Managing in the contemporary world: rape victims' and supporters' experiences of barriers within the police and the health care system in Tanzania

Grounded theory guided the analysis of 30 in-depth interviews with raped women and community members who had supported raped women in their contact with the police and health care services in Tanzania. The aim of this study was to understand and conceptualize the experiences of the informants by creating a theoretical model focusing on barriers, strategies, and responses during the help seeking process. The results illustrate a process of managing in the contemporary world characterized as walking a path of anger and humiliation. The barriers are illustrated by painful experiences of realizing it's all about money, meeting unprofessionalism and irresponsibility, subjected to unreliable services, and by being caught in a messed-up system. Negotiating truths and knowing what to do capture the informants' coping strategies. The study indicates an urgent need for improvement in the formal procedures of handling rape cases, improved collaboration between the police and the health care system, as well as specific training for professionals to improve their communication and caring skills.     

Assessment of age and sex by means of DXA bone densitometry: application in forensic anthropology

An effective way to reveal the history of drug abuse is to determine the parental drug and its metabolites in hair. Here, a quantitative HPLC-Chip-MS/MS method was developed for simultaneous measurement of ketamine and its metabolite norketamine in human hair. Ketamine and norketamine were extracted from hair by acid hydrolysis, and then enriched by organic solvent extraction. The chromatographic separation was achieved in 15 min, with the drug identification and quantification by a tandem mass spectrometer. The linear regression analysis was calibrated by deuterated internal standards with a R(2) of over 0.996. The limit of detection (LOD) and the limit of quantification (LOQ) for ketamine and norketamine were 0.5 and 1 pg/mg of hair, respectively. The standard curves were linear from the value of LOQ up to 100 pg/mg of hair. The validation parameters including selectivity, accuracy, precision, stability and matrix effect were also determined. In conclusion, this method was able to reveal the present of ketamine and norketamine with less hair from the drug abusers, and which had the sensitivity of ～1000-fold higher than the conventional method. In addition, the amount of ketamine and norketamine being detected in different hair segments would be useful in revealing the historical record of ketamine uptake in the drug abusers.     

The Effect of Ministerial Instability on Government's Mandate Fulfilment: Evidence from the Portuguese Case

Research on the fulfilment of electoral promises has been particularly fruitful over the past decades. Most of it focused on examining pledge fulfilment at the cabinet level, and little emphasis was placed on the reasons underlying the level of compliance. As a consequence, core factors in explaining pledge fulfilment have not yet been explored. One such factor might be instability in a government's internal functioning. We argue that ministerial instability is relevant for explaining a government's broken promises, and that its importance increases at the junior minister level and among the most salient ministries. Relying on data on the fulfilment of electoral promises and ministerial instability in Portugal between 1995 and 2019, backed by interviews with former ministers and junior ministers, we provide evidence that the fulfilment of electoral promises is significantly influenced by portfolio volatility, particularly at the junior ministerial level and in the most important ministries.