Analytical Challenge in Postmortem Toxicology Applied to a Human Body Found into a Lake after Three Years Immersion

The body of a 30‐year‐old woman was found in Como lake at a depth of about 120 meters in her own car after 3 years of immersion. The aim of this study was to evaluate psychoactive drugs as well as alcohol biomarkers in biological matrices. The following analyses were initially performed: GC‐MS systematic toxicological analysis on biological fluids and tissues; GC‐MS analysis of drugs of abuse on pubic hair; direct ethanol metabolite determination in pubic hair by LC‐MS/MS. After 7 years, the samples, that had been stored at ?20°C, were re‐analyzed and submitted to an LC‐MS/MS targeted screening method, using multiple reaction monitoring mode. These analyses detected citalopram (150–3000 ng/mL), desmethylcitalopram (50–2300 ng/mL), clotiapine (20–65 ng/mL), and ethyl glucuronide (97 pg/mg). The methods showed an acceptable reproducibility, and the concentrations of citalopram and desmethylcitalopram calculated through the two analytical techniques did not significantly differ in biological fluids.     

Reshaping Cultural Heritage Protection Policies at a Time of Securitisation: France,Italy, and the United Kingdom

In the context of the increasing securitisation of cultural heritage, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom have reacted differently to the recent wave of iconoclasm perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and similar radical groups and terrorist organisations. With cultural heritage now discursively identified as a security concern, the three states enacted security practices to deal with the newly emerged security threats. All three cases show a tight association between the protection of cultural heritage, development and security policies. State-driven cultural heritage protection policies continue to be designed around the notion of multilateral cooperation, although innovative forms of public-private multilateralism and civil-military cooperation are increasingly being introduced.     

Shaping Structured Out-of-School Time Use Among Youth: The Effects of Self,Family, and Friend Systems

To explore predictors of adolescent participation in structured out-of-school activities, various types of structured out-of-school time use and their correlates were examined among 454 adolescents in Grades 9–12 in a rural southeastern state. Using a developmental-ecological model as an organizing framework, four different uses of time were explored with regard to self, family, and friend systems. Regression analyses revealed that time in after-school extracurricular activities was predicted by parent endorsement of activities, ethnicity, and friend endorsement of activities, whereas time spent in nonschool clubs was predicted by peer pressure, parent endorsement, and grades. Socioeconomic status, parental monitoring of activities, school grade level, and family structure predicted time spent in volunteering, and time spent in religious-related activities was predicted by ethnicity, family structure, friend endorsement, and gender.     

Decentralization,Fiscal Independence,and Poverty in the Philippines

Decentralization is a common public sector reform in developing countries. Its basic rationale is that local governments have an informational advantage regarding the needs and preferences of consumers. However, decentralization also has drawbacks. Foremost is the efficiency advantage of the central government in providing public services because of economies of scale and better access to resources. This study looked at the relationship between decentralization and poverty using data from Philippine cities and municipalities. Results suggest that decentralization, as represented by fiscal independence and measured by the share of locally sourced revenues to total local government revenues, is indeed associated with lower poverty. However, this effect is not linear—the marginal effect of decentralization on poverty diminishes as decentralization increases. Moreover, decentralization moderates the positive effect of good governance on poverty reduction and the magnitude of the relationship between poverty and decentralization is stronger in poorer municipalities than in richer ones.     

From Text to Image: The Sacred Foundation of Western Institutional Order: Legal-Semiotic Perspectives

The paper analyzes the sacred foundations of Western institutional order, moving from an epistemological, historical and legal–aesthetic perspective. Firstly, it identifies an epistemological theory of complexity which, pursuing Hayek’s theory of complexity, Robilant’s notion of informative–normative systems, Popper’s theory of the Worlds, and Dupuy’s theory of endogenous fixed point, will conclusively lead to presenting the hypothesis of World 0 as the World of the foundation of legal thinking, the home of the sacred and the aesthetic. Secondly, it identifies the axiological character of the legal aesthetic as a discipline, a topic that will be taken up in relation to the work of the French historian of canonical law and psychoanalyst Legendre, starting from the analysis of a legal/historiographical context (Corpus Iuris Civilis, Corpus Iuris Canonici, Hobbesian Leviathan, Kelsenian Grundnorm). Thirdly, following Ellul’s thought on secularization, the idea that we now live in a secularized, lay society, lacking in the sacred is revealed as a sort of illusion, the creation of a myth of modernity, only apparently rational. Finally the paper proposes as the task of legal theory the identification of the system of “nomograms” in which the normative message is organized, according to a nonreductionistic approach that forces legal theory to recognize the plurality of the iconic forms of the normative message. The “nomograms” respond to the need of extending the field of legal science to phenomena that the positivist theory of law does not consider important, but which the process of evolution of contemporary society imposes.     

Emission Trading Restrictions with Endogenous Technological Change

In this paper we use a simple climate model for endogenous environmental technical change in order to analyse the effects on equity and efficiency of placing different degrees of restrictions on trade in the market of pollution permits. The model is obtained by incorporating in Nordhaus and Yang (1996)'s RICE model a notion of induced technical change close to the one proposed in Goulder and Mathai (2000). With the help of such a model, we assess the pros and cons of introducing ceilings on emission trading. In particular, we analyse both the cost effectiveness and the distributional effects of placing restrictions of trading emissions. The analysis takes into account the role of environmental technical change that could be enhanced by emission trade limitations. However, this effect is shown to be offset by the increased abatement cost induced by the larger than optimal adoption of domestic policy measures when ceilings are made binding. Hence, our analysis provides little support for quantitative restrictions of emission trading, even when these restrictions actually have a positive impact of technical change. Even in terms of equity, ceilings find no justification within our theoretical and modelling framework. Indeed, we find that flexibility mechanisms in the presence of endogenous technical change increase equity and that the highest equity levels are achieved without ceilings, both in the short and in the long run.     

The making and political life of Miners Shot Down: an interview with Rehad Desai and Anita Khanna

The interview that follows was conducted in Kensington, Johannesburg, in may 2015. I had not originally planned to publish it: I interviewed rehad desai and anita Khanna in preparation for a presentation on their documentary, Miners Shot Down (2014), I was going to give at a conference, to be repeated at the annual colloquium we organise with the school of Communication at the university of Johannesburg to mark the anniversary of the marikana massacre. I had been monitoring the marikana support Campaign quite closely, so I was interested in hearing not only about the documentary – the way it frames and narrates the story of the massacre – but also about its role in this multimedia campaign. I wanted the director and producer to share their thoughts on the impact the film had made, on the response at the local and international screenings they had attended, on what the miners of marikana and their communities thought of it, and on the campaign to have the film screened on South African national television. in the interview, they also describe the involvement of the miners and their communities in the political life of the film and their own experience of filming, producing and promoting the documentary. When Miners Shot Down won the international emmy award for best documentary in november 2015, I reread the interview and thought others might be interested in it – especially scholars working in media, film and communication studies. So here it is. Thanks go to rehad desai and anita Khanna for their time and generosity and to amy maphagela for transcribing the interview.