Using Gas Chromatography with Ion Mobility Spectrometry to Resolve Explosive Compounds in the Presence of Interferents*

Abstract: Ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) is a valued field detection technology because of its speed and high sensitivity, but IMS cannot easily resolve analytes of interest within mixtures. Coupling gas chromatography (GC) to IMS adds a separation capability to resolve complex matrices. A GC‐IONSCAN^® operated in IMS and GC/IMS modes was evaluated with combinations of five explosives and four interferents. In 100 explosive/interferent combinations, IMS yielded 21 false positives while GC/IMS substantially reduced the occurrence of false positives to one. In addition, the results indicate that through redesign or modification of the preconcentrator there would be significant advantages to using GC/IMS, such as enhancement of the linear dynamic range (LDR) in some situations. By balancing sensitivity with LDR, GC/IMS could prove to be a very advantageous tool when addressing real world complex mixture situations.     

Overcoming Constraints of State Sovereignty: global health governance in Asia

Abstract

In an increasingly globalised world effective international communicable diseases control requires states to embrace basic norms informing global health governance. However, recent international public health crises have shown that states continue to use national sovereignty to justify non-compliance with these norms. In this article we use three recent high-profile examples from Asia in which the tight hold of state sovereignty cut into the effective implementation of international communicable disease control efforts. Taken together, the three cases illustrate a wider trend in which states historically diminished in structural power or subject to imperialist intrusion contest the legitimacy of global governance initiatives if they are perceived to be another vehicle for the imposition of exogenous norms that do not reflect the values or goals of that state. In response to these challenges, three strategies are posited for how the actors involved in protecting public health might overcome the constraints of state sovereignty to more effectively address global public health threats created by the fluid movement of pathogens across borders.     

Understanding how sexual offenders compare across psychiatric and correctional settings: examination of Canadian mentally ill sexual offenders

Abstract

Much of what is known about sexual offenders is based on correctional samples and then applied across settings based on the assumption that this group is homogeneous. In this study, 149 files were compared, including 108 cases from the forensic mental health system (FMH) and 41 cases from the correctional system (COR). Although many similarities were observed between the FMH and COR groups, the results also revealed important differences. The FMH group was characterised by more frequent hospitalisations, higher rates of major mental illness and single status. The COR group was characterised by a history of physical and sexual abuse, family history of addictions, more intrusive sexual offences and higher rates of offending. These results highlight different profiles for sexual offenders in forensic mental health and correctional settings and challenge us to consider the implications for assessment, treatment and risk management of this unique group of sexual offenders.     

Book Reviews

Jarol B. Manheim, All of the People all the Time: Strategic Communication and American Politics (New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1991), 255 pp. $25.00.

Harry C. Mansfield, Jr., America's Constitutional Soul (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1991), pp. 236.

Donald L. Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), 293 pp. $24.95.     

Regional prosperities compared: Massachusetts and Baden-Württemberg in the 1980s

This article compares the relationship between economic development and public policy in two of the most prosperous regions of the 1980s: Massachusetts in the United States and Baden-Württemberg in West Germany. Beginning with a critique of the theory of the product life-cycle, the article examines the rise and fall of traditional industries in Massachusetts and their survival in Baden-Württemberg. It then goes on to consider the rise–but also the vulnerability–of the high-tech and financial firms in Massachusetts, as well as the more robust, though almost invisible growth of these sectors in Baden-Württemberg. The burden of the argument is that there are, strictly speaking, no ‘mature’ industries and public policies aimed at stimulating innovation are most successful when the latter is integrated into the local industrial structure as a whole rather than isolated into a distinct high-tech sector.     

Simulating commercial policy in a small,open dual economy with urban unemployment: A general equilibrium approach

A two‐sector numerical general equilibrium model calibrated on Kenyan data is used to consider second‐best tariff policy in an economy with a distorted market for urban‐industrial labour and urban unemployment. The results illustrate the sensitivity of second‐best policy to the way the administered urban wage is determined (whether it is fixed primarily in terms of food or the manufactured good), and to the degree of inter‐sectoral mobility of capital. Efficiency gains from moving to a second‐best policy are shown to be small in comparison with the gains from eliminating the wage distortion in the first place.     

New Zealand: the dynamics behind a reinvented government

Within the last ten years, the New Zealand government has reformed its management and accounting systems to such a degree that it has attracted the attention of government officials from around the world. The new business-like methods adopted include realignments in managerial authority, accrual budgeting and accounting, asset revaluations, capital charging, and budgeting for outcomes. This paper provides a look at the dynamics behind these revisions with specific emphasis on changes in budgeting processes. Additionally, an explanation is provided as to why it would be very difficult to adopt these methods in the U. S.     

Measuring the quality of election administration

How do we distinguish between a ‘genuine’, ‘free and fair’, or ‘legitimate’ election and an election that is something less? In this article, we offer an answer to this vexing question: the Election Administration Systems Index (EASI). EASI is a practical, transparent, and sustainable tool for measuring the quality of elections in the developing world. The following pages describe the current limitations in measuring election quality, detail the EASI approach, and provide a comparative analysis of the results of its pilot implementation. EASI scores are drawn from a survey of experts on elections in the target country following a recent nationwide election. The analytical framework is comprised of three electoral dimensions: participation, competition, and integrity of the process. We also divide these dimensions temporally according to the electoral cycle: either pre-election, during the election, or post-election. The final product is a set of six primary scores displayed across dimension and time. By aggregating the survey data in this fashion, we provide for a nuanced assessment of an election by each dimension and across the cycle. As our pilot results demonstrate, EASI is a diagnostic tool for identifying electoral strengths and weaknesses and serves well for comparative assessments.     

Illumination and Innovation: What Philanthropic Foundations Bring to Global Health Governance

This article argues that because much of the scholarship examining the influence of private foundations in global health governance is either neo-Gramscian or reflexively critical in orientation, undue attention has been paid to foundations' origins, affiliations and perceived biases towards bringing technological solutions to bear on problems with deep socio-political determinants, obscuring their chief functions as global governors while downplaying their agency. Such concerns are by no means new as private philanthropic influence in the governance of global health is not a new phenomenon. Drawing on examples from the Ford, Rockefeller and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations' efforts to strengthen public health across the Global South, we argue that for over a century private foundations have been instrumental in the governance of collective action problems for two important reasons. Firstly, their stark illumination of state and market failures disproportionately affecting the world's marginalised and the potential of science-enabled innovation to address longstanding challenges has repeatedly generated the requisite political will to address, however imperfectly, global disparities. Secondly, foundations have ensured that functional governance mechanisms exist to provide public goods to the poor when changes to the structural fabric of the world order constrain the ability of other institutions mandated to perform this function.