Do Mothers and Teens Disagree About Sexual Communication? A Methodological Reappraisal

This study investigated whether parent–teen disagreement in reports of sexual discussions is due to methodological factors. Forty-four mothers and their 12- to 15-year-old daughters (n = 18) and sons (n = 26) completed parallel questionnaires including measures of communication about 18 different sexual topics during the teen's entire life and during the past year. Analyses examined whether congruence rates were influenced by the use of global as compared to specific items, assessment of conversations during the teen's entire life as compared to the past year, and use of forced-choice as opposed to continuous-response categories. Taken as a whole, results support the notion that methodological limitations are partly responsible for lack of congruence in parent–teen reports. Suggestions for methodological improvements in future research are discussed.     

Illicit pharmaceutical networks in Europe: organising the illicit medicine market in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands

It has been widely suggested that the global market in counterfeit, falsified and illegally traded medicines has expanded at a tremendous rate in recent years, offering lucrative opportunities for criminal entrepreneurs with little legal risk. However, with a few exceptions, there has been little criminological research conducted on the trade’s actors and organisation. Of the few studies that are available, most position the supply of these products in the context of ‘transnational organised crime’, often presupposing the overwhelming presence of large-scale, hierarchical structures in the trade. This article, based on two extensive research projects in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, offers an account of the illicit supply of medicines in two European jurisdictions. The research outlines the nature and dynamics of the trade including the roles played by each national context as nodes in the global supply chain. The focus then shifts to the modus operandi, actors, online trade and social organisation in both countries. In contradistinction to the ‘transnational organised crime’ narrative, the empirical data outlined in this paper demonstrates that actors and networks involved in the trade are highly flexible and complex structures that straddle the categories of licit and illicit, online and offline, and global and local. This suggests that operations supplying illicit medicines vary largely in terms of size, reach, organisation and legality.     

Raíces Del Sur: Cultivating Ecofeminist Visions in Urban New Jersey

ABSTRACT

Significant research has been devoted to analyzing community gardens, including their benefits and problems. This article contributes to debates about community gardens by using concepts from feminist geography and food justice research to reflect upon the challenges and possibilities of community gardening in small, peripheral cities with large immigrant populations. We argue that these concepts provide a useful framework to enact ecofeminist visions through community gardens, especially in places dominated by immigrant populations that are particularly marginalized in the present political era. Our case study garden, Raíces Del Sur, was located in the City of Passaic, a low-income, post-industrial urban center surrounded by suburbs in Passaic County, New Jersey. As activists involved in the making of the Raíces Del Sur community garden to different degrees, and as researchers committed to an ecofeminist vision, we draw attention to the need for greater ecofeminist engagement with community gardening initiatives in cities throughout New Jersey.     

Distribution of 6-monoacetylmorphine and morphine in head and pubic hair from heroin-related deaths

There is limited published data to aid interpretation of analytical findings from hair analysis. The aim of the study was to collate 6-monoacetylmorphine (6-AM) and morphine concentrations in head and pubic hair from heroin users and to propose reference ranges and relate these to the amount of heroin used. The ratio of morphine-to-6-AM was also investigated. A total of 82 head hair samples divided into 173 segments of various lengths and 15 pubic hair samples were collected at postmortem from heroin users. The hair was analysed using a previously published method. A statistical evaluation demonstrated that in head hair, the lower, middle and upper concentration ranges of 6-AM were 0.1–0.9, 0.9–12.5 and 12.5–154.1 ng/mg and those of morphine were 0.1–0.8, 0.8–6.0 and 6.0–36.3 ng/mg. In pubic hair, the lower, middle and upper concentration ranges of 6-AM were 0.2–0.5, 0.5–2.3 and 2.3–18.2 ng/mg and those of morphine were 0.2–0.4, 0.4–2.4 and 2.4–13.3 ng/mg. The morphine-to-6-AM ratio showed a large variation. The ratio tended to decrease from proximal to distal segments. The statistical results suggest low, middle and high concentration ranges which we propose can be used for estimating the amount of heroin consumed into corresponding low or occasional, regular or habitual and heavy or excessive drug use. The ratio of morphine-to-6-AM showed great variation and did not support the proposal that a ratio less than 0.77 is needed to prove ingestion of heroin.     

The Impact of Incarceration in State Prison on the Employment Prospects of Women

This paper uses a unique data set constructed from two sets of administrative records to examine the relationship between incarceration and employment rates for former female state prisoners from Illinois. Our analysis indicates that although prison is associated with declining employment rates during the quarters leading up to women’s incarcerations, it does not appear to harm their employment prospects later on. In the short-term, we estimate that women’s post-prison employment rates are about 4 percentage points above expected levels. However, these employment gains do not persist and gradually fall back to pre-prison levels. These results indicate that time out of the work force is not a cost associated with incarcerating women.

The effects of university-level policies on women’s participation in academic patenting in Italy

The Journal of Technology Transfer - A growing stream of the academic literature has investigated the factors that hamper the participation of women researchers in patenting and commercialization...     

How women are imagined through conceptual metaphors in United Nations Security Council Resolutions on women,peace and security

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 is a landmark pronouncement on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. Not only does this resolution highlight the important role of the involvement of women in peace processes, but it also stresses the importance of their equal participation in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace. Furthermore, it also triggers the approval of some other resolutions, which are all further elaborations on that first document. The aim of this paper is to analyse, from a cognitive linguistic perspective, the way in which women are actually narrated in these pronouncements by means of the two conceptual metaphors that are most often repeated: WOMEN ARE VICTIMS, typically found in earlier resolutions, and WOMEN ARE AGENTS OF CHANGE, as the metaphor that has gained more strength and visibility as new resolutions have continued to appear. As metaphors are the cognitive lenses we use to make sense of abstract concepts, it is important that we look closely at each of those metaphors to see how they shape the characterization of women in times of armed conflict and post-conflict and, in doing so, how they guide our understanding and behaviour towards them.     

Technology transfer and entrepreneurship: cross-national analysis

The purpose of this article is to improve our understanding of the links between technology transfer, entrepreneurship and the institutional setting in explaining both the competitiveness of firms and the economic performance of places, albeit a city, region, state or country. We accomplish this objective by presenting a framework for the cross-national analysis of different regional contexts. Finally, we introduce the papers included in this special issue in the International journal of Technology Transfer on ‘Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship: Cross-National Analysis’.     

Are Service Profiles Incubator-Specific? Results from an Empirical Investigation in Italy*

What are the core services of start-up incubators, and how can the be managed best? We use five incubator archetypes (university, regional business, company-internal, independent commercial, and virtual incubators) to identify key services and describe their implementation. Case-research was conducted on 10 incubators (from an estimated total of 50) in Italy. We concluded that differences in competitive scope (industry, geography, and segment focus) and differences in strategic objectives (profit versus non-for-profit) influence the nature, quality and implementation of incubation services and the way they are managed.     

Migrant women breadwinners in Italy during the crisis: improvement or trap?

Gender gaps in some aspects of the labour market in Europe narrowed during the recent economic crisis, mainly because men were hit harder and because of the ‘added worker effect’. Therefore, the number of families with a single wage-earner, in particular female-headed households, increased. However, the differential impact of the crisis on male and female labour force in part was an unintended effect of the ‘gendered’ and ‘racialized’ structure of the labour market. Occupational concentration in care and reproductive work and the public sector in fact protected women from unemployment. Adopting an intersectional approach and using individual and household data from the Labour Force Survey from 2008 to 2015, the aim of this paper is to assess to what extent the gendered and ‘racialized’ structure of the Italian labour market has changed, both from a quantitative and qualitative point of view, and to what extent the increase in female breadwinner families, especially among migrants, hides widening or narrowing intersectional inequalities by gender and citizenship.