The African bureaucrat and personnel management

Personnel Management in Africa by Peter Blunt and Oladeji Popoola Longman, London, 1985. xii plus 212 pp. including tables, figures, bibliography and index. £6,50 paperback.     

How a luxury monopolist might benefit from the aspirational utility effect of counterfeiting?

Thanks to an intertemporal analytical model, we incorporate aspirational consumers in Veblen markets for luxury fashion items. We show how a luxury monopolist can increase its profits thanks to the presence of counterfeit products. The genuine producer profit is shaped by two opposite effects: (1) a positive aspirational effect resulting from a sales increase due to the aspirational consumers who seek to imitate the lifestyle of snob consumers (2) a negative snob effect, resulting from a sales decrease due to the reduction of consumption by some snob consumers. We identify the conditions under which the overall effect generated by counterfeiting can increase the genuine firm profit. These conditions imply the existence of large aspirational effects and high additional utility gain associated with buying an original product instead of obtaining a counterfeit product.     

Determination of benzodiazepines in human hair by on-line high-performance liquid chromatography using a restricted access extraction column.

A method is described for the identification of five frequently prescribed benzodiazepines (BZD) (clonazepam, diazepam, flunitrazepam, midazolam and oxazepam) in human hair samples by reversed phase HPLC, following on-line simple enrichment and clean-up on a restricted access extraction column. 50mg of powdered hair were incubated (2h at 45 degrees C) after sonication (1h) in 1 ml of the following solution (methanol:ammonia, 97.5/2.5, v/v). The aliquot was centrifuged and the methanolic phase transferred to a conical tube and evaporated under a gentle stream of nitrogen. The residue was reconstituted by adding 100 microl of a mixture of phosphate buffer (20mM, pH=2.2) and acetonitrile (94/6, v/v). A total of 80 microl were injected into the system with the column switching technique. The pre-column or clean-up column was washed with phosphate buffer pH=7.2. The drugs retained on the pre-column were then eluted in the back-flush mode and separated on a C(8) semi micro column, Lichrospher select B, 125 mm x 3 mm. The BZD were determined by a photodiode-array detector at 254 nm, using reference data (retention time and UV spectra) stored in a personal library. The method showed excellent linearity between 0.5 and 20 ng/mg of hair for clonazepam, flunitrazepam and midazolam and between 0.5 and 100 ng/mg of hair for diazepam and oxazepam. Finally, the present method has been applied to a number of forensic cases in our laboratory.     

The Negotiated Desecuritization Of Turkey in Saudi Foreign Policy

Saudi-Turkey relations hit one of their lowest points due to the Arab uprisings and the regional shock of the Gulf crisis. The tension resulted from, and in turn exacerbated, a process of securitization of Saudi discourse, whereby officials labeled Turkey as a threat. But after three and a half years of the Gulf crisis, the Al-Ula accords allowed reconciliation among the regional states and opened the way for the construction of new understandings based on diplomacy, tolerance of differences on regional and domestic security, and respect of sovereignty. This spurred Saudi policy makers to de-securitize their discourse concerning Turkey—that is, to talk of it not as a threat, but as a potential partner. This process continues to develop gradually through cooperation on economics and investment, but it has required time to re-establish confidence among Saudi decision makers. This article analyzes the discourses of Saudi leaders and policy makers and shows how they affected Saudi Arabia's relations with Turkey, both negatively and positively.