The Condition of Community Streets and Parks: A Comparison of Resident and Nonresident Evaluations

Practitioners and scholars are concerned that citizen surveys about community services are heavily influenced by respondents' opinions on other issues and by their sociodemographic backgrounds. We search for these biases by examining the extent to which citizen assessments of streets and parks in Iowa communities match the assessments of a nonresident. The citizens' ratings correlate significantly with the nonresident's ratings, indicating that citizen evaluations are not entirely the product of other influences. However, further analysis reveals some bias. In particular, streets are rated higher in wealthy towns, towns high in political efficacy, and towns where residents rate government services good overall. Parks are rated higher in towns where people come together to solve problems and in towns where people rate government services good overall. Even with these biases, our research indicates that citizen evaluations convey reasonably accurate information about the condition of community streets and parks.     

Romantic Relationship Aggression and Attitudes in High School Students: The Role of Gender,Grade, and Attachment and Emotional Styles

Use of aggressive behaviors in adolescent romantic relationships, the endorsement of attitudes that promote such behaviors, and the extent to which attachment and emotional styles are related to these behaviors and attitudes were examined in 254 high school students. In general, aggressive behaviors and attitudes were not common. As expected girls were somewhat more likely to report being the perpetrator of physical aggression and boys were somewhat more likely to endorse the acceptance of aggression and dysfunctional sexual attitudes. For girls, a less secure relationship with best friends and lower levels of shame and guilt were related to the use of aggression in romantic relationships and endorsing less healthy attitudes about these relationships. For boys, externalizing responsibility for harm to others was related to using physical aggression in romantic relationships and lower levels of guilt and shame were related to the justification of sexual aggression. Intervention implications discussed include the need to employ programs that are grounded in the nature of adolescent relationships where aggression is more often mutual between partners, and the potential benefit of targeting emotional styles.     

Coercive diplomacy by the EU: the Iranian nuclear weapons crisis

The European Union has been the main international actor trying to contain the Iranian nuclear programme. In 2003, for the first time ever, the EU-3 adopted a coercive diplomatic approach vis-à-vis Iran. The current article begins with an analysis of the concept of coercive diplomacy before applying it to the Iranian case. In so doing, the article aims to make an interim assessment of the European (EU-3) effort.     

Class struggle and the deproletarianisation of agricultural labour in Haryana (India)

This article considers the way in which labour attachment is theorised, both in the 1950s Agricultural Labour Enquiries, and subsequently in the work of Rudra, Bardhan, and Breman. Common to all these texts is a positive conceptualisation of attached labour, and consequently the elimination of its element of unfreedom. Instead, the relation is presented in terms of a materially reciprocal exchange between landholder and worker, a transaction which from the viewpoint of the latter corresponds to a much sought‐after form of job insurance or subsistence guarantee. By contrast, it is suggested here that attachment constitutes de‐proletarianisation undertaken by capital in the course of class struggle, and that in Haryana the agricultural work‐force strongly dislikes this kind of employment.     

Administrative Reform: Changing Leadership Roles?

Three interwoven change elements characterize New Public Management: substantial horizontal and vertical specialization, substituting an integrated sector model for a fragmented functional model, and extensive use of contracts as part of a "make the manager manage" kind of incentive system. This article discusses the effects and implications of these reform elements on political-democratic processes in general, and on political, administrative, and public enterprise leadership roles more specifically. Examples from Norway and New Zealand illustrate the discussion.     

The visualization and quantification of cell nuclei in telogen hair roots by fluorescence microscopy, as a pre-DNA analysis assessment

Although nuclear DNA-profiling of human hairs is a well-known technique in forensic investigations, its success rate is quite low. Because the extracted nuclear DNA (nuDNA) is scarce and often degraded, a simple and effective method was developed to estimate the number of cell nuclei in telogen roots. DAPI, a fluorescent, non-destructive DNA-stain, allows visualizing nuclear DNA and does not interfere with subsequent PCR analyses. After staining 3242 roots from 27 volunteers and subsequent STR-profiling of a selection of roots, we show that the amount of analysable nuDNA can be predicted. This screening method allows the genetic laboratory to analyse only the most promising hair roots.