EDITOR'S CORNER: CHANGING THE CULTURE

It is perfectly obvious that in any decent occupation…there are only two ways…of succeeding. One is by doing very good work, the other is by cheating.     

鸡毒支原体鸡滑液囊支原体和副鸡禽杆菌三重PCR检测方法的建立

鸡毒支原体(MG)、鸡滑液囊支原体(MS)、副鸡禽杆菌(APG)三重PCR诊断对于鸡呼吸道疾病的鉴别诊断和防控有着重要意义。本次试验首先对三重PCR反应条件进行优化,之后对多种病原的DNA进行扩增以确定本方法的特异性,调整MG、MS和APG的DNA浓度以确定本方法的敏感性。结果显示,利用优化后的反应条件,本试验建立的诊断方法能够同时扩增出长度为453 bp(MG)、328 bp(MS)和241 bp(APG)的特异性片段,而大肠杆菌、鸡白痢沙门菌、禽多杀性巴氏杆菌、金黄色葡萄球菌和阴性对照样品在检测时则无条带产生。对三种病原的混合DNA进行10倍梯度稀释,确定MG、MS和APG的最低检出量为5×10^-3ng/μL。对37份临床样品的检测结果表明,三重PCR的检出率和单重PCR的检测结果一致,且可同时检测出两种或三种病原同时感染。上述结果表明,本试验建立的MG、MS和APG三重PCR诊断方法具有良好的特异性、较高的灵敏性,可用于鸡呼吸道病的诊断和防控。     

Procedural justice, routine encounters and citizen perceptions of police: main findings from the Queensland Community Engagement Trial (QCET)

Objectives

To test, under randomized field trial conditions, the impact of police using the principles of procedural justice during routine encounters with citizens on attitudes towards drink-driving, perceptions of compliance, and their satisfaction with the police.

Methods

We conducted the first randomized field trial??the ??Queensland Community Engagement Trial?? (QCET)??to test the impact of police engaging with citizens by operationalizing the key ingredients of procedural justice (neutrality, citizen participation, respect, and trustworthy motives) in a short, high-volume police?Ccitizen encounter. We randomly allocated 60 roadside Random Breath Testing (RBT) operations to control (business-as-usual) and experimental (procedural justice) conditions. Driver surveys were used to measure the key outcomes: attitudes towards drinking and driving, satisfaction with police and perceptions of compliance.

Results

Citizen perceptions of the encounter revealed that the experimental treatment was delivered as planned. We also found significant differences between the experimental and control groups on all key outcome measures: drivers who received the experimental RBT encounter were 1.24 times more likely to report that their views on drinking and driving had changed than the control group; experimental respondents reported small but higher levels of compliance (d?=?.07) and satisfaction (d?=?.18) with police during the encounter than did their control group counterparts.

Conclusions

Our results show that the way citizens perceive the police can be influenced by the way in which police interact with citizens during routine encounters, and demonstrate the positive benefits of police using the principles of procedural justice. Our study was limited by the use of paper-only surveys and low response rate. We also recognize that the experiment setting (RBT road blocks) is limiting and non-reflective of the wider set of routine police?Ccitizen encounters. Future research should be undertaken, using experimental methods, to replicate our field operationalization of procedural justice in different types of police?Ccitizen encounters.     

Manning the Fields: Remaking Women's Work in the Tobacco South in the Twentieth Century

Today, men make up the vast majority of the workforce in the tobacco fields of the American South. This was not always the case. For more than two centuries, enslaved women worked alongside men in the tobacco fields. In the late nineteenth century, the unpaid labor of female kin made possible the household's replacement of the plantation as the center of production, and it remained critical for farm families well into the twentieth century. Following World War II, agricultural engineers developed new technologies to eliminate tasks traditionally done by women. In the 1980s, the process of defeminization accelerated as growers began to hire male guestworkers from Mexico as more women moved into the non-farm labor market to supplement their families' farm incomes. The transition from family to wage labor in the tobacco South was far from a ‘natural’ process, but one nurtured by state agricultural, labor, and immigration policy.     

Case Survey

This section of the Journal deals with recent case law. The cases are listed in alphabetical order by case name.     

A shrinking state? Politics,economics and private health care in Thailand

This article explores the political and economic forces involved in the development of privatization policies within the health care sector in Thailand. It is suggested that many of the motivating factors behind private sector growth are outside of the health sector; the general macroeconomic environment and tax incentives have stimulated private sector expansion. Within the Ministry of Public Health a preoccupation with improving care in rural areas and an unclear policy line on the private sector has facilitated this expansion. Only recently has private sector growth come to the policy agenda. During this lag period a number of interest groups have developed. It will be difficult to overcome these entrenched interests in order to change policy direction. Meanwhile, problems of rapid cost inflation and inequity face the Thai health care system. Although this case study focuses upon the health care sector in Thailand it would appear relevant both to other sectors and to other countries. The relationship between development models based upon pro-private, pro-market tenets and the establishment of a satisfactory social policy is questioned.