The Quantitation of Cocaine on U.S. Currency: Survey and Significance of the Levels of Contamination

It has long been suspected that the illicit distribution of cocaine in the United States has led to a large‐scale contamination of the currency supply. To investigate the extent of contamination, 418 currency samples (4174 bills) were collected from 90 locations around the United States from 1993 to 2009. The extent of their cocaine contamination was quantitated via gas chromatography/mass spectrometry or liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry. The level of cocaine contamination was determined to average 2.34 ng/bill across all denominations ($1, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100). Levels of cocaine contamination on currency submitted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory in criminal cases over the 1993–2001 timeframe had significantly higher contamination than currency in general circulation. A mathematical model was developed based on the background survey that indicates the likelihood of drawing a bill in specific concentration ranges. For example, there is a 0.8349 likelihood that random bill will have contamination less than 20 ng.     

The Jews of early modern Marburg, 1640s—1800

This article examines Jewish household and family organization in a middle-sized German city, the Upper Hessian regional center of Marburg, the population of which ranged from 2500 to 6000 from the Thirty Years War to the end of the 18th century. Some general hypotheses about population development, household structure, and family life conveniently summarized by Toch [Toch, M. (1995). Aspects of stratification in early modern German Jewry: Population history and village Jews. In R. P. Hsia & H. Lehmann (Eds.). In and out of the ghetto: Jewish-Gentile relations in late medieval and early modern Germany (pp. 77-89). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] serve as an organizational frame for the case study. In Toch's view, Jews' comparative wealth, as well as governmental restrictions on their settlement and marriage in central Europe, led to their having larger and more complex households than those of the Christian majority. While household enumerations over time confirm several of Toch's observations, especially the larger size of Jewish families, neither Hessian settlement policy nor local Marburg opposition prevented the Jewish minority of about 1% from keeping pace with general population growth. Moreover, Jews did not respond to their regulated living conditions and status as cultural outsiders with a family organization exhibiting remarkably more internal complexity than did Christian households.     

Jurisdictional integration: A framework for measuring and predicting the depth of international regulatory cooperation in competition policy

This article takes a new approach to international regulatory cooperation by developing a concept of the depth of cooperation, jurisdictional integration. A dataset of international competition policy agreements is compiled and ranked against an ordinal index of the depth of de jure cooperation in enforcing competition policies. There has been both a deepening and broadening of de jure cooperation over time. Statistical analysis finds that common membership of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development is a strong predictor of the depth of agreements to cooperate in enforcing competition policies; that we can be confident that the depth of agreements is low when signatories' substantive competition laws are dissimilar; and that the depth of de jure cooperation is a strong predictor of whether an agreement is “intergovernmental” or “transgovernmental.” The article puts forward a new way to map and measure international regulatory cooperation, and a new variable for use in research on its causes and consequences.     

Developmental Relations Between Bullying Victimization and Suicidal Ideation in Middle Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood: Do Internalizing Problems and Substance Use Mediate Their Links?

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Previous research has suggested that bullying victimization is associated with higher suicidal risk among young people; however, the mechanisms underlying this...