Infant and child mortality in developing countries: Analysing the data for Robust determinants

Is development best achieved by going for growth, or does specific attention need to be paid to directly improving human welfare? In contrast to the Human Development Reports of the UNDP, the World Bank has stressed the growth approach. Recent work has reinforced this position by arguing that health spending is extremely ineffective in reducing infant or child mortality, which is mainly explained by a country's income per capita. This article contests this position through testing the robustness of determinants of infant and child mortality. We have estimated over 420,000 equations which show that, while income per capita is a robust determinant of infant and child mortality, so are indicators of health, education and gender inequality. Some health spending, such as immunisation, is thus shown to be cost effective way of saving lives. Our results are consistent with the view that much health spending in developing countries may be poorly targeted or otherwise ineffective, but do not support the position that public health strategies should not be given too great a role in pursuing improvements in human welfare.     

Exporting and importing criminality: Incarceration of the Foreign Born

Since previous studies have found that crime rates vary by immigrant group there is a need to dis‐aggregate immigrants by country of birth in order to obtain a more accurate representation of the relationship between migrants and crime. This study examines data from six countries (Australia, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the U.S.A.) on the country of birth of their inmate populations. The following observations are reasonable conclusions from the data available. First, the percentages of each home country's inmate population that is foreign‐born varies remarkably. Second, in general foreign‐born inmates tend to come from regions outside the region within which the host country was located, though in most cases from regions that were proximate. Third, given the small number of countries reporting, it is intriguing that just a small number of countries and regions can account for such a high proportion of a home country's inmate population if one includes the numbers of a country's citizens who are housed in foreign prisons as part of that original country's inmate population. The paper concludes with a discussion of a number of policy implications that flow from these findings.     

Decentralization as a tool for social services management

This paper describes considerations which attempt to identify suitable applications of prototype advanced information technology (IT) systems within United Kingdom (UK) local government.

A ‘task‐analysis’ was undertaken of the activities of the departments within a large UK local authority. The resultant data was then matched, through a theoretical model, with the characteristics of these advanced IT systems. It was concluded that a low risk, low cost system should be implemented within the training function associated with a number of departments.

The empirical study was undertaken within Manchester City Council (MCC) which is considered representative of local government. It is believed, therefore, that many of the issues described in this paper may be of value to other authorities nationally.     

Can Small High Schools of Choice Improve Educational Prospects for Disadvantaged Students?

This paper provides rigorous evidence (for 12,130 participants in a series of naturally occurring randomized lotteries) that a large‐scale high school reform initiative (New York City's creation of 100+ small high schools of choice between 2002 and 2008) can markedly and consistently increase high school graduation rates (by 9.5 percentage points overall and for many different student subgroups) for a large population of educationally and economically disadvantaged students of color without increasing annual school operating costs. These findings are directly relevant to current debates by policymakers and practitioners about how to improve the educational prospects of disadvantaged students in the United States.     

Pharmaceutical Industry Financial Support for Medical Education: Benefit, or Undue Influence?

Presently, the pharmaceutical industry funds about half of the costs of continuing medical education (CME) programs in the U.S. This contributes to the ethical problems that pervade the relationship between medicine and the pharmaceutical industry: trustworthiness and conflicts of interest. The problems are exacerbated by rationalizations prevalent on both sides that deny the ethical concerns. Commercialism and commercial bias are highly visible at large CME gatherings, and available data, while scanty, back up the view that physician attendees' subsequent prescribing practices are influenced by the commercial message. The industry believes that it will recoup $3.56 in increased sales for every dollar that it invests in CME. New guidelines instituted by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) in 2004 may succeed in reducing excessive commercial influence, especially since the Department of Health and Human Services has also warned the industry of possible anti-kickback violations if firewalls are not erected between CME funding and marketing of drugs. Critics counter that early indicators of improvement are lacking.     

On Necessity as a Defence to Crime: Possibilities, Problems and the Limits of Justification and Excuse

The article reviews recent developments in England in the law of necessity as a defence to crime and calls for its further extension. It argues that the defence of necessity presents the criminal law with difficult questions of competing values and the ordering of harms. English law has taken a nuanced position on the respective roles of the courts and the legislature in the ordering of harms, although the development of the law has been pragmatic rather than coherently theorised. The law has granted necessity some scope as an exculpatory principle in the law of general defences, but it has also respected the primacy of the legislature as the legitimate arbiter of many of the competitions of value that necessity throws up. The recognition of necessity has not been in the form of a single unified defence of that name. Rather it has taken the form of a number of defences, based on a principle of necessity, but with different nomenclature and different rationales. This approach to necessity is defended as right in terms of principle and policy. Any further development of necessity as a general defence should be restricted to two contexts, namely those of emergencies, and of conflicts of duty, where a danger of death or serious injury is present.

Developmental validation of a Cannabis sativa STR multiplex system for forensic analysis

A developmental validation study based on recommendations of the Scientific Working Group on DNA Analysis Methods (SWGDAM) was conducted on a multiplex system of 10 Cannabis sativa short tandem repeat loci. Amplification of the loci in four multiplex reactions was tested across DNA from dried root, stem, and leaf sources, and DNA from fresh, frozen, and dried leaf tissue with a template DNA range of 10.0-0.01 ng. The loci were amplified and scored consistently for all DNA sources when DNA template was in the range of 10.0-1.0 ng. Some allelic dropout and PCR failure occurred in reactions with lower template DNA amounts. Overall, amplification was best using 10.0 ng of template DNA from dried leaf tissue indicating that this is the optimal source material. Cross species amplification was observed in Humulus lupulus for three loci but there was no allelic overlap. This is the first study following SWGDAM validation guidelines to validate short tandem repeat markers for forensic use in plants.     

Validation and casework application of a Y chromosome specific STR multiplex

A series of validation experiments was performed for a Y chromosome specific STR multiplex system following the suggestions made by the Technical Working Group DNA Analysis Methods (TWGDAM). The multiplex PCR products were detected on Perkin-Elmer 373 and 377 automated sequencers using two labeling colors. No problems regarding the stability, robustness and sensitivity of the Y STR multiplex were observed. Mixture studies revealed a cut off rate similar to autosomal STRs for mixtures of male DNAs and no interference of any female admixture. The comparison of the Y STR results to the autosomal typing results for 56 nonprobative semen stains and swabs, showed a slightly higher success rate in detecting the semen donor’s alleles for the Y STR multiplex. Two examples are shown to illustrate the usefulness of Y STR typing for DNA mixtures. In one case the Y STR results confirmed an isolated exclusion; in the other case, the interpretation of a mixture was clarified since the Y STR results proved the presence of DNA from at least two semen donors. Y STR typing is a valuable addition to the forensic DNA testing panel.