Blood versus bone marrow isopropanol concentrations in rabbits

The use of bone marrow to determine the blood isopropanol concentrations becomes important when a blood specimen is contaminated or unavailable. The blood/marrow isopropanol ratios were determined in rabbits autopsied 0, 4, and 24 h after sacrifice. The lipid content of the individual marrow specimens was shown to have a significant influence on the range of ratios. When the determined marrow isopropanol concentrations were corrected for lipid content, a better correlation between blood and marrow concentrations was obtained. The ratio (1.45 ± 0.17) was not altered significantly by postmortem time or temperature.Although acetone was not exogenously administered to the rabbits, but rather was endogenously produced from isopropanol metabolism, the relationship between blood and marrow acetone concentrations was somewhat linear. However, the range of observed and corrected blood/marrow acetone ratios was altered significantly by storage temperature, and delays between death and analysis. Thus, under the experimental conditions of this study, marrow isopropanol concentrations may be used to predict blood isopropanol concentrations, whereas marrow acetone concentrations can not.     

Die Beweislastverteilung bei der Geltendmachung von Störerausgleichsansprüchen nach § 24 Abs. 2 Bundes-Bodenschutzgesetz

§ 24 Abs. 2 BBodSchG normiert seit dem 1. 3. 1999 einen Ausgleichsanspruch zwischen mehreren Verantwortlichen gemäß BBodSchG. Besonders problematisch ist im Rahmen des Ausgleichsanspruchs die dem Anspruchsteller obliegende Beweislast. Der Beitrag nimmt im Anschluss an die erste Rechtsprechung des LG Hannover , des OLG Celle und des Bundesgerichthofes zu Beweiserleichterungen Stellung zu den vorgeschlagenen Lösungsmodellen.

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Preliminary evidence for an automatic link between sex and power among men who molest children

Understanding critical motivational processes of sexual offenders may ultimately provide important clues to more effective treatments. Implicit, automatic cognitive processes have received minimal attention; however, a lexical decision experiment revealed automatic links between the concepts of power and sex among participants who self-reported attraction to sexual aggression. The current study replicates this experiment with a group of male child molesters and forensic and analogue controls. Subliminally presented sex words elicited a facilitation effect for power words among child molesters only; that is, sex to power associations were evident, as well as a trend for the reverse. These results provide preliminary evidence for an automatic sex-power association in child molesters and may point to a crucial pathological link in the cognitive schemata of sex offenders. As well, the current study suggests that paradigms from cognitive psychology may contribute to multimodal (risk) assessment of sexual offenders.     

Informing patients about small risks: A comparative approach

This article relates to the question to what extent patients should be informed about risks in the context of obtaining consent in case of treatment. To explore this issue, a comparative study has been carried out. The legal position taken with regard to informing about treatment risks in the Netherlands has been compared to that in the UK and Germany.     

China's troubled culture

Abstract

China has spent the twentieth century at repeated efforts, in Ezra Pound's phrase, to “make it new.” But it has repeatedly fallen back on tightly controlled political power and organization as the only means it knows—in the process always discouraging individual initiative and forestalling free expression of ideas, qualities perceived by those in power as twin threats to the order of the state. The use of military force against Chinese citizens on 4 June 1989 is only the most recent example that China has seldom allowed itself to experience the creative chaos that might arise from a true “hundred flowers” era, a protected arena of competing voices. This, at least, is the theme that tugs at the cuff of each of the books grouped here—two cultural studies, three memoirs, and a manifesto.     

What History Cannot Write: Bei Dao and Recent Chinese Poetry

An examination of the dictates and implications of contemporary counter-terrorism in the United States, this article analyzes the rhetorical tropes, historical precursors, and political valences of the “war on terrorism” as they pertain to the nature of sovereignty, the status of law, and the formation of political subjectivity. Building from a consideration of the demonological discourse on terrorism and the history of counterterrorism during the cold war, the article turns to the contingent sovereignty conferred to other states in the Bush administration's NationalSecurity Strategy and as borne out by its recent foreign policy and military actions. It notes a parallel development within domestic politics since September 11, as the administration seeks to consolidate sovereign authority against the other branches of government, evidenced most clearly in contests with the judiciary over the legitimacy of military tribunals and the legal status of “unlawful” and “enemy combatants.” Pursuing its thesis that counterterrorism as promulgated by the Bush administration needs to be registered as an emergent political rationality, the article draws from the thought of Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault for its concluding analysis of the effects of counterterrorist surveillance and other forms of social regulation on political subjectivity and the enactment of democratic freedom.     

Bureaucracy Versus Markets in Hospital Care: The Dutch Case

In this paper we analyze the bureaucratic negotiation processthat is implied by the budgeting system applied in Dutchhospital care. This system is based on centralized pricesetting while simultaneously allowing for decentralizednegotiations on volumes. We apply a variant of the bureaucracytheory, according to which the bureaucratic agency (in ourcase the joint hospitals) are not allowed to pricediscriminate, but will receive a flat price per unit ofoutput. We find that central price setting, where the insurercannot exploit its information on hospital costs, leads to asuboptimal supply of hospital care.