Identification of Eight Synthetic Cannabinoids,Including 5F‐AKB48 in Seized Herbal Products Using DART‐TOF‐MS and LC‐QTOF‐MS as Nontargeted Screening Methods

Synthetic cannabinoids are sprayed onto plant material and smoked for their marijuana‐like effects. Clandestine manufacturers modify synthetic cannabinoid structures by creating closely related analogs. Forensic laboratories are tasked with detection of these analog compounds, but targeted analytical methods are often thwarted by the structural modifications. Here, direct analysis in real time coupled to accurate mass time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (DART‐TOF‐MS) in combination with liquid chromatography quadruple time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (LC‐QTOF‐MS) are presented as a screening and nontargeted confirmation method, respectively. Methanol extracts of herbal material were run using both methods. Spectral data from four different herbal products were evaluated by comparing fragmentation pattern, accurate mass and retention time to available reference standards. JWH‐018, JWH‐019, AM2201, JWH‐122, 5F‐AKB48, AKB48‐N‐(4‐pentenyl) analog, UR144, and XLR11 were identified in the products. Results demonstrate that DART‐TOF‐MS affords a useful approach for rapid screening of herbal products for the presence and identification of synthetic cannabinoids.     

Patella sex determination by 3D statistical shape models and nonlinear classifiers

Sex determination is one of the essential steps in personal identification of an individual from skeletal remains. Most elements of the skeleton have been subjected to discriminant function analysis for sex estimation, but little work has been done in terms of the patella. This paper proposes a new sex determination method from the patella using a novel automated feature extraction technique. A dataset of 228 patellae (95 females and 133 males) was amassed from the William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection from the University of Tennessee and was subjected to noninvasive high resolution computed tomography (CT). After the CT data were segmented, a set of features was automatically extracted, normalized, and ranked. The segmentation process with surface smoothing minimizes the noise from enthesophytes and ultimately allows our methods to distinguish variations in patellar morphology. These features include geometric features, moments, principal axes, and principal components. A feature vector of dimension 45 for each subject was then constructed. A set of statistical and supervised neural network classification methods were used to classify the sex of the patellar feature vectors. Nonlinear classifiers such as neural networks have been used in previous research to analyze several medical diagnosis problems, including quantitative tissue characterization and automated chromosome classification. In this paper, different classification methods were compared. Classification success ranged from 83.77% average classification rate using labels from a Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) clustering step, to 90.3% for linear discriminant classification (LDC). We obtained results of 96.02% and 93.51% training and testing classification rates, respectively, using feed-forward backpropagation neural networks (NN). These promising results using newly developed features and the application of nonlinear classifiers encourage the usage of these methods in forensic anthropology for identifying the sex of an individual from incomplete skeletons retaining at least one patella.     

Bringing Community Based Participatory Research to Domestic Violence Scholarship: an Online Toolkit

In the absence of ongoing involvement in the communities that are the subjects of research, even well-intentioned researchers can develop questions that are not relevant to community needs, employ methods that hurt community members, or disseminate findings in ways that are inaccessible to those most affected. Recognizing these harms, a growing number of domestic violence (DV) researchers have embraced community-based participatory research (CBPR), an approach in which researchers and community members share power at every level of the research process, co-creating knowledge that can be applied to enhance community well-being. Despite growing interest in this approach, however, there are insufficient opportunities for interested researchers to learn how to actually engage in it, especially in the DV context. To remedy this gap, the authors of this paper collaborated to develop an online toolkit for emerging researchers interested in CPBR. This brief report frames the need for CBPR in DV research using short vignettes that come from our own research experience; introduces Power Through Partnerships: A CBPR Toolkit for Domestic Violence Researchers; and presents recommendations for developing, promoting, and disseminating future CBPR research. We chose to announce the development and availability of this toolkit in an academic journal in order to highlight its scholarly and practical relevance for researcher audiences who might be less familiar with the CBPR approach.     

Evaluating Brazilian South–South Cooperation in Haiti

I focus on evaluating Brazilian development and humanitarian cooperation in Haiti to answer how emerging providers such as Brazil are contributing to global development through cooperation. The paper establishes criteria for evaluation, arguing that global standards for aid effectiveness need to be expanded. I argue that when assessed on ownership, efficiency and sustainability, cooperation holds several advantages and limits, such as misplaced assumptions that Brazil’s approach is appropriate elsewhere. The discussion is rooted in the context of Haiti in order to underline how outcomes are not pre-determined, but rather depend on the model’s interaction with the partner context.     

Securitization and Desecuritization: Female Soldiers and the Reconstruction of Women in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone

This article focuses on the construction of “soldier” and “victim” by post-conflict programs in Sierra Leone. Focusing on the absence of individual testimonies and interviews that inform representations of women and girls post-conflict, this article demonstrates that the ideal of the female war victim has limited the ways in which female combatants are addressed by disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs in Sierra Leone. It is argued that titles given to female soldiers such as “females associated with the war,” “dependents,” or “camp followers” reveal the reluctance of reintegration agencies to identify females who participated in war as soldiers. In addition, I argue that men and masculinity are securitized post-conflict while women—even when they act in highly securitized roles such as soldiers—are desecuritized and, in effect, de-emphasized in post-conflict policy making. The impact of this categorization has been that the reintegration process for men has been securitized, or emphasized as an essential element of the transition from war to peace. In contrast, the reintegration process for females has been deemed a social concern and has been moralized as a return to normal.     

A Song of Policy Incongruence: The Missing Choir of Consumer Preferences in GMO‐Labeling Policy Outcomes

This article focuses on the degree of policy congruence, and by extension policy responsiveness, of U.S. federal‐ and state‐level GMO labeling laws from 2011–2016. Utilizing consumer survey data, evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates consumers prefer clear text‐based indication if food products contain genetically modified ingredients. However, the federal law adopted in 2016 mandates GMO labeling but with exceptions permitted to clear on‐package text labeling. The results of this study demonstrate that consumer preferences were not adequately represented at the federal level and were misaligned with state policy activities as captured in the aggregate outcome. State legislatures were actively proposing mandatory legislation with only a few cases of success, which did not adequately represent the wishes of the people. Given the misalignment and overall policy incongruence, the consequences of pending federal law are discussed in light of why the voices of the consumer choir were not heard by lawmakers.     

Understanding Entrepreneurial Intent in Late Adolescence: The Role of Intentional Self-Regulation and Innovation

Entrepreneurship represents a form of adaptive developmental regulation through which both entrepreneurs and their ecologies benefit. We describe entrepreneurship from the perspective of relational developmental systems theory, and examine the joint role of personal attributes, contextual attributes, and characteristics of person-context relationships in predicting entrepreneurial intent in a sample 3,461 college students enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States (60 % female; 61 % European American). Specifically, we tested whether personal characteristics (i.e., gender, intentional self-regulation skills, innovation orientation) and contextual factors (i.e., entrepreneurial parents) predicted college students’ intentions to pursue an entrepreneurial career. Our findings suggest that self-regulation, innovation orientation, and having entrepreneurial role models (i.e., parents) predict entrepreneurial intent. Limitations and future directions for the study of youth entrepreneurship are discussed.     

United Nations Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection in Civil War

Does United Nations peacekeeping protect civilians in civil war? Civilian protection is a primary purpose of UN peacekeeping, yet there is little systematic evidence for whether peacekeeping prevents civilian deaths. We propose that UN peacekeeping can protect civilians if missions are adequately composed of military troops and police in large numbers. Using unique monthly data on the number and type of UN personnel contributed to peacekeeping operations, along with monthly data on civilian deaths from 1991 to 2008 in armed conflicts in Africa, we find that as the UN commits more military and police forces to a peacekeeping mission, fewer civilians are targeted with violence. The effect is substantial—the analyses show that, on average, deploying several thousand troops and several hundred police dramatically reduces civilian killings. We conclude that although the UN is often criticized for its failures, UN peacekeeping is an effective mechanism of civilian protection.