Tlatelolco's Persistent Legacy: A Comparative Analysis of Three Mexican Novels

This article analyses how three Mexican novels, published between 1971 and 1999, respond to the effects of political violence on national identity. It focuses particularly on fictional representations of state-sponsored, politically motivated murder and on how survivors negotiate a social space forever changed by unsolved crimes. The article concludes that an important consequence of political violence is that it undermines the validity of systems of representation that once seemed capable of portraying the national community. Each of the three novels interpreted here adopts a different stance regarding literary language's relationship to its ever-changing sociopolitical contexts.     

Optimization of a Statistical Algorithm for Objective Comparison of Toolmarks

Due to historical legal challenges, there is a driving force for the development of objective methods of forensic toolmark identification. This study utilizes an algorithm to separate matching and nonmatching shear cut toolmarks created using fifty sequentially manufactured pliers. Unlike previously analyzed striated screwdriver marks, shear cut marks contain discontinuous groups of striations, posing a more difficult test of algorithm applicability. The algorithm compares correlation between optical 3D toolmark topography data, producing a Wilcoxon rank sum test statistic. Relative magnitude of this metric separates the matching and nonmatching toolmarks. Results show a high degree of statistical separation between matching and nonmatching distributions. Further separation is achieved with optimized input parameters and implementation of a “leash” preventing a previous source of outliers—however complete statistical separation was not achieved. This paper represents further development of objective methods of toolmark identification and further validation of the assumption that toolmarks are identifiably unique.     

Prices,Devices, People,or Rules: The Relative Effectiveness of Policy Instruments in Water Conservation1

Water conservation policy is a natural laboratory for addressing general issues of relevance to policy analysis and public administration, particularly the relative effectiveness of policies in changing human behavior. Using multivariate regression analysis of a dataset comprised of more than 200,000 monthly observations of more than 19,000 household accounts over six years, this paper makes three main contributions. First, it contributes to the substantive area of water conservation policy by analyzing what works. Second, it contributes to our understanding of generic policy instruments. Third, it raises an important issue regarding standard assumptions about selection bias. The results support earlier work warning that offsetting behavior can negate engineering solutions to policy problems, but further indicate that adding communication to engineering solutions can create cooperation that overcomes offsetting behavior. They also provide evidence that appropriate regulation can be effective, and that pricing can be effective even when price elasticities of demand are low.