Aconitum alkaloid content and the high toxicity of aconite tincture

Although proprietary medicines and decoction of processed aconite roots are the most widely used, tincture accounts for the great majority of aconite poisoning cases in China, indicating that it is much more toxic than other formulations. Aconite tincture is often self-prepared at home and raw aconite plants or roots are often used. Even if processed aconite roots were used to make the tincture, the amount of Aconitum alkaloids is highly variable, depending on the adequacy of processing and quality control. Aconitum alkaloids dissolve efficiently in alcohol. For these reasons, tincture contains very high concentrations of Aconitum alkaloids. Despite its high intrinsic toxicity, overdose of aconite tincture by the users has been common. Severe aconite poisoning can be complicated by fatal ventricular tachyarrhythmias and asystole. The public should be repeatedly warned of the danger of taking aconite tincture by mouth.     

Predicting the Risk of Intimate Partner Violence: The Chinese Risk Assessment Tool for Victims

The present study reports the development and validation of the Chinese Risk Assessment Tool for Victims (CRAT-V), an actuarial instrument for the prediction of intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization in a Chinese population. Data were collected from a representative sample of 2,708 Chinese women who were married or cohabiting in Hong Kong. All participants were interviewed with a questionnaire assessing their experience of IPV victimization and personal or family factors related to IPV. As measured by the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS 2), the base rates of preceding-year physical and sexual IPV victimization were 4.6 % and 3.6 %, respectively. Using a cross-validation procedure, the present study developed a 5-factor instrument with one half of the randomly split sample and validated the resulting tool with the other half. The CRAT-V had a sensitivity of 74.0 %, a specificity of 68.3 %, an overall accuracy of 68.7 %, and an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.75 when administered on the second half of sample. Overall, the CRAT-V may serve as a straightforward, systematic, and easy-to-administer instrument tailor-made for Chinese populations for the assessment of risk of IPV victimization against women.     

Conceptualising legal culture and lawyering stress

Recent evidence of the prevalence of stress and mental health issues among Australian lawyers has led to calls for legal culture to be changed to promote a better work–life balance and wellbeing for practitioners. Yet three decades of empirical studies in North America have shown consistently high levels of job satisfaction among lawyers. This paper investigates the role of legal culture in sustaining the paradox of satisfied lawyers under working conditions that may be conducive to stress. Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of practice and the literature on work stress, the paper conceptualises the relationships between the demand of legal work, the culture of legal practice, and lawyering stress. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of this kind of analysis for reforming the legal profession. In spite of the difficulty of cultural change, the paper argues that as consciousness is raised and the field changes, alternative models of practice will need to emerge, so that lawyering stress may become a mechanism for change not reproduction.     

Whatever Happened to the Australian Role in the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership?

In 2003, Iraq was invaded, ostensibly to remove a nuclear threat, by a coalition led by George W. Bush. At the same time select allies were invitited to participate in Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership which aimed to limit the spread of nuclear enrichment and reprocessing. This came as climate change gave emphasis to the development of nuclear energy, especially in Asia. With an abundant supply of uranium and strict nuclear safeguards, Australia was well placed to provide a site for the full suite of nuclear services. The recent AUKUS nuclear submarine agreement has underscored its failure to do so. This article makes the case for the adoption of nuclear power as a necessary step in the development of advanced manufacturing; the provision of a domestic capability to fuel nuclear attack submarines and other naval craft; and as a contribution to global nuclear non-proliferation.     

Permission to speak: British women in the established churches during the First World War

The first decade of the twentieth century witnessed the growth of the suffrage movement, and a vigorous debate about the public role of women. Britain’s established churches were caught up in this discussion, as they addressed calls for women to have more authority in religious institutions. Dialogue among church leaders ranged between two extremes. Conservatives viewed women’s roles through the lens of ‘traditional’ gender constructs, opposing a public role and voice for women. Progressive factions contended that women should receive the political suffrage and the right to participate in church councils. The male hierarchy argued that empowered women were necessary for the ongoing ministries of the churches, and would be supportive of traditional morality. By 1919, the progressives had prevailed. This matched developments in the franchise, in which gendered qualifications for voting were swept away. Thus, the typically conservative churches played an important role in redefining women’s public roles.     

Changing contexts: A quasi-experiment examining adolescent delinquency and the transition to high school

In a quasi-experiment, we examine whether changing schools during the transition from 8th to 9th grade influences adolescent delinquency, using a sample of more than 14,000 students in 26 public school districts (PROSPER study). The dataset follows students for eight waves from 6th through 12th grade and facilitates a unique, direct comparison of students who change schools with those who remain in the same school during this period. Results show that students who transition between schools report significantly less delinquency after the shift than those who do not, and that this difference persists through 10th grade. This decline is most pronounced when adolescents from multiple middle schools move to a single high school (i.e., multifeeder transitions). Students who transition between schools have fewer delinquent friends and participate in less unstructured socializing following the change in school environment, which partially mediates their reduced delinquency. Results provide some support for theories of differential association and routine activities. Our findings highlight the role of a crucial, yet understudied, life transition in shaping adolescent delinquency. The results from this quasi-experiment underscore the potential of alterations in social context to significantly dampen juvenile delinquency throughout high school.     

Training in the Strategic Use of Evidence technique: Improving deception detection accuracy of American law enforcement officers

The Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) approach is a framework for planning and executing suspect interviews with the aim of facilitating judgments of truth and deception. US law enforcement officers (N = 59) either received training in the SUE approach or did not. Each officer interviewed a mock suspect (N = 59) who had either committed a simulated security breach or had completed a benign task. The officers who received SUE training interviewed in line with the training: They questioned the suspect systematically, withheld the evidence and critical case information until after questioning, and relied on statement-evidence inconsistency to detect deceit. Consequently, SUE-trained interviewers achieved a higher deception detection accuracy rate (65%) compared to untrained interviewers (43%).     

Who Pollutes? Ownership type and environmental performance of Chinese firms

What is the relationship between ownership type and environmental performance in Chinese firms? Using a survey of over 1,000 industrial firms in 12 Chinese cities in 2006, this article tests a number of competing hypotheses linking ownership type to environmental performance. The results show that small and medium state-owned enterprises (SOEs) on average spend less on pollution abatement technologies and are less likely to meet national emissions standards, compared to privately owned enterprises (POEs) and foreign invested enterprises (FIEs). However, the environmental performance of the largest SOEs matches that of their private and foreign counterparts. These findings are complemented by qualitative interviews and archival research conducted in 2012.     

关于完善地方立法质量保障体系的思考北大核心CSSCI

地方立法质量在一定意义上决定着地方社会治理的水平,也在一定程度上制约着国家治理现代化的进程。创新和完善地方立法工作,以地方立法引领地方社会治理的改革和进步,是推进地方社会治理现代化的必然选择,也是推进国家治理体系和治理能力现代化的必然要求。如何保障地方立法质量从而保障地方社会治理水平,已经成为新时代我国地方立法工作的重大课题。完善地方立法质量保障体系,推进地方立法高质量发展,必须创新地方立法工作理念与规范,进一步明确和恪守科学民主法治总要求;创新地方立法工作体制与机制,进一步健全和完善党委领导、人大主导、政府依托、各方参与的地方立法工作总格局;创新地方立法工作体系与结构,进一步优化和完善地方立法工作总布局。另外,应当进一步加强地方立法与社会守法、党内立规的关系,以高质量的守法和立法立规一体化,推进地方立法的制度优势转化为制度实效和治理效能,从而提高地方社会治理能力和水平,为加快推进国家治理体系和治理能力现代化奠定坚实基础。