A Governance Reform Proposal: Improving Bus Transit Operations in Los Angeles

This article examines key governing issues related to Los Angeles transit operations. The study uses empirical data from the National Transit Database and personal interviews conducted with transit agency officials. Based on technical analysis and evaluation, the authors call for empowering council of governments and small cities to address interagency/intersector coordination and political equity issues, downsizing the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Headquarters and strengthening autonomy of the “Service Sectors” to better streamline transit operation issues, abolishing small municipal transit operators to refine bus fleet size distribution, and enhancing transit service privatization to yield a better cost efficiency.     

Are Your Disputants Insecure and Does It Matter? Attachment and Disputants' Speech during Mediation

An exploratory qualitative study explored the effect of attachment styles on disputants' speech during real‐life mediations. Drawing on attachment theory, we classified disputants as secure or insecure individuals using a self‐report attachment‐style questionnaire. Subsequently, they entered their mediation sessions, where their entire speech was recorded. Qualitative analysis of their speech yielded consistent and sometimes striking differences that portrayed secure speech as remarkably more useful and enhancing toward resolution compared with insecure speech. The findings, presented with many examples, strongly indicate the relevance of attachment to the research of communication during mediation sessions. In this report, we also consider the practical implications of the association between attachment and disputants' behavior, emphasizing the role of mediators.     

Microcrystal analysis of cocaine hydrochloride and added adulterants

The objective of this project was to investigate the trends of changes in the crystal morphology of cocaine in the presence of the common adulterants, caffeine and lidocaine HCl. By performing gold chloride microcrystal tests on samples of cocaine with adulterants at 10, 20, and 50% concentrations, trends in the changes of the crystal morphology can be linked to specific adulterants and concentrations. For cocaine/caffeine mixtures, the trend is elongation of one axis, additional branching, and brown discoloration of the crystals. At 50:50 cocaine/caffeine mixtures, branched spherical crystals and long needles appear. The trends for cocaine/lidocaine mixtures include elongation of one axis with an X-shaped middle axis. The axes continue to grow and branching decreases until at 50%, spherical clusters of needles appear. These results indicate microcrystal analysis can be used as a novel method for presumptively identifying not only cocaine but also the identity and concentration of the adulterant.