Repetition, power imbalance, and intentionality: do these criteria conform to teenagers' perception of bullying? A role-based analysis

The criteria that researchers use to classify aggressive behaviour as bullying are 'repetition', 'power imbalance', and 'intent to hurt'. However, studies that have analyzed adolescents' perceptions of bullying find that most adolescents do not simultaneously consider these three criteria. This paper examines adolescents' perceptions of bullying and of the different forms it takes, and whether these perceptions vary according to the teen's role of victim, aggressor, or witness in a bullying situation. The data acquisition instrument was a questionnaire applied to a sample of 2295 teenagers. The results show that none of these three groups considered the criterion of repetition to be important to define bullying. A further conclusion was that both aggressors and witnesses used the criteria of 'power imbalance' and 'intent to hurt' to identify a situation of bullying, although the aggressors placed especial emphasis on the superiority of power over the victim, while the witnesses emphasized the intent to hurt the victim. One noteworthy finding was that victims do not consider the factor 'power imbalance'. The factor that determined their perceptions was the 'intent to hurt'. Finally, some modes of bullying were seen as forms of typical teen social interactions, and the perception depended significantly on the adolescent's role as aggressor, victim, or witness.     

The Determinants of the Structure of Rainy Day Funds

This article investigates the factors that determine the configuration of budget stabilization funds, also known as rainy day funds, along their two most important dimensions: deposit and withdrawal requirements. These funds are created to accumulate savings in order to reduce the impact of adverse fiscal conditions during downturns. The effectiveness of such funds depends greatly on their institutional structure, and yet most states choose configurations that compromise their efficacy. Using multinomial discrete techniques, and introducing the ordered nature of the requirements in the analysis, the results of this study indicate that political and institutional factors such as the size of the house of the legislature and some strict institutions are associated with weak budget stabilization funds, while economic factors such as the volatility of state tax revenues are associated with stricter funds.     

Apparent partial hanging

A careful analysis of circumstances and investigations of death scene are required before commenting on the manner of death in a case of hanging. Hanging may result from either complete or incomplete suspension of the body. Two cases of hanging are reported where discrimination in eyewitness's account and death scene investigation report was evident regarding type of hanging (complete/partial). The use of term apparent partial hanging is proposed in such cases. Body position in hanging is one of the numerous factors that determine the strength of the neck compression by the ligature and thus should be considered in the evaluation of dying process and pathomorphologic feature of hanging. The cases also put a probable explanation to the higher incidence of partial hangings in different studies. We believe that incidence of true partial hangings may be much lower than that reported in the literature.     

Validation of neuropsychological consequences in victims of intimate partner violence in a Spanish population using specific effort tests

Neuropsychological consequences in female survivors of intimate partner violence are being used in courts as evidence of acquired injury and for criminal exculpation. To support the validity of neuropsychological test performance and the veracity of victim testimony, effort tests can be used by expert witnesses. Nevertheless, no study has evaluated whether the two principle types of effort tests, Symptom validity tests or Performance validity tests, are most adequate for this population. The study’s objective was to compare the false positive rates of a Performance validity test (Test of Memory Malingering: TOMM) and a Symptom validity test (Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology: SIMS). The sample included 68 female intimate partner violence victims and 40 control females. SIMS showed a significantly higher rate of false positives in victims on four of five subtests, reaching a 59.3% in the total score. There were 0% false positives in both groups on the TOMM. Findings indicate that the SIMS may incorrectly score female IPV victims, undermining the victim’s testimony in judicial cases.     

La construction institutionneIIe des reagions du Québec

Sommaire: En visant le développement régional, l'État québécois est passé dune phase d'aménagement du territoire à une phase de management régional de programmes nationaux ainsi que de biens et de services collectifs. L'émergence ou la localisation d'organisations publiques, parapubliques et collectives entre l'État et les municipalités traditionnelles ont occasionné, en fait, la construction institutionnelle des régions. Douze composantes caractérisent cette construction et offrent des criteres de différenciation entre les deux écheions que sont les régions administratives et les régions mrc. Grke à la mesure de l'occupation institutionnelle de ces deux niveaux régionauu, l'article illustre plusieurs phénomènes, dont le degré de construction de cliaque région du Québec. Les auteurs exposent les causes des inégalités ainsi que les tendances actuelles. Abstract: In its efforts towards regional development, Quebec has gone from a phase of physical planning to a phase of regional management of national programs as well as collective goods and services. The emergence or the placing of public organizations at the levels between local municipalities and the state has in fact given rise to the institutional organization of regions. This concept is characterized by twelve components which differentiate between the tier of administrative regions and the tier of the mrc regions. With the degree of the institutional occupation of these two regional levels, this ptper illustrates several phenomena, in particular the degree of achievement in the organization of Quebec regions. The authors expose some causes of inequalities in the achievement of organizations in these regions and the actual tendencies.     

The 2000-2001 GEP-ISFG Collaborative Exercise on mtDNA: assessing the cause of unsuccessful mtDNA PCR amplification of hair shaft samples

We report the results of Spanish and Portuguese working group (GEP) of International Society of Forensic Genetics (ISFG) Collaborative Exercise 2001-2002 on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis. 64 laboratories from Spain, Portugal and several Latin-American countries participated in this quality control exercise. Five samples were sent to the participating laboratories, four blood stains (M1-M4) and a sample (M5) consisting of two hair shaft fragments. M4 was non-human (Felis catus) in origin; therefore, the capacity of the labs to identify the biological source of this sample was an integral part of the exercise. Some labs detected the non-human origin of M4 by carrying out immuno-diffussion techniques using antihuman serum, whereas others identified the specific animal origin by testing the sample against a set of animal antibodies or by means of the analysis of mtDNA regions (Cyt-b, 12S, and 16S genes). The results of the other three human blood stains (M1-M3) improved in relation to the last Collaborative Exercises but those related to hairs yielded a low rate of success which clearly contrasts with previous results. As a consequence of this, some labs performed additional analysis showing that the origin of this low efficiency was not the presence of inhibitors, but the low quantity of DNA present in these specific hair samples and the degradation.As a general conclusion the results emphasize the need of external proficiency testing as part of the accreditation procedure for the labs performing mtDNA analysis in forensic casework.     

Single-strand conformation polymorphism of hyper-variable regions HV1 and HV2 of human mitochondrial DNA: detection by silver staining

Human mitochondrial DNA from 50 trios consisting of mother (M), child (C) and father (F) was PCR amplified with primers flanking the hyper-variable regions, HVR1 and HVR2. The amplified products were then fractionated under non-denaturing conditions, silver-stained and compared by single-stranded conformational polymorphism (SSCP). In all but one case, mother and child displayed identical patterns, which could be promptly distinguished from that of the father. For the remaining cases, either set of primers was sufficient to resolve the familial ties. In no instance, M displayed alleles different from those of C within each trio, demonstrating that no false exclusions occurred. The SSCP approach proved to be a robust technique suitable as a preliminary screening in cases requiring identification of multiple samples.     

Defining and measuring the underclass

Research on the underclass has been hampered by the absence of a clear definition of the term. In this article we develop an operational definition of the underclass that is consistent with the emphasis of most of the underclass literature on behavior rather than poverty. Using this definition, we anlyze data for all census tracts in the United States in 1980. According to our definition, about one percent of the U.S. population lived in “underclass areas” in 1980, and this group was overwhelmingly concentrated in urban areas. It was also disproportionately made up of minorities living in the older industrial cities of the Northeast.     

Public Financial Management Reforms: The Role of Ipsas in Latin‐America

During the last 30 years, many public administration reforms promoted by New Public Management have been undertaken. These reforms have spread to Latin‐American countries and include changes in governmental accounting systems, where the implementation of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) has been a stimulus for modernization. This article aims to clarify the situation of IPSASs implementation in the Latin‐American context as well as the stimuli for and effects of their implementation. The analysis shows that there is an emerging international trend to adopt IPSASs in Latin‐American countries although at the same time, there are evident obstacles to achieving reform goals. In Colombia, reforms are still underway, and the usefulness of IPSASs to improve decision‐making at an organisational level cannot be evaluated. Meanwhile, in Peru, the modernization is more rhetorical than real, and many efforts remain to be made for the effective implementation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.