Sexing of human clavicles using length and circumference measurements

Measurement of clavicular length and circumference, and computation of clavicular robustness and length-circumference product from 724 autopsied adults of known age, sex, and body length between the ages of 15 and 96 years produced useful sex-predictive values. This predominantly North American white population contained 560 males and 164 females with intact, nondeformed clavicles. Clavicle length and circumference and particularly their product have been found useful in sexing, but robustness as a single trait has not. Despite a significant overlap of male and female values, the use of single cutoff values allowed correct sex assignment of up to 93% of the entire study population, including 94% of males and 89% of females. The ratios of body length to clavicle circumference and to clavicle length are on average greater in women than in men. The former ratio yields male predictive values greater than 95% for those individuals with ratios falling below the cutoff value of 43, whereas the latter ratio is a relatively poor sex predictor.     

A Formula for Disaster: The Department of Homeland Security's Virtual Ontology

This paper focuses on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in order to theorise the spatialities of post-9/11 security knowledge and practice in the US. It analyses the organisational discourses that animate homeland security work, such as preparedness, vulnerability, the new threat environment, risk analysis and capabilities-based planning, and considers the implications of these practices for contemporary geographies of security. It is argued that DHS operates through a virtual ontology of threat, whereby potential, future threats are addressed as present possibilities that emerge in the spaces of everyday life. The sources of American freedoms and insecurities, the everyday, emerging circulations of goods and people, present DHS with a terrain of shifting threats from which both emergencies and preparedness may materialise. Disaster looming, the potential suspension of everyday life forms the basis for security practice as the emergency becomes a fact of life itself. The spatialities of this environment of imminent threat are considered and it is argued that the everyday emergency operates topologically as a continuous process of spatialisation.     

Legal consequences and ethical dilemmas of pain perception in persistent vegetative states

"Persistent vegetative state" (PVS) describes brain-damaged patients who survive their injuries in a sleeplike, insensible state, with periodic awakenings. Due to technological advances, such individuals can sustain biological existence for prolonged periods of time. Their existence results in a dichotomy between the legal and medical interpretations of persistent vegetative states, giving rise to ethical conflicts. The author reviews the limitations in our understanding of what PVS signifies for the afflicted individual, and explores the conflicts arising from such limitations that may impact an individual's right to live or die. The author concludes that the medical community has yet to adopt consistent clinical criteria to diagnose PVS and that a universal standard for PVS is needed to avoid the abuse of vegetative individuals' rights.     

What's the problem with gender-based analysis? Gender mainstreaming policy and practice in Canada

Abstract: Gender “mainstreaming” is an important concept in feminist politics because it integrates a gendered perspective into all policy- and decision-making. However, while most scholars agree that gender mainstreaming has the potential to transform social relations, to date it has been limited and delivered only marginal benefits for a few women. In the Canadian context, scholars have pointed to several contextual and conceptual issues that limit the transformative potential of gender-based analysis. While such studies have contributed to our understanding of the impacts of gender mainstreaming, the author suggests that we must also explore the creative or productive dimensions of mainstreaming. When we do so, we see that gender mainstreaming constructs a new form of worker: the “gender expert,” who is then given authority to analyse, monitor and suggest interventions based on “expert analysis.” From this perspective, gender analysis becomes a “technology of rule,” constructing gender experts whose power ultimately goes unscrutinized in the context of the organization, thus obscuring the ways in which gender systems are reproduced or fractured by gender mainstreaming itself. In closing, the author calls for a reorientation of gender mainstreaming, away from an analytic approach that focuses only on the instrumental effects of policies and towards an approach that illuminates both the instrumental and creative impacts of policies.     

Deregistration issues in the US for foreign private issuers

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. Key points

• While the passage of Sarbanes–Oxley in the USwas just one of the many causes for the lack of competitivenessof the US capital markets recently, it served to focus the attentionof foreign private issuers in the US on the difficulty and sometimesimpossibility of exiting the US capital markets.
• Unlike manyother jurisdictions, the process of deregistering in the USis distinct from process of delisting. The current rules forderegistration of foreign private issuers focus on the numberof US shareholders, regardless of how or where those shareholderspurchased their shares. In addition, foreign private issuers,were subject to complicated rules for counting US shareholders,and deregistration often would only suspend (not terminate)their reporting obligations.
• As a result of pressure from foreignprivate issuers, the SEC proposed new rules at the end of 2005to liberalize the existing deregistration regime for foreignprivate issuers. . . . [Full Text of this Article]