Changes in composition of ballpoint pen inks on aging in darkness

A method for comparison of the relative age of ink entries written by the same ballpoint pen on documents stored in darkness is presented. Inks were extracted from the document and analyzed by HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography). On aging, changes in the chemical composition of the inks were noted. These changes were similar to those observed when inks were exposed to light or heat. The aging was followed by using ternary diagrams constructed for dyes generally present in blue-colored inks--Crystal Violet, Methyl Violet, and Tetramethyl Para Rosaniline. The procedure is applicable for relative dating of ink entries in diaries, notebooks, etc., where often several ink entries are written by the same ink. However, a prolonged exposure of the document to daylight and/or artificial light (light from fluorescent tubes) as well as to extensive heat will render the whole procedure inapplicable. An example of the use of the proposed method in casework is given.     

Comparison of Anonymous Versus Confidential Survey Procedures: Effects on Health Indicators in Dutch Adolescents

Self-report questionnaires are frequently used in youth research, but doubt remains whether total anonymity affects the results. This study compared the responses of 704 mainly 16–17-year-old adolescents to self-report measures of various health indicators in 2 groups: anonymous and confidential collection. For most health indicators no significant differences were found. Perceived health, use of alcohol, and aggressive behavior (for boys) were reported significantly less frequently in the confidential group (small effect size). It appeared that pupils with high scores on social desirability do not respond differently at most health indicators in the 2 conditions. For most health characteristics, epidemiologically useful outcomes may be derived from confidential self-report measures, which are also valuable for detecting individual at-risk children. Similar studies in lower grades and other types of education should confirm the results.Youth Department, Municipal Health Service Rotterdam area. Main research interests are emotional and behavioral problems of adolescents, youth health care, monitoring.Youth Department, Municipal Health Service Rotterdam area. Main research interests are emotional and behavioral problems of adolescents, youth health care, monitoring.Research Department, Municipal Health Service Rotterdam area. Major research interests include emotional and behavioral problems of adolescents, suicidal behavior, youth health care, monitoring.     

Structure and Opportunity: Committee Jurisdiction and Issue Attention in Congress

This article explores how the congressional committee system shapes the dynamics of issue attention. Consisting of what is referred to as a congressional opportunity structure, it describes how committee jurisdictions provide an important institutional context for the attention paid to new issues in congressional hearings. This is illustrated through an examination of congressional attention to biotechnology over a 30-year period. This article finds that committees with broader jurisdictions were more active in biotechnology than committees with a narrow policy remit. However, these institutional effects varied widely, even within a single policy domain. This variation suggests that issue attention depends on the degree of fit between issue characteristics and the congressional opportunity structure. More broadly, the findings here illustrate the virtues of public policy research in studies of Congress.     

I'm Not That Liberal: Explaining Conservative Democratic Identification

The persistence of self-identified conservative Democrats in the electorate is puzzling. Both the ongoing Southern realignment and the recent ideological polarization should have resulted in conservative Democrats changing their party identification to accord with their discrepant ideology. Instead, the number of conservative Democrats, as a percentage of the total electorate, has held steady over the last 20 years. I propose an explanation for this phenomenon that draws upon theories of mass belief systems, as well as an element of recent political reality: the popular stigmatization of the word liberal. I argue that Democrats who are susceptible to elite cues garner positive affect toward the conservative label and negative affect toward the liberal label. They then identify themselves accordingly, regardless of their issue positions.     

The Spirit of Capitalism? Religious Doctrine,Values, and Economic Attitude Constructs

This article examines the relationship between conservative Protestant doctrine and economic policy attitudes. Building upon Weber's (1930) classic (and controversial) thesis that Calvinist thought inspired the capitalist spirit, we posit that the individualistic theology of fundamentalists, evangelicals, and charismatics often engenders political preferences for individualistic economic policies. We test this hypothesis by (1) performing a series of cross-sectional ordered probit analyses to understand the independent degree of association between doctrinal belief and economic attitudes toward taxing, spending, and the role of government, (2) creating and testing a structural equation model to assess various hypothesized paths of influence, and finally, (3) using 1994–96 NES panel data to assess the degree to which changes in an individual's doctrinal beliefs produce changes in his or her economic attitudes. Results lend substantial support to the efficacy of Weber's thesis, and point to religious belief as one exogenous agent of core political values.     

Does carcass enrichment alter community structure of predaceous and parasitic arthropods? A second test of the arthropod saturation hypothesis at the Anthropology Research Facility in Knoxville, Tennessee

In a second test of an arthropod saturation hypothesis, we analyzed if the on-campus Anthropology Research Facility (ARF) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, with its 20+ yr history of carcass enrichment, is comparable to non-enriched sites in community structure of predatory and parasitic arthropods that prey upon the sarcosaprophagous fauna. Over a 12-day period in June 1998, using pitfall traps and sweep nets, 10,065 predaceous, parasitic, and hematophagous (blood-feeding) arthropods were collected from freshly euthanized pigs (Sus scrofa L.) placed at ARF and at three surrounding sites various distances away (S2-S4). The community structure of these organisms was comparable in most paired-site tests with respect to species composition, colonization rates, and evenness of pitfall-trap abundances on a per carcass basis. Site differences were found in rarefaction tests of both sweep-net and pitfall-trap taxa and in tests of taxonomic evenness and ranked abundances of sweep-net samples. Despite these differences, no evidence was found that the predatory/parasitic fauna at ARF was impoverished with fewer but larger populations as a result of carcass enrichment. Comparison of the sarcosaprophagous and predatory/parasitic faunas revealed a tighter (and more predictable) linkage between carrion feeders (sarcosaprovores) and their carrion than between carrion feeders and their natural enemies (predators and parasitoids), leading us to conclude that ARF is more representative of surrounding sites with respect to the sarcosaprovore component than to the predatory/parasitic component within the larger carrion-arthropod community.     

STR analysis of artificially degraded DNA-results of a collaborative European exercise

Degradation of human DNA extracted from forensic stains is, in most cases, the result of a natural process due to the exposure of the stain samples to the environment. Experiences with degraded DNA from casework samples show that every sample may exhibit different properties in this respect, and that it is difficult to systematically assess the performance of routinely used typing systems for the analysis of degraded DNA samples. Using a batch of artificially degraded DNA with an average fragment size of approx. 200 bp a collaborative exercise was carried out among 38 forensic laboratories from 17 European countries. The results were assessed according to correct allele detection, peak height and balance as well as the occurrence of artefacts. A number of common problems were identified based on these results such as strong peak imbalance in heterozygous genotypes for the larger short tandem repeat (STR) fragments after increased PCR cycle numbers, artefact signals and allelic drop-out. Based on the observations, strategies are discussed to overcome these problems. The strategies include careful balancing of the amount of template DNA and the PCR cycle numbers, the reaction volume and the amount of Taq polymerase. Furthermore, a careful evaluation of the results of the fragment analysis and of automated allele calling is necessary to identify the correct alleles and avoid artefacts.