Toward a Global Theory of Mind: The Potential Benefits of Presenting a Range of IR Theories through Active Learning

Active learning is particularly well-suited to teaching across the range of perspectives inherent in the practice and study of international politics for two key reasons: (1) because of its capacity to highlight how subjective, intersubjective, and contested understandings play an important role in determining outcomes in the ivory tower as well as in the real world and (2) because of the compatibility between underlying theories of knowledge that inform active learning and the newer generation of IR theories including subaltern realism, social constructivism, constitutive theory, and postmodernism. This article explores the potential benefits of presenting these and other norm-oriented theories through active learning. It also discusses ways to overcome barriers to the integration of active learning techniques.     

Multi-technique comparison of source and primary transfer soil samples: an experimental investigation by D Croft and K Pye. A comment.

The Croft and Pye paper has a story to tell about the differentiation capabilities of four analytical techniques. It is not however, the whole story. This may be due in part to the lack of reproducibility in the generation of results, and also in the effort to match soil samples and thus infer that the results provide stronger conclusions than is possible to make with this sort of analysis. More research must be done to establish in what instances these techniques and others provide reliable, reproducible, representative and accurate results, and in what capacity such results can be presented. As they stand, the results from this paper should be treated with great caution and not extrapolated to any other forensic case work until greater reliability of these and other techniques has been established.     

A National Survey of Mental Health Services Available to Offenders with Mental Illness: Who Is Doing What?

The purpose of this study was to examine the national practices of psychotherapy services for male offenders with mental illness (OMI) in state correctional facilities. Participants consisted of 230 correctional mental health service providers from 165 state correctional facilities. Results indicated that mental health professionals provided a variety of services to OMI that can be conceptualized by six goals considered important in their work: mental illness recovery, emotions management, institutional functioning, re-entry, risk-need, and personal growth. Mental health professionals in this study generally viewed mental illness recovery, institutional functioning, and personal growth as significantly more important and spent more time focused on these goals than emotions management, re-entry, and risk-need. Mental health professionals tended to believe the services they provided were effective across four key treatment foci including mental illness, skill development, behavioral functioning, and criminogenic needs with more progress perceived in areas related to mental illness and skill development than their ability to effectively change behavioral functioning. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Missing links in nanomaterials governance: bringing industrial dynamics and downstream policies into view

In this article we explore some of the analytical and policy implications of widening the focus of nanomaterials governance from risk regulation to the broader issue of the purposeful direction of the innovation process. We focus on the impact of industrial activities on nanotechnology governance, arguing that the specific characteristics of the industrial dynamics of nanomaterials—flexibility in applications and distributed innovation—limit and enable different potential interventions to shape technology. In particular, these characteristics exacerbate the difficulties of attempting to directly influence innovation trajectories. Under these conditions, we argue that policies for nanomaterials governance need to be broadened. The prevailing emphasis in the UK on policy initiatives ‘upstream’ in the R&D process, while commendable, should be complemented with policies aimed further ‘downstream’ at potential users of nanomaterials, such as renewable energy procurement or housing regulations in order to modulate technological development towards socially desirable goals.     

The reincorporation and redistribution of trace geoforensic particulates on clothing: An introductory study

Two experimental studies were undertaken to investigate the processes of reincorporation and redistribution of trace evidence on garments when worn by a suspect or a victim (reincorporation) or after the garments have been seized and packaged for subsequent forensic analysis (redistribution). The first experiment utilised UV powder, an established proxy for geoforensic trace particulates and the second experiment utilised daffodil pollen transferred onto garments under conditions that mimicked forensic reality. It was demonstrated that reincorporation of trace particulates occurs from upper to lower parts of the same garment and also from upper garments to lower garments. Reincorporation also occurred to all areas of the lower garments, however the highest concentration of particulates was found to be the lap area of the jeans. Particulates also tended to be preserved around technical details such as stitching or relief design features of the garments. Thus the decay of particulates after a contact has been made does not necessarily involve a loss of those particulates from the entire system. These findings have implications for the interpretation of trace evidence when seeking to establish the source of initial contacts or the chronology of pertinent events. The second study demonstrated that folding and packaging items of clothing leads to a redistribution of any trace particulate evidence that is present thereby eliciting an alteration in the spatial distribution of that evidence. There is therefore a necessity to take the context of trace evidence into account and also to follow protocols that are sensitive to these aspects of trace evidence behaviour as a failure to do so may have consequences for the correct interpretation of such evidence.