The use of orthopedic surgical devices for forensic identification

Surgically implanted devices have become increasingly common in modern skeletal material. Therefore, having the knowledge of the variety of implanted orthopedic devices, their manufacturer, and where to find and how to use identifying numbers in such implants can assist in the identification process when traditional methods are not applicable. Orthopedic device manufacturers are required by the Safe Medical Devices Act of 1990 and the FDA Modernization Act of 1997 to track permanently implanted devices. Manufacturer information on orthopedic devices associates the orthopedic surgeon who implanted the device with the patient. By providing a current list of the most common orthopedic device manufacturers in the U.S.A. and the associated contact information, investigators will have updated tools for the individuation process. Despite numerous complicating factors regarding how device data are tracked, the information presented here can assist forensic professionals with obtaining presumptive and/or positive identifications.     

Social Science and the Public Interest

Social Science and the Public Interest

Social Science and the Public Interest May/June 2011     

Party system dynamics in post-war Japan: A quantitative content analysis of electoral pledges

Qualitative accounts of Japanese party politics allude to the standard left-right spectrum, but they invariably devote much more space to discussions of foreign policy differences than to socioeconomic conflict. Quantitative estimates of Japanese party positions treat short party responses to newspaper interviews as if they were true manifestos, and fail both to confirm the claims of the qualitative literature and to demonstrate any consistent basis for party differentiation at all. We address both puzzles by applying a text scaling algorithm to electoral pledges to estimate Japanese party positions on three major policy dimensions. Our analysis largely confirms the findings of the qualitative literature, but also offers new insights about party movement and polarization over time.     

Subnational electoral regimes and crisis recovery in Argentina and Mexico

The confluence of Latin America's volatile economic development patterns and transition to democracy has given rise to a proliferation of work on the national-level political causes and consequences of economic shocks and recovery rates. We explore the subnational electoral determinants of crisis recovery through analysis of growth rates in Mexico's thirty-one states and Argentina's twenty-three provinces following their economic declines of 2000–2002. Consistent with a theory that views intra-national variations in democracy as critical to understanding broader development patterns, we find that subnational electoral “regimes” significantly affect provincial recovery rates. Provinces that have an established electoral legitimacy prior to the onset of an economic shock, and those in which the governor enjoyed a substantial margin of victory, had significantly stronger recovery rates than those provinces stuck in a subnational regime transition with a sitting executive who lacked any claim to an electoral mandate.     

Dominican Party System Continuity amid Regional Transformations: Economic Policy,Clientelism, and Migration Flows

In the 1980s and 1990s, economic crisis produced ideological convergence in many Latin American party systems. Much scholarship explores how this convergence frequently provoked system change that enabled renewed ideological differentiation, but little research examines instances where convergence persisted without destabilizing the system. Through comparative historical analysis of Dominican continuity amid regional change, this study identifies factors that sustain or challenge party systems. Then, through analysis of Americas Barometer surveys, it assesses the causal mechanisms through which these factors shape support for the traditional Dominican parties. The findings demonstrate that maintaining programmatic and clientelist linkages facilitates continuity. In addition, the article argues that the threats political outsiders pose to existing party systems are constrained when people excluded from the system are divided and demobilized. In the Dominican case, Haitian immigration divides the popular sector while Dominicans abroad sustain ties to the parties, with both migration flows facilitating party system continuity.     

Institutional Foundations of Legislative Speech

Participation in legislative debates is among the most visible activities of members of parliament (MPs), yet debates remain an understudied form of legislative behavior. This study introduces a comparative theory of legislative speech with two major implications. First, party rules for debates are endogenous to strategic considerations and will favor either party leadership control or backbencher MP exposure. Second, in some systems, backbenchers will receive less time on the floor as their ideological distance to the party leadership increases. This leads to speeches that do not reflect true party cohesion. Where party reputation matters less for reelection, leaders allow dissidents to express their views on the floor. We demonstrate the implications of our model for different political systems and present evidence using speech data from Germany and the United Kingdom.     

Experimentalism in the EU: Common ground and persistent differences

Our central claim in this rejoinder is that experimentalist forms of organization in making regulatory rules, organizing social services, and articulating constitutional norms arise and diffuse as the problem that the actors and the state face shifts from ignorance to uncertainty. We argue that this has consequences for forms of accountability and for the conception and organization of democracy and constitutionalism. The EU, founded by diverse states in a period of continuing uncertainty, intensified by growing interdependence, proves to be a natural laboratory for observing urgent efforts to adjust to this new situation, and the symposium focuses on developments there. The symposium has brought us to see that there is more common ground in these debates than prior exchanges may have suggested. We therefore emphasize convergence on large points, while underscoring and, we hope, clarifying persistent differences, with the aim of encouraging the joint exploration of them already underway, in part explicitly, in part implicitly.     

Numerical classification of curvilinear structures for the identification of pistol barrels

This paper demonstrates a numerical pattern recognition method applied to curvilinear image structures. These structures are extracted from physical cross-sections of cast internal pistol barrel surfaces. Variations in structure arise from gun design and manufacturing method providing a basis for discrimination and identification. Binarised curvilinear land transition images are processed with fast Fourier transform on which principal component analysis is performed. One-way analysis of variance (95% confidence interval) concludes significant differentiation between 11 barrel manufacturers when calculating weighted Euclidean distance between any trio of land transitions and an average land transition for each barrel in the database. The proposed methodology is therefore a promising novel approach for the classification and identification of firearms.