Identifying the causes of road traffic accidents in India: An empirical investigation

This study utilizes data for the period 2006–2015 to estimate the determinants of road fatality rates in the Indian states. We employ baseline regression, where the total traffic fatalities, total traffic injuries, rural road fatalities, and urban road fatalities are the functions of human errors in driving, weather conditions, and some control variables. This paper is exclusively focussed upon different sets of human‐driven factors in influencing the road fatality across the Indian states. Our empirical results show that reckless driving, defective motor conditions, bad weather, and reckless driving by bus, truck, and car drivers are found to cause road accidents. We further find that the increase in motorization rates and rash driving are the primary causes behind the road fatalities, and bad weather play a major role in causing road fatalities and injuries in urban areas. However, road fatalities are increasing; still, cases of under reporting, lack of proper road safety regulation, improper investigation procedures, increasing vehicle usages, and higher urbanization have made the matters quite worse in India.     

I Am Your Son,Baba

Our Black bodies have had colonial histories inscribed on them. This colonial project of inscribing Black bodies with colonial knowledge has fragmented our Black knowledge to the point of making us doubt our Blackness. In my effort to leave my Black children a road map for living a whole and healthy life as proud Black people, I engage my experience of being fathered in colonial Africa through a letter to my own Baba (father). This letter embodies the African orality structure of engaging, and reflects on how colonialism has fragmented Black families and traumatized our children as part of the colonial project. To expose this colonial trickery through dialogue is my way of beginning to re-establish my Black familial bonds. I also share this story to our diverse global community because our Blackness is a part of our common humanity. So in our global human diversity we center our relational humanity through storytelling. This means how we matter to each other is in the stories that we tell. I hope my story connects us so that we matter to each other without undermining the intersections of race, gender, disability, colonialism, class structures, poverty, and ageism. My story highlights the power of dialogue in healing fractured relationships, giving witness to colonial oppression and being a tool for engaging social justice.     

Aging studies on fingerprint residues using thin-layer and high performance liquid chromatography

The chemical substances of perspiration found in latent fingerprint residue may hold the key for dating latent fingerprints. To study the chemical transformations of these components as a function of time and environment, fingerprint residues from four males and four females were analysed by thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Three major and two or three minor components were detected by both methods and the variation in the quantity of the major components with time was observed.     

Unconscionability of E-contracts: A Comparative Study of India,the United Kingdom,and the United States

Liverpool Law Review - Adhesion contracts have a strong likelihood of being unconscionable. The laws and principles are further complicated by the introduction of electronic contracts, specifically...     

Modelling the determinants of electronic tax filing services’ continuance usage intention

The success of electronic filing services largely depends on their continuance usage. This study examines the factors affecting the continuance usage intention of the online tax filing services in Mauritius. An integrated model comprising Trust Theory and Information System Success Model (ISSM) is applied to assess the continuance usage behaviour of e-filing systems. The model has been extended by adding two additional variables: Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Risk. The model was tested using a sample of 315 users of e-filing services in Mauritius. A structural equation modelling technique using partial least square structural equation modelling verified the hypotheses. The results reveal that the continuance usage intention of an electronic tax filing system is influenced by Perceived Usefulness, User Satisfaction, and Service Quality. However, Perceived Risk does not influence the continuance usage intention of e-filing systems since the importance of Perceived Risk diminishes as trust in the e-service provider increases. The theoretical and practical implications derived from the findings of this study are also discussed. This paper makes several contributions to the literature on electronic tax filing systems.     

Using DNA-barcoding to make the necrobiont beetle family Cholevidae accessible for forensic entomology

Although many cases of fatal hydrogen sulfide poisoning have been reported, in most of these cases, it resulted from the accidental inhalation of hydrogen sulfide gas. In recent years, we experienced 17 autopsy cases of fatal hydrogen sulfide poisoning due to the inhalation of intentionally generated hydrogen sulfide gas. In this study, the concentrations of sulfide and thiosulfate in blood, urine, cerebrospinal fluid and pleural effusion were examined using GC/MS. The sulfide concentrations were blood: 0.11-31.84, urine: 0.01-1.28, cerebrospinal fluid: 0.02-1.59 and pleural effusion: 2.00-8.59 (μg/ml), while the thiosulfate concentrations were blood: 0-0.648, urine: 0-2.669, cerebrospinal fluid: 0.004-0.314 and pleural effusion: 0.019-0.140 (μmol/ml). In previous reports, the blood concentration of thiosulfate was said to be higher than that of sulfide in hydrogen sulfide poisoning cases, although the latter was higher than the former in 8 of the 14 cases examined in this study. These results are believed to be strongly influenced by the atmospheric concentration of hydrogen sulfide the victims were exposed to and the time interval between exposure and death.     

The Decline of the Indian Parliament

Indian Parliament had a very promising start and worked well during the1950s-1960s. During the 1970s Parliament was squeezed by a great extra-parliamentary mass movement against authoritarianism and corruption and partial but crippling subversion of parliamentary-federal Constitution during the national emergency. Democracy was restored following the 1977 general elections. But the general decline of Parliament that set in the post-Nehru era has not yet been reversed. Major indicators of this decline are shortening sessions, time lost due to disruptions in proceedings by the opposition and violation of norms and precedents by the government, rampant absenteeism, actual hours of sitting as a percentage of available hours, phenomenon of weak legislative federalism via Rajya Sabha in the overall setting of parliamentary-federalism, challenges of new extra-parliamentary mass movements, and judicial activism. The new committee system introduced since 1993 is a welcome development. However, the parliamentary reforms recommended by the constitutional review commission (2002) remain unimplemented.     

Book review

Law and internet cultures: Kathy Bowery, ISBN: 0521600480 (paperback) Cambridge University Press, 2005