How “Standardized” is Standardized? A Validation of Postcranial Landmark Locations

Since the mid‐1990s, osteometrics have been a major aspect in forensic anthropology. However, recent evidence has shown that practitioners have been using differing points to establish certain measurements; namely those involving the clavicle, scapula, ulna, femur, and tibia. Engaging 61 practitioners, this study examined and confirmed how extensive this discord is. The highest consistency rate among practitioners was the scapular breadth (62.3%), followed by the femoral anteroposterior subtrochanteric diameter (55%). All other levels fell below these, particularly the physiological length of the ulna which was the most inconsistently measured bone. Furthermore, these low consistency rates yielded percent mean differences between two and 20% of the measurement length, with ranges averaging 14 mm. In light of these results, it is recommended that the field take steps to improve the standardization of such problematic measurements, including reexamining all measurements currently listed in osteometric texts, reassessing the utility of each, and reissuing a comprehensive guide.     

System management and compensatory parenting: Educational involvement after maternal incarceration

Research has demonstrated that paternal incarceration is associated with lower levels of educational involvement among fathers and primary caregivers, but little is known regarding caregiver educational involvement when mothers have been incarcerated. In this study, we present the first analysis of variation in school- and home-based educational involvement by maternal incarceration history, pairing survey and interview data to connect macro-level group differences with micro-level narratives of mothers’ involvement in their children's education. Our survey data demonstrate that children of ever-incarcerated mothers experience increased school-based educational involvement by their primary caregivers, regardless of whether the caregiver is the mother herself. Our interview data point to compensatory parenting as a key motivating factor in educational involvement, wherein a caregiver endeavors to “make up for” the child's history of maternal incarceration. Findings add to the literature demonstrating maternal incarceration as a distinct experience from both paternal incarceration and material disadvantage alone, and they suggest the need to explore the role of schools as potential points of productive institutional involvement for mothers with an incarceration history.     

Bacterial Cross‐contamination Potential Associated with Contaminated Currency

Previous studies have shown a significant amount of contaminants on paper currencies. It is important to study the transfer of microorganisms between paper currencies to determine whether it meets the level of a human health threat. This cross‐contamination potential was analyzed by seeding new US 1‐dollar bills with Bacillus thuringiensis, and pressing or rubbing them against clean currency to determine the amount of bacteria transfer to the unseeded currency. The transferred amount of bacteria was recovered, plated, incubated, and the colony‐forming units were quantified. Among the recovery methods tested, the most efficient method, vortexing for 10 min with a recovery efficiency of 40 ± 8.1%, was used in this analysis. The resulting transfer rates were 4.8%, 8.6%, and 14.3% when pressed for 24 h, 72 h, and rubbed together, respectively. These transferred amounts of bacteria are significant and have the potential to spread infectious diseases.     

Maple Leaf Zeitgeist? Assessing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Policy Changes*

In the October 2015 elections, the charismatic Justin Trudeau led the Canadian Liberal Party to its first majority government in 15 years, overturning nearly a decade of conservative government. His premiership is generally considered to have begun well. This article examines Trudeau’s conduct of the election campaign, his choice of a young and diverse Cabinet, his courtship of the media and image making, and assesses changes in foreign and domestic policy. These have yet to prove substantive but Trudeau has signalled a reversal of Stephen Harper’s conservative policies and especially in regard to migration has tapped into images of ‘compassionate Canadians’. In foreign policy, this has been evidenced in relations with the United States and with a re-engagement with the Commonwealth especially in its soft power aspects. Trudeau’s green credentials and stance on Climate Change are a contrast to those of his predecessor but he has yet to confront the different environmental profiles and policies of the Canadian states. Canada’s Strategic Partnership with the European Community and the ratification of CETA are priorities and he has to come to terms with the implications of Brexit.     

What Do Panel Studies Tell Us About a Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment? A Critique of the Literature

Objectives

We provide a critical review of empirical research on the deterrent effect of capital punishment that makes use of state and, in some instances, county-level, panel data.

Methods

We present the underlying behavioral model that presumably informs the specification of panel data regressions, outline the typical model specification employed, discuss current norms regarding “best-practice” in the analysis of panel data, and engage in a critical review.

Results

The connection between the theoretical reasoning underlying general deterrence and the regression models typically specified in this literature is tenuous. Many of the papers purporting to find strong effects of the death penalty on state-level murder rates suffer from basic methodological problems: weak instruments, questionable exclusion restrictions, failure to control for obvious factors, and incorrect calculation of standard errors which in turn has led to faulty statistical inference. The lack of variation in the key underlying explanatory variables and the heavy influence exerted by a few observations in state panel data regressions is a fundamental problem for all panel data studies of this question, leading to overwhelming model uncertainty.

Conclusions

We find the recent panel literature on whether there is a deterrent effect of the death penalty to be inconclusive as a whole, and in many cases uninformative. Moreover, we do not see additional methodological tools that are likely to overcome the multiple challenges that face researchers in this domain, including the weak informativeness of the data, a lack of theory on the mechanisms involved, and the likely presence of unobserved confounders.