Analysis of the impurities in the methamphetamine synthesized by three different methods from ephedrine and pseudoephedrine

Organic impurities of methamphetamine may show different patterns by synthesis. In the present study, we tried to find the impurities reflecting the conditions of synthesis by comparing impurity patterns of the methamphetamine samples synthesized by different methods. Sixteen methamphetamine samples were synthesized from ephedrine and pseudoephedrine by the three different manufacturing methods of Emde, Nagai and Moscow. The synthesized samples were extracted with ethyl acetate containing four internal standards, and the patterns of the organic impurities were investigated by GC-MS and GC-FID . Through the investigation, we found 10 peaks appearing in the latter part of GC chromatograms are characteristic to synthesis. The areas of the selected peaks were converted to the variables suitable for the statistical calculation, and the synthesized samples could be classified into four groups through the resultant cluster analysis.     

Examination of Y-STR mutations in sex chromosomal abnormality in forensic cases

The Y-STR typing was carried out on eight DNA samples (three from criminal cases) demonstrating Klinefelter's syndrome. STR types in the X chromosome were randomly distributed. However, some Y-STR markers were distributed within the normal range but restricted to only one or two specific alleles, that is, some specific haplotypes were found in Klinefelter's syndrome. In addition, a single nucleotide polymorphism in DYS390 (transversion of G to A at the 28th position downstream of tandem repeats) was detected in Klinefelter samples. This Y-STR polymorphism and restricted Y-STR alleles in Klinefelter's syndrome is not known, but it might be related to the genesis of Klinefelter's syndrome. We also found that extended standard haplotypes of these samples are extremely rare in the normal population, according to the Y-STR haplotype reference database (YHRD). The extended standard haplotype database in a Japanese population is also reported. In 100 unrelated Japanese, 89 haplotypes were observed, and the haplotype diversity was calculated to be 0.9866.     

Game tree analysis of international crises

Conflicts among nations can often be understood as games in which players (nations) possessing strategies (the sets of actions they may take) face alternative consequences (loss or gain of territory or prestige) determined by their choices of action. Amenable to this type of analysis is the recent Falkland Islands crisis involving Argentina and Great Britain. The events in this case provide an illustration of the way “three-stage, two-person sequential game tree models” can explain the outcome of a crisis situation, whether the parties involved possess perfect information regarding the likely actions of their opponents or are subject to misperceptions about them. When misperceptions occur, the effects can be severely detrimental to both players. Under certain conditions a single misperception by a player of an opponent's preferences can lead to conflict even though both players would have preferred another outcome, one that would in fact have resulted if the error in perception had not occurred. Thus, the outcome of such a “game” is highly sensitive not only to the players' actual preferences but to mutual perceptions of those preferences.     

Does the American Dairy Industry Fit the Meso-Corporatist Model?

Corporatism having become a less useful label for describing entire political systems, corporatist scholars have emphasized the importance of meso-level corporatism, using dairying as the classic example. Analysis of the American dairy industry does not support the claim that there is 'no corporatism in the United States' but it suggests why meso-corporatist enclaves in a macro-pluralist system are liable to be ephemeral. What sets the American dairy industry apart from its European and Canadian counterparts is that the meso-corporatist institutional arrangements were undermined by the emergence of large regional cooperatives in the 1960s and as a result present dairy policy-making has reverted once more to a pluralist paradigm.     

Career development of adolescents: An ecological perspective

Bronfenbrenner's ecological model of human development is used as a framework for examining the research on the career development of adolescents. The examination of the four contexts — the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, and the macrosystem — provides an additionalperspective to the ontogenic (individual) approach that has predominated the research literature in this field. Among the four contexts examined, some research on the influence of microsystem, including family, school,peer group, and workplace is identified. The amount of developmentally based research drops off quickly for the other systems, although there are other pertinent research and social issues for each system. Research and intervention implications of this perspective are indicated.This research was supported by grants from the Humanities and Social Science Grants Committee of the University of British Columbia and Youth Employment Program of British Columbia.Received Ed.D. from McGill University. Current research interest is career development and counseling of adolescents.     

Meritocracy revisited

Michael Young is author of The Rise of the Meritocracy,reissued in paperback by Transaction. Among his other books is Family and Kinship in East London (with Peter Willmott).He is founder and director of the Institute of Community Studies in London. He is a past chairman of the Social Science Research Council of the United Kingdom and founder of the Open University. He is a member of Parliament as Lord Young of Dartington.