Distinguishing Between Legally and Illegally Produced Gold in South Africa

The identification of gold‐bearing material is essential for combating the theft of gold in South Africa. Material seized in police operations is generally a mixture of gold from different mines, and as such cannot be traced back to a single location. ICP‐OES analysis of material dissolved by acid dissolution provided a database of gold compositions comprising gold from South African mines, illegal gold stolen from the mines, and commercial gold alloys and jewelery. Discrimination between legal and illegal gold was possible due to the presence of Pb, As, Sb, Sn, Se, and Te in the stolen material, elements which are not present in legally produced gold. The presence of these elements is a quick and simple way to distinguish between gold alloys based on refined gold, such as in commercially manufactured jewelery, and gold alloys containing a proportion of unrefined and therefore illegally obtained gold.     

Long‐term Geophysical Monitoring of Simulated Clandestine Graves using Electrical and Ground Penetrating Radar Methods: 4–6 Years After Burial

This ongoing monitoring study provides forensic search teams with systematic geophysical data over simulated clandestine graves for comparison to active cases. Simulated “wrapped,” “naked,” and “control” burials were created. Multiple geophysical surveys were collected over 6 years, here showing data from 4 to 6 years after burial. Electrical resistivity (twin electrode and ERI), multifrequency GPR, grave and background soil water were collected. Resistivity surveys revealed that the naked burial had low‐resistivity anomalies up to year four but then difficult to image, whereas the wrapped burial had consistent large high‐resistivity anomalies. GPR 110‐ to 900‐MHz frequency surveys showed that the wrapped burial could be detected throughout, but the naked burial was either not detectable or poorly resolved. 225‐MHz frequency GPR data were optimal. Soil water analyses showed decreasing (years 4 to 5) to background (year 6) conductivity values. Results suggest both resistivity and GPR surveying if burial style unknown, with winter to spring surveys optimal and increasingly important as time increases.     

Damned If You Do and Damned If You Don’t: Title VII and Public Employee Promotion Disparate Treatment and Disparate Impact Litigation

What has been the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in Ricci v. Destefano on the selection and promotion practices of public employers?; Relying solely on circumstantial evidence, the Supreme Court held that the Civil Service Board of New Haven, Connecticut, had engaged in Title VII disparate treatment discrimination by refusing to certify the results of a promotion examination that led, in turn, to a disparate impact on African American firefighters. To limit the discretion of public employers to disregard such selection and promotion exam results, the Ricci majority held that a public employer must “have a strong basis in evidence to believe it will be subject to disparate‐impact liability if it fails to the take the race‐conscious discriminatory action.” This article argues that the decision effectively prohibits public employers from rejecting the results of selection and promotion instruments, even though there is evidence that screening instruments inequitably affect protected groups. It also forces public employers to become more careful in developing selection and promotion examinations or face the possibility of costly Title VII litigation.     

Spanning “Bleeding” Boundaries: Humanitarianism,NGOs, and the Civilian‐Military Nexus in the Post–Cold War Era

How do nongovernmental (NGO), international (IO), and military organizations cope with their dependencies and address their perceptual and real differences in order to coordinate their field operations? This question is addressed through the creation of a matrix grouping civilian (NGOs and IOs) and military operations into four general types: peacekeeping; disaster relief; complex humanitarian emergencies/warfare; and stabilization and reconstruction. Second, using Galbraith's information processing approach to organizational design, a range of formal coordination mechanisms that organizations use at the strategic and operational levels to help them cope with their dependencies in different field operations is identified. Third, the author underscores how communities of practice are emerging as informal mechanisms of coordination among civilian and military organizations. And finally, a framework of organizational forms that views communities of practice as an alternative to hierarchy and markets is offered. Believing communities of practice hold the most promise for coordination in the human security domain when hierarchies are politically untenable and markets lack accountability, the author concludes with implications for interorganization coordination research and practice.     

The Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool: a new framework for measuring rural poverty

The Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool (MPAT) measures fundamental dimensions of rural poverty in order to support poverty-alleviation efforts in the less developed world. This article's primary purpose is to introduce MPAT and describe its theoretical rationale. It begins with an overview of the importance of creating enabling environments for rural poverty alleviation before describing MPAT's purpose and structure. The article goes on to address some of the advantages and shortcomings of surveys and indicators as means of measuring poverty, and concludes with a few caveats on using MPAT, and a focus on its added value to practitioners and academics.     

What Is The Wrong Of Wrongful Disability? From Chance To Choice To Harms To Persons

The issue of wrongful disability arises when parents face the choice whether to produce a child whose life will be unavoidably flawed by a serious disease or disorder (Down syndrome, for example, or Huntington’s disease) yet clearly worth living. The authors of From Chance to Choice claim, with certain restrictions, that the choice to produce such a child is morally wrong. They then argue that an intuitive moral approach––a “person-affecting” approach that pins wrongdoing to the harming of some existing or future person––cannot account for that wrong since the choice to produce such a child cannot, under the logic of the nonidentity problem, harm that child. The authors propose that we supplement the person-affecting approach with an “impersonal” principle that takes the form of their well-known principle N. In this paper, I argue that the authors are mistaken to suppose that a plausibly articulated person-affecting approach cannot account for the wrong of wrongful disability. We can retain an intuitive, comparative, “worse for” account of harm and still identify serious harms imposed by the choice of wrongful disability. In particular, I argue that harm, both to the impaired child and to others, comes not in the form of that procreative choice’s procreative effect but rather in the form of its many distributive effects. I also argue that the rare, residual case in which a person-affecting approach would approve of the choice of wrongful disability does not function as a counterexample to that approach. As a separate matter, I address legal claims for wrongful disability, which are closely akin to claims for wrongful life. The legal claim is brought by the impaired child, not against the parents, but rather against health care providers whose negligent failure to diagnose or inform parents of an increased risk of a genetic or congenital impairment results in the birth of the impaired child. The authors’ treatment of the moral wrong that is done as impersonal in nature suggests that courts are correct to dismiss any such claim. Once we identify harm, however, the person-affecting approach can identify a clear foundation in the law for the wrongful disability claim.