Sulfuric acid poisoning

Deliberate ingestion of a corrosive acid is an unusual manner of death. Sulfuric acid, often used in electrical industry, chemical laboratories, and agriculture, is fatal at a dosage of 3.5-7.0 ml. The mortality rate is quite high, with only 35% recovery rate. Poisoning by sulfuric acid resembles other mineral acids in that the esophagus is more commonly spared while coagulative necrosis of the stomach is often apparent. A case involving the ingestion of sulfuric acid by a patient with a history of chronic psychiatric illness is presented. The pathological, clinical, and toxicological aspects of this case are discussed.     

Ethics Goes Global: The OECD Council Recommendation on Improving Ethical Conduct in the Public Sector

On 23 April 1998 the Council of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development issued the Recommendation on Improving Ethical Conduct in the Public Sector. It is the result of more than three years research, analysis and cooperation between OECD member countries, and, as a statement from the highest level of the organisation, it represents a consensus of all of its 29 members on an issue of global public concern. This article is a speculative analysis of a new international development that may have implications for local public management practice. The purpose of this article is to unearth some of the theoretical assumptions on which the recommendation relies and to consider the implications they might have for its implementation and effectiveness.     

WHAT FAMILY LAWYERS ARE REALLY DOING WHEN THEY NEGOTIATE

How should lawyers negotiate? This article outlines an empirical study of how lawyers rate each other in negotiation behaviors. After discussing what skills are needed for effective negotiation behavior, we then look more closely at how family lawyers in particular are negotiating. Examining some troubling data, we find that family lawyers appear to be more adversarial and less problem solving than other types of practitioners. We conclude by discussing why this might be so and what the family law bar and family law professors should be doing in the future to address this problem.     

Utility of infectious disease coding sheets for surveillance in a state medical examiner's office

Medical examiners are often first to recognize unusual occurrences of fatal infectious diseases. Recognition of these deaths allows public health officials to institute appropriate public health measures. Therefore, we developed a simple method of identifying and tracking infectious disease deaths in a statewide medical examiner's office. One-page infectious disease forms were completed for 1566/1949 autopsies (80%) performed at the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator in 2004. In 241 cases one infectious disease was identified at autopsy and 58 cases had two infectious diseases. Fourteen of the infectious-diseases caused deaths involved diseases that are notifiable conditions in New Mexico. Pneumonia was the most commonly reported infectious process (47 deaths) followed by sepsis (25 deaths). Tracking infectious disease deaths highlighted the importance of recognizing these deaths, although hand-written entries were unstandardized. Preferably, a tracking system would be built into electronic databases at medical examiner and coroner's offices, expediting the identification of these diseases and contact of public health agencies.     

Politically valued resources and preferred outcomes: Does the political context matter?

Previous research has concluded that ownership of economic resources that are politically valued leads to preferential outcomes during interactions with government officials. However, how the political context, and specifically the roles of the government actors involved, influences the relationship between political valued resources (PVRs) and desired outcomes has to date been relatively unexplored. In our paper, we argue that in interactions with elected legislators, PVRs are much more likely to lead to preferential outcomes. Conversely, due to the lack of power these resources have with bureaucrats in charge of regulatory enforcement, PVRs are less likely to lead to preferential outcomes. We provide some support for our arguments by looking for shifting patterns of effects in outcome variables that typically fall under the jurisdiction of each political role type. We find that large firms, export firms, and technology firms largely report having favorable influence over laws and regulations due to lobbying and increased foreign ownership, while also spending more days in inspections and more managerial time dealing with regulations.     

Contracting Out Local Services: A Tale of Technical and Social Services

Governments face a fundamental choice between in‐house production and contracting out for the delivery of services to citizens. This article examines the importance of ideology, fiscal pressure, and size for contracting out in technical and social services. The analysis builds on a panel data set covering municipal spending on services in all 98 Danish municipalities. The authors find that contracting out is shaped by ideology in social services but not in technical services, which indicates that social services are the contemporary ideological battlefield of privatization. The analysis further reveals that economically prosperous municipalities are more likely to contract out social services, whereas contracting out of technical services is not influenced by economic affluence. Finally, larger municipalities contract out more in technical services but less in social services, demonstrating that the size effect is contingent on the transaction cost characteristics of the service.