Collaboration Processes: Inside the Black Box

Social science research contains a wealth of knowledge for people seeking to understand collaboration processes. The authors argue that public managers should look inside the "black box" of collaboration processes. Inside, they will find a complex construct of five variable dimensions: governance, administration, organizational autonomy, mutuality, and norms. Public managers must know these five dimensions and manage them intentionally in order to collaborate effectively.     

Legal Design for Practice,Activism, Policy,and Research

This article offers an original integrated introduction to how to think about what design can do for law; where to find examples of legal design; and how to assess it. It identifies clear points of contact between lawyerly concerns and designerly skills, knowledge, and attitudes. It proposes that designerly ways can directly improve lawyerly communication; and that they can also generate new structured‐yet‐free spaces in which lawyers can be at once practical, critical, and imaginative. The article foregrounds the, hitherto unrecognized, diversity of existing legal design practice by drawing examples from across four fields of lawyering: legal practice, legal activism, policy making, and legal research. Emphasis is placed throughout on the need for a critical approach to legal design – that is, for legal design to be thought about and done with a commitment to avoiding, exposing, and remedying biases and inequalities.     

The Reasonable Woman Standard: Effects on Sexual Harassment Court Decisions

Some federal courts have used a reasonable woman standard rather than the traditional reasonable man or reasonable person standard to determine whether hostile environment sexual harassment has occurred. The current research examined the impact of the reasonable woman standard on federal district court decisions, controlling for other factors found to affect sexual harassment court decisions. Results indicated that there was a weak relationship between whether a case followed a reasonable woman precedent-setting case and the likelihood that the court decision favored the plaintiff. The implications of our findings for individuals and organizations involved in sexual harassment claims are discussed.     

The effect of ibuprofen on ethanol concentration and elimination rate.

Pursuant to a recent driving under the influence (DUI) case, a medical study of six subjects was cited reporting that ibuprofen causes a decrease in the maximum rate of elimination of ethanol. Such a drug interaction is of significant forensic science interest and warrants further examination. This study investigates the effect of ibuprofen on ethanol elimination rate and ethanol concentration in nineteen volunteers. Volunteer subjects were randomly assigned to two groups administered either a placebo followed by ethanol or ibuprofen followed by ethanol. Subjects served as their own control. Blood ethanol concentrations were monitored every 30 to 60 min for up to 4 h with Intoximeter 3000 instruments. A blood sample was drawn at the final Intoximeter test and analyzed for ethanol and ibuprofen by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, respectively. The mean elimination rate (+/- SD) as calculated using Widmark's elimination factor was 0.018 +/- 0.006 g/dL for ethanol and 0.017 +/- 0.007 g/dL/h for ethanol with ibuprofen. Mean ethanol concentrations (g/dL +/- SD) were: 0.095 +/- 0.026 (ethanol) and 0.095 +/- 0.033 (ethanol and ibuprofen) at 30 min; 0.077 +/- 0.026 (ethanol) and 0.075 +/- 0.031 (ethanol and ibuprofen) at 150 min; and 0.089 +/- 0.025 (ethanol) and 0.087 +/- 0.030 (ethanol and ibuprofen) overall. There was no statistically significant affect of ibuprofen on either the peak blood ethanol concentration or the ethanol elimination rate (p less than or equal to 0.001). These results reveal no evidence of a significant ethanol-ibuprofen interaction.     

Adolescent nutritional and psychological patterns and risk for the development of an eating disorder

A group of 256 female and 248 male adolescent students were assessed regarding nutritional practices and psychological attitudes associated with the development of eating disorders. While the majority showed adequate nutritional practices, there was a high prevalence of dieting and the consumption of low-calorie foods among the girls. For boys, there was no relationship between a strong desire for thinness and restriction of foods high in calories; boys tended to report that hunger and positive affective states were related to overeating. A risk factor conception of nutritional and psychological precursors to the later development of an eating disorder was discussed.This research was supported in part by a Biomedical Research Support Grant to Dr. Cheryl Perry.