Pleading for Justice: The Availability of Plea Bargaining as a Method of Alternative Resolution at the International Criminal Court

This article serves to illustrate how the implementation of a plea bargaining process at the ICC would enable the Court to achieve both peace and justice. Part II begins by analyzing the history of plea bargaining in the international criminal arena, using the ICTY and the ICTR as models of the successful incorporation of plea bargaining into a court\u27s adjudication process. Part III transfers these advantages to the ICC by examining how the plea bargaining process would advance the Court\u27s goals of achieving peace and justice. Part IV moves from the theoretical to the practical by analyzing how the principles of ADR provide a framework for establishing a functional plea bargaining process at the ICC. Finally, Part V provides conclusive remarks about the role of plea bargaining in attaining peace and justice at the ICC

Diet and locomotion, but not body size, differentiate mammal communities in worldwide tropical ecosystems

Aim To test whether tropical habitat groups across the world can be differentiated by using taxon-free mammalian community structures and to discuss the implications of this analysis for palaeoecological community studies. Materials and methods We used mammalian community data for 169 localities, which were assigned a priori to hierarchical Olson (1983) vegetation categories. Species over 500 g were classified into dietary, locomotion, and body mass groups and the resulting group structures were analysed using community structure analyses (NPMANOVA, CAP, SIMPER). Results The test results show that the mammalian community structures are significantly different between all of Olson's categories. These differences are highest at Olson's major and minor ecosystem levels, and require the least number of variable categories. At the vegetation level, the number of variable categories required to distinguish between them becomes higher. Of the dietary groups, the number of frugivore–granivores, frugivore–omnivores, grazers and mixed feeders contribute most to these differences, while the number of arboreal, arboreal–terrestrial and subterranean–terrestrial species are the key locomotor groups. Body mass was not a good discriminator. Main conclusions As general ecosystem categories are broken down into more precisely defined habitats, it requires more detailed knowledge of the species adaptations to distinguish between them. Many of Olson's vegetation groups represent a continuum of cover that are, at least at the worldwide comparison, too detailed to differentiate when broad generalities are sought. We suggest using three worldwide tropical major ecosystems in mammalian community structure analyses: “Humid, closed forests”, “Seasonal or interrupted forests and grasslands”, and “Seasonal, open drylands”. Our results also demonstrate that community structures defined by both dietary and locomotor adaptations are powerful discriminators of tropical ecosystems and habitats across the continents we examined, but body mass should be interpreted with caution when the research question pertains to multiple continents

Bovids as palaeoenvironmental indicators: an ecomorphological analysis of bovid post-cranial remains from Laetoli, Tanzania

This thesis reports on 1) a new method of palaeoenvironmental reconstruction using bovid ecomorphology and 2) the application of this methodology to fossil assemblages from the Plio-Pleistocene site of Laetoli, Tanzania. A global saniple of extant bovids (n205), cervids (n=14) and tragulids (n=5) from seven known habitat types comprise the comparative dataset. All long bones, carpals, tarsals and phalanges are measured. These measurements are entered as predictor variables in discriminant function analyses (DFA) in order to evaluate the ability of each element to accurately predict habitat affiliation. The baseline of chance accuracy for DFAs (i.e. the percentage of correct predictions that can be expected when habitat assignments are randomised) is determined. This baseline serves as the cut-off point between good and bad habitat predictors. Analyses are conducted on non-size corrected and size corrected data. The results of both sets of analyses are similar. A total of 24 analyses of non-size corrected elements and 23 size corrected analyses yield percentages of correct classification over the baseline of accuracy. The non-size corrected analyses are extended to the Laetoli fossil assemblages. DFAs are conducted on fossil assemblages from the Upper Laetolil Beds (3.50 - 3.80 mya) and the Upper Ndolanya Beds (2.66 mya). Summaries of the number of specimens predicted to belong to each habitat type and their associated probabilities of correct prediction are used to reconstruct the palaeoenvironrnent. The results indicate that at the time of the deposition of the Laetolil Beds the area had heavy woodland-bushland cover with some lighter tree and bush cover and grass available. This lends strong support to recent suggestions that the area was on the more wooded end of the habitat spectrum, contra initial conclusions that it represented a mosaic of more open habitats. It furthermore supports the theory that early australopithecines such as Au.siralopiihecies afiiren,s'is required a significant amount of tree cover for survival. The results also indicate that during the deposition of the Ndolanya Beds the environment had become more open and the grassland component of the environment had increased significantly. Light woodland-bushland and an abundance of grass cover dominated the landscape, although tracts of land with denser vegetation likely existed. This agrees with earlier suggestions that the area was a semi-arid bushland. It also supports the theory that Paranthropus aethiopicus was adapted to a lifestyle in a more open and arid environment than earlier species

Exploration of the taxonomy of some Pleistocene Cervini (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Cervidae) from Java and Sumatra (Indonesia): a geometric- and linear morphometric approach

Third molars of extant- and fossil Southeast Asian deer were metrically compared using a linear- and geometric morphometric approach and discussed in relation to known taxonomic information from the literature. Our analysis suggests the presence of medium sized deer of the genus Axis and large sized taxa of the genus Cervus s. l. in Java. Axis lydekkeri and Axis javanicus are considered valid taxa, with A. lydekkeri probably related to the subgenus Hyelaphus. The large deer, such as Cervus kendengensis, Cervus stehlini and Cervus problematicus are most likely of the subgenus Rusa, the former two closely related to extant Cervus timorensis. The Sumatran fossils are members of the subgenus Rusa, but not necessarily conspecific with extant Cervus (Rusa) unicolor

In Silico Fatigue Optimization of TAVR Stent Designs with Physiological Motion in a Beating Heart Model

The rapid expansion of TAVR to younger, low-risk patients raises concerns regarding device durability. Necessarily, extended stent lifetime will become more critical for new generation devices. In vitro methods commonly used for TAVR stent fatigue testing exclude the effects of the beating heart. We present a more realistic in silico stent fatigue analysis utilizing a beating heart model in which TAVR stents experience complex, nonuniform dynamic loading. Virtual TAVR deployments were simulated in the SIMULIA Living Heart Human Model of a beating heart using stent models of the self-expandable nitinol 26-mm CoreValve and Evolut R devices, and a 27-mm PolyV-2. Stent deformation was monitored over three cardiac cycles, and fatigue resistance was evaluated for the nitinol stents using finite element analysis via ABAQUS/Explicit. In all models, there were elements in which strains exceeded fatigue failure. The PolyV-2 stent had far fewer failing elements since its struts were optimized to reduce the strain in stent joints, achieving better fatigue resistance in the stent crown and waist elements. Different stent sections showed markedly different fatigue resistance due to the varying loading conditions. This study demonstrates the utility of advanced in silico analysis of devices deployed within a beating heart that mimics in vivo loading, offering a cost-effective alternative to human or animal trials and establishing a platform to assess the impact of device design on device durability. The limited fatigue life of TAVR stents indicated here highlights a clinical complication that may eventually develop as younger, lower-risk TAVR patients, age.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figures, 2 table

On the misidentification of species: sampling error in primates and other mammals using geometric morphometrics in more than 4,000 individuals

An accurate classification is the basis for research in biology. Morphometrics and morphospecies play an important role in modern taxonomy, with geometric morphometrics increasingly applied as a favourite analytical tool. Yet, really large samples are seldom available for modern species and even less common in palaeontology, where morphospecies are often identified, described and compared using just one or a very few specimens. The impact of sampling error and how large a sample must be to mitigate the inaccuracy are important questions for morphometrics and taxonomy. Using more than 4000 crania of adult mammals and taxa representing each of the four placental superorders, we assess the impacts of sampling error on estimates of species means, variances and covariances in Procrustes shape data using resampling experiments. In each group of closely related species (mostly congeneric), we found that a species can be identified fairly accurately even when means are based on relatively small samples, although errors are frequent with fewer specimens and primates more prone to inaccuracies. A precise reconstruction of similarity relationships, in contrast, sometimes requires very large samples (> 100), but this varies widely depending on the study group. Medium-sized samples are necessary to accurately estimate standard errors of mean shapes or intraspecific variance covariance structure, but in this case minimum sample sizes are broadly similar across all groups (≈ 20-50 individuals). Overall, thus, the minimum sample sized required for a study varies across taxa and depends on what is being assessed, but about 25-40 specimens (for each sex, if a species is sexually dimorphic) may be on average an adequate and attainable minimum sample size for estimating the most commonly used shape parameters. As expected, the best predictor of the effects of sampling error is the ratio of between- to within-species variation: the larger the ratio, the smaller the sample size needed to obtain the same level of accuracy. Even though ours is the largest study to date of the uncertainties in estimates of means, variances and covariances in geometric morphometrics, and despite its generally high congruence with previous analyses, we feel it would be premature to generalize. Clearly, there is no a priori answer for what minimum sample size is required for a particular study and no universal recipe to control for sampling error. Exploratory analyses using resampling experiments are thus desirable, easy to perform and yield powerful preliminary clues about the effect of sampling on parameter estimates in comparative studies of morphospecies, and in a variety of other morphometric applications in biology and medicine. Morphospecies descriptions are indeed a small piece of provisional evidence in a much more complex evolutionary puzzle. However, they are crucial in palaeontology, and provide important complimentary evidence in modern integrative taxonomy. Thus, if taxonomy provides the bricks for accurate research in biology, understanding the robustness of these bricks is the first fundamental step to build scientific knowledge on sound, stable and long-lasting foundations