The rapid analysis of heroin drug seizures using micellar electrokinetic chromatography with short-end injection

A simple and rapid method for the analysis of heroin seizures by micellar electrokinetic chromatography with short-end injection is described. Separations were performed using an uncoated fused silica capillary, 50 cm x 50 microm I.D. x 360 microm O.D. with an effective separation length of 8 cm. The system was run at 25 degrees C with an applied negative voltage of -25 kilovolts. Injection of each sample was for 2 s at -50 mbar. UV detection was employed with the wavelength set at 210 nm. The background electrolyte consisted of 85:15 (water:acetonitrile, v/v) containing final concentrations of 25 mM SDS and 15 mM sodium borate, pH 9.5. Samples and standards were prepared in 0.1% v/v acetic acid and diluted in the run buffer containing 1 mg/ml of N,N-dimethyl-5-methoxytryptamine as an internal standard. Under these conditions a text mixture containing caffeine, paracetamol, morphine, codeine, heroin, and acetylcodeine was resolved within 1.5 min. The method was used to determine the concentration of heroin in heroin seizure samples, and the results were in good agreement with those obtained by a validated gas chromatographic method.     

Flirting with Authoritarian Fantasies? Rodrigo Duterte and the New Terms of Philippine Populism

This commentary aims to take stock of the 2016 presidential elections in the Philippines that led to the landslide victory of the controversial Rodrigo Duterte. It argues that part of Duterte’s electoral success is hinged on his effective deployment of the populist style. Although populism is not new to the Philippines, Duterte exhibits features of contemporary populism that are befitting of an age of communicative abundance. This commentary contrasts Duterte’s political style with other presidential contenders, characterises his relationship with the electorate and concludes by mapping populism’s democratic and anti-democratic tendencies, which may define the quality of democratic practice in the Philippines in the next six years.     

Infants Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence: Issues of Gender and Sex

A review of the literature finds that the development of infants exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) may vary across sex as boys display more externalizing behavior, while girls show more internalizing behavior. Given this trend, gender- and sex-based analysis (GSBA) may play a critical role in understanding and improving the adjustment of these infants. Researchers are often encouraged to include gender and sex into their analysis, though they are rarely afforded appropriate direction in this process. The intention of this article is to provide guidance in GSBA for research on infant development in families affected by IPV. We present a discussion on GSBA, a review of the literature, explanations for differences in male and female infant development, a set of research priorities, and directions for future work. Findings suggest that a better understanding of the complexities in the adjustment of violence-exposed infants through GSBA may promote childhood development.     

Social Disorganization and Neighborhood Fear: Examining the Intersection of Individual,Community, and County Characteristics

Fear has long been studied as a consequence of crime given the consistent and ubiquitous nature of fear as a reaction and the systematic variations in its consequences. Past research has shown significant variations in fear of crime at both the individual and ecological level. Here we implement a multi-level approach to understanding potential interactions between perceived safety in one’s neighborhood in relation to social disorganization indicators at the neighborhood level and crime rates at the county level. The nationally representative sample data (n = 2,610) used in this analysis combines individual level data collected in 2006 from the Panel Study of Religion and Ethnicity (PS-ARE) with ecological level data at the tract and county level from the 2000 US Census. The findings suggest a three level interaction negating the well known protection hypothesis of marriage and crime; this essentially means that as being married or cohabitating decreases the negative effects of being in a community with a high level of familial disruption (percent of divorced) increases, but that effect is substantively negatively tempered as the violent crime rate of the county rises.     

The Partisan Usage of Parliamentary Salaries: Informal Party Practices Compared

It is widely acknowledged that political parties in European democracies have become increasingly dependent on state resources, most notably direct state funding. Yet cross-national studies on parties' usage of state resources that are not earmarked for partisan purposes, which require the assessment of informal, intra-organisational practices, are still rare. This article looks at one such practice across 33 parties in five European democracies: namely the ‘taxing’ of national MPs' salaries. Under this practice, candidates who enter elected office on a party ticket are obliged regularly to donate a fixed share of their public salaries to party coffers. The empirical analysis shows that the presence of a taxing rule is more likely in parties with a strong extra-parliamentary organisation, while a leftist ideology facilitates the collection of high salary shares from parliamentarians. Moreover, where party entanglement with the state is particularly pronounced, the partisan usage of parliamentary salaries is easier irrespective of their organisational dispositions. Finally, while in unitary systems national headquarters are usually able to monopolise control over national MPs' contributions, in federal systems regional party executives are able to insist on their share of these payments.     

Towards an organisational perspective on party funding: Explaining financial transfers from MEPs to their national parties

Which parties represented in the European Parliament (EP) are able to extract regular donations from their MEPs' salaries and, if they extract donations, how great are they? In the literature on party finances, there has been a lack of attention paid to the use of salaries of elected representatives as a source of funding. This is surprising given that the national headquarters of many parties in Europe regularly collect ‘party taxes’: a fixed (and often significant) share of their elected representatives' salaries. In filling this gap, this article theoretically specifies two sets of party characteristics that account for the presence of a taxing rule and the level of the tax, respectively. The presence of a tax depends on the basic ‘acceptability’ of such an internal obligation that rests on a mutually beneficial financial exchange between parties' campaign finance contributions to their MEPs and MEPs' salary donations to their parties. The level of the tax, in contrast, depends on the level of intra‐organisational compliance costs and parties' capacity to cope with these costs. Three factors are relevant to this second stage: MEPs' ideological position, the size of the parliamentary group and party control over candidate nomination. The framework is tested through a selection model applied to a unique dataset covering the taxing practices in parties across the European Union Member States.