Customizing a commercial laboratory information management system for a forensic genetic laboratory

The need for high-throughput laboratories to comply with regulatory requirements makes data management an important aspect of forensic genetics. A Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) enables efficient workflows and ensures traceability if designed and implemented properly. We customized a commercial LIMS to support STR typing of reference samples according to in-house defined requirements. The customization focused on data validity, traceability and automated solutions.     

Gender-Based Violence Prevention Workshops: An Experimental Evaluation of Efficacy

Gender-based violence has become an increasingly visible and salient public problem. In the Fall of 2015, the University of Connecticut’s Violence Against Women Prevention Program (VAWPP) implemented interactive workshops in first-year experience (FYE) classes to reduce rape myth acceptance, improve knowledge and understanding of the University’s affirmative consent policy, and increase confidence in interpreting cues related to sexual consent. This randomized experimental design tested whether these outcomes were realized as a result of the workshops. In almost all instances, the workshops substantially and statistically significantly decreased students’ rape myth acceptance, increased their knowledge and understanding of consent, and improved their confidence in cue interpretation.     

The unintended consequence of doorstep consumer protection: surprise,reciprocation, and consistency

Cooling-off periods are universally employed in doorstep selling regimes. Paired with a right for consumers to withdraw from the contract, this legal instrument seeks to protect consumers against superior skilled and knowledgeable sellers thus restoring the balance of interests. According to prior literature, cooling-off periods also serve an economic function by moderating the abuse of market power, by mitigating problems of hidden characteristics, and by promoting consumer choice. If their drawbacks—mainly the creation of consumer moral hazard and shifting of risk to the seller—can be contained, cooling-off periods are hence supposed to yield efficiency gains. By thinking out of this box, the present paper showcases that cooling-off periods also establish the perverse incentive for the seller to increase consumer compliance to a level which outlasts the cooling-off period. I argue that inevitably occurring psychological factors and transaction costs from the cooling-off regime amplify each other, thus creating a hard-lock status-quo bias. Based on behavioural insights and transaction cost theory, I predict that an inefficiently high number of consumers will enter into a doorstep contract and that, at the same time, the number of cancelled contracts will be inefficiently low. Consequently, I propose to change the default inherent in current cooling-off regimes from presumed consent to presumed withdrawal in order to debias consumers’ withdrawal decision.     

The Influence of Jurisdiction Size and Sale Type on Municipal Bond Interest Rates: An Empirical Analysis

The authors use data on municipal bond sales in Oregon from 1994 to 1997 to explore whether population (as a proxy for financial-management capacity) and sale type (competitive or negotiated sale) influence interest rates. They find that smaller jurisdictions pay an interest cost penalty in the municipal bond market, and that competitive sales result in significantly lower interest rates compared to negotiated sales. The authors suggest that measures to enhance the financial-management capacity of small governments are warranted and that state laws requiring justification for negotiated sales are appropriate.     

China–Africa Cooperation: promises,practice and prospects

Chinese engagement in African states has increased tremendously over the last decade, much in line with Chinese globalisation strategies and supported by state encouragement and financial support. The size and potential of China as a world power leads to the level of expectations the country faces from the developing world. However, some elements of these expectations are also created through political discourses which emphasise differences with Western countries. The types of promises that the Chinese leadership makes to create such enthusiastic welcome amongst African political leaders are linked closely to the discourse on South–South cooperation. Albeit different from Western development assistance promises and parallel attempts to produce moderate expectations, the current discourse is thus partly sowing the seeds for future disappointment. This article takes a closer look at the discussions around South–South cooperation in China–Africa relations and at key rhetorical features (‘mutual benefit’; ‘non-interference’) and at the practice of this cooperation. It concludes that the Chinese discourse is creating large public expectations in African countries and while China delivers on many projects, its impact on development is less certain. The overall development success of this strategy builds on longer-term success and is implicitly linked to the occurrence of more reforms in Africa. Chinese policy thus ‘bets on the future’ in their foreign relations with Africa; the success of this strategy is dependent on political circumstances among the partners that are largely beyond Chinese control. In a number of cases, it can thus be expected that currently up-beat political rhetoric is going to meet obstacles that will require adjustments in a discourse that, in its current form, might undermine Chinese credibility if not the core elements of South–South cooperation altogether.     

Fatal poisoning in drug addicts in the Nordic countries.

The study includes medicolegally examined fatal poisonings among drug addicts in 1997 in the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and the results are compared to a similar investigation from 1991. A common definition of "drug addict" was applied by the participating countries.The highest death rate by poisoning in drug addicts was observed in Denmark, where it was 6.54 per 10(5)inhabitants, followed by Norway with 6.35, Sweden with 2.21, Finland with 1.63 and Iceland with 1.20 per 10(5)inhabitants. All countries showed a higher death rate in 1997 than in 1991. For all countries the distribution of deaths according to geographical regions showed a decreasing number of drug deaths in the metropolitan area and an increasing number in other cities. Heroin/morphine dominated as the cause of death and was responsible for about 90% of the cases in Norway. In Sweden and Denmark, however, heroin/morphine caused only about 70% of the fatal poisonings. About 30% of the fatal poisonings in Denmark and Sweden were caused by other group I drugs, in Denmark mainly methadone and in Sweden mainly propoxyphene. Apart from two cases in Sweden methadone deaths were not seen in the other Nordic countries. In Finland heroin/morphine deaths have increased from about 10% in 1991 to about 40% in 1997. Forty-four percent of the fatal poisonings in Finland were caused by other group I drugs, mainly codeine and propoxyphene. The two fatal poisonings in Iceland were caused by carbon monoxide. Only few deaths in this investigation were caused by amphetamine and cocaine. A widespread use of alcohol, cannabis and benzodiazepines, especially diazepam, was seen in all the countries.     

Power,Interests and Coalitions: the political economy of mass privatisation in Turkey

This article argues that ethnicity has become increasingly salient in Afghan politics and society during the years of war, and discusses how the country's new institutions can be designed in a way that will contribute towards a reversal of this trend. The article examines a series of policy issues with a bearing on inclusion vs exclusion in inter‐ethnic relations: political institution building (institutions of government, electoral system, and centre–region relations), land rights, state religion, the census and the new identity document. For each of these the article discusses what outcome would best contribute to longer‐term stability and integration by stimulating inclusive, integrative identities—and what the problems and prospects are for these outcomes to be realised. The article specifically discusses warlords' role as spoilers, and the potential and limitations to the leverage on Afghan politics that is held by international actors, above all the USA.     

Leaving Security in Safe Hands: identity,legitimacy and cohesion in the new Afghan and Iraqi armies

Built by outside powers and targeted against local insurgents, the new national armies of Afghanistan and Iraq are fragile institutions. The legitimacy of these forces is limited in the deeply divided societies in which they exist. Whereas low levels of legitimacy exert a disintegrative pressure upon an army, cohesion counterweighs such pressure. This article engages the theory of military unit cohesion for the purpose of increasing understanding of the challenges to cohesion faced by the new armies of Afghanistan and Iraq. Two main sources of legitimacy for the new armies are discussed: the (ethnic/sectarian) composition of the forces, and their respective missions. Challenges to cohesion are found to depend on how soldiers are recruited and units composed: ethnically/sectarian mixed units may disintegrate because of weak horizontal cohesion; homogeneous units (particularly when recruited as groups and not individually) may splinter off because of weak vertical cohesion. The article also argues that promoting an image of the army as ‘national’ within a society may reduce disintegrative pressures.     

Parliamentary Questions,Oversight, and National Opposition Status inthe European Parliament

This study examines when and why members of the European Parliament (EP) use parliamentary questions as a form of fire alarm oversight. We argue that the multilevel nature of the EU political system allows members of the EP from national opposition parties to use parliamentary questions to alert the European Commission to governments' failures to implement EU policy. Representation in the EP provides the only avenue for such oversight for national opposition parties. Using a new sample of EP parliamentary questions, we demonstrate that MEPs from national opposition parties are more likely to alert the Commission to violations of EU law in their own member states. These parliamentary questions may lead the Commission to take legal action against member‐state governments.