Party expenditure and electoral prospects: a national level analysis of Britain

The effectiveness of campaign spending is a hotly contested issue. Much of that debate concentrates upon predetermined or assumed campaign periods. Yet, in a party and electoral system such as Britain, parties are continually campaigning. Party expenditure may therefore have a constant and cumulative effect. This article examines whether increased party spending at the national level is electorally significant. It analyses annual data from 1959 to 1994 and concludes that there is insufficient consistent evidence wholly to support this proposition.     

Identification of a skeleton using DNA from teeth and a PAP smear.

Identification of unknown living or deceased persons using dental treatment records is an established forensic technique. However, some cases remain unidentified, especially when antemortem dental records are not available for comparison to postmortem dental records. Cytological smears have been previously reported to be potential sources of DNA reference samples which can be compared to DNA recovered from found human remains. The case described here involves an adult skeleton which exhibited extensive, complex dental restorative treatment. A putative identification of the found skeleton as a missing woman was established using circumstantial evidence found at the scene. However, it became important to establish a positive identification using reliable scientific methods. When it was discovered that antemortem dental records were not available because the treatment was completed in another country and the treating dentist could not be found, cytological smears stained with Papanicolaou (PAP) stain obtained from the putative decedent's medical records were used as a reference DNA sample. DNA was recovered from the teeth of the skeleton using cryogenic grinding. Comparison of the genotypes resulted in the conclusion that the DNA originated from the same source. The use of PAP smears in this way is seen as a valuable resource in cases where positive identification using traditional dental and medical records is not possible.     

Inferring ancestral origin using a single multiplex assay of ancestry-informative marker SNPs

Tests that infer the ancestral origin of a DNA sample have considerable potential in the development of forensic tools that can help to guide crime investigation. We have developed a single-tube 34-plex SNP assay for the assignment of ancestral origin by choosing ancestry-informative markers (AIMs) exhibiting highly contrasting allele frequency distributions between the three major population-groups. To predict ancestral origin from the profiles obtained, a classification algorithm was developed based on maximum likelihood. Sampling of two populations each from African, European and East Asian groups provided training sets for the algorithm and this was tested using the CEPH Human Genome Diversity Panel. We detected negligible theoretical and practical error for assignments to one of the three groups analyzed with consistently high classification probabilities, even when using reduced subsets of SNPs. This study shows that by choosing SNPs exhibiting marked allele frequency differences between population-groups a practical forensic test for assigning the most likely ancestry can be achieved from a single multiplexed assay.     

No room for Asia-Pacifists?

When this Journal decided to run a special issue on IP in theAsia-Pacific region, it was following the conventional wisdomof the profession and the marketplace. For many years, the conceptof the Asia-Pacific sold conferences and printed publications.And it was on this assumption that JIPLP based its decisionto give over its March issue for coverage of that zone. However,there comes a point in the life of     

Making the innocent pay

Even those of us who enter the legal profession for reasonsof personal advancement or greed can spot an injustice whenwe see it. As students and raw recruits to the profession, weshare with our clients the notion that, in any cause, one sideis ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong’. Toallow the party in the wrong to vanquish the party in the rightwould be unjust, notwithstanding the fact that the law permitsit. In time our perspective mellows: we learn to appreciatethat     

“What Are You Going to Do with the Village's Knowledge?” Talking Tradition,Talking Law in Hopi Tribal Court

Though the details of face-to-face talk and interaction have been studied in Anglo American and British courtrooms, few attempts have been made to extend similar analyses to the study of contemporary indigenous and (post)colonial legal institutions that continue to employ legal processes informed by both Anglo-style adversarial notions of law and "local" notions of law, culture, and tradition. Using methods of legal discourse analysis and language ideology studies, this article investigates how interlocutors in a hearing before the courts of the Hopi Indian Nation construct discourses of tradition and Anglo American jurisprudence in multiple and competing ways, and for significant sociopolitical effect. An argument is thus made for attending to the microdetails of sociolegal interactions as an important site for exploring the complex articulations between the contemporary lives of indigenous peoples and the laws with which they are imbricated.     

Exiled to Main Street: How government's use of social media diminishes public space

Public administrators have long treated their connections with citizens as tools for efficiently achieving results. As Dwight Waldo once commented, their key political concern has been, “How much democracy can we afford?” Increasing use of social media technologies appears to expand citizen input at greatly reduced cost. On the basis of phenomenological investigation of virtual citizen–government relationships, we argue that the political consequences of social media have yet to be noticed fully. Social media exile citizens to Main Street—everyday life—instead of fostering connections in public space.