Knowledge,Expertise, and Committee Power in the Contemporary Congress

Scholars, practitioners, and observers typically portray committee influence as rooted in traditional congressional processes and practices, which are thought to provide committees with powerful opportunities to block and shape legislative proposals. The erosion of regular order processes suggests these traditional processes cannot underlie committee power in the contemporary Congress. Drawing on a mixed‐methods approach of interviews with congressional staff and an original data set of every amendment offered on the floor of the House of Representatives from 2005 to 2008, I find that absent these traditional process norms, committees in the contemporary Congress can rely on their specialized knowledge and expertise to influence the behavior of their colleagues and shape the legislation that passes.     

Understanding the political goals of non-binding resolutions: evidence from the Mexican Chamber of Deputies

By primarily focusing on bill initiatives, the literature on legislatures and parliaments has understudied other important legislative instruments -such as non-binding resolutions, minutes or speeches- which might help parties and legislators achieve their electoral and policy goals. Non-binding resolutions (NBRs) do not carry the force of law and are primarily used for parties or legislators’ position taking and the request of government actions. This article examines the political goals of NBRs by examining these tools in the lower chamber of the Mexican Congress. Employing a novel dataset, we claim that legislators strategically utilise NBRs to strengthen their relationship with their political principals. We find differences on the use of these instruments across political parties, based on the types of policy areas they choose to target. The analysis also indicates that SMD legislators tend to introduce more particularistic NBRs that might further their political careers at the subnational level.     

Are Public-Led Arts Incubating Programs a Double-Edged Sword? A Case Study of the Arts Council Korea’s Performing Arts Grant Program

A nation’s cultural policy is derived from its political and governance history, and its past practices. Taking the genealogical traits of South Korean cultural policies into account, the authors examine the contributions and risks of a public-led arts incubator program. One of the Arts Council Korea’s grant programs in the arts-incubating structure was involved with a public funding scandal of political intervention during the grant review process. Consequently, questions were raised about the current bureaucratic system for cultural policy. This article discusses the legitimacy of state intervention in the arts, and analyzes the case with relevant collected documents and interviews.     

Toward Better Outcomes for Families Through Innovative Dispute Resolution Programs in England

This article explores and shares the learning from two of Cafcass’ innovative dispute resolution pilot programs. The programs aim to improve outcomes for families against the backdrop of rising private law demand in England, while keeping the child at the center. The Positive co‐Parenting Programme pilot provides a structured intervention to reduce conflict and promote timely resolution for children and families in complex cases. The Support with Making Child Arrangements pilot explores whether the provision of a package of support to parents ahead of the first court hearing can help them come to safe agreements about their children without the need for court intervention.     

Digital Infrastructure for Diversity—On Digital Bookshelf and Google Books

Diversity is a core value of cultural policy, and new global digital conditions for creative industries mean new challenges for diversity at a national level. Internet has become a new infrastructure for services and platforms, and global actors as Google and Amazon are changing the play. This article concerns digitization of books, the collection of the National Library of Norway and cultural policy. The results indicate the National Library's digital collection contributes to diversity in terms of demography, content, dissemination and techno-cultural aspects. For policy makers, libraries and researchers the study demonstrates a national digital service's contribution to expanded diversity.     

A multivariate statistical approach to for the evaluation of the biogeographical ancestry information from traditional STRs

The capability to achieve biogeographic ancestry (BGA) information from DNA profiles have been largely explored in forensic genetics because of its potential usefulness in providing investigative clues. For law enforcement and security purposes, when genetic data have been obtained from unknown evidence, but no reference samples are available and no hints come out from DNA databases, it would be extremely useful at least to infer the ethno-geographic origin of the stain donor by just examining traditional STRs DNA profiles.Current protocols for ethnic origin estimation using STRs profiles are usually based on Principal Component Analysis approaches and Bayesian methods. The present study provides an alternative approach that involves the use of target multivariate data analysis strategies for estimation of the BGA information from unknown biological traces. A powerful multivariate technique such as Partial Least Squares-Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) has been applied on NIST U.S. population datasets containing, for instance, the allele frequencies of African-American, Asian, Caucasian and Hispanic individuals. PLS-DA approach provided robust classifications, yielding high sensitivity and specificity models capable of discriminating the populations on ethnic basis. Finally, a real casework has been examined by extending the developed model to smaller and more geographically-restricted populations involving, for instance, Albanian, Italian and Montenegrian individuals.     

Genetic investigation of Chinese she ethnic based on autosomal STRs and X-STRs

The She ethnic is a large minority in China with approximately 700,000 individuals. For more than one thousand years, they mainly resided in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. To obtain a better understanding of the genetic background of She, we investigate 21 autosomal STRs (A-STRs) and 16 X-STRs in 296 unrelated healthy individuals from Zhejiang She population. Allele frequencies and forensic parameters prove these markers are useful for forensic application. We also investigate the genetic background with the two types of markers. Nei genetic distances between She and Eastern Han population are always the lowest, regardless of the markers used for analysis. Although the tested STRs are located on different chromosomes with different inheritance laws, A-STRs and X-STRs provided in general congruent phylogenetic signal and similar cluster among compared groups. These results demonstrated that geographic isolation and interactions play significant roles in differentiation of genetic constitution of ethnic groups.     

Tricyclic Antidepressants Found in Pilots Fatally Injured in Civil Aviation Accidents

Prevalence of tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) has not been explored in pilots. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) aviation accident and the Federal Aviation Administration's Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI) toxicology and medical certification databases were searched for pilots fatally injured in aviation accidents. During 1990–2012, CAMI received bio‐samples of pilots from 7037 aviation accidents. Of these, 2644 cases were positive for drugs. TCAs were present in 31. TCA blood concentrations ranged from therapeutic to toxic levels. The NTSB determined that the use of drugs and ethanol as the probable cause or contributing factor in 35% (11 of 31) of the accidents. None of the 31 pilots reported the use of TCAs during their aviation medical examination. The prevalence of TCAs in aviators was less than 0.5% (31 of 7037 cases). There is a need for aviators to fully disclose the use of medications at the time of their medical examination.