Absorptive capacity in child welfare: measurement challenges and item development

Promoting successful implementation of evidence-based practices within child welfare agencies necessitates accurately measuring absorptive capacity (i.e., the ability to acquire, assimilate, transform, and exploit knowledge) through valid and reliable assessment. However, a measurement tool does not exist for child welfare agencies. As such, this exploratory study identified existing measures and items relevant to absorptive capacity in child welfare. The study resulted in 12 identified measures, comprising 98 applicable items. This research is a first step toward creating a measure for use in child welfare settings that will guide practice and administration decisions through valid measurement.     

Customizing a commercial laboratory information management system for a forensic genetic laboratory

The need for high-throughput laboratories to comply with regulatory requirements makes data management an important aspect of forensic genetics. A Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) enables efficient workflows and ensures traceability if designed and implemented properly. We customized a commercial LIMS to support STR typing of reference samples according to in-house defined requirements. The customization focused on data validity, traceability and automated solutions.     

Body and Self: learning to be modern in 1920s–1930s Britain

Observing the divergent tracks taken by historians of the ‘modern self’ and those of the ‘modern body’ the article focuses on health and fitness movements in Britain, c.1920s–1930s. Asking whether there is a place for the body in the history of women performing ‘the self’ in this context, the article suggests a way in which contemporaries found a way to have a ‘self’ in the body. Contemporary notions of the body emphasised its interdependence with ‘the mind’, health and happiness being functions of each other. In the language of health and beauty was a language of inner vitality and outer radiance, a modern formulation of the individual as a ‘self’ equipped to embrace the exciting but uncertain possibilities of the ‘modern world’. Popular print culture on ‘healthy living’, reports by the BMA and the National Fitness Council are considered along with more extensive discussion of the Women's League for Health and Beauty founded in 1930 by Mollie Bagot Stack and inherited by her daughter, Prunella, ‘Britain's Perfect Girl’, in 1935.     

Colouring Within the Lines: How the International Legal Operating System Influences Rule Creation∗

Some of the most visible changes in the international legal system occur when treaties specify new rules or norms of behaviour for its members. Each of these is a component of what has been referred to elsewhere as the “normative system”, or the part of the international legal system that is quasi-legislative in character by mandating particular values and directing specific changes in state and other actors' behaviour. Yet the normative system is only part of the international legal system; we adopt the term “operating system” to refer to the other segment. This article identifies six different ways that extant provisions or changes in the international legal operating system condition international rule creation: (1) setting the parameters of acceptability, (2) clarifying credible commitment, (3) providing flexibility, (4) actor specification, (5) forum specification and (6) direct law-making.

     

The importance of appropriate allocation to offending behavior programs

This study examined the impact on reconviction of appropriate allocation to three general offending behavior programs involving adult male offenders in the English and Welsh Probation Service. Appropriate allocation was defined by level of risk for reconviction. There were three allocation groups: too low, appropriate, and too high. Using a quasi-experimental design, the reconviction rates of offenders who were allocated to and completed a program, offenders allocated to a program who failed to start, and a comparison group were compared. It was found that the appropriateness of allocation affected reconviction independently of treatment group. Furthermore, in line with the risk principle, there was an interaction between treatment group and the appropriateness of allocation.     

Fighting for the right to play: women’s football and regime-loyal resistance in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This paper seeks to contribute to the scholarship on women and social change in Saudi Arabia through the case of female football players in Riyadh. Officially, there has been no women’s football in the kingdom, but beneath the surface women have been playing for more than a decade. The women are actively promoting and engaging in change and women’s opportunities to practise sport by building organisations, creating awareness, and negotiating norms and regulations. They are not in opposition to the regime, but supportive of reforms in favour of increased rights for women, while seeing conservative elements in the society as their opponents and the royal family as their allies. They are thus engaging in what O’Brian and Li termed ‘rightful resistance’, by deploying the language of the rulers to express their perspectives and aims, and are engaged in a three-party game with the rulers and conservatives, where divisions within the state and elite allies matter greatly.     

Can latent fingerprint disclose the sex of the donor? A preliminary test study using GC–MS analysis of latent fingerprints

While fingerprints are a highly used means of identification, not every fingerprint left behind on a potential crime scene can be used for identification purposes. In some cases, the fingerprint may be smudged, partially preserved or overlapping with other prints hence distorting the ridge pattern and may therefore be not appropriate for identification. Further, fingermark residue yields a very low abundance of genetic material for DNA analysis. In such cases, the fingermark may be used to retrieve basic donor information such as sex. The focus of this paper was to assess the possibility of differentiating between the sexes of the donor of latent fingermarks. Analytical method was GC–MS analysis of the chemical compounds of latent fingermarks using 22 male and 22 female donors. Results showed 44 identified compounds. Two alcohols, octadecanol C₁₈ and eicosanol C₂₀, were found to show a difference that was statistically significant between male and female donors. There is also some evidence for the possibility of distinguishing sex of the fingermark donor based on the distribution of branched chain fatty acids, as free compounds or esterified in wax esters.     

Litigation Migrants

Civil law is enforced primarily via private litigation. One characteristic of private enforcement is that litigation levels tend to cycle between periods of boom and bust. This article builds a theory for explaining this fluctuation, proposing that plaintiffs’ attorneys can be understood as economic migrants. Just as workers cross borders to find jobs, lawyers “move” across case types and jurisdictions to find profitable claims, and case filing numbers increase as a result. Using the recent wage and hour litigation boom as a case study, this article paints an empirical picture of attorney migration and its influence on case filing numbers.     

Dismantling,disintegration or continuing stealthy integration in European Union environmental policy?

This symposium assesses the trajectory of European Union (EU) environmental policy and integration in light of the rising pressure for policy dismantling and disintegration. This introductory article discusses the literature and the mixed evidence of EU environmental policy dismantling. Building on the three symposium articles, we investigate the role of the European Commission in this process, evaluating its role as a general ‘motor of integration’ and more specifically as an environmental policy entrepreneur. We find that the current political context does push the Commission to reconsider its entrepreneurial role and adopt the role of a ‘normalized bureaucracy’. Nonetheless, organizational features, such as new hierarchies and presidential leadership, and ideas that frame policy initiatives explain continued policy evolution and resistance to outright dismantling. Scholars should also pay close attention to implementing measures and patterns of enforcement to detect the more subtle policy shifts.