A Bayesian approach to estimate skeletal age-at-death utilizing dental wear

In the forensic context, teeth are often recovered in mass disasters, armed conflicts, and mass graves associated with human rights violations. Therefore, for victim identification, techniques utilizing the dentition to estimate the first parameters of identity (e.g., age) can be critical. This analysis was undertaken to apply a Bayesian statistical method, transition analysis, based on the Gompertz-Makeham (GM) hazard model, to estimate individual ages-at-death for Balkan populations utilizing dental wear. Dental wear phases were scored following Smith's eight-phase ordinal scoring method and chart. To estimate age, probability density functions for the posterior distributions of age for each tooth phase are calculated. Transition analysis was utilized to generate a mean age-of-transition from one dental wear phase to the next. The age estimates are based on the calculated age distribution from the GM hazard analysis and the ages-of-transition. To estimate the age-at-death for an individual, the highest posterior density region for each phase is calculated. By using a Bayesian statistical approach to estimate age, the population's age distribution is taken into account. Therefore, the age estimates are reliable for the Balkan populations, regardless of population or sex differences. The results showed that a vast amount of interpersonal variation in dental wear exists within the current sample and that this method may be most useful for classifying unknown individuals into broad age cohorts rather than small age ranges.     

Domestic regulatory reform and transgovernmental networks: Brazil and China in the global competition regime

Developing countries increasingly participate in transgovernmental networks of global regulatory governance, but they do so in different ways. This article aims to provide an explanation for this variation for two of the major emerging powers in the world economy, Brazil and China, in their transition toward more active players in the global competition regime. Distinguishing between bilateral and multilateral transgovernmental networks and examining the domestic factors conditioning the transition of their national competition agencies from rule-takers to rule-promoters or rule-makers through these networks, the article makes theoretical contributions to the linkage between transgovernmentalism and the regulatory state. I argue that differing political needs and the incomplete process of regulatory state formation push domestic agencies to join transgovernmental networks, with a need for greater legitimacy steering the Brazilian regulators to multilateral networks and facilitating their transition from rule-takers to rule-promoters. The Chinese agencies' primary need for expertise rather than legitimacy, by contrast, led them to pursue technical assistance and cooperation via bilateral relationships. The Chinese approach has slowed its transition from rule-taker to rule-promoter where its norms and practices are aligned with the established powers. Such approach will further impede its transition into a global rule-maker in areas of competition law and policy where China's preferences diverge.     

Analysis of age-at-death estimation through the use of pubic symphyseal data

The question of whether age parameters derived from an American population will reliably estimate age-at-death for East European skeletal populations is important since the ability to accurately estimate an individual's age-at-death hinges on what standard is used. A reference sample of identified individuals with known ages-at-death from the regions of the Former Yugoslavia (n = 861) is used to determine the age structure of victims and serves as the prior in the Bayesian analysis. Pubic symphyseal data in the manners of Todd (Am J Phys Anthropol, 3 [1920], 285; Am J Phys Anthropol, 4 [1921], 1) and Suchey-Brooks (Am J Phys Anthropol, 80 [1986], 167) were collected for n = 296 Balkan males and females and for n = 2078 American males and females. An analysis of deviance is calculated using an improvement chi-square to test for population variation in the aging processes of American and East European populations using proportional odds probit regression. When males and females are treated separately, there is a significant association among females and the population (df = 1, chi-square likelihood ratio = 15.071, p = 0.001). New age estimates for Balkan populations are provided and are based on the calculated age distribution from the Gompertz-Makeham hazard analysis and the ages-of-transition. To estimate the age-at-death for an individual, the highest posterior density regions for each symphyseal phase are provided.     

反向传播神经网络用于牛黄解毒片的质量评价研究

目的：研究中成药牛黄解毒片的质量评价方法。方法：应用反向传播神经网络（ＢＰ神经网络）模型。结果：该分类结果与其它经典方法一致,识别准确率为１００％。结论：该方法具有较强的容错能力和较快的识别速度,简单易行,便于大规模的数据处理,也可用其它中成药的质量评价。     

指纹鉴定标准及鉴定结论概率化研究

指纹鉴定标准是指纹鉴定理论的核心内容之一.指纹鉴定理论和实践中形成的最低特征数量标准、质量—数量标准、面积—质量量化标准、拓扑学方法和标准、形态学方法和标准等均有其局限性.运用统计学理论和贝叶斯定理建立指纹鉴定结论概率化方法和评价标准,不仅在理论和实践上具有必要性和可行性,而且也可以避免指纹鉴定标准之争,使指纹鉴定从经验走向科学.通过统计每枚指纹平均细节特征数量和每类特征的出现率,可以计算出两枚指纹匹配的概率值,进而对概率结论的可靠性作出分析评断.     

Is the genie out of the bottle? Digital platforms and the future of clinical trials

Is it possible to conduct impartial clinical trials in a world full of digital networking tools that patients can use to coordinate themselves and act against research protocols? This paper builds on an ethnography of PatientsLikeMe, a company running an internet social media network where patients with different conditions share their clinical data with standardized questionnaires. The company faced a serious dilemma in 2011 when some ALS patients, members of the site, started sharing data about a phase II clinical trial of an experimental drug (NP001) in which some of them were participating, to anticipate the experiment’s outcomes and understand each one’s allocation over trial arms. In parallel, some other patients were using the site and other web tools to coordinate and run their own replication of the trial with homebrew mixes of industrial grade chemicals. PatientsLikeMe researchers reflected on their position as networks managers and eventually decided to use the collected data to develop their own analysis of the efficacy of the original compound, and of the homebrewers’ compound. They presented the NP001 events as a case in point for articulating a new social contract for clinical research. This paper analyses these events, first, by understanding the clinical trial as an experiment organization form that can succeed only as long as its protocol can be enforced; second, we observe how web networks make it dramatically easier for the trial protocol to be violated; finally, we point out how a potentially dangerous confluence of interests over web networks could incubate developments that disrupt the status quo without creating a robust and safe alternative for experimentation. We conclude by warning about the interests of the pharmaceutical industry in exploiting patients’ methodological requests to its own advantage.     

Collective Action,Civil Society,and Public Policy in Turkey

Abstract

Understanding policy change mechanisms has been a key question for scholars of public policy and collective action. However, policy scholarship mostly ignores civil society-based explanations of policy processes. In order to address this gap, this study combines the Advocacy Coalition Framework with networked collective action perspectives and analyzes a successful case of mobilization of women’s rights organizations in Turkey to reverse a bill on child marriage. Study findings suggest that advocacy coalitions are not static entities. When different issues in a policy subsystem are invoked, the structure of inter-coalition networks can change substantially and these variations in inter-coalition interactions may have consequences for influencing policy change. Moreover, this paper argues that extensive street protests and online campaigns by civil society organizations have the capacity to boost the bargaining power of minority coalitions, especially in contexts that lack multiple formal venues for making policy claims.     

Negotiating Umbrella Agreements

Experienced negotiators know that it is often impossible to define all terms of a complex agreement. By negotiating umbrella agreements, the negotiating parties try to balance the need for certainty and calculability of give-and-take processes with the need to remain sufficiently flexible to embrace new or emerging business opportunities. Umbrella agreements describe a joint consent that explicitly articulates a framework of rules and principles that guides future agreements. It is argued that negotiators are better able to maximize their joint gains if they differentiate between agreements and the framework in which agreements are made.     

Breaking boundaries,defying borders: transnational networks of gender and race in South Africa and the United States

Abstract

This special issue examines transnational connections and collaborations among women and People of Color from South Africa and the United States, from the late nineteenth to the beginning of the twenty-first century: it considers how connections were fostered and how ideologies travelled. Key figures include Emily Hobhouse, Charlotte Maxeke, Cecilia Lilian Tshabalala, Maude White Katz, Madie Hall-Xuma, Elizabeth Mafeking, Miriam Makeba, Gloria Steinem, and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Actively and symbolically, each of these non-state actors approached the relationship between the two nations differently, through political and religious affiliations, and as individuals and through organizations. Many challenged and transcended the restrictions imposed upon them officially, through state-sanctioned segregation and apartheid, but also socially, on account of their gender. These women fostered intellectual and social connections with each other, as well as for their nations, through interpersonal relationships and in print, but also simply – and perhaps most problematically – through abstracted ideas about humanitarianism, motherhood, apartheid, and nation. Such travels and intellectual journeys could prove both mutually beneficial and hierarchically imbalanced, but nonetheless reiterate the continued transnational relevance and resonances between South Africa and the United States.