现场分析处理技术的研究与思考

随着科技的发展，三维信息、三维虚拟现实动画已经越来越多的出现在人们的视野中。国内一些公安机关已经将三维虚拟技术应用到犯罪现场数据采集中，为了减少三维采集数据处理的时间，提高应用数据的效率。本文将研究方向定位在研发一个集一维信息、二维信息、三维信息、漫游系统、三维仿真动画等功能于一身的三维制作平台，并探讨其在案件侦查中的运用。     

Anthropological Measurement of the Juvenile Clavicle Using Multi‐Detector Computed Tomography—Affirming Reliability

Currently, there is no standardized protocol for multi‐detector computed tomography (MDCT) measurement of juvenile remains. Using 33 juvenile clavicles, this paper investigates a protocol to allow MDCT measurements, comparable or supplemental with traditional osteometric measurements, to be acquired for application to previously published algorithms. The results illustrate that there is no significant difference between MDCT measurements and those taken by direct osteometric methods. By presenting such a protocol, this paper takes the first steps toward validation of the process of conversion from measurement of dry juvenile bone to MDCT compatibility and allows the forensic world to take a step forward in standardizing the way MDCT is used for forensic practice. This paper assesses the limitations and potential applications of this virtual approach and offers some suggestions for where further work might progress the conversion of these new approaches into legally admissible anthropological techniques of age estimation.     

Remembering remotely: would video-mediation impair witnesses' memory reports?

Witnesses often experience lengthy delays prior to being interviewed, during which their memories inevitably decay. Video-communication technology – favored by intergovernmental organizations for playing larger roles in judicial processes – might circumvent some of the resourcing problems that can exacerbate such delays. However, whereas video-mediation might facilitate expeditious interviewing, it might also harm rapport-building, make witnesses uncomfortable, and thereby undermine the quality and detail of their reports. Participants viewed a crime film and were interviewed either one day later via video-link, one day later face-to-face, or 1–2 weeks later face-to-face. Video-mediation neither influenced the detail or the accuracy of participants' reports, nor their ratings of the quality of the interviews. However, participants who underwent video-mediated interviews after a short delay gave more accurate, detailed reports than participants who waited longer to be interviewed face-to-face. This study provides initial empirical evidence that video-mediated communication (VMC) could facilitate the expeditious conduct of high-quality investigative interviews.     

Fixers as Shadow “Public Servants”: A Case Study of Israel

Fixers can thrive in any level of political, bureaucratic, or institutional development. Paradoxically the academic research of the phenomenon of fixers is in its infancy. There exists no accepted definition of fixers; the boundaries between fixers and lobbyists remain murky, in terms of comparative administration only limited knowledge about the forces that breed different types of fixers in different political settings is available; and no deductive theory was articulated that might determine when and how fixing might become dysfunctional and corruptive. In an attempt to better understand the phenomenon of fixers more theoretically; this study analyzes fixers in view of three theories of bureaucratic corruption, and in view of the emerging theory of alternative politics. Using Israel as a case in point, the study shows that within certain national and local branches of government fixers not only create a shadow copy of official institutions, but also foster institutional corruption.     

Kyrgyzstan between democratization and ethnic intolerance

The international community has expressed great concern about the treatment of the Uzbek minority in the south of Kyrgyzstan and has called on the majority community to make major efforts to improve the situation. The article compares the treatment of minorities in Kyrgyzstan with analogous situations in the Balkans and contends that, given the European-style ethno-national state model and democratic political system that have been adopted by independent Kyrgyzstan, such calls are unrealistic.     

Towards African Communication Science curricula: Challenges for higher education

Abstract

This article explores the integration of Africanism in curriculum content of Communication as a science on the level of higher education. Africanism is not treated as something to be added to curriculum content, but is regarded as an integral part of an institutional strategy of post-apartheid and post-merger transformation. This article is divided into two sections. The first focuses on strategic shifts that have to be considered when revisiting curricula content and the dilemma of linguistic pluralism. The second section deals with the operational processes that are necessary when revisiting curriculum content, by focusing specifically on the application of collaboration and assessment as mechanisms for planning and negotiating changes to curriculum content, plus the nature of key determinants of the interrelationships among academics, higher-education institutions and adult learners. The article concludes with critical questions which Communication curriculum designers and academics need to ask in their research and training endeavours to contribute to the national development goals and social reconstruction.     

Using online social networking for teaching and learning: Facebook use at the University of Cape Town

Abstract

Web-based learning has made learning content much more freely and instantaneously available to students who can download course notes and readings with a single mouse click. Facebook is one of many Web 2.0 tools – wikis, delicious, YouTube, podcasts – that are listed as having potential applications for teaching and learning. Moreover, it has been argued that the current generation of youth, often described as Net Geners or Digital Natives, may be resistant to traditional methods of teaching and learning. This article explores student use of Facebook at the University of Cape Town, as well as lecturer engagement with students via the new social media. Drawing on a virtual ethnography and qualitative interviews, this article shows that while there are potential positive benefits to using Facebook in teaching and learning, particularly for the development of educational micro-communities, certain challenges, including ICT literacy and uneven access, remain pertinent.     

Presidential Leadership on Foreign Policy,Opinion Polling,and the Possible Limits of “Crafted Talk”

The strategy of “crafted talk” (or framing) suggests that a politician uses public opinion to anticipate the most alluring, language to convince the public to follow a politician's own preferred policy (Jacobs & Shapiro, 2000 Jacobs, L. R. and Shaprio, R. Y. 2000. Politicians don't pander: Political manipulation and the loss of democratic responsiveness, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  [Google Scholar]). This manipulatory behavior by presidents has important consequences in the realm of constructing foreign policy, especially if the policy involves military service personnel, international prestige, or foreign conflict. However, no scholar has investigated White House archival data to examine the theoretical nuances of presidential “crafting” talk when constructing arguments for foreign policy. This article examines three case studies using internal polling memoranda and focus group results concerning the Vietnam War under President Johnson, the signing of the INF Treaty with the Soviet Union under President Reagan, and the Gulf War under President Bush. In each of the three cases, public opinion places serious constraints on presidential framing of foreign policy. Implications for the effectiveness of political framing and the limits of presidential persuasion are discussed.     

Observatory's linguistic landscape: semiotic appropriation and the reinvention of space

Using a longitudinal ethnographic study of the linguistic landscape (LL) in Observatory's business corridor of Lower Main Road, the paper explores changes brought about by the influx of immigrant Africans, their artefacts and language practices. The paper uses the changes in the LL over time and the development of an “African Corner” within Lower Main Road, to illustrate the appropriation of space and the unpredictability, which comes along with highly mobile, technological and multicultural citizens. It is argued that changes in the LL are part of the act of claiming and appropriating space wherein space becomes summarily recontexualized and hence reinvented and “owned” by new actors. It is also argued that space ownership can be concealed through what we have called “brand anonymity” strategies in which the identity of the owner is deliberately concealed behind global brands. We conclude that space is pliable and mobile, and that, it is the people within space who carve out new social practices in their appropriated space.     

The semiotics of religious space in Second Life®

Scholarly research on the religious dimension of Second Life® can be conducted with reference to several elements: ties between the religious dimension of Second Life and that of the “First Life” (an approach privileged by the sociology and the psychology of religion); the transcendent value inherent in the creation of an alternative reality (an approach favored by the philosophy of religion); the enunciation of a “virtual” religious dimension through the digital artifacts of Second Life (an approach promoted by aesthetics, phenomenology, and semiotics); and so forth. Adopting the point of view of cultural semiotics, the paper summarizes the results of a “virtual” ethno-semiotic participant observation conducted over six months in portions of the digital “metaverse” of Second Life where a religious dimension is predominant. The consequent analysis of digital places of worship singles out five main characteristics of their aesthetics, phenomenology, and semiotics: isolation, prototypicality, didacticism, anarchy, and parasitism.