Lessons from Leadership Theory and the Contemporary Challenges of Leaders

Leadership theories and the academic literature can sometimes seem difficult for practitioners to understand because of complex conceptualizations, obscure terms, and its enormousness. Yet taken as a whole, the literature makes a great deal of sense and has much to offer. Indeed, the truths are often quite simple, elegant, and straightforward. The purpose of this article is to review the major findings of the organizational leadership literature and to identify the important overarching insights, specifically those of particular importance to today's leaders in administrative positions in the public sector, where an evolving context constantly reconfigures age‐old challenges.     

Mapping the Scope and Opportunities for Public Health Law in Liberal Democracies

The two questions, "What is public health law?" and "How can law improve the public's health?" are perennial ones for public health law scholars. This paper proposes a framework for conceptualizing discussion and debate about the scope and opportunities for public health law within liberal democracies. Part 2 of the paper draws selectively on this framework in order to highlight some areas where law's potential role deserves greater acknowledgment and exploration.     

Twelve-locus Y-STR haplotypes in the Flemish population

POPULATION: One hundred and thirteen unrelated Flemish men from Belgium.     

Forensic considerations in cases of neurofibromatosis--an overview

Neurofibromatosis types 1 and 2 are inherited neurocutaneous disorders characterized by a variety of manifestations that involve the circulatory system, the central and peripheral nervous systems, the skin, and the skeleton. Significant reduction in lifespan occurs in both conditions often related to complications of malignancy and hypertension. Individuals with these conditions may also be the subject of medicolegal autopsy investigation if sudden death occurs. Unexpected lethal events may be associated with intracranial neoplasia and hemorrhage or brainstem compression. Vasculopathy with fibrointimal proliferation may result in critical reduction in blood flow within the coronary or cerebral circulations, and aneurysmal dilatation may be associated with rupture and life-threatening hemorrhage. An autopsy approach to potential cases should include review of the history/hospital record, liaison with a clinical geneticist (to include family follow-up), a full external examination with careful documentation of skin lesions and nodules, measurement of the head circumference in children, photography, possible radiologic examination, a standard internal autopsy examination, documentation of the effects of previous surgery and/or chemo/radiotherapy, examination for specific tumors, specific examination and sampling of vasculature (renal, cerebral, and cardiac), formal neuropathologic examination of brain and spinal cord, possible examination of the eyeballs, examination of the gastrointestinal tract, histology to include tumors, vessels, gut, and bone marrow, toxicological testing for anticonvulsants, and sampling of blood and tissue for possible cytogenetic/molecular evaluation if required.     

Extensive and mutilating craniofacial trauma involving defleshing and decapitation: unusual features of fatal dog attacks in the young

Four cases of fatal dog attacks are reported in 3 children aged 6, 10, and 11 years and in an infant aged 3 weeks. The cases were all characterized by extensive and mutilative stripping of soft tissues from the face and scalp, progressing to decapitation in the infant. The attacks were highly focused, involving 2 dogs in all but 1 case, with the area of trauma localized to the craniofacial region. The injuries resembled those found after postmortem animal depredation. The involvement of more than 1 dog may account for the severity of the injuries due to "pack" behavior. Deaths were due to exsanguination, air embolism, and decapitation. Necropsy examination of the attacking dogs revealed tissues from the victims in 2 of the animals' stomachs. These cases demonstrate the vulnerability of infants and young children to fatal dog attacks, with an unusual concentration of severe injuries to the head regions. Necropsy of the canine assailant, with collaboration between pathologists and veterinarians, is an important part of such investigations as it may provide information helping to establish the identity and ownership of the animal, along with trace evidence confirming that the dog was involved in the attack.     

LC-MS/MS analysis of fentanyl and norfentanyl in a fatality due to application of multiple Durogesic transdermal therapeutic systems

Fentanyl is a potent synthetic narcotic analgesic administered in the form of a transdermal patch for the management of chronic pain. A 78-year-old woman with a history of cancer was found dead in bed. She was lying on her back. The external examination revealed 10 Durogesic transdermal therapeutic systems (100 microg/h fentanyl) on the body. Liquid-liquid extraction and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry with electrospray source in positive ionization mode was applied for the quantitation of fentanyl and its major metabolite norfentanyl in the post-mortem samples. Fentanyl-d5 and norfentanyl-d5 were used as internal standards. Multiple reaction monitoring was used for specific detection. Calibration was performed by addition of standard solutions to drug-free matrix (blood, urine and liver) prior to extraction. The method showed good linearity for fentanyl and norfentanyl over a concentration range of 5-150 microg/L in reconstituted extracts with coefficients of determination equal or greater than 0.998. Percent mean within-day precision and accuracy of 0.9-1.0% and 99.4-101.1% for fentanyl and 2.0-4.5% and 93.1-101.0% for norfentanyl were obtained. Mean extraction recoveries varied between 95.5% and 100.3% for fentanyl and 39.2-57.4% for norfentanyl. The following fentanyl (norfentanyl) concentration in the post-mortem samples were measured; 28.6 microg/L (3.0 microg/L) in right and 28.2 microg/L (3.5 microg/L) in left subclavian blood, 21.3 microg/L (<2 microg/L) in right and 20.9 microg/L (<2 microg/L) in left femoral blood, 37.6 microg/L (4.2 microg/L) in right and 33.9 microg/L (4.4 microg/L) in left ventricular blood, 282.9 microg/L (121.2 microg/L) in urine, 688.2 microg/L in stomach contents, 122.5 microg/L (25.4 microg/L) in bile, 19.5 microg/L (< 2 microg/L) in vitreous humour, 203.0 microg/kg (26.6 microg/kg) in liver and 78.6 microg/kg (46.3 microg/kg) in kidney. We concluded that the woman's death was caused by acute intoxication with fentanyl. The manner of death was presumed to be suicide due to excessive administered Durogesic transdermal therapeutic systems.     

Policy networks,politics and decentralisation policies in Ghana

Policy‐making is a political process involving a network of actors with varied interests. This article uses policy network as an analytical framework to understand the politics of decentralisation policy‐making in Ghana from the perspective of interactions among interest groups. The article is based on a research study, which utilised semi‐structured interviews and documentary sources in its data collection. It argues that the lack of progress in decentralisation in Ghana can be explained by the politics surrounding government–interest group relations. The article also provides evidence to indicate how varied interests represented within the decentralisation policy networks affected politics and in turn influenced decentralisation policy‐making and outcomes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mortgage credit risk in EU countries: Constraints on exploiting the single currency market

The adoption of a single EU currency market raises questions about how individual country mortgage policies are likely to affect the gains that can be realized from this larger market. We use an option pricing model to provide some perspective on this issue. We address questions such as how does the risk exposure of a mortgage guarantee program in one country compare with those in other countries? What kind of effects do any such differences or varying legal restrictions on lender recourse have? Do the programs help complete financial markets? That is, are the programs structured as unsubsidized financial intermediaries which help allocate risks? Or, are the programs essentially wards of the state which encourage risk taking? In short, we aim to provide a simple, tractable way to think about how individual country policies affect the ability to exploit the potential offered by the larger market. Our conclusions are three. First, when correctly structured, mortgage default insurance can be expected to reduce non-price rationing at an actuarially fair price. It follows that to the extent that such programs lead to more complete markets without subsidies they are also more efficient than are the many schemes now used which rely on subsidies to address mortgage market incompleteness. Second, considerable care must be exercised in the development of such instruments. In a number of countries the pricing policies do not appear to be prudent. The program terms imply either that regulators often expect a much safer economic environment than seems likely, or, alternatively, the programs have been conveying either unbudgeted subsidies or incurring contingent liabilities. Such liabilities have already been realized in Sweden, and the current exposure in the Netherlands as well as with the restructured program in Sweden, appear to be large. Finally, we find that the potential geographical risk diversification provided by the single currency market can be expected to reduce mortgage rates and improve risk allocation. However, legal, fiscal, and regulatory issues with respect to credit risk limit the ability to exploit this larger market.