Policy Advocacy in Transitioning Regimes: Comparative Lessons from the Case of Harbour Protection in Hong Kong

Current research on policy advocacy relies exclusively on established regimes where instability is largely contained. Using the harbour protection advocacy in Hong Kong as an exploratory case, the article documents how conservationists exploited the unique opportunities arising from the transfer of sovereignty to advance heritage protection policy. Three new strategic choices in policy advocacy are identified. First, policy advocates strategically switched between issue frames instead of becoming strongly identified with any issue frame. Second, they avoided prolonged involvement by pursuing modest, programme-level adjustments. Third, they circumvented the restrictions on scope and focus by creating new venues outside of the policy subsystem.     

Analysis of the First- and Second-Generation Raving Dragon Novelty Bath Salts Containing Methylone and Pentedrone

In recent years, a large number of designer drugs sold as “Bath Salts” have appeared on the market. In July of 2011, Raving Dragon Novelty Bath Salts was obtained over the Internet. This product became unavailable in October of that year coinciding with the DEA issuing a temporarily schedule of mephedrone, methylone, and MDPV. Four months later in February of 2012, a new product was released from the same company under the new name Raving Dragon Voodoo Dust. The contents of both products were identified using spectroscopy methods: nuclear magnetic resonance, infrared, UV–visible, tandem mass spectrometry, and high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry. It was determined that Raving Dragon Novelty Bath Salts contained methylone. The replacement product Raving Dragon Voodoo Dust contained the unscheduled drug pentedrone. The Raving Dragon brand of products illustrates the rapid change of ingredients in these products to circumvent laws restricting availability, distribution, and use.     

Fibre mapping--a case study.

Fibre mapping, more commonly known as one-to-one taping, was developed in Germany approximately twenty years ago. The technique facilitates the distribution of fibres on a surface to be recorded. The impact of this technique on the investigation of serious crime has been reported in the European Fibre Group on several occasions. This paper represents a case study of the application of the technique. It is believed to be the first time that this technique has been successfully applied in the United Kingdom.     

Trilateral trade relations among China,Japan and South Korea: Challenges and prospects of regional economic integration

China’s emergence as a global and regional manufacturing center has significant implications for the Northeast Asian economies of Japan and South Korea. China's trade with Japan and South Korea has been rapidly growing in relative importance, largely facilitated by China's rise as a regional production base as well as changes in the trade structures between China and her neighbours. Indeed, in recent years, China has been the main driving force behind Northeast Asian trade interdependency. The strong economic linkages and complementarities among China, Japan and South Korea augur well for the further integration among the three Northeast Asian countries. Establishing a trilateral free trade arrangement (FTA) provide new opportunities to enhance the three countries’ overall growth potential through trade and investment. However, such Northeast Asian regional integration is destined to be a long, drawn out process. The forging of a trilateral trading arrangement between China and her two neighbours remain a long term vision in view of the many outstanding issues and obstacles.     

Regulating Quality of Care in Nursing Homes in Hong Kong: A Social-Ecological Investigation

A social-ecological model aided by an adversarial methodology was employed to study the regulation of private nursing homes in Hong Kong over a five-year period. Specifically the study addresses the way quality of care and its definitions changed in response to shifting socio-political-economic conditions. The study began when only 2 percent of the industry was licensable. It was found that an initial period of harmful capture was replaced by a period of cooperation between government and the industry, following increased resource flow into the system that made it possible for desirable trade-offs to occur between the two parties. Six-and-a-half years after the introduction of the regulatory ordinance, all homes in the market achieved licensure status.     

Introduction: The Basic Law,Governance and Electoral Politics in China's Hong Kong and Macao since 1997

1 July 2007 marks the tenth anniversary of Hong Kong's retrocession to Chinese sovereignty to become a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the PRC. The HKSAR has functioned under the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ framework as enshrined in the Basic Law, its mini-constitution. Upon the resumption of Chinese jurisdiction over Macao on 20 December 1999, a similar ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula also came into effect for the new MSAR under its Basic Law. The ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula that guarantees a high degree of autonomy in both Hong Kong and Macao is also a cornerstone of the PRC's strategy toward peaceful reunification with Taiwan. To provide a more balanced and informed understanding of these two Chinese SARs in actualizing the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ model, this special section of four articles adopts a bi-focal approach. On the one hand, it presents in a joint article the views of two leading mainland Chinese legal scholars (Professors Geping Rao and Zhenmin Wang, both National People's Congress Hong Kong Basic Law Committee members) on some vital dimensions of the Basic Law. On the other hand, it offers three articles with a more locally anchored perspective—a comparative analysis (by Professor Sonny Lo) of the contrasting HKSAR and MSAR experiences, and two case studies (by Professors Bruce Kwong and Eilo Yu) that highlight key features of patron–client linkages and informal politics dynamics in HKSAR and MSAR elections and politics.     

To Behave Like a Liar: Nonverbal Cues to Deception in an Asian Sample

The detection of deception is an essential yet challenging component of investigative interviewing. Behavioural cues to deception in particular, have long been used in investigative interviewing contexts to determine decisions of suspect veracity and deceit. Nevertheless, deception research amongst non-American or European populations has yet to fully explore the effectiveness of such non-verbal observations. This study may be the first to examine truth-lie behaviours involving South-East Asian participants. In this study conducted in Singapore, 68 participants completed either a mock criminal task or a non-criminal task, before encountering an investigative interviewing scenario in which they had to lie or tell the truth to the interviewer. The results showed that liars displayed significantly more head movements and less hand/finger movements, as well as reported more feelings of guilt, than truth-tellers. Implications for investigator training and criminal investigative procedures are discussed.     

Sample pre-treatment for CO-oximetric determination of carboxyhaemoglobin in putrefied blood and cavity fluid

Blood or blood-containing cavity fluid samples recovered from decomposed bodies in suspected carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning cases often have low total haemoglobin (tHb) levels or contain significant amounts of oily droplets, methaemoglobin (MetHb) and sulphaemoglobin (SHb), all conditions which render the validity of the measurements of carboxyhaemoglobin (HbCO) by commercially available CO-oximeters doubtful. Two sample pre-treatment methods, namely, centrifugal evaporation and addition of a commercially available standard haemoglobin solution containing a known level of HbCO, were developed to render such putrefied samples amenable to analysis by CO-oximeters. The methods developed were validated with samples of various degrees of putrefaction and various HbCO levels. The relative uncertainty of the determined HbCO levels as compared to their corresponding reference levels for the centrifugal evaporation method was approximately 5% and that for the standard addition method was <20%.     

Application of Volume‐of‐Fluid Method to Analyze the Viscosity Effect on the Spine Formation of Bloodstains

In bloodstain pattern analysis, the blood droplet volume and surface impact velocity play an important role, and many related experimental studies have been carried out. If an appropriate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model that could solve bloodstain patterns, especially spine formation bloodstain patterns, can be obtained, the blood droplet volume and impact speeds at various crime scenes can be predicted more accurately. For this purpose, Flow‐3D software using the volume‐of‐fluid method was applied to analyze the behavior of human blood droplets during an impact event, especially focusing on the viscous effect on splashing, which forms the spine which can be used to predict the impact velocity. To obtain a non‐Newtonian viscosity model of blood for a computational fluid dynamic analysis, the venous blood samples of 163 people were tested using a hemorheology instrument. Among the venous blood samples of 163 people, 37 samples for which all blood test results were in a normal range were selected for the non‐Newtonian viscosity modeling. From the CFD analysis, it could be concluded that a non‐Newtonian viscosity model is more appropriate than a constant viscosity model for predicting splashing that forms the spine. The gradient of the non‐Newtonian model at a high shear rate has more of an effect on spine formation than that at a low shear rate. The lowest viscosity with a high velocity at the outer front of the radiating flow plays an important role in forming the splashing pattern.     

Introduction

The seemingly disparate aspects of long-term care (LTC) exist in a broader context of concern for the ability of disabled and chronically ill individuals of all ages to function in everyday life. A focus in LTC, therefore, is on the types of services and products needed for an individual to perform basic activities of daily living.

A primary emphasis in LTC is on the individual who is in need of assistance. Related questions include: What impact will the receipt of LTC have on the autonomy of the individual? How will the care, which may extend over a period of years or decades, be funded? How will the various payment mechanisms affect an individual's access to care? What are potential solutions to the problems encountered as the individual and his or her family deal with the fragmentation and other problems of the LTC system? Such questions are addressed in the articles in this symposium, “Issues in Long-Term Care.” This paper provides a context for the symposium.