Reflections on China’s Foreign Policy

With China’s new leadership established in office,many fresh concepts and proposals on diplomacy were put forward in 2014,and President Xi Jinping has indicated his intention to make a state visit to the U.S.this September.Bringing his new thinking and building a"new type of great power relations"between China and the U.S.and a China-ASEAN"community of common destiny"will require that international relationships are based on mutuality.The proposed ideal of mutual respect in Sino-U.S.relations calls for equality,mutual trust,tolerance,mutual learning,cooperation and common prosperity between the two major powers.A neighborhood diplomacy embracing friendship,sincerity,     

Baring it all for Activism: The 1985 Naked Protest in Mexico

This article analyses the 1985 naked protest carried out by silver miners of Pachuca, Mexico. This singular form of resistance, the first in Mexican labour history and organised by a dissident group within the miners' union called Liberación Minera (Miners Liberation), forced management to recognise and temporarily solve some of the miners' grievances. The naked protest unveiled the shady practices of the miners' employer, the state-owned Compañía Real del Monte y Pachuca, which refused to provide work clothes and safety equipment to miners. It also pointed to the miners' union leadership's complicity in the deterioration of labour conditions. Part of the miners' naked protest success had to do with the support that they gained from members of the left-wing press who used the protest to offer an early critique of Mexico's neoliberal policies. The 1985 naked protest occurred during one of Mexico's most severe economic crises and only four years before the company became privatised. This protest is one of the last examples of organised labour resistance before industries closed down and fired thousands of workers.     

Homicide by unusual‐edged weapons: Forensic considerations of two cases

Homicide by stab wound is common worldwide. However, the use of unusual edged weapons is rarely reported in the forensic literature. Here, we report two cases of homicide involving a Japanese sword, or katana, and a sickle. Both of these weapons can create either stab or incised wounds with some particularities. In our cases, characteristics of the external wounds, internal injuries, and the depth of penetration raised the possibility of an unusual weapon. Meticulous forensic examination of these injuries (morphological characteristics, depth of penetration, trajectories, and cut marks in the bone) may allow the forensic expert to determine the type of weapon used.     

新发展阶段产业工会实现高质量发展与作用发挥的路径探析——以安徽省产业工会为例

产业工会是产业职工合法权益的代表者和维护者,是产业劳动关系的协调者,是产业经济持续健康发展的促进者.进入新发展阶段,产业工会正处在为党和国家中心工作发挥更大作用的机遇期,处在推动产业工会工作高质量发展的窗口期.本文以安徽省产业工会为例,通过对安徽省产业工会的历史沿革与组织概况的梳理,分析了产业工会发挥作用的路径,提出了推动新时期我国产业工会高质量发展的对策建议.     

社会影响力债券:利用社会资本解决社会问题

"社会影响力债券"是公共部门吸引私人资本投资社会公益服务项目的一种新型社会合作治理工具。从资源依赖、新公共管理、网络治理和多中心治理等理论视角,可以把社会影响力债券阐释成一种以结果为导向的多方、多层次合同,将政府、市场和社会三者结合在一起的特有的合作治理模式;以共同解决社会问题,产生良性的社会影响效应,私人投资同时获得回报为目的。通过梳理现有文献和总结社会影响力债券近十年的实践发展可以看到,社会影响力债券相对于政府购买社会服务和PPP模式,具有将风险从政府转移到私人投资者、更多元主体参与和评估机制更严谨等特点。社会影响力债券以其多主体合作与"共赢"模式,以项目组织方为连接中心形成协同运作机制,能够有效解决传统社会公益项目资金不足、资源吸引能力弱、治理绩效低、评估监测不足等问题。尽管社会影响力债券在世界各国得到很大的关注,但是现有案例显示,它仍存在着风险过高、项目结果不确定性大、吸引的私人投资者不足等问题。在未来,社会影响力债券在风险机制、评估机制、问责制等方面都具有很大的研究空间。在日益复杂的社会治理领域,社会影响力债券的研究和发展对各国社会问题的改善和解决都具有很好的借鉴和启发。     

Identification of furosemide in hair in a post‐mortem case by UHPLC‐MS/MS with guidance on interpretation

Testing for drugs in hair raises several difficulties. Among them is the interpretation of the final concentration(s). In a post‐mortem case, analyses revealed the presence of furosemide (12 ng/mL) in femoral blood, although it was not part of the victim's treatment. The prosecutor requested our laboratory to undertake an additional analysis in hair to obtain information about the use of furosemide. A specific method was therefore developed and validated to identify and quantify furosemide in hair by UHPLC‐MS/MS. After decontamination of 30 mg of hair, incubation in acidic condition, extraction with ethyl acetate, the samples were analyzed by UHPLC‐MS/MS. Furosemide was found in the victim's hair at 225 pg/mg. However, it was not possible to interpret this concentration due to the absence of data in the literature. Therefore, the authors performed a controlled study in two parts. In order to establish the basis of interpretation, several volunteers were tested (four after a single 20 mg administration and twenty‐four under daily treatment). The first part indicated that a single dose is not detectable in hair using our method. The second part demonstrated concentrations ranging from 5 to 1110 pg/mg with no correlation between dosage and hair concentrations. The decedent's hair result was interpreted as repeated exposures. In the case of furosemide analysis, hair can provide information about its presence but cannot give information about dosage or frequency of use.     

Characterization and differentiation of aluminum powders used in improvised explosive devices – Part 1: Proof of concept of the utility of particle micromorphometry

Aluminum (Al) powders are commonly used in improvised explosive devices as metallic fuels, a component of explosive mixtures. These powders can be obtained readily from industrial‐scale and consumer products, and produced using unsophisticated “kitchen chemistry” techniques. This research demonstrates the potential of automated particle micromorphometry for comparisons between known source and questioned Al powders recovered from IEDs, as well as for insight into the method of Al powder manufacture. Al powder samples were obtained from legitimate manufacturers, and 56 samples were produced “in‐house” from Al‐containing spray paints and ball‐milled Al foils. Transmitted light microscope images of Al powder particles were acquired using an automated stage with automated z‐focus; 17 size and shape parameters were measured for all particles. Approximately 37,000–2,500,000 particles/sample were analyzed using an open‐source statistical package with customized code. Dimensionality reduction was required for processing the large datasets: eight of the 17 measured variables were selected based on inspection of the correlation matrix. Data from four subsamples from each of the 56 samples produced using “in‐house” methods were analyzed using ANOVA to assess the within‐ and between‐sample variation. High within‐sample variation was noted; however, ANOVA and post‐hoc Tukey's honestly significant difference (HSD) tests demonstrated that the between‐sample variation was substantially larger than the within‐sample variation. Each sample could be differentiated from all other samples in the test set. Future experiments will focus on ways to reduce the within‐sample variation, and additional statistical and microanalytical methods to classify sources and confidently constrain the method of Al powder manufacture.     

马克思主义理论当代价值的方法论思考

马克思主义理论的当代价值是一个重大而迫切的时代课题。马克思主义理论当代价值的方法论解读大体来讲,涵括马克思主义理论历史的纵深与现实的广延、马克思主义理论的系统把握与辩证运用、马克思主义理论特质的保持本真与时代的创新等三个方面。从方法论角度思考马克思主义理论当代价值的内在意蕴,旨在揭示马克思主义理论当代价值的探索路径和马克思主义理论当代形态的建构逻辑。     

Domestic Contestation and Presidential Prerogative in Colombian Foreign Policy

The study of Colombian foreign policy emphasises external constraints and presidential prerogative in foreign policymaking. Drawing on insights from recent foreign policy analysis literature and evidence from several cases (Plan Colombia, US military bases, free trade talks with China, and ICJ arbitration of a maritime border with Nicaragua), this article challenges commonplace presidentialist assumptions. A novel model of ‘contested presidentialism’ better captures how Colombian domestic actors mobilise to raise political costs to block or modify presidential preferences. When the opposition fails to raise costs, presidentialist assumptions apply. Otherwise, presidents respond strategically by abandoning policies or substituting second-best alternatives.     

Firearm examination: Examiner judgments and computer‐based comparisons

Forensic firearm examination provides the court of law with information about the source of fired cartridge cases. We assessed the validity of source decisions of a computer‐based method and of 73 firearm examiners who compared breechface and firing pin impressions of 48 comparison sets. We also compared the computer‐based method's comparison scores with the examiners' degree‐of‐support judgments and assessed the validity of the latter. The true‐positive rate (sensitivity) and true‐negative rate (specificity) of the computer‐based method (for the comparison of both the breechface and firing pin impressions) were 94.4% and at least 91.7%, respectively. For the examiners, the true‐positive rate was at least 95.3% and the true‐negative rate was at least 86.2%. The validity of the source decisions improved when the evaluations of breechface and firing pin impressions were combined and for the examiners also when the perceived difficulty of the comparison decreased. The examiners were reluctant to provide source decisions for "difficult" comparisons even though their source decisions were mostly correct. The correlation between the computer‐based method's comparison scores and the examiners' degree‐of‐support judgments was low for the same‐source comparisons to negligible for the different‐source comparisons. Combining the outcomes of computer‐based methods with the judgments of examiners could increase the validity of firearm examinations. The examiners' numerical degree‐of‐support judgments for their source decisions were not well‐calibrated and showed clear signs of overconfidence. We suggest studying the merits of performance feedback to calibrate these judgments.