Treaty Federalism in Northern Canada: Aboriginal-Government Land Claims Boards

Treaty federalism in North America encompasses not only governanceimplications of the historic treaties signed with Aboriginalpeoples, but also the modern-day treaties known as "comprehensiveland claim agreements." This article explores how treaty federalismis realized in Northern Canada through claims-mandated jointgovernment-Aboriginal boards dealing with wildlife management,land-use planning, and environmental protection. These boards,existing at the intersection of the three orders of government-national,federal/territorial, and Aboriginal—are found to be uniquegovernance institutions, with substantial independence fromgovernment. They have significantly enhanced Aboriginal peoples'influence over land, wildlife, and resource decisions, but theextent to which they bring Aboriginal culture and worldviewsto bear in decision-making remains an open question.     

The effectiveness of regulatory disclosure policies

Regulatory transparency—mandatory disclosure of information by private or public institutions with a regulatory intent—has become an important frontier of government innovation. This paper assesses the effectiveness of such transparency systems by examining the design and impact of financial disclosure, nutritional labeling, workplace hazard communication, and five other diverse systems in the United States. We argue that transparency policies are effective only when the information they produce becomes “embedded” in the everyday decision‐making routines of information users and information disclosers. This double‐sided embeddedness is the most important condition for transparency systems' effectiveness. Based on detailed case analyses, we evaluate the user and discloser embeddedness of the eight major transparency policies. We then draw on a comprehensive inventory of prior studies of regulatory effectiveness to assess whether predictions about effectiveness based on characteristics of embeddedness are consistent with those evaluations. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Intercepting Disgrace: Lacuna and “Letter to John Coetzee”

ABSTRACT

This review article examines two palimpsest rewritings of J. M.Coetzee’s canonical but controversial novel, Disgrace (1999). Both rewritings are by women: Lacuna, a novel published in 2019, is by a white South African woman, Fiona Snyckers, and “Letter to John Coetzee” takes the form of a short story by Michelle Cahill, a woman of color living in Australia, published in Cahill’s collection Letter to Pessoa (2016). The article uses Cahill’s coinage of “interceptionality” to discuss how dominant narratives may be disrupted and subverted, particularly when it comes to representing gender-based violence in the arts. It concludes with a discussion of South African artist Gabrielle Goliath’s exhibition, “This song is for … ” (2019).     

The Microbial Rosetta Stone database: A common structure for microbial biosecurity threat agents

Infectious microorganisms are important to multiple communities engaged in biodefense and biosecurity, including the agencies responsible for health, defense, law enforcement, agriculture, and drug and food safety. Many agencies have created lists of high priority infectious microorganisms to prioritize research efforts or to formally control the possession and distribution of specific organisms or toxins. However, the biological classification of infectious microorganisms is often complex and ambiguous, leading to uncertainty and confusion for scientists involved in biosecurity work. To address this problem, we created a database, known as the Microbial Rosetta Stone, which resolves many of these ambiguities and includes links to additional information on the microbes, such as gene sequence data and scientific literature. Here we discuss the efforts to coordinate organism names from pathogen lists from various governmental agencies according to biological relatedness and show the overlap of high-priority organisms from multiple agencies. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive coordination of pathogens, synonyms, and correct taxonomic names. The organized tables and visual aids are freely available at http://www.microbialrosettastone.com. This website provides a single location where access to information on a broad range of disease-causing organisms and toxins is available to members of the biosecurity community.     

Priming Unconscious Racial Stereotypes About Adolescent Offenders

Two studies examined unconscious racial stereotypes of decision makers in the juvenile justice system. Police officers (Experiment 1) and juvenile probation officers (Experiment 2) were subliminally exposed to words related to the category Black or to words neutral with respect to race. In a presumably unrelated task, officers read 2 vignettes about a hypothetical adolescent who allegedly committed either a property crime (shoplifting from a convenience store) or an interpersonal crime (assaulting a peer). The race of the offender was left unstated and the scenarios were ambiguous about the causes of the crime. Respondents rated the hypothetical offender on a number of traits (e.g., hostility and immaturity) and made judgments about culpability, expected recidivism, and deserved punishment. They also completed a self-report measure of conscious attitudes about race. As hypothesized, officers in the racial prime condition reported more negative trait ratings, greater culpability, and expected recidivism, and they endorsed harsher punishment than did officers in the neutral condition. The effects of the racial primes were not moderated by consciously held attitudes about African Americans. The implications of the findings for racial disparity in the juvenile justice system and for changing unconscious stereotypes were discussed.     

Unsuspected meningoencephalitis in a case of assault by blunt force trauma

Reported is a case of an assault causing extensive blunt force injuries in which the clinical, radiologic, and postmortem findings were all consistent with death resulting from brain damage arising from the assault. The assailant was charged with murder. Subsequent full neuropathologic (including histologic) examination revealed the unsuspected finding of a widespread meningoencephalitis but no evidence of significant traumatic brain damage. The contributions of the infective process and of the trauma to death were felt to be unclear and a guilty plea to attempted murder was accepted. This case highlights the importance of a full neuropathologic examination, including histology, in cases of trauma to the head, even when the cause of death may initially appear obvious.     

A potential metallographic technique for the investigation of pipe bombings

This study was conducted in an attempt to develop a metallographic method for the investigation of pipe bombings. Three common pipe materials, ASTM A53 steel, AISI 304L stainless steel, and 6061-T6 aluminum, were shock-loaded using five high explosives and three propellants. The explosives used were ANFO, Composition C4, C6 detasheet, nitroglycerine-based dynamite, and flake TNT. The propellants used were FFFFg black powder. Red Dot smokeless powder, and Turbo Fuel A. The post-blast microstructure, hardness, and, in the case of 304L, transformed martensite content were examined for each test. The damage done to the microstructure was found to increase with increasing detonation velocity of the explosives and increase in pressure generated by the shock-metal interaction. Material hardness and, in the case of 304L, martensite content showed a sharp increase followed by a plateau as the shock pressure and detonation velocity increased.