Geographic Variation in Zygomaxillary Suture Morphology and its Use in Ancestry Estimation

Angled/curved zygomaxillary suture coding is widely employed in cranial assessments of ancestry. However, the efficacy of this method has not been extensively evaluated across diverse populations. In this study, zygomaxillary suture morphology was assessed on a total of 411 human crania from six populations (European, Native American, African, Asian, Arctic Circle, and Aboriginal Australian) using a novel 3D coordinate landmark method. Our results indicate a predominance of angled sutures among native peoples of the Arctic and North America (85–86%), a prevalence of curved sutures among Africans and Aboriginal Australians (77–81%), and essentially equal proportions of both configurations in Asians and Europeans (50–56%). Statistically, angled/curved coding generally discriminates poorly between groups, except when populations with antithetically high frequencies of the two configurations (e.g., African vs. Native American) are compared. Moreover, comparisons across previous studies reveal conflicting frequencies for many populations, further suggesting limited utility of this trait in ancestry estimation.     

Prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence Victimization and Victims’ Relational and Sexual Well-Being

Research shows that experiences with intimate partner violence (IPV) harm victims’ individual well-being. Surprisingly, little is known about how IPV might impact on victims’ well-being at the relationship level. Based on a population-based study in Flanders (the Northern part of Belgium), this study concentrates on how lifetime experience with IPV impacts on victims’ relational and sexual well-being with their current partner. Ten percent of the population was confronted with physical violence and 56.7 % with psychological violence. Higher levels of IPV victimization corresponded with an adverse mental, relational (relationship satisfaction, attachment), and sexual (sexual satisfaction, sexual dysfunction, sexual communication) well-being in both women and men but except for the latter correlates, the effects were more pronounced for women than for men.     

Improving legal quality—a knowledge engineering approach

Many legislation drafting departments at the different ministries have their own quality insurance techniques. Furthermore in many cases the Ministry of Justice has a special role because it is usually responsible for the overall legal quality of a country. Despite all the effort that has been spent on improving legal quality using traditional measurements, such as co‐reading (peer reviewing etc.) many anomalies can still be found in recently drafted legislation. The situation is even worse in situations when existing legislation is adapted. This paper will show how a systematic approach that has its origins in knowledge engineering can help to improve legal quality. This approach was developed in the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration (DTCA) (in Dutch: Belastingdienst) and offers both a method and supporting tools that support a systematic translation of (new) legislation into the administrations' processes. This method—called the POWER‐method—not only helps to improve the quality of (new) legislation. It also supports codification of the legal knowledge into procedures, computer programs and other designs. One of the advantages thereof is the reduction of the time‐to‐market of the implementation of legislation and its increased transparency (which will lead to reduced maintenance costs). Focus will be placed on legal quality improvement and knowledge representation techniques that are used to enable this will be explained. In contrast to other knowledge modeling approaches, the POWER‐approach is focused on modeling legal sources rather than expert knowledge. Expert knowledge of course is indispensable to find the correct interpretations and also for efficiency reasons. Starting with representing the (legal) experts' knowledge (using scenarios) helps to find the adequate scope (the legal sources to be analyzed). Confronting the expert with differences between the models built out of the experts' knowledge and the conceptual models constructed of the other knowledge sources (specifically the law) causes the legal experts to see things in a different light and has often led to changes in the law.