A positive interpretation of the expansion of urban services in Latin America,with some Colombian evidence

It is argued that the contemporary phenomenon of rapid urbanisation cum rural‐urban migration with a high share of new urban jobs located in the service sector is likely to be an appropriate response to the agricultural, manufacturing, and service production functions available to the countries in question. There is at present no reason to believe it to be a less efficient process than the historical pattern in now developed countries, where production of goods provided relatively more urban employment than it does today. The nature of technological change between then and now appears to be a key factor in explaining the difference in patterns.     

Extraction and analysis of flunitrazepam/7-aminoflunitrazepam in blood and urine by LC-PDA and GC-MS using butyl SPE columns

The forensic toxicology community has recognized flunitrazepam and its metabolite (7-aminoflunitrazepam) as compounds of concern for several years. In this procedure, the analytes were extracted from whole blood and urine onto single mode solid phase cartridges (butyl) using nitrazepam as an internal standard. The columns were washed with distilled water and hexane. All three compounds were eluted from the sorbent using an ethyl acetate-methanol solvent mixture. After collection and evaporation of the solvent, the residue was dissolved in A, 0.1% (v/v) aqueous trifluoroacetic acid for HPLC-PDA analysis or B, ethyl acetate for derivatization with pentafluoropropionic anhydride (PFPA) for analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (selected ion monitoring, SIM). A limit of quantitation for this method using HPLC-PDA was found to be 5 and 1.0 ng mL(-1) by SIM.     

Involuntary outpatient treatment as "desintitutionalized coercion": the net-widening concerns

In American jurisprudence, two justifications have traditionally been put forth to support the government's social control of persons with mental illness: police power and parens patriae. As public mental hospitals became less available as loci in which to exercise these functions, governments sought alternative means to achieve the same ends. One prominent but quite controversial means is involuntary outpatient treatment (IOT). While the concerns about IOT have been myriad, one often alluded to but never documented is that of "net-widening." That is, once IOT became available, it would be applied to an ever greater number of individuals, progressively expanding the margins of the designated population to whom it is applied, despite the formal standard for its application remaining constant. We tested the net-widening belief in a naturalistic experiment in Massachusetts. We found that net-widening did not occur, despite an environment strongly conducive to that expansion. At this time, whatever the arguments against IOT might be, net-widening should not be one of them.