A Greener Future

In the past year, extreme weather events have erupted across the globe, and 2010 looks to be one of the hottest years in recorded history. That has placed an onus on the Cancun conference to prompt     

The Use of Laser Microdissection in Forensic Sexual Assault Casework: Pros and Cons Compared to Standard Methods

Sexual assault samples are among the most frequently analyzed in a forensic laboratory. These account for almost half of all samples processed routinely, and a large portion of these cases remain unsolved. These samples often pose problems to traditional analytic methods of identification because they consist most frequently of cell mixtures from at least two contributors: the victim (usually female) and the perpetrator (usually male). In this study, we propose the use of current preliminary testing for sperm detection in order to determine the chances of success when faced with samples which can be good candidates to undergo analysis with the laser microdissection technology. Also, we used laser microdissection technology to capture fluorescently stained cells of interest differentiated by gender. Collected materials were then used for DNA genotyping with commercially available amplification kits such as Minifiler, Identifiler Plus, NGM, and Y‐Filer. Both the methodology and the quality of the results were evaluated to assess the pros and cons of laser microdissection compared with standard methods. Overall, the combination of fluorescent staining combined with the Minifiler amplification kit provided the best results for autosomal markers, whereas the Y‐Filer kit returned the expected results regardless of the used method.     

The Dark Glory of Criminals: Notes on the Iconic Imagination of the Multitudes

This article explores the relationships between crime, collective responses to it, and the social production of so-called great criminals. It argues that crime, especially sexual and violent crime, produces significant imbalances in individuals habitually subject to instrumental actions, identitarian thinking and positive law. These imbalances are emotional as well as cognitive and, under certain conditions of communication, can generate states of multitude, that is, collective states linked to an intense affectivity and to the prevalence of mythic or symbolic thinking. These states reach their limits and become condensed in the mytho-historical figure of the great criminal. In this sense, great criminals are a function of such multitudinous states: points of imputation that concentrate and catalyze the affective imagination unleashed by collective effervescence.     

The meta-discourse of contemporary brands and the indexing of consumption: a way to build bonds of meaning

There is an important volume of reflections on the theoretical and methodological proximity of semiotics and brand. I emphasize the texts of Lencastre and Corte-Real on brand myopia, Perez on brand expression and the proposition of a brand analysis model based on TGS de Peirce, and Mick with his studies of branding, marketing, and advertising, among others. However, the constitutive tension of the sign-brand, in its complexity as a media phenomenon determined by the sign object, pulsates in harmony with the emotional, associative, and cognitive relations it is able to generate in the interpreting minds. Brand as a complex sign, detached from the shackles of marketing management, grows toward the performing hybridism of digital technologies and arts, finding its interpreters – open-minded, active, and desirous of constant negotiations of meaning – in countless semioses. The purpose of the present article is to show that the sign strength of contemporary brands lies in their ability to index consumption based on advertising metadiscourse that reveals its audiences' social values and the objectual power by which it is determined. To this end, the study integrated knowledge of the semiotic analysis of the expressions of twenty international brands in the fashion, food, and technology industries, and the systematization and analysis of their value offers.     

Revisiting the Meaning of Development: A Multidimensional Taxonomy of Developing Countries

Many have challenged the use of income per capita as the primary proxy for measuring development since Seers’s seminal works. This article continues this tradition with a more recent twist. We use cluster analysis to build a multidimensional taxonomy of developing countries using a set of indicators covering four conceptual frames on ‘development’. The value-added of the article is not to suggest that our classification is the end in itself, but – more modestly – to demonstrate that more work on taxonomies is required in light of the weakness of classifications based solely on income and the changing distribution of global poverty.     

Direct and Indirect Xenophobic Attacks: Unpacking Portfolios of Identity

Political Behavior - Political threats are typically conceptualized by scholars as targeting particular groups of people. We call for also conceptualizing threats as political attacks directed...     

A new perspective for delinquency: culture conflict measured by seriousness perceptions

Numerous theories have attempted to analyze and understand the factors and etiology of juvenile delinquency. The present study is the first to suggest the use of Sellin's "culture conflict" theory as a possible cultural explanation for the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency. According to Sellin, crime in many instances is a product of culture conflict between the values and norms of a certain subculture in a given society and those of the general culture. Following Sellin's rationale, this study argues that youths constitute a social subculture with certain values, norms, and stances toward the criminal law that is not necessarily concordant with the moral values and formal norms of the general culture of adults, who determine the content of the criminal law. These assertions are analyzed via a crime seriousness study, in which adult and teenage respondents from a national (Israeli) sample were asked to evaluate the seriousness of various criminal offenses committed by adolescents. Generally, significant differences were found between the seriousness and punishment values given by the adult and juvenile respondents to violent offenses (high) and self-use of illegal drugs (low), with adult respondents providing significantly higher seriousness values and punishment options for them. Moreover, in a regression analysis, the variable of respondents' age was found as decisive in understanding both dependent variables. The implications of these findings are discussed in this study.     

Rural development through the construction of new,nested, markets: comparative perspectives from China,Brazil and the European Union

This article discusses and compares the rural development processes and practices currently occurring in China, Brazil and the European Union. Although these are strongly rooted in the specificities of time and space, they also share important commonalities. We argue that rural development can be viewed as an evolving set of responses to market failures. A key element of these responses is that they are unfolding through the construction of new markets: a seemingly contradictory phenomenon that has, as yet, hardly been scrutinized or theoretically elaborated. We describe these newly emerging markets as ‘nested markets’ and support our argument with a careful reconsideration of the dynamics of long-established nested markets. We then extend this analysis, firstly, by arguing that the construction of such new markets occurs through a process of social struggle and, secondly, by exploring the strength of these newly emerging constellations in relation to the hegemony exerted by food empires. Our analysis puts common-pool resources, which underlie these new, nested markets, centre stage.