Heroin abuse and a gas chromatographic method for determining illicit heroin samples in Singapore.

The abuse of heroin (diacetylmorphine) in Singapore escalated sharply in 1975 and 1976, as indicated by the 35-fold increase in the number of heroin seizures and the 20-fold increase in the urine samples containing morphine since 1974. A rapid and simple GC method has been described to estimate diacetylmorphine (and caffeine). Monoacetylmorphine and acetylcodeine may be ascertained by an additional step involving acetylation. All gas chromatograms of a large number of samples analyzed consistently had the same pattern, indicating that they possibly had a common origin. This GC "fingerprint," together with the quantitative data, appears to be characteristic of the illicit Asian or Chinese type of heroin found in Singapore. The proportions of the four major ingredients in some twelve typical samples have been tabulated. Statistical data confirming the accuracy and reproducibility of the analytical method have also been presented.     

The ordinary and the extraordinary in institutional litigation

Institutional litigation, in which courts are requested to oversee the operation of large public institutions, has been frequently attacked as a departure from the traditional model of litigation. In this Article, Professors Eisenberg and Yeazell argue that the procedures and remedies employed in institutional litigation are not unprecedented but have analogues in older judicial traditions. Nor, they assert, do the doctrines of separation of powers and federalism present any obstacles to institutional litigation. They conclude that the novelty lies in the newly created substantive rights which courts are asked to enforce.     

Experiments in filtering political opinions

Changes in the wording of core measures of political attitudes in the American National Election Studies have generated a good deal of controversy about artifactual sources of change in the U.S. electorate. This research, based on several field experiments and replications, investigates the effects of using or not using various types of opinion filter questions that have appeared in the SRC/CPS series over the years. The analysis shows that the use of a filter interacts significantly with a respondent's level of education and interest in politics, particularly the latter, in determining whether a respondent will offer an opinion on a given public policy issue. But the study also demonstrates that such an interaction occurs primarily when the question about interest in politics is askedafter, rather thanbefore, a set of political issue items. In interpreting these order-and-context effects the authors develop a self-perception model of how respondents infer their interest in politics from information that isavailable in memory about their own behavior in the survey interview.     

Local planners — global constraints

A number of reports have been published over the past few years documenting the evidence of decline in the northeastern U.S.A. and the simultaneous migration of industry to the U.S. Sunbelt. (Academy for Contemporary Problems, 1977; Sale, 1975; Sternlieb and Hughes, 1975). In developing appropriate recommendations to planners, such studies invariably urge that localities or regions facing industrial out-migration arrest this activity by making themselves more suitable and attractive (Council for Northeast Economic Action [CNEA], 1977a) within the framework of a number of characteristic strategies. We propose to examine critically some of the traditional strategies recommended by these reports.