‘Rise of the Great Powers’=Rise of China? Challenges of the advancement of global history in the People's Republic of China

Ever since it was first broadcasted in 2006, the Rise of the Great Powers, a popular Chinese TV mini-series of 12 episodes, has received great attention both at home and abroad. Some have suggested that the showing of this series marked a new orientation in China's foreign policy and a new perception of its position in the world. Using oral interviews and written works by the historians who masterminded the project, this article analyzes the view of the Chinese historian, and of current Chinese leadership, about the globalizing world today and China's position in and relation to it. Using the documentary as a starting point, it discusses the status quo of world-history study in China today and argues that though receptive to the incentive for globalizing history writing, historical scholarship in China remains grounded in a Eurocentric understanding of modern world history. China's recent economic expansion has paradoxically reinforced this tradition, as the country is bracing for its own world power status.     

Does Performance Management Lead to Better Outcomes? Evidence from the U.S. Public Transit Industry

Although performance management processes are widely assumed to be beneficial in improving organizational performance in the public sector, there is insufficient empirical evidence to back this claim. In this article, the authors examine the impact of performance management practices on organizational effectiveness in a particular segment of the public transit industry in the United States. The analysis utilizes original survey data on performance management practices comprising both strategy formulation and performance measurement in 88 small and medium‐sized local transit agencies in conjunction with comparative outcome data drawn from the National Transit Database maintained by the Federal Transit Administration. The results provide evidence that more extensive use of performance management practices does in fact contribute to increased effectiveness in this segment of the transit industry.     

Use of a Social–Ecological Framework to Understand How and Under What Conditions Family Violence Exposure Affects Children’s Adjustment

The proportion of children experiencing violence in the home is disturbingly high, with many also being victims of violence outside the home. Therefore, smaller, innovative or preliminary studies were invited in order to better understand how exposure to violence across different ecologies independently or interactively influences the risk for maladaptive outcomes. This special issue is predicated on the notion that risk for maladaptive outcomes is contextualized by one’s individual traits (e.g., self-regulatory capacities), characteristics of the abuse (e.g., duration), exposure to multiple forms of violence (both within and outside the home), as well as parenting and familial resources (e.g., parents’ mental health and abuse history, familial social support). Two of the articles focus on dual victimization in the home, two address factors that modify the relation between child sexual abuse and adjustment, and the last two articles focus on mediators of the relationship between abuse or exposure to IPV and adjustment. Taken together, these articles reflect efforts at elucidating modifiable targets for prevention and intervention purposes, as well as qualities of the individual, family, or the abuse that may aid in tailoring interventions to be maximally effective.     

Immunohistochemical investigation of pulmonary surfactant-associated protein A in fatal poisoning

To evaluate the immunohistochemical distribution of pulmonary surfactant-associated protein A (SP-A) in fatal poisoning in relation to the effects of drugs and poisons on respiratory function, 42 forensic autopsy cases were examined by scoring the staining intensity. The highest scores of SP-A staining, with dense granular deposits (aggregates) in the intra-alveolar space, were observed in fatalities from pancuronium bromide (muscle relaxant) injection and petroleum (butane) gas inhalation. Poisoning with organophosphate pesticides and arsenic (ingestion) showed a second grade SP-A score. However, The SP-A scores were relatively low in ethanol and sedative-hypnotic intoxication. Carbon monoxide intoxication showed a varied degree of SP-A score, and the aggregated SP-A score tended to be higher in cases of lower blood carboxyhemoglobin concentration. A varied SP-A score was also observed in methamphetamine fatalities, in which the score was relatively low in cases with a higher serum drug level. Increase of SP-A was not always associated with the intra-alveolar effusion or hemorrhages. The above-described observations suggested that the immunohistochemical score of SP-A may be a possible indication for intensity and duration of drug/poison-dependent respiratory distress.     

Longitudinal brainstem laceration associated with complex basilar skull fractures due to a fall: an autopsy case

This report describes an autopsy case of a rare longitudinal brainstem laceration associated with complex basilar skull fractures. The victim was a 40-year-old male who died immediately after falling from a roof (9.2m in height) of a factory onto a concrete floor. The postmortem examination revealed an incomplete ring fracture of the base of the skull with longitudinal fractures of the sphenoid (clivus of the dorsum sellae turcicae) and occipital bones, cerebral contusions in the frontal and temporal poles, a longitudinal brainstem laceration at the posterior median sulcus of the pons accompanied with multiple contusional hemorrhages in the brainstem and corpus callosum. Related blunt-force injuries were observed in the parieto-occipital region of the head, shoulder and upper back involving the fractures of the cervical and thoracic vertebrae, and sternum and ribs, indicating a huge impact to the occiput and subsequent impression of the vertebral column into the base of the skull due to violent anteroflexion of the neck, which caused the complex basilar skull fractures, contusions and longitudinal laceration of the brainstem.     

Predicting Children’s Depressive Symptoms from Community and Individual Risk Factors

Community, demographic, familial, and personal risk factors of childhood depressive symptoms were examined from an ecological theoretical approach using hierarchical linear modeling. Individual-level data were collected from an ethnically diverse (73% African-American) community sample of 197 children and their parents; community-level data were obtained from the U.S. Census regarding rates of community poverty and unemployment in participants’ neighborhoods. Results indicated that high rates of community poverty and unemployment, children’s depressive attributional style, and low levels of self-perceived competence predict children’s depressive symptoms, even after accounting for demographic and familial risk factors, such as parental education and negative parenting behaviors. The effect of negative parenting behaviors on depressive symptoms was partially mediated by personal variables like children’s self-perceived competence. Recommendations for future research, intervention and prevention programs are discussed.

The Impact of Legal Mobilization and Judicial Decisions: The Case of Official Minority-Language Education Policy in Canada for Francophones Outside Quebec

The article investigates the impact of legal mobilization and judicial decisions on official minority-language education (OMLE) policy in the Canadian provinces outside Quebec, using the "factor-oriented" and "dispute-centered" theories of judicial impact developed by U.S. scholars. The Canadian Supreme Court's decision in Mahé v. Alberta (1990), which broadly interpreted Section 23 of the Charter of Rights to include management and control of OMLE programs and schools, along with federal funding to the provinces to implement OMLE policy, are important to explaining OMLE policy change as predicted by the factor-oriented approach. The dispute-centered approach, on the other hand, helps us understand how the Charter of Rights and judicial decisions shaped the goals and discourse of Francophone groups in the policy process and, more instrumentally, provided opportunity structures that Francophone groups exploited effectively. The article concludes that both approaches to explaining judicial impact could be accommodated within an institutional model of judicial impact that construes institutions as state actors, as sets of rules, and as frameworks of meaning and interpretation. Such an approach would allow for the development of a more comparative model of judicial impact.