Calling a Spade a Spade: Tackling the ‘Women and Peace’ Orthodoxy

In her lecture, ‘Are women peaceful?’, Professor Hilary Charlesworth outlines what she perceives to be the current orthodoxies of the international women and conflict discourse. These include assumptions that women are natural peace-builders, suffer more from conflict, have a right to participate in peace processes, and that gender should be mainstreamed. Based on Charlesworth’s analysis, the authors argue that wars and peace processes are inherently gendered affairs and as a consequence a focus on equality or mainstreaming of gender remains challenging. The authors also note that although equality is a useful platform for ensuring women’s participation in peace processes, feminists should not expect equality arguments to do more than they were designed to do, that is, to ensure seats for women at decision-making tables. Ensuring that women can put forth their concerns and that they are listened to demands a different set of tools.     

States of Environmental Justice: Redistributive Politics across the United States, 1993–2004

In the 20 years since a president committed federal government agencies to achieving environmental justice (EJ), states have been at the forefront of policy development. But states have varied in the nature and extent of their EJ efforts. We use Guttman Scaling to measure state EJ effort and test hypotheses regarding the relative importance of problem severity, politics, and administrative variables to variation in state policy development. Our analysis offers a novel characterization of state policy intensity and demonstrates its scalability. Income‐based problem severity, environmental group membership, and nonwhite populations were important predictors of state EJ policy intensity during our study period. The political geography of EJ policy also displayed a distinctive southern pattern and the EJ policy intensity model contrasted significantly with a model of environmental policy innovation. The findings suggest that state EJ politics are more indicative of redistributive policy than regulatory.     

Valence and satisfaction with democracy: A cross‐national analysis of nine Western European democracies

In recent studies, scholars have highlighted factors that influence citizen satisfaction with democracy, with particular emphasis on the role played by the institutional features of political systems, and ideology. This article presents the first empirical study of whether changes in important party characteristics can affect individuals' satisfaction with democracy. Using a measure of parties' character‐valence derived from content analysis of news reports, evidence is presented that when governing parties' images decline with respect to important valence‐related attributes such as competence, unity and integrity, then citizen satisfaction with democracy similarly declines. However, this relationship is conditional on the performance of opposition parties. These findings are relevant to studies of regime support, political representation, democratic accountability and voter behaviour.     

Methylenedioxypyrovalerone (“Bath Salts”),Related Death: Case Report and Review of the Literature,

Cathinone derivatives (bath salts) have emerged as the latest drugs of abuse. 3,4‐methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) is the primary active ingredient in bath salts used in this country. This article presents the second reported cause of death by MDPV intoxication alone. In April 2011, a delusional man was emergently brought to a hospital, where he self‐reported bath salt usage. He became agitated, developed ventricular tachycardia, hyperthermia, and died. Comprehensive alcohol and drug testing was performed. Using the alkaline drug screen, heart blood contained 0.7 mg/L MDPV and peripheral blood contained 1.0 mg/L MDPV. His bizarre behavior with life‐threatening hyperthermia was consistent with an MDPV‐induced excited delirium state. MDPV is not yet found by routine immunoassay toxicology screens. Testing for MDPV should be considered in cases with a history of polysubstance abuse with stimulant type drugs, report of acute onset of psychogenic symptoms, excited delirium syndrome, or presentation in a hyperthermic state.     

Trends and pattern of drug abuse deaths in Maryland teenagers

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Maryland recorded a total of 149 drug abuse deaths of teenagers aged 13-19 years between 1991 and 2006. Of these deaths, 96 (64.4%) were caused by the use of narcotic drugs only, 29 (19.5%) by both narcotics and cocaine, four (2.7%) by both narcotics and methylenedioxymethamphetamine, six (4.0%) by cocaine only, and 14 (9.4%) by volatile substances (e.g., butane, Freon, nitrous oxide, and propane). The annual death rate from drug abuse for teenagers increased from 1.4 deaths per 100,000 population in 1991 to 2.7 deaths per 100,000 population in 2006 (chi-square test for time trend, p<0.01). The increase in teenager drug abuse deaths occurred in 1999 and since has remained at a higher rate. Further analysis revealed that the increase in drug abuse deaths was attributable to a large degree to narcotic drugs, particularly heroin/morphine and methadone, and was confined to teenagers residing in the suburban and rural areas.