School Smoking Policy Characteristics and Individual Perceptions of the School Tobacco Context: Are They Linked to Students’ Smoking Status?

The purpose of this study was to explore individual- and school-level policy characteristics on student smoking behavior using an ecological perspective. Participants were 24,213 (51% female) Grade 10–11 students from 81 schools in five Canadian provinces. Data were collected using student self-report surveys, written policies collected from schools, interviews with school administrators, and school property observations to assess multiple dimensions of the school tobacco policy. The multi-level modeling results revealed that the school a student attended was associated with his/her smoking behavior. Individual-level variables that were associated with student smoking included lower school connectedness, a greater number of family and friends who smoked, higher perceptions of student smoking prevalence, lower perceptions of student smoking frequency, and stronger perceptions of the school tobacco context. School-level variables associated with student smoking included weaker policy intention indicating prohibition and assistance to overcome tobacco addiction, weaker policy implementation involving strategies for enforcement, and a higher number of students smoking on school property. These findings suggest that the school environment is important to tobacco control strategies, and that various policy dimensions have unique relationships to student smoking. School tobacco policies should be part of a comprehensive approach to adolescent tobacco use.     

Emerging Powers and Africa:A Comparison of Modes of Engagement Pursued by China,India and Brazil

The world has seen a relative power shift from the North to the South.The leading emerging states like China have taken up an increasingly commanding role in global economic affairs in response to the trauma experienced by Western industrialized states.Over the last decade and a half emerging powers have made significant inroads into previously the"bastion"of Western political and economic dominance,resulting in a diversifying external actors involved in African economy with much of this interaction bein...     

Framing the Local and the Global in the Anti-nuclear Movement: Law and the Politics of Place

This article examines the politics of place in relation to legal mobilization by the anti-nuclear movement. It examines two case examples – citizens' weapons inspections and civil disobedience strategies – which have involved the movement drawing upon the law in particular spatial contexts. The article begins by examining a number of factors which have been employed in recent social movement literature to explain strategy choice, including ideology, resources, political and legal opportunity, and framing. It then proceeds to argue that the issues of scale, space, and place play an important role in relation to framing by the movement in the two case examples. Both can be seen to involve scalar reframing, with the movement attempting to resist localizing tendencies and to replace them with a global frame. Both also involve an attempt to reframe the issue of nuclear weapons away from the contested frame of the past (unilateral disarmament) towards the more universal and widely accepted frame of international law.     

The Recovery of Latent Fingermarks from Evidence Exposed to Ionizing Radiation*

Abstract: Continual reports of illicit trafficking incidents involving radioactive materials have prompted authorities to consider the likelihood of forensic evidence being exposed to radiation. In this study, we investigated the ability to recover latent fingermark evidence from a variety of substrates that were exposed to ionizing radiation. Fingermarks deposited on common surfaces, including aluminum, glass, office paper, and plastic, were exposed to doses ranging from 1 to 1000 kGy, in an effort to simulate realistic situations where evidence is exposed to significant doses of radiation from sources used in a criminal act. The fingermarks were processed using routine fingermark detection techniques. With the exception of glass and aluminum substrates, radiolysis had a considerable effect on the quality of the developed fingermarks. The damage to ridge characteristics can, in part, be attributed to chemical interactions between the substrate and the components of the fingermark secretions that react with the detection reagents.     

Why Not Let Kids Be Kids? An Exploratory Analysis of the Relationship Between Alternative Rationales for Managing Status Offending and Youths’ Self-Concepts

Over the past several decades, the juvenile justice system has struggled with an effective response to status offenders and their unwanted behaviors. Three divergent rationales have emerged for handling these youth: (1) treatment, (2) deterrence, and (3) normalization. Using data from over 300 youth under supervision by agencies in three states, the current study assesses how these differing practices are related to youths’ self-concepts. Results provide support for both deterrence and normalization-based rationales over the historical treatment-based rationale. Viewing status offending as normal adolescent behavior (i.e., normalization) has the most beneficial effect on self-concept. Study limitations and directions for future research are discussed.     

The Unpatriotism of the Economic Constitution? Rights to Free Movement and their Impact on National and European Identity

Abstract:  Instead of the political reading of the EU Constitution adopted by advocates of constitutional patriotism, this article examines the European economic constitution. The four single market freedoms can be used by the Court of Justice to strike down Member State laws which represent deeply held aspects of national cultural identity. The article examines whether the court does in fact act in this way and proceeds to argue that the issue of identity protection does not stop with the court. In those policy areas where the court is more interventionist, and its case-law is perceived as an identity threat, one is likely to find binding Treaty-based derogations. Where, in contrast, the effect of the court's case-law poses less of a threat, one is more likely to see non-binding declarations. The article examines a number of policy areas in which specific cultural derogations and declarations are to be found, including abortion, property acquisition, football and alcohol control.     

Emissions trading in the European Union

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. Key points

• The EU ETS will undergo a number of changes consequentupon the commencement of the first Kyoto Commitment Period on1 January 2008.
• This article considers the existing EU ETSframework and also the key developments that are anticipatedin the European emissions market for 2008–2012.
• A secondarymarket for trading EUAs has already developed and this market,together with the standard-form documentation used, is discussed.
• Inconclusion, the article questions the future of emissions tradingin Europe—particularly after the current Kyoto targetsexpire in 2012.

  European businesses entered a carbon-constrained economic environmenton 1 January 2005. For some, the impacts were immediate anddirect in the form of caps on their emissions. The majorityfelt it indirectly and more slowly through increased energycosts as the perceived cost of compliance was passed on by generators.The full impacts are not yet clear, but a quiet revolution is. . . [Full Text of this Article]