RAILROAD POLICY AND INTERMODALISM: Policy Choices after Deregulation

Intermodalism is widely viewed as a promising recent development in transportation. This article examines the role played by railroads in intermodal freight transportation and the framework of public policies around whic intermodal freight movement has evolved. Intermodalism emerged because of technological, organizational, and public policy developments that contributed to its rapid growth. Deregulation of the rail industry since 1980 has led to significant restructuring through mergers and direct contracts between railroads and customers. As intermodal shipments become more important to the overall transportation system in the United States, attention will need to be given to ways in which intermodal concerns are addressed in surface transportation programs.     

The Recruitment of Women Cabinet Ministers in the Canadian Provinces

Although there have been several studies of women in legislatures in Canada, a cabinet position is a much stronger position from which to wield power in an executive-centered and party-disciplined parliamentary system. In the past decade, the increase of women's share of legislative seats, for majority parties as well as others, has led to more women being appointed to cabinet portfolios. This article utilizes data from the ten Canadian provinces over an 18-year period, from 1976 to 1994, to assess patterns of such appointments by province, party, percentage of women in the governing party, and percentage of women in the legislature. The proportion of women in the governing party far outweighs other variables in its impact on the percentage of women in the cabinet, in contrast to a previous study of West European cabinets which found that more women in the legislature was of greater importance. Although a high level of multicollinearity indicates caution in attempting to distinguish between the impact of these two variables, the differences in these studies may be due to Canadian provinces having single-party majority governments while West European cabinets are often coalitions.     

Measuring Barriers to Help-Seeking Behavior in Adolescents

To construct and validate an instrument that would measure barriers to help-seeking behavior in adolescents. Method: A 37-item questionnaire based on prior help-seeking literature was constructed to yield a total score indicating strength of barriers to help-seeking behavior. The instrument was given to a sample of 280 high school students following a pilot study of 65 students. Results: The instrument was found to have good test–retest and internal reliability and adequate validity in the tested population. It shows promise in helping to identify adolescents who may be amenable to, and opposed to, therapeutic intervention, and may aid in understanding which barriers to help seeking are most significant in any given population.     

Continuities in Providing for Old Age: Cross-national and Cross-cultural Comparisons

Drawing on a purposive sample of 25 interviews supplemented by secondary source material, this comparative study explores the options available to elderly immigrants in two quite similar countries to achieve social security in their old age. The focus is the culturally determined perspectives and practices of aging Italian-born and Indian-born immigrants in the context of public and private sector social welfare policies and provisions in Australia and Canada. Government transfers, occupational superannuation, tax-deductible personal savings, housing, and formal and informal supports are discussed. What is important to the sense of social security of the older people and how well-off or disadvantaged they seem to be are among the questions raised. The design affords an opportunity to test the complex combination of cross-national and cross-cultural comparison. In the certainty that the income deficiencies of today's elderly immigrants cannot be remedied easily or quickly enough to benefit those affected, intervention strategies can be aimed at expanding ethno-specific community supports and quality residential care; such a direction is supported by assessment of service availability in relation to estimates of aging among particular foreign-born immigrant groups. Suggestions are made for future research at the levels of theory and application.     

The regulation of lobbyists

The authors gratefully acknowledge helpful comments from Charles Rowley, Robert Tollison, and a referee of this journal.     

Forensic medicine experiences in cremation autopsy in Bonn

2016 coroner's crematorial inquests of the Bonn Institute of Legal Medicine over a 3 years' period were evaluated and the statements in the death certificates were compared to those ones of the Statistical Country Office of Northrhine-Westphalia. No significant differences were found with respect to age, gender and reason of death. However, the number of insufficiently classified deaths with respect to the reason of death were overrepresented especially in cases of older women, while the number of unnatural deaths was generally underrepresented. According to legal medical criteria 2 1/4 per cent of the deaths were falsely classified as natural. Only in 2 cases an autopsy was accomplished. Other author's statements on the validity of death certificates were confirmed.