School Engagement Among Youth Entering Probation

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Strong school engagement is crucial for school success among adolescents and particularly important for reducing recidivism. Yet, little is known about school...     

Patronage Politics and Contentious Collective Action: A Recursive Relationship

Based on ethnographic reanalysis and on current qualitative research on poor people's politics, this article argues that routine patronage politics and nonroutine collective action should be examined not as opposite and conflicting political phenomena but as dynamic processes that often establish recursive relationships. Through a series of case studies conducted in contemporary Argentina, this article examines four instances in which patronage and collective action intersect and interact: network breakdown, patron's certification, clandestine support, and reaction to threat. These four scenarios demonstrate that more than two opposing spheres of action or two different forms of sociability, patronage, and contentious politics can be mutually imbricated. Either when it malfunctions or when it thrives, clientelism may lie at the root of collective action.     

Ethylene glycol poisoning

A 40-year-old man was admitted to the emergency department after a suicide attempt. The patient was found at home unconscious, with an open bottle of antifreeze near him. The patient was in a coma on admission, but neurological examination excluded intracranial changes. Results of initial urine and serum toxicological screening tests were negative. Laboratory values indicated metabolic acidosis, leukocytosis, urinalysis revealed hematuria and unrecognized crystals. Osmolality and osmol gap were not determined on patient admission. Treatment with ethanol as an antidote and hemodialysis were started because of metabolic acidosis, anamnestic data and clinical status of the patient, and subsequently led to improvement of his condition. Further toxicological analyses of glycolic and oxalic acids in serum and urine samples were performed by ion-chromatography (IC) method and showed high values in spot urine and serum ultrafiltrate at admission, but during therapy the values progressively decreased. Treatment of poisoned patient for 3 weeks resulted in complete recovery.     

Britain’s Choice: Polarisation or Cohesion

Britain’s Choice, a report published by More in Common, develops a new segmentation of the British public based on their core beliefs, values and identities. Identifying seven segments, the report aims to better understand the British public, the goal being to work out how to build a more cohesive Britain—the choice facing Britain being a path to further division and polarisation or one to greater solidarity and shared values. The report strikes a broadly optimistic turn and highlights the shared values across the seven groups, but there are warning signs in the data that there are still many issues on which these groups could be divided, the overlap between them, for now, limiting the success of attempts to do so and throwing up a ‘kaleidoscopic’ pattern that changes from issue to issue.