Adolescent Health: Are We Willing to Pay the Price for Inaction?

Several years ago, a legislator spoke clearly of the wishful unawareness we often confront in public health. After a session of frank exchange in his committee about teen pregnancy in Arkansas, he said, "Dr. Elders, until you became the health department director, we didn't have this problem." The facts paint a startling scenario for such people. We have not provided an environment in which our children can flourish. Instead, we have allowed the number of children who are economically, educationally, and medically disadvantaged to grow. Called "at-risk," their existence is an affront to democratic ideals, especially the belief that all have an equal chance for prosperity. It is time for true reform, but before that can happen, we must face the state of our children's health. After this, we must set to work at effective strategies.     

Europäisierung — ein weites Feld. Literaturbericht und Forschungsfragen

Eusammenfassang Wenngleich sich Europ?isierung in der Politikwissenschaft noch zu keinem eigenst?ndigen Theoriestrang verdichtet hat, haben die Aktivit?ten in diesem Forschungsbereich in den vergangenen Jahren erheblich zugenommen. Nationalstaatliche Ver?nderungsprozesse fest im Blick, brachten diese Arbeiten einen lange vernachl?ssigten Bereich zurück auf die Forschungsagenda: die Rückwirkung der europ?ischen Integration auf den Nationalstaat. Dieser Bericht spiegelt den aktuellen Stand der Europ?isierungsdebatte wider und umfasst sowohl Prozesse der Europ?isierung von EU-Mitgliedsstaaten als auch von (potenziellen) Beitrittskandidaten. Darüber hinaus werden dringliche Forschungsfragen zukünftiger Europ?isierungsstudien aufgeworfen, um einen bescheidenen Beitrag zur wissenschaftlichen Debatte zu leisten.     

Molecular study of time dependent changes in DNA stability in soil buried skeletal residues

In the past years, many publications about identification and sex-determination of dry human bones by means of DNA analysis have been published. However, few studies exist that investigate the potential use of DNA technique to determine the postmortem interval (PMI). In the present study we analyzed the rate of increasingly smaller fragments of chromosomal DNA and PMI.     

National and local vulnerability to climate-related disasters in Latin America: the role of social asset-based adaptation

The Latin American region is particularly prone to climate-related natural hazards. However, this article argues that natural hazards are only partly to blame for the region's vulnerability to natural disasters with quantitative evidence suggesting instead that income per capita and inequality are main determinants of natural disaster mortality in Latin America. Locally, the region's poor are particularly susceptible to climate-related natural hazards. As a result of their limited access to capital, adaptation based on social assets constitutes an effective coping strategy. Evidence from Bolivia and Belize illustrates the importance of social assets in protecting the most vulnerable against natural disasters.     

Institutional Foundations of Legislative Speech

Participation in legislative debates is among the most visible activities of members of parliament (MPs), yet debates remain an understudied form of legislative behavior. This study introduces a comparative theory of legislative speech with two major implications. First, party rules for debates are endogenous to strategic considerations and will favor either party leadership control or backbencher MP exposure. Second, in some systems, backbenchers will receive less time on the floor as their ideological distance to the party leadership increases. This leads to speeches that do not reflect true party cohesion. Where party reputation matters less for reelection, leaders allow dissidents to express their views on the floor. We demonstrate the implications of our model for different political systems and present evidence using speech data from Germany and the United Kingdom.