The Political Economy of State Environmental Regulation: The Distribution of Regulatory Burdens

This article examines interstate variance in the distribution of costs for hazardous waste regulation in the American states. The analysis identifies the distribution of regulatory costs for technical externalities and answers specific questions about the regulatory strategies of competing states in a federal system.     

Life (Hi)story writing: The relationship between talk and text

This paper is based on my experience of life (hi)story work with Aboriginal women. It will focus mainly on the development of a collaborative methodology between Patsy Cohen and myself and the process of creating the text Ingelba and the Five Black Matriarchs ¹.

Life (hi)story writing lies uneasily on the boundary between biography and autobiography and as such challenges many of our assumptions about telling and writing a life. It has traditionally been regarded as ‘an extensive record of a life told to and recorded by another who then edits and writes the life as though it were autobiography‘². More recently feminist researchers have redefined this process to emphasise its collaborative nature ‘in life history, two stories together produce one. A speaker and a listener ask, respond, present and edit a life‘³. Such a definition focuses our attention on the relationship, the inevitable power relations involved in the processes of the production of knowledge, the interface between talk and text and the need for alternative models to conventional biography and autobiography. Both the process and the text produced by this method are potentially deconstructive of conventional autobiography and biography. They are not simply deconstructive, however, as new narratives and new forms can be created out of this process which enable us to re‐evaluate the telling of all our lives.     

Sexual Harassment and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Damages Beyond Prior Abuse

This study examined the extent to which harassment experiences correlate with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, and whether diagnosable PTSD on the basis of sexual harassment occurs after accounting for prior PTSD, prior sexual abuse, and prior psychological dysfunction. The sample consisted of a two-wave panel of 445 women who had received a domestic violence protective order from a Kentucky court. Hierarchical linear and logistic analyses confirmed that sexual harassment experiences were significantly correlated with PTSD symptoms after controlling for an extensive set of trauma variables measured in both the baseline and follow up interviews. Our findings lend further evidence that claims of PTSD from sexual harassment may be credible even if claimants have been victims of other forms of trauma.     

Domestic Institutional Constraints on China's Leadership in East Asian Economic Cooperation Mechanisms

The study of Chinese foreign policy has long shown that domestic politics and domestic constraints are sources of foreign policy, albeit generally considered less potent than ideology and interests. Domestic political constraints should also be explored as factors in Chinese regional policies toward East Asia, including regional economic institutions. This paper examines three domestic institutional constraints on regional foreign policy in the area of trade and economics: a fragmented decision-making structure that has difficulty with coordination, a relatively heavy reliance on top level decision-makers at a time when issues of Asian economic policy have relatively low priority for these same decision-makers, and the relatively extreme lack of autonomy for negotiators vis-á-vis top decision-makers in Beijing. These constraints are by any means unique to China. However, at a time when many observers and participants are expecting—indeed, often hoping for—Chinese leadership in the region, the paper posits that these constraints hinder the PRC's ability to fill this role. The key empirical focus is regional trade agreements and regional economic organizations.     

Early Pubertal Timing and Girls’ Problem Behavior: Integrating Two Hypotheses

Girls’ early pubertal timing has been linked in many studies to behavioral problems such as delinquency and substance use. The theoretical explanations for these links have often involved the girls’ peer relationships, but contexts have also been considered important in some explanations. By integrating two theoretical models, the peer-socialization and the contextual-amplification hypotheses, we propose a contextual framework for explaining the link between early pubertal timing and external problem behavior in girls. We hypothesize that early developing girls engage in unhealthy, dangerous, and risky behavior under contextual conditions that promote access to older friends and opposite-sex relationships. Under other conditions it is less likely. We tested this integrated hypothesis in two studies conducted in Sweden. The first was a cross-sectional study with information about school and free-time friends in a community sample (N = 284). Early pubertal timing was linked to having older, more normbreaking friends outside of school, but not in school, thus suggesting that the school context interferes early-developing girls’ selection of older peers. The second study involved both a longitudinal (N = 434) and a cross-sectional sample of girls (N = 634), where we examined a leisure setting that is known to attract delinquent youth. Results showed that early pubertal timing was most strongly linked to delinquency for girls who spent time in this context and were heavily involved with boys and peers. In sum, results from both studies supported our predictions that certain contexts would amplify the peer-socialization effect. Overall, we conclude that the integrated peer-socialization/contextual-amplification model satisfactorily explains the link between pubertal timing and external problem behavior.     

Concordance study between the AmpFlSTR MiniFiler PCR amplification kit and conventional STR typing kits

The AmpFlSTR MiniFiler polymerase chain reaction amplification kit developed by Applied Biosystems enables size reduction on eight of the larger STR loci amplified in the Identifiler kit, which will aid recovery of information from highly degraded DNA samples. The MiniFiler Kit amplifies CSF1PO, FGA, D2S1338, D7S820, D13S317, D16S539, D18S51, and D21S11 as well as the sex-typing locus amelogenin. A total of 1308 samples were evaluated with both the MiniFiler and Identifiler STR kits: 449 African American, 445 Caucasian, 207 Hispanic, and 207 Asian individuals. Full concordance between Identifiler and MiniFiler Kits was observed in 99.7% (10,437 out of 10,464) STR allele calls compared. The 27 differences seen are listed in Table 1 and encompass the loci D13S317 (n = 14) and D16S539 (n = 10) as well as D18S51 (n = 1), D7S820 (n = 1), and CSF1PO (n = 1). Genotyping discrepancies between the Identifiler and MiniFiler kits were confirmed by reamplification of the samples and further testing using the PowerPlex 16 kit in many cases. DNA sequence analysis was also performed in order to understand the nature of the genetic variations causing the allele dropout or apparent repeat unit shift.     

Investigating genetic discrimination in the Australian life insurance sector: the use of genetic test results in underwriting, 1999-2003

A major component of the Genetic Discrimination Project (GDP), an Australia-wide study to examine the advantages and disadvantages for individuals of having genetic information and cases of alleged genetic discrimination, is the analysis of insurers' use of genetic test results. The peak life insurance body, IFSA, had collected data through the Australian Institute of Actuaries (AIA) for the period June 1999-May 2003 from life insurance companies in Australia regarding their use of genetic test results in insurance underwriting. The GDP negotiated with IFSA and the AIA for access to this data for independent analysis. Applications from 288 individuals who had disclosed a genetic test result included products for cover for death, trauma/crisis, income protection/disability and total and permanent disablement. A total of 81% (234/288) contained usable data for analysis. These cases involved the genetic conditions haemochromatosis (71%), Huntington disease (12%) and breast/ovarian cancer (6%). In 49% of cases, the genetic test result was described as the only influencing factor and of these, 32% involved a "positive" genetic test result. Whilst underwriting in most cases appeared to be reasonable, the article highlights several cases involving disclosure of a positive predictive test result for breast/ovarian cancer that required further investigation.