Building collective action at crime hot spots: Findings from a randomized field experiment

Journal of Experimental Criminology - The study examined whether Assets Coming Together (ACT), a policing intervention directed at increasing collective action and collective efficacy at crime hot...     

Liquid chromatography/photodiode array detection for determination of strychnine in blood: a fatal case report

An original liquid chromatography method with photodiode-array detection (DAD) is presented for the determination of strychnine in blood. This sensitive method allows the use of only 0.1 ml of sample. The strychnine was isolated from blood using a liquid-liquid extraction procedure and chloroquine as an internal standard. The limits of detection (LOD) and quantification were 0.06 and 0.5 mg/l, respectively. The recovery was 94% and the coefficients of variation (CV) ranged from 5.9 to 10.8%. A fatal case of strychnine poisoning is presented, with a lethal blood concentration of 25 mg/l.     

Development and Initial Findings of an Implementation Process Measure for Child Welfare System Change

This article describes a new measure designed to examine the process of implementation of child welfare systems change. The measure was developed to document the status of the interventions and strategies that are being implemented and the drivers that are being installed to achieve sustainable changes in systems. The measure was used in a Children's Bureau-supported national effort to assess the ongoing implementation of 24 systems-change projects in child welfare jurisdictions across the country. The article describes the process for measure development, method of administration and data collection, and quantitative and qualitative findings.     

One Woman’s View of the Early Chinese Communist Movement: The Autobiography of Mme. Zhang Guotao

Abstract

Wei Baqun, leader of the influential Donglan Peasant Movement in southern China in the 1920s and 1930s, was attacked by his Nationalist enemies as a real and dangerous Communist long before he joined the Chinese Communist Party. Meanwhile, some of his Communist comrades were reluctant to admit him into the Party or to recognize him as a genuine Communist even after he joined the Communist Party. But after his death, they all began to promote him as a perfect Communist. Through an analysis of Wei Baqun’s life and revolution, this article shows how controversial and conflicting perceptions of the political identity of a political leader could exert strong influence on the political career of the leader and on local and national politics in revolutionary China. The article also attempts to explain why the confusion and controversy over Wei Baqun’s identity dissipated after his death.     

A Panacea for all Times? The German Stability Culture as Strategic Political Resource

The German Stability Culture is frequently pointed to in the literature as the source of the country’s low inflation policies and, at the European Union level, the design of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). In Germany, the term was regularly wielded by central bankers and Christian Democrat (CDU–CSU) politicians to legitimise the move to EMU in the face of a large majority of public opinion opposed – and subsequent EU-level policy developments – particularly in the context of the eurozone debt crisis that erupted in 2009. An ordered probit analysis is used to demonstrate the depth of the German Stability Culture, showing support for low inflation cuts across all party and ideological lines. Despite this ubiquity, the term has been wielded with regularity only by the centre-right Christian Democrats and is strongly associated with this party. A strategic constructivist analysis is employed to explain this uneven but persistent usage in German domestic politics.