La ciència de la (in)justícia

Estudis recents proven que les decisions judicials estan també determinades per factors psicologics, politics i socials.

Firms, destinations, and aggregate fluctuations

This paper uses a database covering the universe of French firms for the period 1990-2007 to provide a forensic account of the role of individual firms in generating aggregatefluctuations. We set up a simple multi-sector model of heterogeneous firms selling tomultiple markets to motivate a theoretically-founded decomposition of firms' annualsales growth rate into different components. We find that the firm-specific componentcontributes substantially to aggregate sales volatility, mattering about as much as thecomponents capturing shocks that are common across firms within a sector or country.We then decompose the firm-specific component to provide evidence on two mechanismsthat generate aggregate fluctuations from microeconomic shocks highlighted in the recentliterature: (i) when the firm size distribution is fat-tailed, idiosyncratic shocks tolarge firms directly contribute to aggregate fluctuations; and (ii) aggregate fluctuationscan arise from idiosyncratic shocks due to input-output linkages across the economy.Firm linkages are approximately three times as important as the direct effect of firmshocks in driving aggregate fluctuations.

Detection of Body Dump Sites and Clandestine Burials: a GIS-Based Landscape Approach

Forensic archaeology has been of inestimable help in the location and excavation of clandestine burials (Hunter 1996a:16-17, 1996b; Killam 2004; Levine et al. 1984). Landscape archaeology techniques have been adapted and widely applied for such purposes. In this article, an adaptation of one of the most common applications of archaeological GIS, that is predictive site location, is applied to the detection of body dump sites and clandestine burial sites, bringing together in the process the fields of landscape archaeology, forensic sciences, and GIS.

La Genética forense y sus aplicaciones

La Genética forense es una disciplina que en la actualidad goza de una gran popularidad debido a su reiterada aparición en la prensa escrita, series de televisión y producciones cinematográfi cas. Aunque la palabra"forense" se asocia comúnmente con"médico forense" y el estudio de los cadáveres, técnicamente deriva de la palabra latina"forum", el foro, donde los romanos llevaban a cabo sus juicios. De forma que"forense" es un adjetivo que indica referencia a temas judiciales. Por tanto, la Genética forense no es más que la utilización de esta rama de la ciencia para resolver temas judiciales. Los ámbitos principales de actuación de la Genética forense son: la identificación de individuos para resolver diferentes tipos de delitos (asesinatos, robos, etc.), la identifi cación de individuos desaparecidos o de cuerpos seriamente dañados como consecuencia de una gran catástrofe (natural o producida por el hombre), los estudios de paternidad (o de otros grados de parentesco) y por último la identifi cación de diferentes especies o de individuos concretos de ciertas especies (para resolver temas de fraudes alimentarios, casos criminales, ataques terroristas mediante microorganismos, etc.).