Alcohol use among college students: Some competing hypotheses

This paper presents a longitudinal study of alcohol use among college students. Three hypothesized predictors of alcohol use are found to have an independent effect when the other predictors and prior drinking are held constant: the drinking context of the dormitory living group, informal social involvement in college, and lack of commitment to religious and academic values. These predictors are also related to the onset of drinking during the freshman year for those who entered college as abstainers. The pattern varies somewhat for males and females, with the dormitory contextual effect larger for females. Formal involvement in college activities and psychological stress have no independent effect on drinking. The results are discussed in relation to previous work on alcohol use.This research was supported in part by NIAAA Grant AA02863 and NIMH Grant MH28177 and Veterans Administration Research funds.Received Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University in 1976. Current research interests include adolescent development, statistics, and environmental studies.Received Ph.D. in psychology from University of California, Berkeley, in 1960. Current research interests are personal and environmental influences on behavior.     

Homicides in two Scandinavian capitals.

In this study we investigated homicides in the two Scandinavian capitals, Copenhagen, Denmark and Oslo, Norway, for the 10-year period from 1985 to 1994. The total number of homicides was 431; 63.8% occurred in Copenhagen and 36.2% in Oslo. The average homicide rate was 1.6/100,000 in Copenhagen and 1.8/100,000 in Oslo. Blunt force, sharp force, and strangulation were the most common methods. Firearms were also used but did not account for >20% in either of the two cities. This is probably due to strict gun laws in both countries. There was no clear difference between the homicide victim populations in the two cities with regard to age, gender, or social and marital status. The proportion of alcoholics and unemployed persons was much higher than in the background population and to a similar extent in both cities, indicating that the homicide victim populations differ from the background populations. The perpetrator knew the victim in the majority of the cases. The most frequent motives or circumstances in both cities were fights, family rows, financial controversies, or jealousy.     

Craniocervical injuries in judicial hangings: an anthropologic analysis of six cases

Restoration projects and archaeologic excavations in two Canadian prisons resulted in the recovery of the skeletons of six felons executed by judicial hanging. Damage inflicted by hanging on various skeletal elements was observed. Among the injuries seen were fractures of the hyoid cornua, styloid processes, occipital bones, and cervical vertebral bodies (C2) and transverse processes (C1, C2, C3, and C5). Despite the general uniformity of the hanging technique, which involved a subaural knot, the trauma to the skeletal elements and the cause of death varied among individuals. Although some of this variation was probably due to minor differences in hanging practices, individual anatomic peculiarities of the victims likely also contributed.