Supply chain arrangements: The ABC to GDPR compliance—A spotlight on emerging market practice in supplier contracts in light of the GDPR

With ever increasingly complex and disaggregated sourcing supply chains and in the wake of the GDPR application deadline, this article shines a spotlight on early emerging market practice in supplier contracts.     

The Role of Media Distrust in Partisan Voting

As an institution, the American news media have become highly unpopular in recent decades. Yet, we do not thoroughly understand the consequences of this unpopularity for mass political behavior. While several existing studies find that media trust moderates media effects, they do not examine the consequences of this for voting. This paper explores those consequences by analyzing voting behavior in the 2004 presidential election. It finds, consistent with most theories of persuasion and with studies of media effects in other contexts, that media distrust leads voters to discount campaign news and increasingly rely on their partisan predispositions as cues. This suggests that increasing aggregate levels of media distrust are an important source of greater partisan voting.     

Interfaith Dialogue and Faith-Based Social Activism in a State of Emergency: <Emphasis Type="Italic">laïcité</Emphasis> and the Crisis of Religion in France

A significant body of literature demonstrates that the discourse of laïcité has become steadily more politicised in recent years (Gidley and Renton 2017; Hajjat and Mohammed, 2016). A series of value-laden discursive constructs have come to be coupled with the normative rulings of secularism (Kahn 2007). This has led to an omerta around Islamophobia in the French political sphere. Based on 20 months (October 2015–May 2017) of ethnographic research in the tense context of Parisian civil society due to austerity and insecurity, this paper shows how interfaith initiatives and faith-based social action figure into a new landscape of state-enforced values under a state of emergency, where one religion in particular is under scrutiny. The first argument is that while interfaith education and outreach are dialogical vectors for combating discrimination, they are constrained by the discourse of laïcité and the implicit targeting of Muslims in the state of emergency (état d’urgence). Seldom explicit, the approach to dialogue between religions of many of these interfaith associations--voluntary organisations--lack a critique of laïcité and its epistemological correlation to anti-clericalism. By contrast, faith-based social action, and its inevitable multi-faith encounter, generates more personal understandings about discrimination. Therefore the second argument, is that it is through social action that the recognition of religious identity as a factor acting in favour of a shared secular-religious common good can come about.     

A systematic analysis of PCR contamination.

In light of the strict legal scrutiny surrounding DNA typing at this time, it has become necessary to systematically address the issue of PCR contamination. To precisely define the parameters affecting PCR contamination under casework analysis conditions, PCR amplification reactions were intentionally compromised by employing sub-standard laboratory technique and by introducing secondary sources of DNA. The PCR parameters considered for potential sources of contamination include amplification set-up, amplification product handling, aerosol DNA and storage. In addition, analyst technique was evaluated by modifying or eliminating standard safeguards. Under the circumstances normally encountered during casework analysis, PCR contamination was never noted. Significantly, using the dot blot detection method, contamination was never observed when nanogram quantities of genomic DNA were mishandled or aerosolized. Contamination occurred only when amplification product was carelessly manipulated or purposefully sprayed near or directly into open tubes containing water or genomic DNA. Although standard precautions should be employed during PCR-based DNA typing, our data indicates that contamination during amplification procedures is not prevalent when detected by dot blot analysis.     

NaOH treatment to neutralize inhibitors of Taq polymerase.

The introduction of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) into the forensic field has greatly extended the ability to analyze DNA from small or degraded samples. However, one significant problem with PCR analysis is the sensitivity of Taq Polymerase to inhibitors found in many substrates commonly encountered with evidentiary materials. We hypothesize that the most problematic of these compounds intercalate into double stranded DNA (dsDNA) and have significantly less affinity for single stranded DNA (ssDNA). This study presents a comprehensive analysis of a novel method for the neutralization of Taq inhibitors by denaturation and washing with NaOH in Microcon-100 filtration units. The data show that DNA recovered following NaOH repurification routinely amplifies when other inhibitor neutralization techniques are unsuccessful. Genetic profiles have been obtained with both AmpliType PM + DQA1 and D1S80 systems. However, the NaOH protocol is not advised when the quantity of DNA is limited since the treatment results in significant loss of DNA.     

Can APB 2000 Be Used to Discern Sincerity of Effort in Unimpaired Subjects from Maximal Performance in Subjects with Shoulder Pain?

The automated pegboard (APB 2000), which has been found to objectively quantify motor performance, was used to differentiate maximal motor performance among subjects with shoulder pain, healthy unimpaired subjects performing normally and also while feigning shoulder pain. Six participants with shoulder pain and 15 healthy unimpaired individuals participated. Individuals with shoulder pain were tested on the APB 2000 using their affected upper extremity. Unimpaired participants were instructed to perform normally on the test with randomly selected upper extremity and to feign shoulder pain with the other upper extremity. The two tests for the unimpaired participants were conducted 1 week apart. There were significant differences in mean performance time for normal, patient, and feigned performance, with 80, 111, and 149 sec for the three groups respectively (p < 0.0005). There was also considerable overlap in the three distributions of performance times. These preliminary findings suggest that the APB 2000 is able to distinguish performance time between these three groups. Whether it can be used to distinguish between maximal performance and submaximal performance in individuals suspected of submaximal performance requires further study.