one of the three groups analyzed with consistently high classification probabilities, even when using reduced subsets of SNPs. This study shows that by choosing SNPs exhibiting marked allele frequency differences between population-groups a practical forensic test for assigning the most likely ancestry can be achieved from a single multiplexed assay.