What Predicts Pre-adolescent Compliance with Family Rules? A Longitudinal Analysis of Parental Discipline,Procedural Justice,and Legitimacy Evaluations

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - During adolescence, individuals make judgements on the legitimacy of authorities to make and enforce rules and they differentiate between various types of rules....     

Municipal Service Delivery: The Role of Transaction Costs in the Choice between Alternative Governance Mechanisms

Service provision by local governments can be delivered using in-house bureaucracies, private firms, and partnerships with other governments or the not-for-profit sector. This production decision has been a major focus of discussion among scholars, practitioners and political agents for the last quarter of a century. The transaction costs framework is an important tool to analyse decisions regarding the production of local services. In this paper, the authors employ this framework to analyse service delivery in Portugal and find that service characteristics and the local political environment play a key role in local officials' choice among the three governance mechanisms to deliver public services.     

Public and private: change and continuity in economy through two meta-fields in society

The current literature on comparative political economy does not seem to consider unifying under a single theoretical framework the analysis of continuity and change in different economic systems. On the one hand, major comparative works derive their theoretical propositions from dynamics in the Western world. On the other, studies that are focused on national trajectories of development are concentrated in cross-national comparisons involving countries with similar characteristics in what concerns strategies of development. In this paper, I argue that all fields in the world of social action are pervaded by two major fields, hereby dubbed ‘meta-fields’: public and private. Both are in a ‘double movement’ to shape each other's boundaries through the definition of social and property rights that regulate access to human capabilities and capital. Public and private are meta-fields because they constrain human action and the organization of social configurations on state and non-state levels.     

Allele frequencies data and statistic parameters for 13 STR loci in a population of the Brazilian Amazon Region

Allele frequencies for 13 short tandem repeat (D3S1358, vWA, D21S11, D18S51, D5S818, D13S317, D7S820, TH01, TPOX, D16S539, CSF1PO, D8S1179 and FGA) loci were determined in a sample of 325 unrelated individuals from the population of the Amazon of Belém, Brazil. These loci are the most commonly used in forensic and paternity testing. The forensic parameters investigated presented high values. The power of discrimination and the probability of exclusion for these 13 STRs are 99.999999999992% and 99.9998%, respectively. In conclusion, these 13 markers are suitable for forensic analysis and paternity tests of the Amazonian population.     

The Just World Gap,Privilege, and Legal Socialization: A Study Among Brazilian Preadolescents

Social Justice Research - Bridging just world theory and legal socialization research, this study looks at preadolescents’ perceptions of justice across race, income, and education, and how...     

A fast ultrasound-assisted extraction procedure for trace elements determination in hair samples by ICP-MS for forensic analysis

An ultrasound-assisted extraction method is proposed for the determination of trace elements in hair samples by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for forensic investigation. Prior to analysis, 25 mg of hair samples were accurately weighed into (15 mL) conical tubes. Then, 2 mL of 20% HNO₃ is added to the samples, sonicated at 2 min (50 W, 100% amplitude), and then further diluted to 10 mL with Milli-Q water. Resulted diluted slurries are centrifuged and the analytes are directly determined in the supernatant. Calibrations against aqueous solutions were carried out with rhodium as internal standard. The method was successfully applied for the extraction of Al, As, Ba, Be, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Mn, Pb, Tl, U, V and Zn with a method detection limit (3 s, n = 20) of 0.1, 0.4, 0.2, 0.09, 0.08, 0.04, 0.1, 2.9, 1.0, 0.9, 0.04, 0.05, 0.1 and 4.2 ng/g, respectively. Method accuracy is traceable to Certified Reference Materials (CRMs) 85 and 86 human hair from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Additional validation data are provided based on the analysis of hair samples from the trace elements intercomparison program operated by the Institut National de Sante’ Publique du Quebec, Canada. The proposed method is very simple and can be applied for forensic purposes with the elimination of sample digestion step prior to analysis. Then, a considerable improvement in the sample throughput is archived with the use of the proposed method.     

The Issue of Abortion in Contemporary Brazil: An Analysis of Feminist Litigation in the Supreme Court

Feminist Legal Studies - This article discusses the issue of abortion in the context of the dispute between progressive and neoconservative political forces in Brazil. The article analyses ADPF...