Forensic science evidence in question

How should forensic scientists and other expert witnesses present their evidence in court? What kinds and quality of data can experts properly draw on in formulating their conclusions? In an important recent decision in R. v T1 the Court of Appeal revisited these perennial questions, with the complicating twist that the evidence in question incorporated quantified probabilities, not all of which were based on statistical data. Recalling the sceptical tenor of previous judgments addressing the role of probability in the evaluation of scientific evidence,2 the Court of Appeal in R. v T condemned the expert’s methodology and served notice that it should not be repeated in future, a ruling which rapidly reverberated around the forensic science community causing consternation, and even dismay, amongst many seasoned practitioners.3 At such moments of perceived crisis it is essential to retain a sense of perspective. There is, in fact, much to welcome in the Court of Appeal’s judgment in R. v T, starting with the court’s commendable determination to subject the quality of expert evidence adduced in criminal litigation to searching scrutiny. English courts have not consistently risen to this challenge, sometimes accepting rather too easily the validity of questionable scientific techniques.4 However, the Court of Appeal’s reasoning in R. v T is not always easy to follow, and there are certain passages in the judgment which, taken out of context, might even appear to confirm forensic scientists’ worst fears. This article offers a constructive reading of R. v T, emphasising its positive features whilst rejecting interpretations which threaten, despite the Court of Appeal’s best intentions, to diminish the integrity of scientific evidence adduced in English criminal trials and distort its probative value

Moderation, the Post-Colonial and the Radical Voice

The abstract is included in the text

History, Gender and the Colonial Moment: Castle Rackrent

The abstract is included in the text

History, Gender and the Colonial Moment: Castle Rackrent

The abstract is included in the text

Post-Colonial Theory and Kiberd's Ireland

The abstract is included in the text

Hireling Strangers and the Wandering Throne: Ireland, Scotland and Samuel Ferguson

This essay discusses the evolving literary and cultural relationship between Ireland and Scotland in the writings and career of the nineteenth-century Irish poet Samuel Ferguson. By examining the correspondence between Ferguson and his Edinburgh-based publisher, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, it shows the ways in which Ferguson tried to frame his own youthful politics through the Scottish Toryism of Blackwood’s. Ferguson’s temporary interest in the Young Ireland movement and the Protestant Repeal Association in the 1840s is brought to an end in his poem and essay on the death of Thomas Davis. The essay argues that this poem, and the account of Davis which accompanies it, are modelled on the two essays that Ferguson wrote in 1845 on the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Ferguson’s strategy of reading Burns as a respectable poet with a naturally conservative sensibility is replicated in his account of Davis. The essay then suggests that in his later work Ferguson found that Scotland was both an awkward analogy for Ireland’s political situation and less welcoming site of publication for his version of Ireland than had been the case at the beginning of his career. His epic poem Congal (1872) shows the Irish-Scottish relationship under strain, as does his final correspondence with Blackwood’s

Evaluation of the Performance of Various Turbulence Models for Accurate Numerical Simulation of a 2D Slot Nozzle Ejector

With the development over the last several decades, accurate Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling has now become an essential part in the analysis and design of various industrial products where the fluid flow plays an important role. The goal of this thesis is to apply the CFD technology to the analysis of a 2D slot nozzle ejector which has application in Short Take-off and Landing (STOL) aircraft and other future aerospace vehicles. In the nozzle-ejector configuration, the high speed air flow from the nozzle entrains the ambient air into a mixing chamber (ejector) as a means to create additional thrust for a STOL aircraft. In 1973, the effectiveness of a slot nozzle ejector configuration in generating additional thrust was evaluated experimentally by Gilbert and Hill of Dynatech under a NASA contract [1]. In this research, numerical simulations of this experimental configuration are performed and compared with the experimental data. An accurate computational model for simulations requires solving the appropriate governing equations of fluid dynamics using an accurate numerical algorithm on an appropriately clustered mesh in the computational domain [2]. We employ the Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) equations to model the turbulent supersonic flow in the 2D slot nozzle ejector. These equations require the computation of turbulent stresses which are modeled by using a turbulence model. The choice of a turbulence model can affect the accuracy of the solution because of their empirical nature. The goal of this research is to evaluate five turbulence models and determine the best possible model that can most accurately simulate the ejector nozzle mixing flow. The five turbulence models employed are the one-equation Spalart-Allmaras (SA) model, two-equation standard k-ε and SST k-ω models, the four-equation Transition SST model, and the SAS-SST k-ω model. The effectiveness of each turbulence model is determined by comparing the computational results with the experimental data. For the computations, an unstructured mesh is generated using the ICEM CFD 14.5 software and the flow field is calculated using the commercial CFD solver ANSYS-Fluent

‘strange architecture’: Ciaran Carson’s Until Before After

In many ways any structure for a book is arbitrary. But at the same time, I like to structure the thing in some way. It gives you a template, a constrain

Motionless Monotony: New Nowheres in Irish Photography

‘But my mind was too confused … so with a kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity … What strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilization, I thought, might not appear when I came to look into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated before my eyes. I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, it seemed, built of glimmer and mist … the earth seemed very fair. And so my mind came round to the business of stopping.’ So The Time Traveller in H.G. Wells’s novella The Time Machine recounts his experience of temporal speed — as the fluctuation of landscape. In Wells’s often relentless fascination with the possibilities of ‘progress’, future time is made real as architecture, and as the eradication of landscape and its replacement by the ever larger and more complex reshaping of the material environment