MEDIATION IN THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT JUVENILE DEPENDENCY COURT

This article presents the results of a 9-month interdisciplinary task force convened to review the mediation process in the juvenile dependency court and to develop guidelines for its operation by the conciliation court, stemming from a grand jury recommendation.     

State nursing home enforcement systems

This study presents interview and statistical data from a telephone and fax survey of state agency officials and statistical data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Online Survey Certification and Reporting (OSCAR) system. State survey activities for nursing facilities were reviewed and the number and types of intermediate sanctions issued by states in 1999 were reported, along with barriers to the use of such sanctions. Using five selected enforcement measures to create a summary score, states were classified by quartiles based on the stringency of their nursing facility enforcement activities. Controlling for the number of complaints as a proxy for quality, the predictors of a summary of state enforcement actions were: percentage of population at age eighty-five and above. Democratic governors, higher percentages of chain facilities, and lower facility occupancy rates. Regional differences in enforcement patterns also were shown. Many federal policies and resource constraints were identitied as barriers to effective regulation. The findings identified nursing facility survey and enforcement issues that need to be addressed by policy makers.     

The role of the new "date rape drugs" in attributions about date rape

This study investigates the effect of voluntary and involuntary drug use on attributions about sexual assault. The sample was composed of 280 randomly selected male and female undergraduate students. The type of drug used (GHB, alcohol, or none) and the voluntariness of the administration were varied in an unambiguous date rape scenario. Participants viewed sexual assault facilitated by alcohol or drugs similarly to sexual assault without drug or alcohol involvement, assigning the highest levels of responsibility and blame to the perpetrator and the lowest levels of both to the victim in these situations. In contrast, women's voluntary consumption of drugs prior to a sexual assault reduced perpetrator responsibility and blame and increased blame to the victim compared to other situations (except in some cases, voluntary drunkenness). These findings extend the limited research on date rape drugs and previous work on the influence of alcohol on date rape attributions.     

Cognitive Abilities,Social Adaptation,and Externalizing Behavior Problems in Childhood and Adolescence: Specific Cascade Effects Across Development

Children’s and adolescents’ cognitive abilities, social adaptation, and externalizing behaviors are broadly associated with each other at the bivariate level; however, the direction, ordering, and uniqueness of these associations have yet to be identified. Developmental cascade models are particularly well-suited to (1) discern unique pathways among psychological domains and (2) model stability in and covariation among constructs, allowing for conservative tests of longitudinal associations. The current study aimed to identify specific cascade effects among children’s cognitive abilities, social adaptation, and externalizing behaviors, beginning in preschool and extending through adolescence. Children (46.2?% female) and mothers (N?=?351 families) provided data when children were 4, 10, and 14 years old. Cascade effects highlighted significant stability in these domains. Unique longitudinal associations were identified between (1) age-10 cognitive abilities and age-14 social adaptation, (2) age-4 social adaptation and age-10 externalizing behavior, and (3) age-10 externalizing behavior and age-14 social adaptation. These findings suggest that children’s social adaptation in preschool and externalizing behavior in middle childhood may be ideal intervention targets to enhance adolescent well-being.     

Attitudes Towards Violence Against Women In Men of South Asian Ancestry: Are Acculturation and Gender Role Attitudes Important Factors?

The purpose of this study was to examine attitudes toward violence against women in men of South Asian ancestry. Studies conducted on other cultural groups have examined separately the influence of gender role attitudes and acculturation on violence against women. In the current study, we proposed that acculturation and attitudes towards violence against women were related through the mediation of gender role attitudes. One hundred male South Asian university students were administered questionnaires that measured their acculturation, gender role attitudes and attitudes towards wife beating. Results indicated that gender role attitudes fully mediated the relationship between acculturation and attitudes towards violence against women. This means that lower acculturation is only related to higher acceptance of wife assault because lower levels of acculturation are related to more restrictive and conservative beliefs about the roles of men and women.     

Purple Pasts: Color Codification in the Ancient World

While developments in intellectual property have opened the door for trademarking color alone or color per se, it is important to observe that color codification is not a new phenomenon. This article outlines the quest to metaphorically trademark purple in antiquity and to provide it with clear "secondary meaning." It highlights how language, literature, and sumptuary law was deployed to infuse purple with the appropriate symbolism, and it links contemporary debates to some of the historic moves to sequester color.     

SPECTACULAR COMPASSION

ABSTRACT

China's “Olympic Year” (2007–2008) was a watershed moment for the country and its ruling Chinese Communist Party. In this article, the author draws on her fieldwork experience as one of the few foreigners living in rural Tibetan regions during the Tibetan unrest in spring 2008 to consider the implications of the Olympic year from the margins of the state. Taking inspiration from recent anthropological debates about the nature of humanitarianism and sovereignty in neo-liberal and post-socialist states, the author considers the Tibetan unrest and the Sichuan earthquake that occurred just three weeks later on 12 May as particularly emblematic disastrous events linked by a new biopolitics of “charity” or “compassion” (Ch. aixin) in the context of state-led disaster relief. To get at the contested nature of morality and sovereignty in practice, the author focuses on nationally televised post-quake death rituals in which statist abstract compassion for lost Chinese citizens confronted the universalized compassion of embattled Tibetan Buddhist monastic communities.     

Alternative measures for the financial condition of the multifamily housing stock

Abstract

Indicators of the financial condition of the multifamily housing stock can potentially inform several policy issues, such as the loss of affordable rental units, multifamily developers’ access to capital, and the emerging secondary mortgage market for multifamily properties. Several rules of thumb exist for assessing financial condition. This article uses the Residential Finance Survey to investigate whether it matters, from a practical standpoint, which one is employed. Specifically, we ascertain how five measures—loan‐to‐value, debt coverage, rent‐to‐value, net operating income—to‐value, and vacancy loss ratios—relate to each other and rank properties.

We found that Pearsonian correlations among the measures varied dramatically. Factor analysis produced two factors, one corresponding to a rent‐flow measure and the other to a debt‐burden measure. Spearman rank‐order correlations revealed that with one exception, measures yielded noticeably dissimilar financial condition rankings. We conclude that single‐dimensional measures of financial condition should not be used in isolation.