Parental Motivational Perseverance Predicts Adolescents’ Depressive Symptoms: An Intergenerational Analysis with Actor-Partner Interdependence Model

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Adolescents’ depressive symptoms are affected by a number of factors including life stress, gender, socio-economic status, and parental depression symptoms....     

Experimental studies on the mechanism of ethanol formation in corpses

Various in vitro experiments were performed for the purpose of clarifying the mechanism of ethanol production in corpses. Whereas a negligible quantity of ethanol was produced in the blood alone, which was left at room temperature, the quantity of ethanol was slightly increased by addition of glucose to the blood. When saprogens were further added, the quantity was markedly increased. Various materials were added to blood-liver homogenates as specimens, and the mixtures were stored in an incubator at 37 degrees C. As a result of the addition of an antibiotic to the mixture every day, there was hardly any production of ethanol. When alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) and reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) were added, ethanol production was slightly increased. When acetaldehyde was added first, ethanol production was inhibited the next day, but on and after day 2, the quantity of ethanol was more than that in the control material. When pyruvic acid was added first, the results were similar to the above. Pyrazole, cyanamide, and disulfiram completely inhibited the production of ethanol. Ethanol production in corpses is believed to take place through a pathway opposite to that of ethanol metabolism in the living body, under the influence of ADH, ALDH, etc., in saprogens using carbohydrates as substrates.     

Comparative study of D1S80 typing by capillary electrophoresis and sequencing

The D1S80 locus is very useful for personal identification in Japan. To obtain a correct allele over 45, we examined PCR amplification product of the allele over 45 both by direct sequencing and fragment analysis using capillary electrophoresis. Direct sequencing finally determined the allele as being 57. However, it was calculated to be an allele of 56 by comparison with size markers for capillary electrophoresis. The difference could be attributed to the electrophoretic size markers. This finding indicates that the direct sequencing may be useful to determine the allele over 45 in the D1S80 locus.     

One village one product: evaluations and lessons learnt from OVOP aid projects

The One Village One Product project that originated in Japan's Oita Prefecture is just one component of many official Japanese development assistance projects aiming to promote rural development in more than 30 countries. Not all efforts, however, result in the same level of sustainability. Oita Prefecture built its movement on three principles: local yet global, self-reliance and creativity, and human resources development. The projects that satisfy these principles are generally found to be sustainable. These principles can also be applicable to overseas projects.     

Lessons learned from the World Commission on Dams

The World Commission on Dams was an independent international body created under initiatives of the World Bank and the World Conservation Union in order to address environmental and social impacts of large dams. It published its final report in November 2000 after 2.5 years of extensive studies, public hearings, and discussions. The report included recommendations that were expected by some to become internationally acceptable standards for the planning, assessment, design, construction, operation, and monitoring of large dam projects. However, to date, none of these recommendations have been either officially accepted by major international financial institutions, including the World Bank, or by a large number of national governments, including China and India, which are the world’s top and third largest dam-building countries. Several factors have prevented their broad acceptance: (1) the World Bank lost its stake in the development of policy as the original scope of the review expanded from solely Bank-funded projects to cover all large dam projects in the world; (2), the World Bank was neither included in the secretariat nor did it provide Commissioners, thereby providing the Bank with an excuse not to accept the recommendations; (3) the Commission had the heavy tasks of carrying out both scientific study and developing policies, under serious time constraints, resulting in premature recommendations that were difficult to apply in the real world; (4) the character of the final recommendations was not clearly explained in the report, giving stakeholders unrealistic expectations.

Through the Back Door: Applying Theories of Legal Compliance to Illegal Immigration During the Chinese Exclusion Era

This article applies theories of legal compliance to analyze the making of this country's first “illegal immigrants”—Chinese laborers who crossed the U.S.‐Canadian and U.S.‐Mexican borders in defiance of the Chinese exclusion laws (1882–1943). Drawing upon a variety of sources, including unpublished government records, I explore the ways in which Chinese laborers gained surreptitious entry into the United States during this period and ask, what explains their mass noncompliance? I suggest that while an instrumental perspective is useful for understanding these border crossings, it overlooks other important determinants of noncompliance: normative values and opportunity structures. Specifically, the exclusion laws were widely perceived by the Chinese as lacking social and moral legitimacy, and thus not worthy of obedience. In addition, the existence of smuggling networks and liberal immigration policies in Canada and Mexico played a critical role in facilitating noncompliance. The article concludes with a discussion about the benefits and challenges of using this theoretical framework to analyze noncompliance in immigration law.     

Analysis of pituitary lesions in fatal closed head injury

We analyzed forensic autopsy findings of 66 consecutive patients with fatal closed head injury who survived up to 48 days after trauma to ascertain the causal factors and the time course of development of posttraumatic pituitary lesions. Pituitary lesions were identified in 27 patients. In patients with pituitary lesions, posterior lobe hemorrhage was observed in 21 patients, followed by anterior lobe hemorrhage in 10 patients and anterior lobe infarct in 7 patients. Comparisons between patients with and without pituitary lesions showed that falls and subdural hematoma were significantly frequent in patients with pituitary lesions. Immunohistochemistry of neurophysin showed increased immunoreactivity in the hypothalamus of patients with pituitary lesions and brain edema, providing morphologic evidence of pituitary dysfunction. Hemorrhage in the anterior or posterior lobe was identifiable in patients with short survival periods, whereas infarct in the anterior lobe appeared in patients surviving at least 14 hours. These data further our understanding of the mechanisms of pituitary dysfunctions and help in the estimation of the survival period after head trauma.     

Legal Attitudes of Immigrant Detainees

A substantial body of research shows that people's legal attitudes can have wide‐ranging behavioral consequences. In this article, I use original survey data to examine long‐term immigrant detainees’ legal attitudes. I find that the majority of detainees express a felt obligation to obey the law, and do so at a significantly higher rate than other U.S. sample populations. I also find that the detainees’ perceived obligation to obey U.S. immigration authorities is significantly related to their evaluations of procedural justice, as measured by their assessments of fair treatment while in detention. This finding remains robust controlling for a variety of instrumental and detainee background factors, including the detainees’ experiences with the legal system and legal authorities in their countries of origin. Finally, I find that vicarious procedural justice evaluations based on detainees’ assessments of how others are treated are as important to detainees’ perceived obligation to obey U.S. immigration authorities as their personal experiences of fair or unfair treatment. I discuss the broader implications of these findings and their contributions to research on procedural justice and legal compliance, and research on legal attitudes of noncitizens.     

Determination of MN blood group from blood stains by electrophoresis and immunoblotting

The determination of blood groups from blood stains is extremely important in medicolegal practice, but there is the possibility of an error in the determination of MN phenotypes by the absorption-elution test. We investigated a new method applying electrophoresis and immunoblotting. As a consequence of various experiments, the most appropriate pretreatment of blood stains was as follows. Blood stains were immersed in physiological saline for 0.5 to 1 h and centrifuged. The supernatant was discarded. The sediment was dissolved in sample buffer (TRIS-buffered physiological saline containing 2% sodium dodecyl sulfate) and followed by thermodegradation. It was subjected to sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). After transfer to a nitrocellulose membrane by Western blotting, MN phenotypes could be determined accurately from blood stains by an enzyme immunoassay (EIA) using commercially available polyclonal anti-M and anti-N sera. For blood stains more than 1 month old it was not easy to determine the MN phenotypes.     

Medicolegal studies on alcohol detected in dead bodies — alcohol levels in skeletal muscle

An experiment was carried out on rats to determine whether or not a skeletal muscle sample was suitable for the determination of ethanol concentration in a carcass. Gas chromatography was used to estimate the ethanol and n-propanol concentrations in the femoral muscle and intracardial blood. The ethanol concentration of each sample was corrected according to the moisture ratio of circulating blood, viz., 78.5%.The ethanol concentration ratio of blood to muscle was 1.03 two hours after ethanol administration. When the carcasses of rats pre-treated with ethanol were stored at 15 °C and 25 °C, respectively, the ethanol concentrations in muscle and blood increased with time. At all times the concentration was higher in blood than in muscle, and also higher in samples collected from the carcass stored at 25 °C than at 15 °C.When the control carcass was stored in the same manner, the postmortem production of ethanol was noticed in both blood and muscle. As in the experimental rats, the control rats exhibited a higher blood ethanol than muscle ethanol level. Again, the ethanol concentration was higher in samples collected from the carcass stored at 25 °C than at 15 °C. The ratio of ethanol to n-propanol was less than 20:1 in blood and less than 10.1 in muscle.These results suggest that skeletal muscle may be a suitable tissue for the postmortem detection of ethanol.