Commercialism in nonprofit hospitals

The private nonprofit hospital is the dominant organizational form in the U.S. hospital industry. Various reasons have been advanced for its high market share. As hospitals undergo massive changes due in large part to changes in payment practices, there is widespread concern that nonprofit hospitals may become less committed to noncommercial activities. This may even be more likely when such hospitals convert to for-profit status. The empirical evidence indicates that, on average, hospitals of nonprofit and for-profit ownership are similar in the provision of uncompensated care, the quality of care, and the adoption of technology. Conversion of a nonprofit to for-profit status does not adversely affect the provision of uncompensated care on average. However, for-profits are more likely to be located in areas where consumers have the ability to pay for care. As hospital markets become more competitive and the opportunity for cross-subsidizing more unprofitable, collective-good activities will become increasingly difficult. Support for such activities, if they are to exist, will have to come from explicit public subsidies.     

The Effect of Governor Support on Legislative Behaviour in the Russian Duma

Until the 2007 Duma election, the Russian polity displayed several characteristics that should have allowed regional leaders to have an impact on deputies: a federalist system, an electoral system that encouraged regional representation, weak political parties, and regional leaders with electoral resources. Recent research on Russian mixed-member Duma elections argues that governors influenced the election of single-member district deputies. This raises the spectre that governors could have influenced the behaviour of these deputies. Using data from the third post-communist Duma, I demonstrate that single-member district deputies backed by regional leaders in the 1999 Duma election behaved differently from others in two critical areas: parliamentary party choice and support for the presidential legislative agenda. Governor support did not, however, affect committee choice.     

In Defense of the Practice Theory

Hart proposed that law is made possible by the practice among legal officials of observing conventional social rules, the most important being rules of recognition. This view has been dubbed the practice theory, and it has been attacked by many legal theorists. This paper argues that many criticisms of the practice theory fail because they misunderstand the nature of the organizational challenge to which rules of recognition are the solution. The challenge of constituting a legal system is essentially the challenge of constituting a group agent, and when viewed through Pettit’s account of group agency, the practice theory can easily be defended.     

Intimate Partner Violence in Turkey: The Turkish Intimate Partner Violence Attitude Scale-Revised

This study documents psychometrics of the Turkish version of Intimate Partner Violence Attitude Scale-Revised (IPVAS-R; Fincham et al. in Psychological Assessment, 20, 260–269, 2008). Dating college students (n=280) from four universities completed Turkish versions of the IPVAS-R, Multidimensional Measure of Emotional Abuse, Physical Assault of Conflict Tactics Scale - Revised, and Ambivalent Sexism Inventory. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the three factor structure of the IPVAS-R, albeit with an item change from the Abuse to the Control factor, due to the cultural nuances. This factor structure was cross validated with a second independent sample of 205 dating college students. Convergent validity and satisfactory internal consistency were also reported. The IPVAS-R was found to be a psychometrically sound measure to gauge attitudes toward psychological and physical dating aggression among college students outside of North America.     

Superimposition of ante- and post-mortem photographs of tattoos as a means of identification--a case report

With the rising number of tattooed people tattoos have become increasingly important for the identification of unknown corpses. Tattoos can be helpful in both phases of the identification process, either by providing clues to the identity of an unknown person or body or as a means of verifying a postulated identity. In the presented case, an ante-mortem photograph of a tattoo was available although it was of poor quality. The respective skin region of the body was photographed from the same angle as the tattoo on the ante-mortem photograph. When superimposing the two photos, the tattoos were found to match and the identity of the body could be verified.