New trends in hair analysis and scientific demands on validation and technical notes

This review focuses on basic aspects of method development and validation of hair testing procedures. Quality assurance is a major issue in drug testing in hair resulting in new recommendations, validation procedures and inter-laboratory comparisons. Furthermore recent trends in research concerning hair analysis are discussed, namely mechanisms of drug incorporation and retention, novel analytical procedures (especially ones using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and alternative sample preparation techniques like solid-phase microextraction (SPME)), the determination of THC-COOH in hair samples, hair testing in drug-facilitated crimes, enantioselective hair testing procedures and the importance of hair analysis in clinical trials. Hair testing in analytical toxicology is still an area in need of further research.     

Rich man’s solution? Climate engineering discourses and the marginalization of the Global South

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - Numerous recent studies project that ‘climate engineering’ technologies might need to play a major role in the...     

Access and coverage: which farmers do plant clinics reach in Uganda?

This article reports on a study that assessed farmers’ access to, and coverage of, five plant clinics operating from market places in two districts of Uganda. Despite the noticeable geographic and thematic coverage of the services, placing plant clinics at markets did not automatically ensure equitable access and high farmer attendance. Clinic users were predominantly middle-aged male farmers and overall attendance was relatively low. Uganda has taken plant clinics to scale in recent years due to their potential to strengthen the country’s responsiveness to pests and diseases. Optimising farmer reach and ensuring equity in access requires reviewing clinic placement, timing, and mobilisation strategies.     

Gender Differences in Resistance to Schooling: The Role of Dynamic Peer-Influence and Selection Processes

Boys engage in notably higher levels of resistance to schooling than girls. While scholars argue that peer processes contribute to this gender gap, this claim has not been tested with longitudinal quantitative data. This study fills this lacuna by examining the role of dynamic peer-selection and influence processes in the gender gap in resistance to schooling (i.e., arguing with teachers, skipping class, not putting effort into school, receiving punishments at school, and coming late to class) with two-wave panel data. We expect that, compared to girls, boys are more exposed and more responsive to peers who exhibit resistant behavior. We estimate hybrid models on 5448 students from 251 school classes in Sweden (14–15 years, 49% boys), and stochastic actor-based models (SIENA) on a subsample of these data (2480 students in 98 classes; 49% boys). We find that boys are more exposed to resistant friends than girls, and that adolescents are influenced by the resistant behavior of friends. These peer processes do not contribute to a widening of the gender gap in resistance to schooling, yet they contribute somewhat to the persistence of the initial gender gap. Boys are not more responsive to the resistant behavior of friends than girls. Instead, girls are influenced more by the resistant behavior of lower status friends than boys. This explains to some extent why boys increase their resistance to schooling more over time. All in all, peer-influence and selection processes seem to play a minor role in gender differences in resistance to schooling. These findings nuance under investigated claims that have been made in the literature.     

Book reviews

Jonathan Michie and John Grieve Smith (eds), Managing the Global Economy, (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1995). 343pp. ISBN 0–19–828968–5 (pb).

Hilary Rose, Love, power and knowledge: towards a feminist transformation of the sciences, (Polity Press, Cambridge 1994). 336pp. ISBN 0–7456–1001–3 (pb).

Daniele Archibugi and David Held (eds), Cosmopolitan Democracy, (Polity Press, Cambridge 1995). 190pp. ISBN 0–7456–1380–2, 0–7456–1381 0 (pb).

Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, (I B Tauris, London 1994). 224 pp. ISBN 1–85043–880–3.

T. Gallagher, Romania After Ceausescu, (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1995). 276pp. ISBN 0 7486 0613 0 (pb).

John Gray, Beyond the New Right: Markets, Government and the Common Environment, (Routledge, London and New York 1993). 195pp. ISBN 0–145–09297–3 9, 0–145–10706–7 (pb).

Anthony Giddens, Beyond Left and Right: the Future of Radical Politics, (Polity Press, Cambridge 1994). 276pp. ISBN 0–7456–1438–8, 0–7456–1439–6 (pb).

Nicola Field, Over the Rainbow: Money, Class and Homophobia, (Pluto, London 1995). 193pp. ISBN 0–7453–0825–2.

Red‐Green Study Group, What on earth is to be done? A red‐green dialogue, (Red‐Green Study Group, Manchester 1995). x+69pp. ISBN 0–9525784–0–9.

Darrow Schecter, Radical theories: Paths beyond Marxism and social democracy, (Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York 1994). x+205pp. ISBN 0–7190–4385–9.     

Temporal Influences of Family Structure and Family Risk Factors on Drug Use Initiation in a Multiethnic Sample of Adolescent Boys

This study examines the effects of family structure and family environments on the initiation of illicit drug use among a sample of U.S.- and foreign-born Hispanic/Latino, African American, and White non-Hispanic adolescent boys (N = 3413). Bivariate and multivariate analyses with longitudinal data, three years, were used to assess transitional/temporal influences of family variables on the initiation of illicit drug use. Findings revealed large differences in family structure among the three race/ethnic groups. African American adolescents report the lowest incidence of illicit drug use initiation, and the weakest effects of family structure and environment on substance use. Cumulative effects of family risk factors were strongly associated with increased probabilities of illicit drug use initiation, but there were temporal as well as race/ethnic variations on these effects. Deteriorating changes in family environments were stronger predictors of the initiation of drug use among Hispanic immigrants than nonimmigrants, and family socioeconomic status was a predictor for immigrant Hispanics only. The relationship between family structure and drug use initiation varied in the context of temporal indicators of family environments, and the accumulation of family risk factors was a stronger predictor of illicit drug initiation than family structure.     

Rethinking regional planning

He is a past visiting scholar at Rutgers’ Center for Urban Policy Research, where he did research for this article. He has written widely on topics of regional and environmental land use.