GC Analysis of Black Gel Pen Ink Stored under Different Conditions

In many criminal and civil cases in China, the most commonly questioned documents are those written with gel pen ink. An important task for forensic document examiners is to identify whether two or more ink entries in one or more documents were written with the same ink type. The identification of the age of gel ink entries made poses an important and difficult problem for forensic document examiners. In this paper, the volatile components of gel ink were determined and the gel ink was classified by gas chromatography with a flame ionization detector. Calibration curves were created to express the relationship between the content of volatile gel ink components and the age of gel ink entries stored under natural and UV‐induced aging conditions. The correspondence between the natural and UV‐induced aging conditions was also established. The experimental results showed that GC was useful in the analysis of black gel ink and applicable for determining the relative age of gel ink entries under certain conditions.     

以共同育儿为业:跨越儿童抚育的家庭边界——以一个城市社区的“抱团养娃”实践为例

本文聚焦于城市化背景下的"抱团养娃"实践,深入探讨在抚育职责被"家庭化"的当下,抚育实践如何在一定程度上重新跨越"家庭"的边界。以社区共育为基点,妈妈们的努力既从私人层面上为在陌生城市中资源不足的小家庭找到更多社会支持,又在公共层面上带动孩子们以温度和情感重塑社区认同、黏合社会转型带来的制度缝隙,体现出独特的现实意义与支持力量。"以共同育儿为业"背后,是女性试图在既有的结构约束下找到被私人化的抚育照料重担与公共生活之间的连接点,在本研究中体现为共育支持网络的形成、共育友好空间的营造、亲子活动内容的生产和共育文化的建构四个方面。这为思考如何将"社会"重新带回抚育实践中提供了想象,也拓宽了对女性主体性的理解。     

Efficiency over generosity? Evidence of electoral accountability from typhoon dayoff in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

Even though voters may irrationally blame the incumbent for natural disasters, democratic accountability can still hold if voters also reward the government for good responses. This article approaches the response-reward question by exploring the election impact of typhoon dayoff decisions in Taiwan. County mayors are responsible for deciding the dayoffs before a typhoon, so voters can easily and immediately observe the quality of the mayor's decision and fully attribute the outcome to him. Results combining 2005–2014 weather, election, and ten survey datasets show that a correct dayoff, which a dayoff was announced and the storm was tomorrow is harmfully strong, can significantly increase the incumbent's vote share. The effect is larger in the election year. Meanwhile, Taiwanese voters also slightly reward the incumbent for a bonus dayoff, which the storm is unexpectedly weak. Evidence also shows that mayors exploit the incumbent advantage by announcing more correct and bonus dayoffs.     

The Far North Act in Ontario,Canada: a sons of the soil conflict in the making?

In 2010, the Government of Ontario, Canada passed the controversial Far North Act. The Act purportedly aims to promote land use planning and sustainable development while recognising Aboriginal and Treaty rights. There are, however, early warning signs that the Act could be a breeding ground for future conflict between Indigenous peoples and other stakeholder groups. This article adopts a ‘sons of the soil’ conceptual framework to explore the mechanisms that could give rise to the escalation of Indigenous vs. non-Indigenous conflict. The findings provide important insights for theorising the contentious politics around land and territory in diverse settler-colonial contexts.     

Dealing with natural disasters

Over the past two decades, natural disasters have severely hit the Southeast Asian region causing dramatic environmental, economic and social consequences. Through the lens of Beck's risk society framework and the theory of reflexive modernization, this article attempts at empirically taking stock of how the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is addressing disaster risk through the creation of new regional institutions and mechanisms. In particular, it argues that the accumulation of the experience of catastrophes is leading ASEAN members towards the development of new precautionary initiatives to deal with disasters, and to forge a new way forward for the promotion of disaster cooperation and joint emergency response. The article is divided into five sections, which will only consider initiatives endorsed within the ASEAN framework. The first introduces risk societies as forms of modern societies and of the insecurities of the present world. In the second section attention is drawn to natural disasters as a paradigmatic example of Beck's risk society. The third section explores how ASEAN normative governance is evolving to include the issue of disaster management within its security and social agenda. Then the main institutional and operational innovations and tools through which ASEAN is preparing to deal with disaster risk are explored. Finally, the article suggests that despite ASEAN overall institutional innovations, the practice of cooperation still is effected by several factors, above all the lack of adequate resources and the difficulty of reconciling principles of solidarity with national sovereignty, which hinder ASEAN effectiveness in this area.     

Violence and Statebuilding in a Borders Conflict Context: A Study of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

Violence, while conceived of and defined as objective, is in reality a subjective phenomenon that takes on myriad forms (political, physical, and psychological). From a constructivist perspective, the identification of violence is contingent on conflicts to signify actions as legitimate; in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the experience of different forms of violence has meant that violence has come to acquire multiple meanings. This violence is legitimate from both Israeli and Palestinian points of view, and it creates and fulfils a cycle that perpetuates intractable conflict. This article aims to demonstrate how strongly this culture of violence has affected the state-formation process in this area, and it calls attention particularly to ongoing statebuilding processes in Palestine. The paper will also explore the intricacies related to violence and border definition in terms of ‘mapping practices’ and territoriality, and examine how, in the wake of the Oslo agreement, the Palestinian statebuilding process is created under the ruling power of the Israeli military force, restraining Palestinian capacity to create state bodies capable of establishing and retaining the monopoly of violence.     

Fuel to the Fire: Natural Disasters and the Duration of Civil Conflict

Do natural disasters prolong civil conflict? Or are disasters more likely to encourage peace as hostilities diminish when confronting shared hardship or as shifts in the balance of power between insurgents and the state hasten cessation? To address these questions, this study performs an event history analysis of disasters’ impact on the duration of 224 armed intrastate conflicts occurring in 86 states between 1946 and 2005. I contend that natural disasters increase conflict duration by decreasing the state’s capacity to suppress insurgency, while reinforcing insurgent groups’ ability to evade capture and avoid defeat. First, disasters’ economic impact coupled with state financial outlays for disaster relief and reconstruction, reduce resources available for counterinsurgency and nation building in conflict zones. Second, the military’s role in administering humanitarian assistance can reduce the availability of troops and military hardware for counterinsurgency, prompt temporary ceasefires with insurgents, or both. Third, natural disasters can cause infrastructural damages that disproportionately hinder the state’s capacity to execute counterinsurgency missions, thereby making insurgent forces more difficult to capture and overcome. The combination of these dynamics should encourage longer conflicts in states with higher incidence of disaster. Empirical evidence strongly supports this contention, indicating that states with greater disaster vulnerability fight longer wars.     

Gender dimensions of decision-making on production assets and challenges facing women

This article investigates gender dimensions of decision-making on access to, and control over, productive assets for agricultural development in selected communities in Ghana. The men were more educated, resourced, and economically empowered than the women. This resulted in differential access to, and control over, resources by gender and a low level of female participation in decision-making. The study identified a land access gap by gender and crop acreage gap of up to 80% for women as compared to men. Challenges limiting women in agricultural production and processing include inadequate land access, inadequate capital, inefficient processing technologies, and unattractive markets.     

Moving from nos/otros to nosotros: a transcendent approach to sustainable development

Traditional top-down approaches to community development reinforce nos/otros binaries within provider/recipient relationships; transcendent approaches, on the other hand, create space for nosotros collaborative development. This article describes an instance of the nos/otros binary, in which a foreign volunteer in a rural community in Ecuador assumed the role of practitioner and limited community members’ roles to recipients or beneficiaries of her development projects. Inspired by findings from this experience, the article presents a case study highlighting an alternative, transcendent, nosotros approach in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where community members work together to imagine, implement, and sustain projects.     

Social normativity,housing, and urbanisation in an Indian city

A significant part of urbanisation in India is happening through unregulated or partly regulated trajectories that are either informal or semi-formal in nature, and regulatory authorities have come to terms with them on a piecemeal basis over a period of time. This article contends that what is considered unplanned by regulatory agencies is actually planned by people and facilitated by the normativity surrounding both formal and informal institutions of urbanisation in society. The study looks at the processes through which such a housing settlement comes into being and negotiates legitimacy, authorisation, as well as basic civic services.