The impact of force,time, and rotation on the transfer of ammonium nitrate: A reductionist approach to understanding evidence dynamics

Empirical studies evaluating the conditions under which the transfer of forensic materials occurs can provide contextual information and offer insight into how that material may have been transferred in a given scenario. Here, a reductionist approach was taken to assess the impact of force, time, and rotation on the transfer of an explosive compound. An Instron ElectroPuls E3000 material testing instrument was used to bring porous and non-porous surfaces adulterated with an ammonium nitrate into direct contact with a human skin analogue, controlling for the force of contact, duration of contact, and rotation applied during contact. Quantifiable amounts of ammonium nitrate were recovered from all of the recipient surfaces demonstrating that ammonium nitrate is readily transferred from one surface to another, even when contact occurs for a short duration with a relatively low force. More particulates were transferred from non-porous surfaces onto the human skin analogue, but the amount of ammonium nitrate transferred did not depend upon the force of contact, duration of contact, or the amount of rotation applied. However, when contact occurred and involved rotation, a greater transfer of ammonium nitrate was observed, compared to those contacts occurring without rotation being applied. This approach complements more commonly-used holistic experiments that test multiple interacting variables in a realistic setting by isolating these variables, allowing them to be examined individually. This can be utilised to better understand the individual impact that specific variables have on the transfer of trace evidence in relevant crime reconstruction contexts.     

Federal dynamics in times of economic and financial crisis

The global economic and financial crisis is a challenge for all governments, but particularly for federal states because divided and/or shared territorial powers make federations susceptible to coordination problems in fiscal policy making. This article explores the effects of the ongoing crisis on federal relations. Three kinds of problems that may become the cause of federal tensions and conflicts are evoked: opportunism of subgovernments, centralisation and erosion of solidarity among members of the federation. Our analysis of fiscal policies and federal conflicts of 11 federations between 2007 and the present reveals three kinds of coordination problems: shirking in the use of federal government grants, rent‐seeking in equalisation payments, and over‐borrowing and over‐spending. Our results show that shirking remained limited to few cases and occurred only in the first part of the crisis. However, rent‐seeking and over‐borrowing and over‐spending led to a reduction of solidarity among subgovernments and to increased regulation of the fiscal discretion of the members of the federation. Subsequently, tensions in federal relations increased – although only in one case did this challenged the federal order.     

Application of Volume‐of‐Fluid Method to Analyze the Viscosity Effect on the Spine Formation of Bloodstains

In bloodstain pattern analysis, the blood droplet volume and surface impact velocity play an important role, and many related experimental studies have been carried out. If an appropriate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model that could solve bloodstain patterns, especially spine formation bloodstain patterns, can be obtained, the blood droplet volume and impact speeds at various crime scenes can be predicted more accurately. For this purpose, Flow‐3D software using the volume‐of‐fluid method was applied to analyze the behavior of human blood droplets during an impact event, especially focusing on the viscous effect on splashing, which forms the spine which can be used to predict the impact velocity. To obtain a non‐Newtonian viscosity model of blood for a computational fluid dynamic analysis, the venous blood samples of 163 people were tested using a hemorheology instrument. Among the venous blood samples of 163 people, 37 samples for which all blood test results were in a normal range were selected for the non‐Newtonian viscosity modeling. From the CFD analysis, it could be concluded that a non‐Newtonian viscosity model is more appropriate than a constant viscosity model for predicting splashing that forms the spine. The gradient of the non‐Newtonian model at a high shear rate has more of an effect on spine formation than that at a low shear rate. The lowest viscosity with a high velocity at the outer front of the radiating flow plays an important role in forming the splashing pattern.     

Political Failure by Agreement: Learning Liberalism and the Welfare State,by Gerhard Wegner

This article explores the validity of the view that collaboration contributes to public value. The analysis is conceptual and uses graphs to develop a formal statement of public value, collaboration, and government dynamics. The concept of the reason-able person is introduced. The ideal state, the ideal partnership, and conditions for collaboration to contribute to public value are derived. Benefit, support, and acceptability are shown to be necessary conditions for public value to be generated by collaboration. These conditions are shown to link to concepts of management, politics, and public administration.     

Cultural dimensions of South African employees and internal organisational communication satisfaction

Abstract

This article aims to help communication practitioners know which cultural dimensions are associated with communication satisfaction. The meta-theoretical framework is the Excellence Theory of Public Relations and Communication Management (Dozier, Grunig and Grunig 1995, 35). The conceptual theoretical framework; cultural dimensions by Geert Hofstede (Hofstede and Hofstede 2005, 39) and communication satisfaction by Downs and Hazen (1977, 68) and Gray and Laidlaw (2004, 427) fit into the Excellence Theory of Public Relations and Communication Management. The research design was a quantitative survey with an online questionnaire as a data collection method distributed among a random sample. Validity was improved through pilot tests and the sampling technique. In terms of reliability this survey's scores sufficed as accurate and consistent, scoring above the acceptable score of 0.7 (Van Heerden 2001); 0.72 for national culture and 0.83 for communication satisfaction. Regression analysis was used to analyse the relationship between cultural dimensions (independent variables) and communication satisfaction (dependent variable). The findings clearly showed that national cultural dimensions have significant relationships with communication satisfaction. The implication was that internal communication practitioners could now be informed about the dynamics of the interaction between the cultural dimensions prevalent amongst South African employees and internal organisational communication satisfaction.     

Evolution of a drug trafficking network: Mapping changes in network structure and function across time

There is a growing body of research using social network analysis to study criminal networks. The great majority of this research examines networks at a single time point. Although there are theoretical approaches which hypothesise on how criminal networks develop and grow, little empirical research has been conducted on the growth of criminal networks over time. This project documents the growth of a drug trafficking network. The aims were to examine and describe structural and functional changes in a criminal network across time. We found that the density of the network remained somewhat stable over time, although the network became more decentralised at the final time point measured. Centrality scores for individual nodes showed significant changes over time. Individuals changed the roles performed across time, consistent with the changing needs and focus of the network. Overall, our results support the characterisation of networks as flexible and adaptive.     

Regulating finance after the crisis: Unveiling the different dynamics of the regulatory process

It is now widely recognized that regulatory failures contributed to the onset of the global financial crisis. Redressing such failures has, thus, been a key policy priority in the post‐crisis reform agenda at both the domestic and international levels. This special issue investigates the process of post‐crisis financial regulatory reform in a number of crucial issue areas, including the rules and arrangements that govern financial supervision, offshore financial centers and shadow banking, the financial industry's involvement in global regulatory processes, and macroeconomic modeling. In so doing, the main purpose of this special issue is to shed light on an often understudied aspect in regulation literature: the variation in the dynamics of regulatory change. Contributors examine the different dynamics of regulatory change observed post‐crisis and explain variations by accounting for the interaction between institutional factors, on the one hand, and the activity of change agents and veto players involved in the regulatory reform process, on the other.     

Foreign minister's budget vote address

This article examines the evolution of the responsibility to protect (R2P) norm through the institutional frameworks of the African Union and the United Nations. The investigation aligns itself with recent constructivist thinking around norm evolution and contestation which holds that diverging interpretations around norms facilitate not only norm contestation, but ultimately norm acceptance. In this case different ‘meanings-in-use’ of R2P within and across both organisations reinforce the contested nature of R2P. This becomes most apparent in the prevailing confusion around the affiliated concept of the protection of civilians, which is not effectively delineated from R2P. Nevertheless R2P is found to be widely acknowledged within both organisations.     

Development Made Sexy: how it happened and what it means

This article examines the recent trend among Northern development organisations to represent development as sexy in awareness and fundraising campaigns. The article argues that the ways in which development organisations represent the global South and development work play an important role in the construction of social power relations between people in the global North and the global South. The representation of development as sexy is compared and contrasted to other representations of development that highlight scarcity and deprivation. The article argues that, although the representation of development as sexy avoids portrayals of poor people in the global South as helpless victims, it presents an image of development in which the most important form of agency is Northern charity.