Heavy alcohol use and youth suicide: Evidence from tougher drunk driving laws

This paper uses the widespread variation across states in the timing of adoption of tougher drunk driving laws that set very low legal blood alcohol limits for drivers under age 21—“zero tolerance” (ZT) laws—to provide new evidence on the causal effect of alcohol use on youth suicide. ZT laws reduced heavy episodic drinking by underage men, with no effect for slightly older males. I estimate the reduced form effect of ZT policy adoption on suicide deaths among 15–17‐, 18–20‐, 21–24‐, and 25–29‐year‐old males and females for the period 1981–1998. The models control for macroeconomic conditions, demographic changes, other alcohol control policies, state and year fixed effects, and smooth state trends. Results indicate statistically significant reductions in suicide among young males aged 15–17 and 18–20 associated with adoption of ZT laws on the order of 7 to 10 percent. I find no effects for slightly older males who were unaffected by the tougher drunk driving laws, and no consistent effects for females. These results provide new and compelling evidence that heavy alcohol use causes young male suicide. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Subaortic Pseudoaneurysm of the Left Ventricle Complicating Staphyloccal Endocarditis*

Abstract: Subaortic pseudoaneurysms are rare but can be a cause of sudden death in young individuals. This case report involves a 20‐year‐old Vietnamese male who died suddenly from rupture of a subaortic pseudoaneurysm with resultant hemopericardium with tamponade. He had a history of bicuspid aortic valve with recent but healed Staphylococcal endocarditis. A review of the literature reveals few similar cases and enlightens the association between aortic bicuspid valve, endocarditis, and subvalvular aortic aneurysm. The pathogenesis as well as recent studies that identified aneurysm predisposing genes in patients with bicuspid aortic valve will be discussed.     

Power tug of war: hegemonic and posthegemonic text control in Gustavo Sainz's Obsesivos días circulares (1969)

This article examines the novel Obsesivos días circulares (1969) by Gustavo Sainz from the point of view of the narrator's and characters' attempts to control the text. It analyses the distribution of influence on the text between the first-person narrator (Terencio) and one of the key characters (Leticia), and the changing locus of text control in the narrative line that includes Leticia. First, I examine Terencio's letters to Leticia and determine whether the text construct Leticia is created and manipulated through them. Secondly, I concentrate upon a section of Chapter 3 which appears to be a non-sequitur in the context of the narrative as a whole; it contains a vignette of a party where an apparently enigmatic exchange takes place between Terencio and Leticia. Finally, the article will address the changes in the narrator's character as a result of this encounter and the subsequent shift and split of the locus of text control between the narrator and one of the characters. Since the article explores various means of the distribution of text control, the theoretical foundation used here will include hegemonic masculinity and the relationship between hegemony and posthegemony in the context of text control.     

"Women, Children and Other Vulnerable Groups": Gender, Strategic Frames and the Protection of Civilians as a Transnational Issue

This article offers an explanation for the use of gender essentialisms in transnational efforts to advocate for the protection of war-affected civilians. I question why human rights advocates would rely upon such essentialisms, since they arguably undermine the moral logic of the civilian immunity norm on which their normative claims are based. This can be understood, I argue, as part of a strategic framing process in which pre-existing cultural ideas, filtered through an environment characterized by various political constraints, impact the rhetorical strategies available to advocates. In-depth interviews with civilian protection advocates reveal that many believe that warring parties, the global media, transnational constituencies and partners in the international women's network will all be more receptive to their message if it is couched in terms of protecting "women and children" specifically. Network actors believe that while this may undermine the protection of adult male civilians and while it may reproduce harmful gender stereotypes, these problems are outweighed by the gains in access to needy populations and the benefits of getting "civilians" on the international agenda. I conclude by considering the extent to which this cost/benefit analysis is being contested and reconsidered by some actors within the civilian protection network.     

The Echo of Tlatelolco in Contemporary Mexican Protest Poetry

The shooting of a student demonstration in La Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco district of Mexico City on 2 October 1968 has been the subject of many literary works, among which the Tlatelolco poetry addresses not only the event itself but also the aftermath of the massacre. Both approaches examine the relationship between the 'yo'/'nosotros' and 'ellos' constructs, focusing on the 'nosotros' construct as the result of this interaction. The following analysis of this process is based on the theory of self and Other, especially René Girard's theory of the mimetics of violence and the process of scapegoating as a basis for the relationship between the individual and society within the context of a violent conflict.     

Folklore as a source for creating exile identity among Latvian Displaced Persons in post-World War II Germany

This article draws on archival and print materials produced by Latvian Displaced Persons during the years they lived in UNRRA refugee camps after World War II. Its focus is on the ‘how’ of their cultural production and identity formation in camps that were established to expedite repatriation but became instead contexts in which Latvians as social actors opposed the goals of authoritative others to endow experience with their own textual meanings. This essay demonstrates how they recontextualized a variety of folklore genres as flexible and powerful resources for addressing their existential crisis and for solidifying exile as the basis for living purposefully off the territory of ‘home.’     

Approval regulation and endogenous consumer confidence: Theory and analogies to licensing,safety, and financial regulation

Safety regulation – in the form of pre-market approval, licensure, screening, and product entry limitations – governs numerous market realms, including consumer finance. In this article, we ask whether the effects of safety regulation go beyond safety and affect consumers' beliefs about the distribution of products they can use. We model “approval regulation,” where a government regulator must approve the market entry of a product based upon observable, unbiased, and non-anticipable experiments. We show that even if regulator and firm disagree about only quality standards, the disagreement induces the firm to provide more information about its product than it would in the absence of regulation. Put differently, purely first-order disagreements in regulation generate second-order consequences (more certainty about product quality). These second-order consequences of regulation are sufficient to generate first-order effects among end-users (more consumption of superior products), even when users are risk-neutral. In other words, even if approval regulation produces little or no improvement in safety or quality, it still aggregates information useful to “downstream” product users; these users will exhibit higher consumption and will more readily switch to superior products. In contrast with libertarian analyses of entry regulation and licensure, the model predicts that entry restrictions may be associated with greater product or service utilization (consumption) as well as with greater price sensitivity among consumers. Because contemporary cost–benefit analyses ignore these second-order effects, they are unlikely to capture the possible confidence effects of approval regulation.     

Reliance on internal autopsies in coronial investigations: a review of the issues

Internal autopsies are invasive and result in the mutilation of the deceased person's body. They are expensive and pose occupational health and safety risks. Accordingly, they should only be done for good cause. However, until recently, "full" internal autopsies have usually been undertaken in most coroners' cases. There is a growing trend against this practice but it is meeting resistance from some pathologists who argue that any decision as to the extent of the autopsy should rest with them. This article examines the origins of the coronial system to place in context the current approach to a death investigation and to review the debate about the role of an internal autopsy in the coronial system.