Reflections on the Olivetti Papers

Editor's Note: Professor Salvemini, professor of economics at the University of Bari and advisor to the Italian Minister of the Treasury, attended the Olivetti Conference on Budgetary problems in the fall of 1981. Papers from the conference were published in the Autumn 1982 issue of this journal. After reviewing both the conference proceedings and the papers published in Public Budgeting & Finance , Professor Salvemini has provided some further reflections and thoughts on the ideas presented at that conference.     

The frontier revisited: displacement,land and identity among farm labourers in the Sundays River Valley

This paper aims to unpack the dynamics of displacement and the relationship of physical movement to elements of space (i.e. land) and place (or identity), in the Sundays River Valley, near the town of Kirkwood, in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. It primarily uses the motif of frontiers to cast light on displacement as an ongoing phenomenon and explore the different eras of occupation of land in the Sundays River Valley, from the early nineteenth century until 1970. It relates different layers of belonging and identity to the unfolding of capitalism and apartheid in South Africa. The article argues that ties to land are multiple, contested and based upon dispossession and physical movement rather than upon stability. While such a high degree of contestation of oral evidence in the Sundays River Valley might not give current claimants a detailed legal basis for restitution, it is an academically valuable idea to explore the origins of the inhabitants in the Sundays River Valley – because it can indicate the degree to which local identities are influenced by experiences of disruption and displacement. The paper argues that frontier relationships in the SRV are central in the formation of larger systems of relationships of race and class, and that this casts new light on displacement (both as a historical event and a contemporary experience), in the formation of identity and place in southern Africa.     

Development of an Index of Subsidized Housing Availability and its Relationship to Housing Insecurity

Housing insecurity is a known threat to child health understanding predictors of housing insecurity can help inform policies to protect the health of young children in low-income households. This study sheds light on the relationship between housing insecurity and availability of housing that is affordable to low-income households.

We developed a county-level index of availability of subsidized housing needed to meet the demand of low-income households. Our results estimate that if subsidized units are made available to an additional 5% of the eligible population, the odds of overcrowding decrease by 26% and the odds of families making multiple moves decrease by 31%. Both of these are known predictors of poor child health outcomes. Thus, these results suggest that state and federal investments in expanding the stock of subsidized housing could reduce housing insecurity and thereby also improve the health and well-being of young children, including their families' food security status.     

Reducing Domestic Violence and Improving Outcomes for Children: Funding Civil Legal Aid to Maximize Impact

Domestic violence survivors and children in foster care often experience significant unmet civil legal needs. Legal aid services, when adequately funded, can help close the justice gap for these two populations while improving safety, stability, and court efficiencies. However, despite ample literature demonstrating how legal aid can improve outcomes, almost half of those seeking legal aid services are turned away due to lack of resources. This article reviews the research and data about how legal aid can improve outcomes for people in the domestic violence and child welfare contexts. It also discusses how several state‐administered federal funding opportunities—including the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) Victim Assistance Formula Grant Program, Title IV‐D child support funds, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) basic block grants—can fund the needed civil legal help.     

Preliminary results of an investigation on postmortem variations in human skeletal mass of buried bones

Extreme fragmentation can complicate the inventory of human skeletal remains. In such cases, skeletal mass can provide information regarding skeleton completeness and the minimum number of individuals. For that purpose, several references for skeletal mass can be used to establish comparisons and draw inferences regarding those parameters. However, little is known about the feasibility of establishing comparisons between inherently different materials, as is the case of curated reference skeletal collections and human remains recovered from forensic and archaeological settings. The objective of this paper was to investigate the effect of inhumation, weather and heat exposure on the skeletal mass of two different bone types. This was investigated on a sample of 30 human bone fragments (14 trabecular bones and 16 compact bones) that was experimentally buried for two years after being submitted to one of four different heat treatments (left unburned; 500?°C; 900?°C; 1000?°C). Bones were exhumed periodically to assess time-related mass variation. Skeletal mass varied substantially, decreasing and increasing in accordance to the interchanging dry and wet seasons. However, trends were not the same for the two bone types and the four temperature thresholds. The reason for this appears to be related to water absorption and to the differential heat-induced changes in bone microporosity, volume, and composition. Our results suggest that mass comparisons against published references should be performed only after the skeletal remains have been preemptively dried from exogenous water.     

Repeat Coronary Artery Dissection in Pregnancy: A Case Report and Review of the Literature

Non‐atherosclerotic spontaneous coronary artery dissection (NA‐SCAD) is a rare cause of morbidity and mortality with a propensity for young, healthy, and often peripartum women. NA‐SCAD etiology is poorly understood, with possible hormonal and hereditary mechanisms. Current treatment strategies range from conservative management (often showing resolution on angiographic follow‐up) to invasive angiographic procedures. Rarely, NA‐SCAD has recurred in another coronary artery, ranging hours to years later. We report NA‐SCAD of the right coronary artery (RCA) in a 30‐year old, 3‐month postpartum female with an additional autopsy finding of remote myocardial infarction (MI) in the left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery territory. The remote MI is consistent with prior NA‐SCAD of the LAD and, given the medical history, may have occurred in the peripartum period of the decedent first pregnancy 3 years earlier. As such, to the best of our knowledge, this may represent the first reported case of NA‐SCAD recurrence in a subsequent pregnancy.     

Application of three spectrometric methods to total selenium determination in postmortem material in a case of acute selenium compound poisoning

Three spectrometric methods, that is, spectrofluorimetry (SF), atomic absorption spectrometry with electrothermal atomization (ET-AAS), and atomic fluorescence spectrometry with hydride generation (HG-AFS) were used for the determination of total selenium in biological samples taken from postmortem material in a case of acute selenium compound poisoning. The precision of the SF, ET-AAS, and HG-AFS methods (RSD, n=10) was found to be in the ranges of 10.0-15.0, 3.0-6.0 and 1.0-1.5%, respectively, and the detection limit was 10.0, 4.0, and 0.1 μg/L of Se, respectively. In the case of HG-AFS, the analytical procedure takes less time and is less laborious than the other methods considered. The obtained results show the usefulness of the HG-AFS method as a supplementary analytical tool to the SF and ET-AAS methods with respect to the determination of selenium as well as the possibility of using this method as a primary one in forensic toxicology practice.     

Temporal variation of oxygen isotope ratios (δ18O) in drinking water: implications for specifying location of origin with human scalp hair

Previous work suggests that δ(18)O values of human hair can be used to constrain the region-of-origin of unknown individuals, but robust assessments of uncertainties in this method are lacking. Here we assess one source of uncertainty - temporal variation in the δ(18)O value of drinking water - using a monthly tap water survey of δ(18)O to develop geospatial models (i.e., maps) of the intra-annual variation (seasonality) in tap water δ(18)O for the contiguous USA. Temporal variation in tap water δ(18)O was correlated with water-supply type, and was related to geographic patterns of precipitation δ(18)O seasonality and water residence time. The maps were applied in a Bayesian framework to identify the geographic origin of an unidentified woman found in Utah, based on measured δ(18)O of scalp hair. The results are robust in specifying parts of the western USA as the most likely region-of-origin. Incorporation of tap water δ(18)O seasonality in the analysis reduces the precision of geographic assignments, but other sources of uncertainty (e.g., spatial interpolation uncertainty) have an equal or larger effect.