A rapid gas chromatographic method for the fingerprinting of illicit cocaine samples.

A gas chromatographic (GC) fingerprint method, based on the presence or absence of six congeners, was developed for illicit cocaine samples. The fingerprint utilizes the relative abundances of these congeners towards each other, disregarding cocaine as the main constituent, and can be expressed numerically or graphically in the form of pictograms for rapid visual comparison. The method can be applied directly to a solution of the sample in chloroform, without previous workup procedures. More than 70 unrelated samples were analyzed and a great variation was observed in the parameter composition. On the other hand, a remarkable similarity could be seen between related samples. The GC fingerprint method may be considered an important contribution for sample comparison, as is exemplified by a subdivision of the analyzed samples in different categories, based on the number and types of congeners found.     

Measuring carbon monoxide content in muscles

A method ist described to determine the CO-content in the tissue of muscles. The prepared tissue is pulverized in a swinging mill at the temperature of liquid nitrogen. Parts of the powder are weighed into headspace vessels. Carbon monoxide ist ejected by a formerly described method and measured gaschromatographically. The Fe-content is determined after an acid disintegration by AAS. Acute intoxications lead to higher CO-contents in heart than in periphere muscles. Chronic exposure to carbon monoxide does not produce these differences.     

Child's play: The political imaginary of international relations and contemporary popular children's films

Many scholars in International Relations (IR) have drawn from popular films to examine various problématiques that have informed the discipline's main theorisations. As Cynthia Weber remarks, popular films are powerful because they engage in the very ‘serious political work’ of mythologising the ‘truths’ and ‘realities’ which provide the foundation for many of IR's main theoretical envisionings of our world. To date, however, children's films have received very little attention. For the purpose of this paper, three have been isolated: Toy Story (1995), A Bug's Life (1998) and Rescue Heroes: The Movie (2003). Children's films, it can be argued, help to craft and restore certain perspectives for each new generation of young minds during the crucial years when the world is being textualised for the first time. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to read these films as working towards producing and sustaining the power/knowledge that seeks to defend contemporary forms of world order while concurrently extending and disseminating the rule of these forms of world order through the medium of children's popular cinema.     

Relationships between psychosocial development and personality disorder symptomatology in late adolescents

The present study investigated the extent to which psychosocial development through the first five stages of Erik Erikson's theory of personality development is associated with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (third edition, revised; DSM-III-R) Axis II personality disorder symptomatology in a late adolescent sample of undergraduate students. The Inventory of Psychosocial Development (IPD) and the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire—Revised (PDQ-R) were administered to a mixed-sex sample of 106 undergraduate students. The results of this research were that IPD scores assessing negative resolutions of the first five Eriksonian developmental stages consistently predicted scores on the PDQ-R composite scale and the PDQ-R impairment/distress index—both measures of overall personality disorder symptomatology. The IPD subscales varied substantially in the extent to which they predicted scores on the 13 PDQ-R subscales that assess symptoms of specific DSM-III-R personality disorders—ranging from the trust vs. mistrust subscale, which predicted scores on 12 of the 13 PDQ-R subscales, to the initiative vs. guilt subscale, which predicted scores on only 6 of the 13 PDQ-R subscales. Implications of these findings for our understanding of the relationship between psychosocial development and psychopathology are discussed in the context of previous research in this area, and suggestions for future research are offered.Received Ph.D. from Temple University. Research interests include personality disorders, depression, and life events.     

CONTRACTORS' EXPERIENCE OF COMPULSORY COMPETITIVE TENDERING: A CASE STUDY OF CONTRACT CLEANERS IN THE NHS

Compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) has been an important instrument of Conservative government economic policy since 1979. Its effectiveness in generating cost-effective services depends on competition to supply the service in question.
The NHS domestic market is large and, prior to the introduction of CCT, promised to be profitable for contractors. Many contract cleaners with office cleaning experience entered. In the event the costs of entry were heavy, and the profit margins of established firms were reduced. When contracts have been awarded to firms, they tended to be to those with a track record. Many firms therefore withdrew; and the few that remained have profit margins in the NHS little different from those found elsewhere. Of more than by firms with a serious interest in entry, probably no more than a handful can have come out of the experience in net profit in the first seven years.
The experience of CCT in the market for NHS domestic services has shown that a degree of competition in the market can be achieved, arguably because of the presence of direct service organizations. Competition for this market, on the other hand, can be limited by the high costs of entry.