Testing for Contagion/Diffusion of Terrorism in State Dyads

This article reviews the new journal Critical Studies on Terrorism. The fashionable approach that this journal adopts towards the contemporary phenomenon of terrorism maintains that a “critical” and “self-reflexive” approach to the study of terrorism reveals a variety of shortcomings in the discipline. These range from a distorting over-identification with the Western democratic state perspective on terrorism to a failure to empathize with the misunderstood, non-Western, “other.” This review examines whether the claims of the critical approach adds anything, other than pedantry and obscurity, to our understanding of the phenomenon. It concludes that it does not.     

Invisible populations: LGBTQ people and federal health policy in Canada

This article reviews the state of federal health policy discourse toward the LGBTQ population in Canada. Despite the advent of greater attention to diversity and gender mainstreaming in federal public policy and the shift to legalized rights protections for LGBTQ people, symbolized by policies such as same‐sex marriage, LGBTQ health concerns continue to be marginalized in federal health policy. Based on a systematic review of federal policy documents and websites as well as a small number of interviews with federal policy‐makers, the research demonstrates the extent to which LGBTQ health concerns are rendered invisible in federal health policy. The article suggests several ways in which a commitment to gender‐based policy analysis could be expanded to take account of diverse health needs of LGBTQ Canadians.     

Physical restraint and the therapeutic relationship

The role of the forensic mental health nurse has led to many debates due to the conflicts between security and therapeutic aspects of their role. Physical restraint is a security element of the role which may have an impact on their ability to work therapeutically with patients. This study examined the impact of physical restraint on the nursing staff–patient therapeutic relationship. This was investigated in a secure unit in the North of England. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with patients across the service, and thematic analysis was undertaken. Five themes were identified from the data which highlighted the impact of the physical restraint as a power imbalance, the experience as traumatic, the importance of justification, the negative attributes and motives of some staff and the impact of coping with powerlessness. Clinical implications and research recommendations are discussed further in this article.     

Evaluation of Degradation in DNA from Males with a Quantitative Gender Typing,Endpoint PCR Multiplex

Evidentiary samples submitted to a forensic DNA laboratory occasionally yield DNA that is degraded. Samples of intact chromosomal DNA (both nuclear and mitochondrial) were subjected to a heating protocol to induce DNA degradation. The DNAs were then analyzed using a multiplex PCR assay that amplifies targets of low and high molecular weight on the X/Y and mitochondrial chromosomes. If degradation is random, the amplification of larger DNA targets should be more adversely affected by degradation than smaller targets. In nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from a male donor, exhibiting degradation, DNA quantity estimates based upon higher molecular weight amplicons (HMW) are significantly lower than estimates made using low molecular weight (LMW) Q‐TAT amplicons. DNA degradation estimated using this approach correlated well with actual fluorescence associated with HMW and LMW STR alleles amplified from the same genomic DNA templates. Q‐TAT is thus useful not only as a quantitation tool, but also as an indicator of template degradation.     

Beyond (and Within) City Limits: Climate Policy in an Intergovernmental System

This analysis explores the role of city‐level and state‐level variables to explain why some cities make more progress on climate‐related policy implementation than others. Using multilevel modeling, we find little support for the influence of state factors on local government leadership among the 812 cities in the dataset, but local government institutional and community variables are strongly associated with climate policy initiatives. We argue for a rethinking of the notion of the limited and constrained city and suggest that, in the realm of climate protection and environmental policy, cities are leading a bottom‐up federalism. Moreover, where some political analysts and scholars have argued that climate protection and environmental policies may not be economically rational for cities to pursue, we theorize that cities are acting locally to further their self‐interest in an increasingly global economy.     

Sexual Activity,Pregnancy, and Deviance in a Representative Urban Sample of African American Girls

The primary goal of this paper is to investigate the interrelationship between sexual activity, pregnancy, and deviance among a cohort of urban African American adolescent girls and compare the risk factors that predict these behaviors. The data are drawn from the Rochester Youth Development Study (RYDS), a multiwave panel study designed to examine the causes and correlates of delinquent behavior and drug use in a representative urban sample. This study relies on data from the 196 African American girls in the panel. Results indicate that girls who engage in early sexual activity and those who become pregnant are more likely to be involved in substance use and status offenses than girls who are not sexually active and who do not become pregnant. Additionally, sexual behavior and pregnancy are both influenced by socioeconomic disadvantage, unlike the other kinds of deviance examined. However, the proximal predictors of early sexual activity and pregnancy differ, with the profile of sexually active girls being more similar to the profile of girls involved in substance use and status offenses.     

Institutionalising the 'eternal return': textbooks and the study of British politics

Anthony Birch, The British System of Government
Ian Budge and David McKay (eds), The Developing British PoliticalSystem: the 1990s
Ian Budge, Ivor Crewe, David McKay and Ken Newton, The NewBritish Politics
Bill Coxall and Lynton Robins, Contemporary British Politics
John Dearlove and Peter Saunders, Introduction to British Politics
Patrick Dunleavy, Andrew Gamble, Ian Holliday and Gillian Peele (eds), Developments in British Politics 5
Bill Jones, Andrew Gray, Dennis Kavanagh, Michael Moran, Philip Nortonand Anthony Seldon, Politics UK
Dennis Kavanagh, British Politics: Continuities and Change
John Kingdom, Government and Politics in Britain: An Introduction
John P. Mackintosh, The Government and Politics of Britain
R. M. Punnett, British Government and Politics
Robert Pyper and Lyton Robins (eds), Governing the UK in the 1990s