To be continued . . . Syntheses and trends in follow-up of quality assurance in West European higher education

The authors report on West European trends in follow-up arrangements of national quality assurance procedures. They argue that external quality assurance ought to adopt a broader conception of quality than is now often the case. Next, the general public ought to have a guarantee that external quality assurance is valid (through meta-evaluation) and has consequences (through follow-up arrangements). Follow-up currently is not well developed in many European countries in a formal sense, but is receiving more attention as external quality assurance is maturing. Finally, the authors link national quality assurance to the European dimension; an international network could fulfil important functions in making quality assurance transparent and credible across Europe. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Departures in Negotiation: Extensions and New Directions

The conception of turning points advanced in this essay emphasizes events that occur in a chronological sequence which the author, in his previous work, has incorporated into a framework for case analysis. The framework covers three stages: precipitants that trigger change; departures which are the reaction to the precipitant; and consequences, which refer to the direction the negotiation takes as a result of the departure. Building on his earlier work, the author uses examples of a less-bounded international negotiation and cases culled from the headlines to demonstrate the framework's generality. He then considers the concept at the individual, relational, and collective levels in an attempt to probe the psychological and social processes that occur before, during, and after departures (turning points); and may be in fact, the underlying impetus for departures.     

Identification of fentanyl derivatives

An interpretative approach to the identification of fentanyl homologs and analogs is presented. The techniques employed are liquid/liquid extractions; capillary gas chromatography; and infrared, mass, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectral characterization. Spectral data are presented for eight fentanyl derivatives of clandestine origin.