A forecasting model for state expenditures

In this study, the median voter model is applied to the problem of predicting state public expenditures in four major categories: human services, elementary and secondary education, higher education, and health services. Demand functions for public services are derived within a formal utility-maximizing model. The resulting model is estimated using time-series data for a representative state and the model is used to predict state spending for fiscal year 1985. The results of the estimation are consistent with the predictions of the median voter model and the forecasts correspond closely to those made by the State Bureau of the Budget. In contrast, a naive autoregressive model of state spending performs poorly.     

Toward a theory of reproduction

Summary In this article I have attempted to theorize the relations of reproduction in a manner that makes their operation in history more apparent. Using an historical materialist analysis, I have diverged from previous analysis by situating reproduction in the base and positing a co-determinative relation between production and reproduction. I have argued that due to the distinctly different dynamic of reproduction, its longer completion time and its political subordination in class societies, we must pursue different research strategies than those used to illustrate the impact of production on reproduction. This article serves only to give the broadest outline of concerns and questions to focus upon in developing new strategies. As such it suggests that the ubiquity of patriarchy and its preservation, even in the face of structural contradictions with production, provide a starting place for such inquiry. To this end I have developed a model of the modes of reproduction in order to rediscover reproduction in history, its dynamic and its interaction with production.This perspective permits us to reanalyze old rules and customs previously understood exclusively as rules of production (e.g., rules of inheritance and property, certain labour and welfare laws), and discover within them the impact of the reproductive as well as the productive imperative. The model emphasizes the inextricable connection between production and reproduction at the same time that it calls attention to the distinctiveness of their dynamics. Dynamics which, because of their distinctiveness, do not automatically guarantee balance between the two spheres. Hence the continuous necessity for socially engineering this balance, a necessity requiring even more intervention as the two spheres become structurally more alienated.     

Chronicles of an information company

The birth and growth of a US West Coast information company is chronicled from its beginning as a part-time partnership to its status five years later as a small but profitable corporation providing information services to Government agencies as well as graduate students. Documentation Associates provides a search and retrieval service that includes brokering on-line data-base searches, and the investment required to set up and maintain this kind of operation is described. Some information-broker policies are discussed, e.g. service types, pricing methods, and the reasons for the wide disparity in data-base search prices are examined. The policies of Documentation Associates in the operation of its broker service are presented.     

Reading aloud as performance and its representation on television programmes for children

ABSTRACT

The social practice of reading aloud picture books to children, or shared reading, has been represented on many televisions programmes broadcast across English-speaking countries. This article views shared reading as a performance, and explores its transformation on two television shows for children and the potential of such shows to promote reading engagement and literacy development. Taking a critical multimodal perspective, we analyse shared reading in real life and on television as a social practice, focusing on the ways the participants talk about the picture book, relate it to exterior texts or activities, and legitimise shared reading through the employment of multimodal and interactive strategies. The analysis reveals significant differences between actual adult–child shared reading and its representation on television. The comparison illustrates the potential benefits and limitations of television shows in which picture books are read to the viewer, in terms of promoting shared reading among families and supporting young children’s emergent literacy development.     

An interlaboratory study to evaluate the utility of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and gas chromatography-infrared spectroscopy spectral libraries in the forensic analysis of fentanyl-related substances

Synthetic opioids such as fentanyl account for over 71,000 of the approximately 107,000 overdose deaths reported in the United States in 2021. Fentanyl remains the fourth most identified drug by state and local forensic laboratories, and the second most identified drug by federal laboratories. The unambiguous identification of fentanyl-related substances (FRS) is challenging due to the absence or low abundance of a molecular ion in a typical gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis and due to a low number of fragment ions that are similar among the many potential isomers of FRS. This study describes the utility of a previously reported gas chromatography-infrared (GC-IR) library for the identification of FRS within a blind, interlaboratory study (ILS) involving seven forensic laboratories. Twenty FRS reference materials, including those with isomer pairs in the library, were selected based on either their presence in the NIST library and/or some similarity of the mass spectra information produced. The ILS participants were requested to use the Florida International University (FIU) GC-MS and GC-IR libraries supplied by FIU to search for matches to their unknown spectra generated from in-house GC-MS and GC-IR analysis. The laboratories reported improvement in the positive identification of unknown FRS from ~75% using GC-MS alone to 100% correct identification using GC-IR analysis. One laboratory participant used solid phase IR analysis, which produced spectra incompatible with the vapor phase GC-IR library to generate a good comparison spectrum. However, this improved when searched against a solid phase IR library.     

Digitised Justice: The New Two Tiers?

Criminal Law Forum - Prevailing conditions of access to justice and due process in the Singapore courts are criticised through McBarnet’s two-tier lens and Carlen’s dramaturgical...