Relationships of Adolescents’ Perceptions of Parental and Peer Behaviors with Cigarette and Alcohol Use in Different Neighborhood Contexts

This study examined the relationships of adolescents’ perceptions of parental and peer behaviors with cigarette and alcohol use in different neighborhood contexts. The sample included 924 adolescents (49% boys, 51% girls) 12–14 years of age whose addresses were matched with 1990 census block groups. Six neighborhood types were identified through a cluster analysis. The findings suggest that parental smoking was associated with increased adolescent smoking in suburban white middle socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhoods. Peer smoking was associated with increased adolescent smoking in rural neighborhoods. Parental monitoring was associated with decreased adolescent drinking in urban white high-SES neighborhoods and parental drinking was associated with increased adolescent drinking in urban white middle-SES neighborhoods, respectively. Peer drinking was associated with increased adolescent drinking in urban neighborhoods. This study demonstrates the importance of examining parental and peer influences on adolescent smoking and drinking in different neighborhood contexts.     

Identity creation and the culture of contrition: Recasting ‘normality’ in the Berlin Republic

This paper considers transformations in the concept of national identity post‐unification. In particular, it is interested in examining the changed status of the NS past in contemporary formulations of national identity. Whilst during the Historikerstreit conservative thinkers predicated the plea for conventional patriotism upon a ‘normalisation’ or ‘reladvisation’ of the NS past, left‐liberal discourse based the case for a post‐national Verfassungspatriotismus upon the critical engagement with the NS period. The collapse of the Cold War political framework has profoundly altered the polarised discourse over the German past and during the 1990s the critical consciousness of National Socialism became a central tenet of contemporary formulations of national identity. The paper attempts to place the contemporary discourse on national identity within a broader historical context and to consider reasons for recent transformations in perceptions of the German national past.     

Developmental tendencies in the situation of East Elbian rural labourers ∗

Abstract

Whereas orthodox economists supported the liberalization of goods and capital markets in the current global era, they typically assumed away the need to liberalize labour markets at an international level. The unexpected rise and then persistence of international immigration indicated the shortcomings of the orthodox account in theory and practice. Various recurring and contradictory or unsupported narratives were developed to ‘explain away’ the necessity or desirability of a policy of free migration, and this in spite of an ideology that otherwise promoted liberalization and choice in matters affecting goods and factor markets. There was, finally, a normative contradiction at the core of the orthodox account.     

Factors influencing the contamination of UK banknotes with drugs of abuse

Bank of England banknotes sampled from different locations in the UK have been analysed for the presence of cocaine, diamorphine (DAM), Delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). A database of the contamination detected is routinely used as a benchmark against which the contamination detected on seized banknotes can be compared. Evidence presented at court details how banknotes seized from a suspect may differ from banknotes in general circulation in terms of their contamination with controlled drugs. A question arising from such evidence is whether seized banknotes could have become contaminated through being in circulation in drug "hot spots". In order to address this issue, a Plackett-Burman experimental design was used to investigate the influence of source location and other factors on banknote contamination with drugs of abuse. Banknotes were drawn from banks in eight regions throughout the UK. Each location could be described by a unique combination of the factors under investigation, namely whether the location was rural or urban, in the North or South of the UK, and whether it was a port of entry. The socio-economic class and the proportion of drug offenders in the area and the denomination of the banknotes were also considered as potentially influential factors. Indices were calculated to describe the degree to which samples were contaminated with different drugs, and normal probability plots were used to identify the factors that could account for the contamination observed. Whilst some factors were more influential than others, it was shown that, at the 95% confidence level, none of the proposed factors were significant influences on the contamination. Cocaine contamination on banknotes has been shown to follow a log-normal distribution. It was, therefore, possible to calculate F- and t-statistics to compare the cocaine contamination on the entire sample set with that detected on a second sample set consisting of banknotes all drawn from a single bank branch. It was shown that both inter-bank samples and intra-bank samples had similar variance and similar contamination levels at the 95% confidence level. This suggests that there are no significant regional trends in the contamination of banknotes with drugs of abuse across the UK.