Microcrystal analysis of cocaine hydrochloride and added adulterants

The objective of this project was to investigate the trends of changes in the crystal morphology of cocaine in the presence of the common adulterants, caffeine and lidocaine HCl. By performing gold chloride microcrystal tests on samples of cocaine with adulterants at 10, 20, and 50% concentrations, trends in the changes of the crystal morphology can be linked to specific adulterants and concentrations. For cocaine/caffeine mixtures, the trend is elongation of one axis, additional branching, and brown discoloration of the crystals. At 50:50 cocaine/caffeine mixtures, branched spherical crystals and long needles appear. The trends for cocaine/lidocaine mixtures include elongation of one axis with an X-shaped middle axis. The axes continue to grow and branching decreases until at 50%, spherical clusters of needles appear. These results indicate microcrystal analysis can be used as a novel method for presumptively identifying not only cocaine but also the identity and concentration of the adulterant.     

远期运费协议的法律性质及管辖问题——评中国第一起航运金融衍生品纠纷

作为海事司法审判中出现的新类型纠纷,远期运费协议主要是为了解决日益突出的运费风险问题,它从传统的包运合同和期租合同进一步演变而来,使其在航运的基础上又具有了更多的金融色彩。从远期运费协议的产生、协议的主体身份以及交易形式等多方面对其法律性质进行分析,主张鉴于其与船舶、海上货物运输等密切相关,有关远期运费协议等航运金融衍生品纠纷丰富了海商法的内容,属海商法的特别范畴,适宜由海事法院管辖。     

论在高校思想政治理论课中培育大学生社会主义核心价值观

社会主义核心价值体系是社会主义意识形态的本质体现。文章立足于社会主义核心价值体系的基本内容,从四个方面阐述了高校思想政治理论课对培养大学生社会主义核心价值观的功能：通过《马克思主义基本原理概论》的教育教学,坚定大学生的马克思主义指导思想;通过《毛泽东思想和中国特色社会主义理论体系概论》的教育教学,凝聚大学生的中国特色社会主义共同理想;通过《中国近现代史纲要》的教育教学,培育大学生的民族精神和时代精神;通过《思想道德修养和法律基础》的教育教学,形成大学生的社会主义荣辱观。     

Teacher career paths,teacher quality,and persistence in the classroom: Are public schools keeping their best?

In this paper we examine the mobility of early‐career teachers of varying quality, measured using value‐added estimates of teacher performance. Unlike previous studies that have examined these issues, we focus on the variation in these effects across the effectiveness distribution. We find that, on average, more effective teachers tend to stay in their initial schools and in the teaching profession. But there also appears to be heterogeneity in mobility behavior across the performance distribution and evidence that teacher mobility is affected by student demographics and achievement levels. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Russian and Soviet forensic psychiatry: Troubled and troubling

Russian forensic psychiatry is defined by its troubled and troubling relationship to an unstable state, a state that was not a continuous entity during the modern era. From the mid-nineteenth century, Russia as a nation-state struggled to reform, collapsed, re-constituted itself in a bloody civil war, metastasized into a violent “totalitarian” regime, reformed and stagnated under “mature socialism” and then embraced capitalism and “managed democracy” at the end of the twentieth century. These upheavals had indelible effects on policing and the administration of justice, and on psychiatry's relationship with them. In Russia, physicians specializing in medicine of the mind had to cope with rapid and radical changes of legal and institutional forms, and sometimes, of the state itself. Despite this challenging environment, psychiatrists showed themselves to be active professionals seeking to guide the transformations that inevitably touched their work. In the second half of the nineteenth century debates about the role of psychiatry in criminal justice took place against a backdrop of increasingly alarming terrorist activity, and call for revolution. While German influence, with its preference for hereditarianism, was strong, Russian psychiatry was inclined toward social and environmental explanations of crime. When revolution came in 1917, the new communist regime quickly institutionalized forensic psychiatry. In the aftermath of revolution, the institutionalization of forensic psychiatry “advanced” with each turn of the state's transformation, with profound consequences for practitioners' independence and ethical probity. The abuses of Soviet psychiatry under Stalin and more intensively after his death in the 1960s–80s remain under-researched and key archives are still classified. The return to democracy since the late 1980s has seen mixed results for fresh attempts to reform both the justice system and forensic psychiatric practice.     

Group Segregation and Urban Violence

How does segregation shape intergroup violence in contested urban spaces? Should nominal rivals be kept separate or instead more closely integrated? We develop an empirically grounded agent‐based model to understand the sources and patterns of violence in urban areas, employing Jerusalem as a demonstration case and seeding our model with microlevel, geocoded data on settlement patterns. An optimal set of parameters is selected to best fit the observed spatial distribution of violence in the city, with the calibrated model used to assess how different levels of segregation, reflecting various proposed “virtual futures” for Jerusalem, would shape violence. Our results suggest that besides spatial proximity, social distance is key to explaining conflict over urban areas: arrangements conducive to reducing the extent of intergroup interactions—including localized segregation, limits on mobility and migration, partition, and differentiation of political authority—can be expected to dampen violence, although their effect depends decisively on social distance.     

Tuberculous Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm with Alimentary Tract Hemorrhage: A Case Report with Medico-legal Implications

An autopsy case of sudden death induced by alimentary tract hemorrhage was presented,which was caused by the unexpected rupture of clinically unrecognized tuberculous abdominal aortic aneurysm(TAAA).The initial diagnosis was made of the syndrome of coronary heart disease and hypertensive disease.The detailed autopsy showed that the alimentary tract hemorrhage was caused by a sudden rupture of the mass after posture changing was ascertained as the cause of death.The diagnosis of TAAA was determined by the autopsy findings.Analysis for the medical dispute of TAAA was described,and the difficulty of the diagnosis and medico-legal implications were also discussed.     

Bargaining unexplained

Is there a bargaining equilibrium comparable to the equilibrium in the competitive economy? The claim in this paper is that there is not. Bargaining models with well-specified equilibria have been built upon a shared sense of what is fair, concessions in proportion to harm from failure to agree or an imposed bargaining procedure. The claim is that these models either come dangerously close to assuming what they seek to prove or define bargaining as something other than what it is commonly understood to be. We know that people strike bargains and that civilized life could not proceed otherwise, but something over and above pure self-interest is required for bargaining and compromise to take place.     

民族地区低碳城市建设的优势及不足

由于受独特的地理区域和经济发展状况、文化传统影响,民族地区低碳城市建设有自然资源较为丰富、低碳经济发展潜力大和行政灵活性较强等优势。但也存在一些问题,需要从城市规划、法律法规建设、城市发展模式等方面进行完善。