“I Got Your Back”: Friends’ Understandings Regarding College Student Spring Break Behavior

Behaviors that pose threats to safety and health, including binge drinking and unprotected sex, increase during a week-long break from university. Understandings with peers regarding these behaviors may be important for predicting behavior and related harms. College students (N = 651; 48% men) reported having understandings with their friends regarding alcohol use (59%) and sexual behavior (45%) during Spring Break. These understandings were to engage in behaviors characterized by risk (e.g., get drunk [23.5%], have sex with someone new [5.2%]) and protection (e.g., drink without getting drunk [17.8%], use condoms [15.8%]). After controlling for previous semester behavior and going on a Spring Break trip, Get Drunk Understandings predicted a greater likelihood of binge drinking and alcohol-related consequences; No/Safe Sex Understandings predicted condom use; and Sex Understandings predicted not using condoms. Understandings with friends regarding Spring Break behavior may be important proximal predictors of risk behaviors and represent potential targets for event-specific prevention.     

Life Satisfaction in Early Adolescence: Personal,Neighborhood, School,Family, and Peer Influences

Drawing from an ecological assets framework as well as research and theory on positive youth development, this study examined the relationship of early adolescents’ satisfaction with life to trait optimism and assets representing the social contexts in which early adolescents spend most of their time. Self-reports of satisfaction with life, optimism, and ecological assets in the school (school connectedness), neighborhood (perceived neighborhood support), family (perceived parental support), and peer group (positive peer relationships) were assessed in a sample of 1,402 4th to 7th graders (47% female) from 25 public elementary schools. Multilevel modeling (MLM) was conducted to analyze the variability in life satisfaction both at the individual and the school level. As hypothesized, adding optimism and the dimensions representing the ecology of early adolescence to the model significantly reduced the variability in life satisfaction at both levels of analysis. Both personal (optimism) and all of the ecological assets significantly and positively predicted early adolescents’ life satisfaction. The results suggest the theoretical and practical utility of an assets approach for understanding life satisfaction in early adolescence.     

Are Secondary Variants of Juvenile Psychopathy More Reactively Violent and Less Psychosocially Mature Than Primary Variants?

There is growing support for the disaggregation of psychopathy into primary and secondary variants. This study examines whether variants of psychopathy can be identified in a subsample (n = 116) of juvenile offenders with high scores on the Youth Version of the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL:YV). Model-based cluster analysis of offenders’ scores on the PCL:YV and a measure of anxiety suggested a two-group solution. The derived clusters manifested expected differences across theoretically relevant constructs of abuse history, hostility, and psychiatric symptoms. Compared with low-anxious primary variants, high-anxious secondary variants manifested more institutional violence, greater psychosocial immaturity, and more instability in institutional violence over a 2-year period, but similar stability in PCL:YV scores.     

Disproportionality and voter turnout in new and old democracies

A long-standing puzzle in electoral research is why the disproportionality of electoral systems has a negative effect on voter participation in established democracies, but not in new democracies. We propose a learning theory of electoral system’s effects, and test it in a cross-national analysis and by using Spain as a case study. Electoral disproportionality is unrelated to voter participation in early elections after democratization, but the relationship is increasingly visible as democracies grow older. The case study uncovers two mechanisms: small parties optimize their mobilization strategy only after the first democratic elections, and the difference in the turnout rates of small party supporters and large party supporters grows over time. Time is needed before the consequences of electoral systems are fully revealed. Importantly, the findings suggest that studies carried out just after an electoral system is created or reformed may provide downward biased estimates of their long-term consequences.     

Provisional Measures: Binding and Persuasive? Enabling Human Rights Adjudicators to Follow up on State Disrespect

Netherlands International Law Review - Given the importance of the rights at stake (the right to life, the prohibition of torture and cruel treatment and the right of individual petition as such)...     

Assessment of the stability of 30 antipsychotic drugs in stored blood specimens

The accuracy of antemortem diagnosis of pulmonary embolism is within the range of just 10-30%, so representing one of the most frequent missed diagnosis in sudden, unexpected death. We describe 43 fatal cases of pulmonary embolism as confirmed by post-mortem examination. The aim of our study was to verify the systematic search for the most common genetic thrombophilias (Factor V Leiden (G1691A) and FII (G20210A) gene variants) and dating the thrombus. As a whole, 41 patients (95.3%) had at least one risk factor. Pre-existing symptoms are described just before fatal embolism in 18 (41.9%) out 43 patients. In 18 out of 43 (41.9%) it was not possible to find the thrombotic site. In 24 out of the remaining 25 cases the involvement of the deep veins of one leg was shown; in 1 case the thrombus was localised in the inferior caval vein. 10 (41.7%) were iliac vein thromboses, 7 (29.1%) femoral, 2 (8.3%) popliteal, 3 (12.6%) posterior-tibial, 1 (4.1%) anterior-tibial and 1 (4.1%) peroneal vein thromboses. In our cohort of patients, 4 (10%) out of 40 cases carried the 20210A prothrombin gene variant in heterozygosis. One (2.5%) out of 40 carried the Factor V Leiden (G1691A) gene variant in heterozygosis. Patients carrying these gene variants in homozygosis or carrying both were not present in our case-series. We strongly underline the relevance of a complete methodological approach, integrating clinical data by means of autopsy findings and histological study. On the contrary, investigating common inherited thrombophilia is not warranted.     

Analysis of hydrogen cyanide in air in a case of attempted cyanide poisoning

A 32-year-old man attempted to poison his ex-girlfriend with hydrogen cyanide by hiding the pesticide Uragan D2 in her car. During the police investigation, chemical analysis of the air inside the car was performed. Hydrogen cyanide was detected through on-site air analysis using a portable Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy gas analyzer and colorimetric gas detection tubes. Furthermore, impinger air-sampling was performed for off-site sample preparation and analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). All three independent techniques demonstrated the presence of hydrogen cyanide, at concentrations of 14-20ppm. Owing to the high volatility of hydrogen cyanide, the temperature and the time since exposure have a substantial effect on the likelihood of detecting hydrogen cyanide at a crime scene. The prevailing conditions (closed space, low temperature) must have supported the preservation of HCN in the car thus enabling the identification even though the analysis was performed several days after the hydrogen cyanide source was removed. This paper demonstrates the applicability of combining on-site FTIR measurements and off-site GC-MS analysis of a crime scene in order to ensure fast detection as well as unambiguous identification for forensic purposes of hydrogen cyanide in air.     

The Democratic Anchorage of Governance Networks

Governance through the negotiated interaction of a plurality of public, semi-public and private actors seems to provide an efficient means for governing our increasingly complex, fragmented and multi-layered societies. However, the big question is whether governance networks also contribute to the democratic governance of society. Governance network theory and post-liberal theories of democracy claim that there are both democratic problems and potentials associated with interactive network governance. In order to be able to assess, and possibly improve, the democratic performance of governance networks, the authors of this article develop and substantiate an analytical model for measuring the democratic anchorage of governance networks in different political constituencies and in an appropriate set of democratic rules and norms. In addition, it is argued that politicians should play a key role in efforts to ensure the democratic anchorage of governance networks.