Financial status of social security program after the Social Security Amendments of 1977

The Social Security Amendments of 1977 resulted in substantial improvement in the current and projected financial condition of the OASDI program. This article reviews the causes of the recent operating deficits, describes the effects of the amendments that most influence the program's financial status, and gives projections of income and expenditures under the new law. The revised benefit formula eliminates the "over-indexing" expected to occur under the old provisions and results in stable earnings-replacement ratios under practically all future economic conditions. About one-half of the long-range actuarial deficit was resolved by this step alone. Increases in the contribution and benefit base, along with tax-rate reallocations and increases, prevent the imminent depletion of the OASI and DI trust funds. Increased income due to the higher wage bases is partially offset in later years, however, by greater benefit payments based on the increases in the coverage of total earnings. Overall, under the new law the OASDI program is projected to be financed adequately for about 50 years but significant operating deficits are expected after that. The financial condition of the hospital insurance program was substantially unchanged by the amendments, however, and the HI trust fund is expected to be exhausted in 1988.     

Contact Disputes: Narrative Constructions of `Good' Parents

This paper explores contact disputes in England and Wales. We discuss the legal background as well as separating parents' experiences of contact disputes. Contact has been high on the agenda since the U.K. Government report, Making Contact Work, (2002) examined various means for facilitating contact between non-resident parents and their children. More recently, the issue has featured prominently in the headlines, largely as a result of the campaigning efforts of fathers' rights groups who complain of injustice and demand changes in the law. The idea that contact is necessary for children's well-being seems to have acquired the status of uncontestable truth. This paper examines the ways in which these ideas about children's interests have become embodied in adominant welfare discourse that is embedded in law and informs policy thinking. Family law has long abhorred parental conflict, particularly that which involves the children. It is frequently assumed that conflict can be reduced if parents could be persuaded to accept the premises of the welfare discourse. In this paper, we consider how parents themselves, in talking about their experiences of contact disputes, makes sense of family law. We found that parents regularly invoke the welfare discourse in their talk, but they interpret it in unexpected ways. Often these interpretations fuel conflict rather than reducing it.     

Aurelian Craiutu, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes</Emphasis>

Review of Aurelian Craiutu’s work, Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes (2017).     

STATE LEGISLATORS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY RELATIONSHIPS AND THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT IN BIOTECHNOLOGY

This article presents a detailed examination of some key political dimen- sions underlying cooperative research in agricultural biotechnology among state land-grant universities, state legislatures, and biotechnology corpora- tions. Factor analysis and path analysis methods are employed to assess differences in the perceptions of university administrators, biotechnology corporation researchers, and state legislators, using national and state survey data. Two attitudinal dimensions, one regarding cooperation among university and corporate researchers, and the other regarding barriers to joint research, are extracted. Generally similar attitudes are shared by university and legislative respondents, who are concerned over the prospects of market-oriented university research. In contrast, corporate respondents are more concerned with reducing barriers to cooperative research and the need for more open communication between academia and industry, and with issues of patent rights. Extensions of this work to other states and to other high-technology industries are considered.     

American redistricting in the 1980s: The effect on the mid-term elections

An effort is made to determine the effect of decennial congressional redistricting and reapportionment on the 1982 election. Notional results of the 1982 election fought on the 1980 boundaries were compared with the actual results from 1982 to discover which election victories were decisively affected by boundary changes. New seats awarded through reapportionment were scrutinized to determine which party was intended to benefit; contests which defied boundary drawer's intentions were scored as genuine electoral reverses. Tabulation of the distribution of marginals and safe seats is attempted, with the intention of analysing whether there was any change in the frequency or distribution of marginals that can be attributed to redistricting.     

Short tandem repeat (STR) genotyping of keratinised hair. Part 2. An optimised genomic DNA extraction procedure reveals donor dependence of STR profiles

A feasibility study of short tandem repeat (STR) genotyping of telogen phase hairs in particular, and hair shaft in general, is presented. A number of extraction procedures in common use were investigated and the quantities of nuclear DNA (nuDNA) delivered were quantified via a real-time PCR assay. The extracts were subjected to two variations on AmpFlSTR Profiler Plus PCR amplification strategies (extended cycles, two rounds of PCR) and the genotypes compared. Nuclear DNA was found to persist in human hair shafts, albeit at very low levels. Full Profiler Plus profiles consistent with the hair donor were obtained from 100 mg hair shaft samples (bleached and unbleached). These were, however, mixed profiles, indicating low copy number (LCN) contamination in the extracts. Single telogen hair clubs and single hair shafts delivered partial profiles with usually only one allele of heterozygous loci. Telogen phase hairs yielded the same amount of nuDNA (and no more) as hair shafts (either anagen or telogen). Whether hair shafts dissolved or not in lysis buffer had no effect on either the quantitated yield of DNA or on the chance of obtaining a correct genotype. These results provide evidence that genomic DNA resides on the exterior of the hair shaft and we use this information to suggest an optimal procedure for nuDNA extraction from keratinised hair samples: soaking hairs in simple digestion buffers containing Tris-HCl, a salt and a chelating agent without prior cleaning of the hair shafts. It is proposed that cleaning removes most of the recoverable DNA. This procedure was applied to obtain genotypes from 3 cm hair shafts which matched reference profiles from the donors at up to 9 out of 10 AmpFlSTR Profiler Plus STR loci. When the genotyping success was measured by counting the number of matches between the two dominant alleles at each locus for each extract with the reference DNA profile of the hair donor, the success was found to be highly dependent on the donor. The number of matching alleles varied between not less than 10 for one donor to no more than two for another donor. These results may well be linked to the environmental experience of the hairs from each donor prior to removal.     

A molecular identification system for grasses: a novel technology for forensic botany

Our present inability to rapidly, accurately and cost-effectively identify trace botanical evidence remains the major impediment to the routine application of forensic botany. Grasses are amongst the most likely plant species encountered as forensic trace evidence and have the potential to provide links between crime scenes and individuals or other vital crime scene information. We are designing a molecular DNA-based identification system for grasses consisting of several PCR assays that, like a traditional morphological taxonomic key, provide criteria that progressively identify an unknown grass sample to a given taxonomic rank. In a prior study of DNA sequences across 20 phylogenetically representative grass species, we identified a series of potentially informative indels in the grass mitochondrial genome. In this study we designed and tested five PCR assays spanning these indels and assessed the feasibility of these assays to aid identification of unknown grass samples. We confirmed that for our control set of 20 samples, on which the design of the PCR assays was based, the five primer combinations produced the expected results. Using these PCR assays in a 'blind test', we were able to identify 25 unknown grass samples with some restrictions. Species belonging to genera represented in our control set were all correctly identified to genus with one exception. Similarly, genera belonging to tribes in the control set were correctly identified to the tribal level. Finally, for those samples for which neither the tribal or genus specific PCR assays were designed, we could confidently exclude these samples from belonging to certain tribes and genera. The results confirmed the utility of the PCR assays and the feasibility of developing a robust full-scale usable grass identification system for forensic purposes.     

Social Exclusion and the Welfare of the Child

The 'best interests of the child' is a pervasive notion in law, and the welfare discourse within which it acquires meaning has become increasingly dominant in our culture's stock of 'common sense'. Because this discourse positions children as dependent and vulnerable, it underpins images of children that can perpetuate the social, legal, and political marginalization of children. This paper uses the area of children and divorce to explore the ways in which this exclusion of children persists alongside both an ostensible commitment to the welfare of children and an increasingly strong rights discourse. We argue that constructions of the child as victim have both political and psychological dimensions: they serve to legitimize state intervention into 'private' family life, and they help assuage social anxieties about the alleged demise of 'the family'. At an individual level, they facilitate a process whereby children can become the repository for feelings with which adults cannot cope. We then suggest that two fundamental changes are required in order to address children's exclusion: the development of a more psychodynamically informed view of personhood and a new image of the child to inform policies.