Autopoietic Law and the 'Epistemic Trap': A Case Study of Adoption and Contact

This paper examines autopoietic theory with reference to functionally differentiated social sub-systems, particularly law, science, and politics. It sets out to 'test' the practical relevance of autopoietic theory in relation to ongoing debates about post-adoption contact and personal identity issues. Law has resisted social scientific pressure to regulate post-adoption contact in the context of a social policy approach, which emphasizes the relationship between identity development and genealogical continuity. I argue that law's response to this pressure relates to the particular nature of adoption as this is expressed through legislation and case law. Law's refusal to intervene in post-adoption contact reflects its self-referential operations and its attempts to avoid epistemic entrapment by a social scientific discourse. Applying autopoietic theory to law's practical operations in adoption clarifies its explanatory value, provides a conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between law, politics, and social science and indicates areas that require theoretical refinement.     

The Words of Violence: Autobiographical Narratives of Abused Women

Personal narratives tell the stories of people’s lives as well as provide insight into the meaning of those experiences. These narratives both reflect and are influenced by the relationships within which an individual is embedded. In this study, autobiographical narratives for two groups of women were compared: women who had experienced habitual gender-based domestic violence in their couple relationships and women who had not. The language of narratives was analyzed by LIWC (Language Inquiry and Word Count procedure). Results showed that the language and structure of narratives by women with a history of domestic violence indicated greater stress and trauma, more incoherent space-time organization, and poorer relationship quality. Women who experienced violence wrote longer narratives that contained proportionately more negative emotion words and more references to cognitions and physical/body issues, and indicated more disorganized structure by means of incoherent use of verbal tense, more impoverished use of connectives, and greater use of negative sentence syntax and discrepancy words. They also included proportionately more pronoun references to ‘I’,‘You’,’ and ‘He’, indicating self vs. partner conflictual relationships. However, women who had experienced relationship violence for longer decreased their references to the emotions of fear and anxiety, suggesting adaptation to violence over time.     

Structural disadvantage and the concentration of environmental hazards in school areas: a research note

Research shows that environmental hazards are disproportionately located in poor and minority communities, but most of these studies examine the association between community demographics and the presence (and/or frequency) of one type of environmental hazard at a time. The current study extends the prior research by examining the concentration of multiple forms of environmental hazards and structural disadvantage of school areas. School area structural disadvantage is associated with an increase in the number of environmental hazards, but the magnitude of the association is relatively small. Implications for future research are discussed.

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The recovery of latent fingermarks and DNA using a silicone-based casting material

There are many techniques available for the recovery of fingermarks at scenes of crime including the possibility of taking casts of the marks. Casts can be advantageous in cases where other destructive recovery techniques might not be suitable, such as when recovering finger marks deposited on valued or immobile items. In this research, Isomark (a silicone-based casting material) was used to recover casts of finger marks placed on a variety of substrates. Casts were enhanced using cyanoacrylate fuming. Good quality marks were successfully recovered from a range of smooth, non-porous surfaces. Recovery from semi-porous surfaces was shown to be inefficient. DNA was subsequently extracted from the casts using QIAamp Mini extraction kits, amplified and profiled. Full DNA profiles were obtained 34% of samples extracted.     

Implementing Performance-Based Program Budgeting: A System-Dynamics Perspective

The article proposes a model for evaluating budget reforms that combines insights from budgeting, policy implementation, and system-dynamics literatures. System-dynamics modeling combines both quantitative and qualitative research techniques to provide a new framework for applied research; its use is illustrated using performance budgeting as an example. Applied to the implementation of Florida's performance-based program budget, the model identifies actions in the short run that will increase the reform's likelihood of success: providing clear communications; facilitative budget and accounting routines; reliable performance information. The model also identifies critical legislative behaviors that influence executive implementation: how the legislature in the long-run uses performance information to inform resource allocation and how it applies incentives or sanctions to programs that achieve or fail to achieve their performance standards. The legislature has the opportunity to use program reviews prepared by legislative staff to invigorate the executive branch's resolve to continue implementing the reform.     

Cocaine babies: the scourge of the '90s

Six cases of cocaine-related deaths of infants have covered the spectrum of potentially devastating effects. They include an intrauterine death of a 35-week-old fetus following acute maternal cocaine abuse; anoxic encephalopathy at birth with 3 months' vegetative survival from a similar episode; traumatic compression asphyxia in a 4-month-old; infectious cardiomyopathy with heart failure in a twin at age 21 months following maternal cocaine abuse at birth; malnutrition and dehydration in a 7-week-old during continuing cocaine abuse by the parents; and a teenage sibling's cocaine lacing of a baby milk bottle ingested by his 6-week-old brother. All the cases had positive toxicological screening for cocaine or metabolites or both in the mother at delivery or in the infant at birth, or both. There were no instances of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS, or "crib death"). Pathologic and toxicologic, as well as birth, developmental, and social data are presented. An integrated medical, public health, law enforcement, and educational policy to prevent or at least ameliorate these tragic cases, now approaching epidemic proportions, has yet to be developed. A careful obstetrical history and examination of the mother, indication on the birth certificate of maternal drug abuse, and notification of health authorities (by birth certificate checking, among other ways) may send an early warning message to providers for intercession. Active ingestion/injection and passive inhalation by older children and teenagers require more intensive monitoring and aggressive interaction by pediatricians, social workers, school authorities, and employers.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)