Historical Criminology and the Explanatory Power of the Past

To what extent can the past ‘explain’ the present? This deceptively simple question lies at the heart of historical criminology (research which incorporates historical primary sources while addressing present-day debates and practices in the criminal justice field). This article seeks first to categorise the ways in which criminologists have used historical data thus far, arguing that it is most commonly deployed to ‘problematize’ the contemporary rather than to ‘explain’ it. The article then interrogates the reticence of criminologists to attribute explicative power in relation to the present to historical data. Finally, it proposes the adoption of long time-frame historical research methods, outlining three advantages which would accrue from this: the identification and analysis of historical continuities; a more nuanced, shared understanding of micro/macro change over time in relation to criminal justice; and a method for identifying and analysing instances of historical recurrence, particularly in perceptions and discourses around crime and justice

Laboratory Measurement of the Pure Rotational Transitions of the HCNH+ and its Isotopic Species

The pure rotational transitions of the protonated hydrogen cyanide ion, HCNH+, and its isotopic species, HCND+ and DCND+, were measured in the 107 - 482 GHz region with a source modulated microwave spectrometer. The ions were generated in the cell with a magnetically confined dc-glow discharge of HCN and/or DCN. The rotational constant B0 and the centrifugal distortion constant D0 for each ion were precisely determined by a least-squares fitting to the observed spectral lines. The observed rotational transition frequencies by laboratory spectroscopy and the predicted ones are accurate in about 30 to 40 kHz and are useful as rest frequencies for astronomical searches of HCNH+ and HCND+.Comment: 14 pages in TeX, 1 figures in JPE

Mechanisms of Surviving Burial: Dune Grass Interspecific Differences Drive Resource Allocation After Sand Deposition

Sand dunes are important geomorphic formations of coastal ecosystems that are critical in protecting human populations that live in coastal areas. Dune formation is driven by ecomorphodynamic interactions between vegetation and sediment deposition. While there has been extensive research on responses of dune grasses to sand burial, there is a knowledge gap in understanding mechanisms of acclimation between similar, coexistent, dune-building grasses such as Ammophila breviligulata (C3), Spartina patens (C4), and Uniola paniculata (C4). Our goal was to determine how physiological mechanisms of acclimation to sand burial vary between species. We hypothesize that (1) in the presence of burial, resource allocation will be predicated on photosynthetic pathway and that we will be able to characterize the C3 species as a root allocator and the C4 species as leaf allocators. We also hypothesize that (2) despite similarities between these species in habitat, growth form, and life history, leaf, root, and whole plant traits will vary between species when burial is not present. Furthermore, when burial is present, the existing variability in physiological strategy will drive species-specific mechanisms of survival. In a greenhouse experiment, we exposed three dune grass species to different burial treatments: 0 cm (control) and a one-time 25-cm burial to mimic sediment deposition during a storm. At the conclusion of our study, we collected a suite of physiological and morphological functional traits. Results showed that Ammophila decreased allocation to aboveground biomass to maintain root biomass, preserving photosynthesis by allocating nitrogen (N) into light-exposed leaves. Conversely, Uniola and Spartina decreased allocation to belowground production to increase elongation and maintain aboveground biomass. Interestingly, we found that species were functionally distinct when burial was absent; however, all species became more similar when treated with burial. In the presence of burial, species utilized functional traits of rapid growth strategy, although mechanisms of change were interspecifically variable

The evolution and development of visual perspective taking

I outline three conceptions of seeing that a creature might possess: ‘the headlamp conception,’ which involves an understanding of the causal connections between gazing at an object, certain mental states, and behavior; ‘the stage lights conception,’ which involves an understanding of the selective nature of visual attention; and seeing-as. I argue that infants and various nonhumans possess the headlamp conception. There is also evidence that chimpanzees and 3-year-old children have some grasp of seeing-as. However, due to a dearth of studies, there is no evidence that infants or nonhumans possess the stage lights conception of seeing. I outline the kinds of experiments that are needed, and what we stand to learn about the evolution and development of perspective taking

Coverage of clinic-based TB screening in South Africa may be low in key risk groups

The South African Ministry of Health has proposed screening all clinic attendees for tuberculosis (TB). Amongst other factors, male sex and bar attendance are associated with higher TB risk. We show that 45% of adults surveyed in Western Cape attended a clinic within 6 months, and therefore potentially a relatively high proportion of the population could be reached through clinic-based screening. However, fewer than 20% of all men aged 18–25 years, or men aged 26–45 who attend bars, attended a clinic. The population-level impact of clinic-based screening may be reduced by low coverage among key risk groups

Non-Commutativity and Unitarity Violation in Gauge Boson Scattering

We examine the unitarity properties of spontaneously broken non-commutative gauge theories. We find that the symmetry breaking mechanism in the non-commutative Standard Model of Chaichian et al. leads to an unavoidable violation of tree-level unitarity in gauge boson scattering at high energies. We then study a variety of simplified spontaneously broken non-commutative theories and isolate the source of this unitarity violation. Given the group theoretic restrictions endemic to non-commutative model building, we conclude that it is difficult to build a non-commutative Standard Model under the Weyl-Moyal approach that preserves unitarity.Comment: 31 page