University of Florida Press: Journals
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The Effects of Household Corrosive Substances on the Dissolution of Complete Pig (Sus scrofa) Carcasses
No full textCaustic substance submersion has been a known method of body dispersal in homicides, and its use continues today in cases involving organized crime. Additional research is necessary to determine whether a complete body can be fully dissolved using caustic substances and at what rates. The present study submerged two complete 10-to 15-kg fresh, never-frozen, juvenile pigs (Sus scrofa) in each of three different household corrosive substances (37% sulfuric acid, 31.45% hydrochloric acid, and 18–28% sodium hydroxide) under controlled conditions to simulate the way in which complete human remains would react to common household corrosives. The goal of this project was to determine which corrosive substance could most rapidly dissolve a body or reduce it to a slurry. Hydrochloric acid achieved complete dissolution in one week, sulfuric acid achieved complete dissolution in five weeks, and sodium hydroxide achieved near-complete dissolution in eight weeks. Certain household corrosive substances are therefore effective in complete body dissolution
Craniometric Relationships of Migrant Victims of the April 18, 2015 Shipwreck Off the Coast of Libya
No full textOne of the most tragic events involving African migrants’ attempts to get to Europe was the 2015 shipwreck off the coast of Libya. More than 300 crania were recovered and are currently in the Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology and Odontology, Milan, Italy, where attempts are being made to identify them. This paper analyzes the cranial morphometrics in relation to what is known of African cranial variation. It also addresses questions of population subdivision on the ship as well as secular changes that may be reflected in cranial morphology. Crania were digitized using the 3skull software, which also computes Howells measurements from the coordinates. Migrant crania were compared to African reference samples consisting of both 19th-century sub-Saharan West Africans and East Africans. Statistical procedures were discriminant and canonical variate analysis and Mahalanobis distances. K-means unsupervised clustering was also used. Results showed that the migrant samples differed from the 19th-century samples systemically; the differences consisted mainly of lower facial projections and higher cranial vaults and bases. Position on the ship, whether on the deck or below in the holds, showed subdivision. Holds had a higher proportion of West Africans, and the deck had a higher proportion of East Africans. K-means clustering also found groups contrasting between the deck and the holds. Comparing migrant cranial morphology to 19th-century Africans using variables that respond to secular change showed that migrants reflect changes that have occurred in Africa over the past 200 years. We conclude that morphometric analysis can provide useful information concerning the composition of unidentified victims of tragic events such as the 2015 shipwreck
Short Time, Big Impact: Lessons, Legacies, and Future Directions Based on the Work of Stephen D. Ousley
No full textAcademic impact is often measured in the amount of publications, number of students mentored, and what seminal research is contributed to a field. However, beyond this physical component of a person’s legacy is the influence they have on the field’s current and future practitioners and their perceptions of the field. Stephen Ousley’s contributions to both academic impact and lasting influence on its members are innumerable. This article seeks to provide a retrospective look into his teaching and mentorship style, highlight some of his contributions to the field, and then provide a prospective of new research Steve envisioned based on his last project, which was presented at the 2023 AABA conference
Differences in the Shape of the Frontal Bone between 20th-Century Euro-Americans and Germans
No full textGeometric morphometrics is a very useful but rarely applied concept in forensic anthropology. It uses information on the shape of an object for data analysis. For this study, geometric morphometrics has been used to compare the shape of the frontal bone between a German and a Euro-American sample (both early 20th century). Results were compared using size-only, shape-only and size-and-shape combined.
Results show that the frontal shapes of the two study populations can clearly be distinguished from one another. The best classification results could be achieved when combining size and shape data for analysis. Centroid size showed significant variation by group and sex, and that Euro-Americans are more sex dimorphic than Germans. We conclude that shape data provides a considerable amount of extra information for population affinity estimation, even on a single cranial bone like the frontal. A broader application of geometric morphometrics in forensic anthropology could thus help generating a more reliable biological profile, as well as providing additional insight into German-American morphometric differentiation
Preparing For Pandemic: Securitizing Rhetoric in U.S. National Influenza Response Plans, 1978-2017
No full textScholars from a wide range of disciplines, including communication and rhetoric, have argued that infectious disease has been increasingly securitized in the post-9/11 environment. This essay tracks the rhetoric of seven U.S. pandemic plans from 1978 to 2017 to investigate how the evolving language of these plans supports or undermines the infectious disease securitization thesis. Our analysis reveals stark differences in the arrangement, delivery, and style of U.S. pandemic plans, despite a consistent focus on antigenic shifts of influenza A, vaccines, and medical research and development. Although U.S. pandemic plans reflect connections to security since their earliest inception, they have adopted more explicit linkages to national and global health security since 2005. This move reflects the emergence of the global health security paradigm and raises questions about pandemic planning implementation
Intersections of Genre and Identity in Contraceptive Health Discourses
No full textThis study aims to examine online contraception texts as a way to interrogate the intersections of identity, inclusivity, and access in contraception and reproductive health discourses. At the center of this project is the understanding that, while many contraceptive technologies are designed for and marketed towards "women" for the sole use of preventing pregnancy, the actual users of contraception and their purposes for its use are diverse and involve considerations of sexuality, gender identity, socioeconomic status, ability, cultural and religious norms, and access to healthcare. By examining the genre of contraception texts through systematized coding and rhetorical analysis, this study examines how the constitutive genre features of these texts do and do not recognize the diversity of users, with a particular focus on users in the trans community
Air Justice in Louisville: Why Health Literacy Requires Coalition
No full textOne of the root causes of health disparities in Louisville, Kentucky, is air pollution, a disparity rooted in the city’s history of environmental racism. Residents who engage in local environmental justice efforts face other systemic barriers, all of which intersect in the jargon-filled public notices about air pollution that circulate throughout the city. This article discusses a feminist environmental health literacy coalition formed to promote health literacy and create translations of public notices in plain language. Our preliminary theory of Air Justice maintains that health literacy is a social practice and that intersectional coalitions provide rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) scholars with a local approach to scholarship that mirrors the diverse and multiple situatedness of the communities in which they work
The Shifting Economic Allegiance of Capital Gains
No full textTechnological advances and the digitalization of the global economy have created an economic environment beyond the imagination of the original designers of the international tax system. Much scholarly attention has been paid to the question of how these economic transformations should affect which country is able to tax a multinational company’s income. But which country should be able to tax capital gains income from the sale of that company’s shares is an important and overlooked question.
This Article answers this question. It concludes that taxing authority over capital gains income must be reallocated to the countries in which companies conduct business. In our modern, digitalized economy, this reallocation is necessary to align international sourcing rules with international tax law’s underlying principles.
While this Article is a primarily a proof of concept, it also seeks to begin a conversation about ways to implement this reallocation and describes one possible approach: an annual mark-to market tax at the company level on increases in company value apportioned amongst source countries based on a set formula
Designing a Billionaire's Tax
No full textWith ProPublica’s dramatic revelation in 2021 of the low “true tax rates” of America’s billionaires serving as a catalyst, the exclusion of unrealized gains from the base of the federal income tax has been challenged to an extent unprecedented in the century-plus history of the tax. In late 2021, a proposal by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D, OR) to tax billionaires’ unrealized gains in tradable assets might have become law, but for the opposition of Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV). And in early 2022, the Treasury Department of President Joe Biden included a minimum tax on the unrealized gains of the ultrarich in its tax reform proposals. A narrower reform, taxing billionaires who borrow against unrealized appreciation to finance lavish consumption expenditures, has also been urged. All three of these proposed reforms—but especially the first two—would transform the fundamental character of the income tax as applied to the wealthiest Americans. This Article describes the three approaches, considers design challenges under each and evaluates their relative merits
Safeguarding Taxpayer Data
No full textThe Internal Revenue Service (IRS) collects more information on more individuals than any other government agency. The information is not only financial but personal, potentially including information about health care needs and decisions; the caregivers, disabilities and foreign birth of children; the educational progress and felony convictions of students; and one’s religious and charitable associations. In acknowledging the vast quantity of information held by the IRS, and the necessity of taxpayers trusting tax administrators with their information, Congress provided greater protection for taxpayer information under the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) than it was provided under the Privacy Act. Congress obligated IRS employees to keep taxpayer information confidential, and authorized felony charges and damages suits, including punitive damages for inappropriate disclosures of taxpayer information. These special protections were enacted almost 50 years ago, long before the spread of the internet and emergence of cybercrime. This Article proposes updating the IRC’s special protections for taxpayer information to reflect the cybersecurity objectives of the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), and the frequent audits of the IRS by its Inspector General that show the IRS’s persistent failures to comply with FISMA guidance, such as failing to encrypt taxpayer data, secure mainframe platforms, regulate system access, remediate known vulnerabilities and assist victims of data breaches