A Test of Competing Hypotheses about Homicide Following Terrorist Attacks: An Interrupted Time Series Analysis of September 11 and Oklahoma City

There is substantial evidence that catastrophic events, including terrorist attacks, lead to increased levels of post-traumatic stress, especially in communities in close proximity to the incident. Some scholars also argue that these events disrupt social organization. On the other hand, many contend that these incidents produce social cohesion as community members coalesce to help each other in time of need. These ideas have resulted in competing hypotheses in the literature. The first is that violence will increase in the wake of catastrophic events due to heightened levels of individual stress and community disorganization. The second is that violence will decline after these events because of increased social cohesion, especially in the face of an outside threat. In order to test these competing hypotheses, we employed autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) techniques to model the impact of the Oklahoma City bombing and the September 11 attacks on monthly homicide counts at the local, state, and national level. Unlike prior studies that provided evidence of an effect but did not use rigorous time-series techniques, we found no support for either of the competing hypotheses. We conclude that while such catastrophic events may have an effect on individual and collective efficacy well beyond the immediate impact of the incidents, these effects are not strong enough to influence homicide rates. An erratum to this article can be found at     

小白鼠肝脏5’—核苷酸酶活力与死亡时间的关系

小白鼠死亡后，肝脏不离体恒温保存，定时定量制备肝浸出液为酶样品，催化5’-腺苷酸（5’AMP）生成腺苷和无机磷酸，后者在还原利存在下与钼酸试剂发生蓝色反应，其颜色深度与磷酸含量成正比。用722型分光光度计测定光密度（OD值），计算酶活力。在三种温度下，经5次重复实验，发现小白鼠死亡后在3O℃12小时、18℃21小时、7℃24小时，其酶活力降低均呈明显的规律性。说明此酶用于一定温度和时间范围内的死亡时间推断具有参考价值。     

Negotiating constitutions for political unions

This paper provides a cradle-to-grave model of political merger between two states and highlights the role of cross-border disparities in material and technological endowments in state formation. This issue has not received adequate theoretical attention in the existing scholarship that has largely focussed on factors like defence, trade, and public goods provision. In this paper, merger negotiations are modelled using a bilateral bargaining model with inside options and contest as an outside option. It is shown that the threat of contest constrains the set of mutually acceptable taxes and, more importantly, it provides stability to the federal constitution by making the punishment strategy in the secession rule credible. The existence of negotiated and contested constitutional merger agreements that are path dependent but time-consistent is shown. Also, the rent extracted by the advanced province in the union for transferring technology to the backward province is shown to be increasing in the complexity of technology but bounded from above. Finally, the impact of demographic heterogeneity on the feasibility of inter-state mergers is discussed.     

Latent Fingerprint Visualization using a Scanning Kelvin Probe in Conjunction with Vacuum Metal Deposition

The application of vacuum metal deposition before scanning Kelvin probe visualization of fingerprints is investigated. The potential contrast between fingerprint ridges and furrows is maximized by the use of silver deposition for non‐noble metals and gold–zinc deposition for noble metals. The higher susceptibility of eccrine fingerprints to vacuum metal overdeposition is confirmed. Additionally, fingerprints are best developed individually and by building the metal deposition slowly to protect against overdevelopment and variation in the rate of metal condensation. The progress of the metal deposition can be monitored using the scanning Kelvin probe by reference to the change in potential and continuity of the new potential on the surface. The use of acetic acid solution for the recovery of overVMD‐developed samples is shown not to be useful. Applying the metal deposition has the additional prospect of increasing surface conductivity and homogeneity and both can aid fingerprint visualization using the scanning Kelvin probe.     

论党员监督权

党员享有监督权是党员进行党内民主监督的前提。党员监督权包括批评权、检举权和要求罢免权。党员监督权具有工具性、综合性、重合性等特征,具有评价、免疫、善事、防变等功能。保障党员有效行使监督权,对于反腐防变具有重要意义。     

Forensic or Archaeological Issue: Is Chemical Analysis of Dental Restorations Helpful in Assessing Time Since Death and Identification of Skeletonized Human Remains?

In 2011, small mass grave with completely skeletonized remains was discovered in Belgrade suburb. An eyewitness claimed that skeletons belonged to German soldiers killed in WWII. Anthropologists were engaged to investigate whether the skeletal remains correspond to the indicated German group or represent more recent case requiring court trial. Numerous dental restorations were noticed. Owing to the fact that different dental materials were used in dental practice at certain times, the aim of this study was to explore whether analysis of dental restorations could help in identification and estimation of time since death. Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry revealed that dental fillings corresponded to copper amalgam, conventional silver amalgam, silicophosphate cement, and zinc phosphate cement. Chemical results combined with anthropological and historical facts suggest that the individuals lived before the 1960s in country with well‐developed dental service at that time. Therefore, chemical analysis of dental fillings was useful to distinguish between skeletal remains that are too old to be of forensic interest and the remains relevant to legal investigations.     

Android forensics: Interpretation of timestamps

Interpretation of traces found on Android devices is an important aspect of mobile forensics. This is especially true for timestamps encountered on the device under investigation. In the presence of both naive and UTC timestamps, some form of timestamp normalisation is required. In addition, the investigator needs to gain some understanding of potential clock skew that may exist, especially when evidence from the device under investigation has to be correlated to real world events or evidence from other devices. A case study is presented where the time zone on the Android device was set incorrectly, while the clock was set to correspond to the time zone where the device was actually located. Initially, the fact that both time zones enforced daylight saving time (DST) at different periods was expected to complicate the timestamps normalisation. However, it was found that the version of the Time Zone Database on the device was outdated and did not correspond to the actual time zone rules for the given period. After the case study, the results of experiments on a broader range of devices are presented. Among other things, these results demonstrate a method to detect clock skew based on the mmssms.db database. However, it was also found that the applicability of this method is highly dependent on specific implementation choices made by different vendors.     

法律视野中的时间范畴

“时间”首先是自然科学和哲学的范畴 ,其运动规律在法律制度设计的技术化特征上也有体现。本文从分析法学与哲学、经济学的学科间影响 ;法律制度中与“时间”相关的概念、规则和原则 ;法律规范与客观规律的关系入手 ,阐述了“时间”范畴与法律制度、法律价值、法律程序、法律成本的密切联系 ,意在提醒人们 ,在研究法律制度的价值追求和伦理评价的基础上 ,法律中的时间问题或是以“时间”为重要范畴来分析法律制度的有关内容 ,具有重要的价值意义和工具意义 ,值得做思考的努力。     

"三个代表"与马克思主义的与时俱进精神

马克思主义具有与时俱进的内在创造精神,而“三个代表”重要思想则体现了这种 精神。     

The estimation of the time of death by non-protein nitrogen (NPN) in cadaveric materials. Report 3: Multiple regression analysis of NPN values in human cadaveric materials

The non-protein nitrogen (NPN) values in brain, lung, liver, and kidney in 79 autopsy cases were determined according to the Micro-Kjeldahl Nessler method. Multiple regression analysis of the data was performed with every possible combination of the time of death and the NPN values in the tissues.The brain NPN showed the best correlation with the postmortem time (r = 0.673), whereas the other correlations were less satisfactory (lung r = 0.422, liver r = 0.397, and kidney r = 0.379, respectively). However, multiple combinations of each tissue NPN value proved to give better correlation coefficients and smaller errors of the estimated time of death.The practical significance of the tissue NPN as a postmortem biochemical indicator of the time of death and the multiple regression analysis of such indicators were extensively discussed in this report.