Without fear or favour,affection or ill will: addressing gender bias in NSW judicial education

This article traces how gender equality has evolved conceptually and provides an overview of the educational initiatives in place for raising gender awareness among members of the NSW judiciary. The author gives examples of gender bias and explores some of the seminal policy and legislative responses at state and federal levels during the reformist decades of the 1970s to the 1990s. North American jurisdictions played an important role in raising judicial awareness of gender bias in the 1980s, with this issue coming to prominence in Australia in the 1990s. The author describes the work of the Judicial Commission of NSW in this area, including training sessions on gender equality, both discrete and as part of integrated education initiatives; its involvement with the National Judicial Orientation Program; and the launch of its Equality before the Law Bench Book in 2006.     

Closing Off Opportunities for Crime: An Evaluation of Alley-Gating

A new situational crime prevention measure recently introduced into Great Britain involves the fitting of gates to alleyways running along the back of terraced properties to restrict access to local residents and reduce opportunities for offenders. A number of quantitative techniques were used to assess the success of the intervention in reducing burglary in the City of Liverpool. The results demonstrate that, relative to a suitable comparison area, burglary was reduced by approximately 37%, there was a diffusion of benefit to properties in the surrounding areas, and the scheme was cost beneficial with a saving of £1.86 for every pound spent. The analyses provide persuasive evidence that these reductions were attributable to the intervention. We argue that the methodological techniques demonstrated here can be applied more widely to crime prevention evaluations.     

Reconsidering risk: adapting public policies to intergenerational determinants and biosocial interactions in health-related needs

According to recent research, interactions between infant health and environment can play crucial roles in clustering health and economic disadvantage among certain families. Researchers have provided a clear example of such intergenerational biosocial cycles when they document that interactions between parental low birth weight status and prenatal environment are associated with the risk of a low birth weight, and that interactions between a child's birth weight status and early childhood environment are associated with adult socioeconomic outcomes. In this article, we consider how existing policies may be revised to more effectively address such interactions between social and biological risk categories. We are particularly concerned in this discussion with revising risk categories so they can encompass biological risk, social risk, and developmental frameworks. A framework of biosocial risk is quite flexible and may be applied to a variety of issues and programs; however, in this article we focus on the single case of low birth weight to illustrate our argument. In considering specific applications, we further explore how attention to biosocial interactions may reshape Medicaid, special education, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.     

Ideology and campaign activity at three levels of government

This article examines the relationship between self-designated political ideology, opinions on twenty-one issues, and campaign activity at local, state, and national levels. The samples examined include delegates to the 1984 Party Conventions in eleven states. Generally, the findings indicate that ideology and issue position are most strongly associated with activity in national campaigns. Among Democrats liberalism is associated with national activity, whereas among Republicans those who are conservative are most active in national campaigns. Some important intraparty differences are found between local campaign activists and national activists. For example, among Democrats local campaign activists are much more conservative than national activists on several issues.     

Aromatic content in medium range distillate products--Part I: an examination of various liquids

Classification of ignitable liquids in accordance with voluntary consensus-based standards published by ASTM International has become increasingly specific, relying upon both the chemical composition and the boiling point range of submitted ignitable liquids. This classification system includes among others, specific classes for distillates and dearomatized distillates. In this study, a variety of medium-range ignitable liquids were analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Several methods of data analysis were utilized to examine the relative aliphatic and aromatic contents in these liquids. Results show that commercially available products in the medium range exhibit a broad range of compositions with respect to the relative proportion of aliphatic and aromatic compounds and that some liquids may not be easily classified. This study demonstrates the importance of examining the proportion of aliphatics:aromatics for classifying such liquids and suggests guidelines for differentiating medium range distillates, dearomatized distillates, and blended products.     

Social capital, social liabilities, and political capital: Social networks and informal manufacturing in Nigeria

This article addresses the question of why social networks havefailed to promote economic development in Africa when they havebeen associated with economic growth in other parts of the world.Detailed field research traces the role of social networks inthe economic organization of two dynamic informal enterpriseclusters in the town of Aba in south-eastern Nigeria, an arearenowned for the density of its popular economic networks andfor the rapid development of small-scale manufacturing underNigeria’s structural adjustment programme. Focusing onthe role of embedded social institutions and their restructuringamid the competitive pressures of rapid liberalization, I considerthe extent to which social networks in Aba constitute ‘socialcapital’ capable of promoting economic development inthe context of ongoing liberalization, ‘social liabilities’that undermine accumulation through a social logic of redistributionand parochialism, or ‘political capital’ throughwhich popular forces are incorporated into the ‘shadowstructures’ of predatory states. This article challengesthe essentialism of much of the contemporary literature on Africansocial networks, arguing for a sharper focus on the specificinstitutional capacities of indigenous economic institutions.It calls for greater attention to the role of rapid liberalizationand state neglect in explaining the developmental failures ofAfrican informal enterprise networks.     

Fast gas chromatography of explosive compounds using a pulsed-discharge electron capture detector

The detection of a mixture of nine explosive compounds, including nitrate esters, nitroaromatics, and a nitramine in less than 140 sec is described. The new method employs a commercially available pulsed-discharge electron capture detector (PDECD) coupled with a microbore capillary gas chromatography (GC) column in a standard GC oven to achieve on-column detection limits between 5 and 72 fg for the nine explosives studied. The PDECD has the benefit that it uses a pulsed plasma to generate the standing electron current instead of a radioactive source. The fast separation time limits on-column degradation of the thermally labile compounds and decreases the peak widths, which results in larger peak intensities and a concomitant improvement in detection limits. The combination of short analysis time and low detection limits make this method a potential candidate for screening large numbers of samples that have been prepared using techniques such as liquid-liquid extraction or solid-phase microextraction.