The Foreign Research and Press Service: Britain's Primary Source of Intelligence from the German-occupied Baltic States during the Second World War

The article investigates how the Foreign Research and Press Service succeeded in overcoming internal government prejudice to become His Majesty's Government primary supplier of intelligence from the German-occupied Baltic states during the Second World War. As the Foreign Office had banned the covert intelligence agencies from operating within the Soviet sphere, which included the Baltic states, the non-covert Foreign Research and Press Service Baltic States Section could operate without offending the USSR. The article charts how the Foreign Research and Press Service supplied crucial information from the enemy press that helped to form British war and post-war policy towards the USSR.     

“I've got a lot to do and i don't think i'll have the time”: Gender differences in late adolescents' narratives of the future

The present study examined gender differences in late adolescents' future narratives.Thirty-nine male and 43 female late adolescents (M=20.01 years) completed 90-minute individual interviews assessing dimensional and thematic aspects of the future narrative as well as psychological profile characteristics (abstract reasoning, psychological distress, self-concept, and self-esteem). As predicted, gender differences emerged in the anticipation and projected timing of adulthood transition events. More females than males anticipated marriage and parenthood; females also anticipated younger ages at marriage and parenthood than males. Examination of adolescents' narratives of the life course beyond the adulthood transition revealed greater extensionoverall among males than females. No gender differences in extension or densitywere obtained for the anticipated occupational domain, and no gender differences were obtained in extension in the family domain. Female adolescents, however, anticipated more events in the family domain than did males. The findings are discussed in terms of the implicit theories of adulthood that inform adolescents' future narratives.This research was supported, in part, by a grant awarded to the first author by the National Science Foundation (Differential Perceptions of the Family Environment).Received Ph.D. from Boston University in Developmental Psychology. Research interests include future narratives, self-perception, and cognition.Research interests include cognition, schema theory, and gender.     

Perimortem or Postmortem Bone Fractures? An Experimental Study of Fracture Patterns in Deer Femora*

The determination of perimortem trauma is important for forensic anthropologists. Characteristics of bone fractures such as sharp edges, presence of fracture lines, the shape of the broken ends, fracture surface morphology, fracture angle on the Z-axis, and butterfly fractures are said to differentiate perimortem from postmortem trauma. A Drop Weight Impact Test Machine was used to break 76 deer femora of various ages since death. The results of this study suggest that the characteristics listed above are unreliable at differentiating a perimortem fracture from a postmortem fracture in a forensic case. There are, however, statistically significant differences between fresh bones broken less than 4 days old and dry bones broken 44 days or 1 year old after death.     

British open source intelligence (OSINT) and the Holocaust in the Soviet Union: persecution,extermination and partisan warfare

Where does British open source intelligence (OSINT) fit into the intelligence debate surrounding Allied knowledge of the Holocaust? In particular what can this source of intelligence tell us in regards to the opening of the extermination phase of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union? Were the Allies conclusions being falsely influenced by their own OSINT analysts? Or conversely did OSINT provide further evidence (alongside SIGINT decodes) that the Nazis were now committing mass genocide. This article explores these questions by examining the FRPS/FORD OSINT reports from the civilian ruled territories of (and those intended for) the Reichskommissariate Ostland and Ukraine.     

An evaluation of sex and body weight determination from the proximal femur using DXA technology and its potential for forensic anthropology

Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is a rarely used technology in forensic anthropology. These densitometers quantify bone mineral density (BMD) and bone mineral content (BMC) and thus introduce new variables which are important for the application of forensic anthropology. This study investigates the importance of these variables and of this technology using bone scans of the proximal femur in sex and body weight determination. Two data sets from studies conducted at the University of Alabama at Birmingham were examined. The first study had 41 White patients, of which there were 17 males and 24 females, ranging in age from 61 to 79 years and in weight from 99 to 242 lb. The following variables were utilized from the DXA scans: BMD in the femoral neck, greater trochanter and in Ward's triangle. A manual ruler in the software facilitated measurements on the minimum neck diameter and shaft diameter just below the lesser trochanter from each scan. The second study had 128 female patients, 71 of which were Black and 57 were White. They ranged in age from 23 to 47 1/2 years and they weighed between 31 1/2 and 98 1/4 kg. The same variables were examined on these DXA scans as in the first study, with the addition of BMC of the femoral neck and the deletion of the minimum shaft diameter below the lesser trochanter. The first study showed statistically significant sex determination relationships (p < 0.02, t-tests for equality of means) at the supero-inferior femoral neck and lesser trochanter diameters, and from BMD at the femoral neck, trochanter, and Ward's triangle. Discriminant function analysis correctly classified sex over 92% of the original grouped cases using these variables. Multiple regression analysis using body weight as the dependent variable and various measures of the proximal femur as independent variables shows that while they are statistically significant and they have reasonably high R2 values up to 0.49; nevertheless, their standard errors of the estimates are too wide to be of much forensic use. The second study examined ethnic differences, Blacks and Whites, and body weight relationships in a larger, all female data set. Statistically significant differences between Blacks and Whites of BMD were found at Ward's triangle. Multiple regression analyses were again run on body weight and various measures of the proximal femur. The results were also broken down by ethnicity. Some body weight relationships were again statistically significant such as between the BMC of the femoral neck and the BMD of the greater trochanter and the BMC of the neck and the minimum neck diameter, but again, the standard error of the estimate is too wide to be of much use. In addition, the square of the correlation coefficient (R2) is very low, for example, below 0.1 in all cases. Thus, there is very little variability in weight that can be accounted for with these variables. DXA technology offers the potential of a living skeletal data bank and of variables that are useful in cause-effect relationships between bone mineralization and skeletal loads.