“Wild Years”: Rock Music,Problem Behaviors and Mental Well-being in Adolescence and Young Adulthood

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Adolescent preferences for non-mainstream types of rock music can be markers of adolescent problem behaviors, but no study has ever investigated whether this...     

Does Nationality Matter? A Comparative Assessment of Perceptions Related to Litigiousness among Americans and Germans

Prior research has examined the salience of civil rights and freedom, core tenets of American life, and their impact on court accessibility and litigiousness. We extend this research by using a nationally representative sample of US and German residents to examine the impact of reported civic involvement and the perceived effectiveness of these activities on three outcomes related to litigiousness – use of a lawyer, seriously considering suing, and actually suing. The findings indicate that, with the exception of boycotting, civic involvement is not a significant predictor of litigiousness. Those who believe litigating is an effective way to participate in public life are more likely to litigate. Notably, Americans also are less likely than Germans to see litigation as effective and are substantially less likely to sue.     

Digital disobedience and the law

Digital disobedience can be defined as politically motivated online lawbreaking. It includes Distributed Denial of Service actions, hacktivism, digitally based leaking (for example, Anonymous, Wikileaks), and whistleblowing (along the lines pursued by Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden). Given its growing political importance, the phenomenon requires careful theoretical attention. Against the widespread tendency to criminalize digital disobedience by appealing to conventional notions of the ‘rule of law’, this article argues that some of its proponents are in fact engaging in digital lawbreaking as expressions of their fundamental respect for the rule of law. Although this diagnosis highlights the partial overlap with conventional models of civil disobedience (which oftentimes similarly conceive of politically motivated lawbreaking as necessarily resting on a more fundamental respect for the law), we should hesitate before viewing digital disobedience simply as modernized or digitalized civil disobedience. Digital disobedience includes some political novelties, and traditional views of civil disobedience only get us so far in making sense of those novelties.     

A Hydrologic Retention System and Water Quality Monitoring Program for a Human Decomposition Research Facility: Concept and Design

Forensic taphonomy is an essential research field; however, the decomposition of human cadavers at forensic science facilities may lead to nutrient loading and the introduction of unique biological compounds to adjacent areas. The infrastructure of a water retention system may provide a mechanism for the biogeochemical processing and retention of nutrients and compounds, ensuring the control of runoff from forensic facilities. This work provides a proof of concept for a hydrologic retention system and an autonomous water quality monitoring program designed to mitigate runoff from The Southeast Texas Applied Forensic Science (STAFS) Facility. Water samples collected along a sample transect were analyzed for total phosphorous, total nitrogen, , , NH₄, F^?, and Cl^?. Preliminary water quality analyses confirm the overall effectiveness of the water retention system. These results are discussed with relation to how this infrastructure can be expanded upon to monitor additional, more novel, byproducts of forensic science research facilities.