Teacher induction appeals

The system of teacher induction appeals as introduced by the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 is yet to be fully implemented. The appeals system envisaged by both the Act and subsequent regulations is still evolving and matters are made more complex by the fact that the appeals will be part of the General Teaching Council's (GTC) functions in due course. The Department for Education and Employment has had the unenviable task of drafting detailed procedures which may, or may not, be adopted by the GTC. The department's system of appeals may only apply for six months before the GTC review which may not be time enough to properly evaluate the various procedures. This article attempts to set out the current procedure and to offer some thoughts on areas which may need to be carefully monitored by both the department and the GTC.     

The ‘wanted’ children. Experiences of Hungarian children living with Belgian foster families during the interwar period

Transnational adoption and child migration are often regarded as recent phenomena, yet there is a long history of children travelling without their families, settling and integrating in a foreign culture and environment. In the 1920s, thousands of Hungarian children went to Belgium for a six-month holiday within the framework of a humanitarian project. Although they were supposed to return to Hungary after their vacation, some of them stayed indefinitely with their Belgian families. By analyzing oral testimonies of the now elderly ‘children’ about their migration and childhood experiences in Belgium, we explore how they construct and reconstruct concepts such as childhood, vulnerability, and loyalty commitments, and show the crucial importance of maintaining birth family ties for the future development of transnationally adopted children.     

Heteroplasmy in hair: differences among hair and blood from the same individuals are still a matter of debate

The analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is a useful tool in forensic cases when sample contents too little or degraded nuclear DNA to genotype by autosomal short tandem repeat (STR) loci, but it is especially useful when the only forensic evidence is a hair shaft. Several authors have related differences in mtDNA from different tissues within the same individual, with high frequency of heteroplasmic variants in hair, as also in some other tissues. Is still a matter of debate how the differences influence the interpretation forensic protocols. One difference between two samples supposed to be originated from the same individual are related to an inconclusive result, but depending on the tissue and the position of the difference it should have a different interpretation, based on mutation-rate heterogeneity of mtDNA. In order to investigate it differences in the mtDNA control region from hair shafts and blood in our population, sequences from the hypervariable regions 1 and 2 (HV1 and HV2) from 100 Brazilian unrelated individuals were compared. The frequency of point heteroplasmy observed in hair was 10.5% by sequencing. Our study confirms the results related by other authors that concluded that small differences within tissues should be interpreted with caution especially when analyzing hair samples.     

To act or not to act, that is the question: informed consent in a criminal perspective

Some years ago the doctor was seen as the one who "knows better", and it was absolutely unconceivable that the patient could refuse the suggested treatment or even ask any questions about it. Differently, nowadays doctors face demands to keep their patients informed and can even be sued when they act without patient knowledge and consent. On the patient's side this new paradigm does not necessarily legitimate euthanasia--still criminally forbidden in most parts of the world--but allows some kind of personal power over body, health and life, materialized in advance directives. On the doctor's side, it entails a change in the list of good medical practices, imposing the doctrine of informed consent and the prohibition of dysthanasia.     

Driver's Licenses for All? Racialized Illegality and the Implementation of Progressive Immigration Policy in California

Progressive subfederal immigration policy aims to reduce the consequences of illegality for undocumented immigrants. Drawing on interviews with representatives from immigrant‐serving organizations in California, we examine the case of Assembly Bill (A.B.) 60 driver's licenses to assess whether all Californian undocumented immigrants have equal access to a driver's license. Although A.B. 60 was race‐neutral legislation, we argue that its implementation was shaped by racialized migration histories and that it reproduces racialized illegality. Specifically, the deep history of undocumented Mexican migration to California has shaped the institutional capacity of nonprofit and community organizations, foreign consulates, and the Department of Motor Vehicles to advocate for, implement, and serve A.B. 60 applicants. As a result, Spanish‐speaking, Latina/o/x immigrants, particularly those of Mexican origin, experience greater access to A.B. 60 driver's licenses. To combat this, organizations actively worked to reracialize illegality as an issue that also affects non‐Latino populations. Ultimately, we demonstrate that the construction and experience of illegality are deeply tied to race and place.     

Tissue distribution of trichloroethylene in a case of accidental acute intoxication by inhalation

This article describes the toxicological findings in a fatality due to an accidental inhalation of trichloroethylene which took place during wall coating of a poorly ventilated well using trichloroethylene. The man was wearing protective clothing and a mouthmask with adsorbent. He was found dead on the floor of the well 5h after descending. Trichloroethylene was added to the mortar to enhance drying. Identification and quantitation of trichloroethylene in the postmortem samples (blood, lung, liver, kidney, stomach content and bile) and identification of its metabolite trichloroacetic acid in urine was performed using static headspace gas chromatography with mass spectrometric detector. The compounds were separated on a CP-SIL 5CB Low Bleed/MS column using n-butanol as internal standard. The method was linear over the specific range investigated, and showed an accuracy of 104% and an intra-day precision of 11%. Trichloroethylene concentrations of 84mg/l in subclavian blood, 40mg/l in femoral blood, 72mg/kg in liver, 12mg/kg in kidney, 78mg/kg in stomach content, 104mg/l in bile and 21mg/kg in lung were found. Trichloroacetic acid was identified in the urine.     

Actual and expected deprivation: Northern Mexico in the 1980s. A research note

This paper examines the relationship between objective and subjective effects on household spending in a situation of economic crisis based on data derived from a survey conducted in 1985 in the industrial city of Monterrey in northern México. The analysis focuses first on historical developments in income through a longitudinal study of income distributions since these can be considered to be the historical conditions of the two types of deprivation studied. Using family budgets, we were able to describe actual and expected effects of the crisis in terms of the reductions in spending that it provoked. Finally, using regression analyses, the relations between both kinds of effects and the personal history of the respondents, taken to represent the individual counterpart of historical conditions, are examined. Neighborhood SES and occupational level are found to be significant predictors of both objective and subjective deprivation. The best predictor of subjective effects are the actual ones. The phenomenon of relative deprivation appears to be conditioned by the context of societal development in northern México. Menno Vellinga is a senior lecturer at the Center for Caribbean and Latin American Studies at the State University of Utrecht in The Netherlands. The author and co-author of several books on Latin America, his latest is an edited collection of original works onThe Prospects of Social Democracy in Latin America (Westview, 1992). Hernan Vera is an associate professor of Sociology at the University of Florida. The author of a book on the Profession of Catholic Priests, and several dozen articles, he is currently working in the field of race relations in which a book coauthored with Joe Feagin (Routledge, 1994), is forthcoming. Soon-Rae Lee is a 1993 University of Florida Ph.D. in Sociology. He is currently at the Department of Juvenile Justice of The Korean Institute of Criminology in Seoul, South Korea. His main interests are in the field of deviance and criminology.     

Critical legal and environmental view on the Ramsar Convention in protection from invasive plant species: an example of the Southern Pannonia region

The emergence and continued expansion of one of the most dangerous causes of biodiversity loss and habitat alteration such as invasive species at some Ramsar wetlands of the Southern Pannonia raise a series of questions of both an environmental as well as a legal character relevant to these fragile ecosystems. The Ramsar Convention provides a set of general instructions and guidelines, but it does not establish an adequate mechanism of sanctions that could be imposed on states or individuals who violate its provisions. Fully aware of the importance of wetlands and their wildlife for a healthy living environment and human welfare, the authors of this paper describe the present conditions of invasive plant species at some Ramsar Sites and briefly analyze the current legal framework for the implementation of the Ramsar Convention. Finally, the authors propose innovative normative solutions that would improve the protection of wetlands and contribute to the suppression and prevention of the presence of invasive species not only in this region, but also worldwide.     

Institutional design and organisation of the civil protection national system in Mexico: the case for a decentralised and participative policy network

Mexico established the Civil Protection National System (CPNS) following the disastrous 1985 earthquake that killed nearly 10,000 people and devastated large sections of Mexico City. The institutional design and structure of the CPNS embraced citizen demands for greater participation in the Federal government's disaster prevention and response programmes. The authors examine the Federal government's response to disasters since 1985 and conclude that the CPNS operates in a manner that is contrary to the precepts that shaped its design and structure. The authors conclude that orthodox beliefs and assumptions about disasters rationalise the current operations of the CPNS. They argue that a holistic perspective of disasters, rather than a change in institutional design and organisation, is required in order to operationalise intergovernmental cooperation and citizen participation. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.