Volatile Organic Compound Profiling from Postmortem Microbes using Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are by-products of cadaveric decomposition and are responsible for the odor associated with decomposing remains. The direct link between VOC production and individual postmortem microbes has not been well characterized experimentally. The purpose of this study was to profile VOCs released from three postmortem bacterial isolates (Bacillus subtilis, Ignatzschineria indica, I. ureiclastica) using solid-phase microextraction arrow (SPME Arrow) and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Species were inoculated in headspace vials on Standard Nutrient Agar and monitored over 5 days at 24°C. Each species exhibited a different VOC profile that included common decomposition VOCs. VOCs exhibited upward or downward temporal trends over time. Ignatzschineria indica produced a large amount of dimethyldisulfide. Other compounds of interest included alcohols, aldehydes, aromatics, and ketones. This provides foundational data to link decomposition odor with specific postmortem microbes to improve understanding of underlying mechanisms for decomposition VOC production.     

The Consequences of Adolescent Delinquent Behavior for Adult Employment Outcomes

Delinquent behavior is common during adolescence and may disrupt trajectories of labor market attainment. Estimates of the relationship between delinquency and employment are threatened by selection bias, as youth who engage in delinquency often differ substantially from youth who do not. The current study examined the association between adolescents’ engagement in serious delinquency and four measures of occupational attainment in young adulthood: unemployment, personal earnings, employer-provided benefits, and occupational earnings. It examined the effect of delinquency independent of between-person differences in a variety of attributes and tested whether the hypothesized relationship was mediated by educational attainment, work experience, disconnectedness from both education and work, or criminal justice sanctioning. This study analyzed data from the first four waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), yielding an analytic sample of 14,800 (51% female, mean age 16 years). The Wave 1 Add Health survey was administered in 1994–1995, and Wave 4 of the survey was administered in 2007–2008. The analytic strategy, propensity score weighting, produced estimates that were less biased by differences between youth who had and who had not engaged in delinquent behavior. The study found that delinquency was significantly associated with the likelihood of being unemployed: compared to non-delinquents, delinquents were more likely to be unemployed even after controlling for temporally prior traits and resources, human capital, and criminal justice contact. The results provided more qualified support for hypothesized relationships between delinquency and job quality. The study concluded that offending may result in less fruitful job searches, but once a search results in employment, employed delinquents are not readily discernible from employed non-delinquents in the quality of their jobs. These conclusions contribute to literature on the labor market outcomes of people with histories of adolescent delinquency as they enter young adulthood.

     

“I’m totally transariffic”: Exploring how Transgender and Gender-expansive Youth and Young Adults Make Sense of their Challenges and Successes

As transgender and gender-expansive (TGE) youth and young adults (YYA) navigate challenging environments, they often seek spaces for safety and acceptance. This study explores ways in which a group of TGE YYA who were engaged with a community-based service organization make sense of their experiences, challenges, and successes in ways that illuminate the factors and processes associated with resilience. Secondary data analysis was conducted on qualitative responses from 85 TGE YYA ages 13–24. The themes that emerged provide insight into the ways community-based programs and providers can understand and support the resilience of TGE YYA.     

Knowing Me,Knowing You: Media Portrayal of the EU in Kazakhstan

Abstract

The dichotomy of Self/Other prevails in shaping identity. This article asks how and to what extent the elements of the EU’s image produced by media discourse shape the national identity of Kazakhstan. It contends that a state’s identity can be formulated not in opposition—that is, not ‘Us against Them’—but rather, ‘Us as One of Them’. It argues that, in the case of Kazakhstan, the predominantly positive media discourse about the EU ‘Other’ contributes to a positive formulation of the Self via the legitimisation of the domestic regime on the national and international levels.     

Bullying Victimization and Adolescent Self-Harm: Testing Hypotheses from General Strain Theory

Self-harm is widely recognized as a significant adolescent social problem, and recent research has begun to explore its etiology. Drawing from Agnew’s (1992) social psychological strain theory of deviance, this study considers this issue by testing three hypotheses about the effects of traditional and cyber bullying victimization on deliberate self-harm and suicidal ideation. The data come from a school-based survey of adolescents in a rural county of a southeastern state (n = 426); 50% of subjects are female, their mean age was 15 years, and non-Hispanic whites represent 66% of the sample. The analysis revealed that both types of bullying are positively related to self-harm and suicidal ideation, net of controls. Moreover, those relationships are partially mediated by the negative emotions experienced by those who are bullied and partially moderated by features of the adolescent’s social environment and self. Regarding the latter, exposure to authoritative parenting and high self-control diminished the harmful effects of bullying victimization on self-harm and suicidal ideation. The article concludes by discussing the implications of these conclusions for future research and for policy efforts designed to reduce self-harm.     

Memory for political actors: Contrasting the use of semantic and evaluative organizational strategies

This paper explores the organizational strategies used to represent information about political actors in memory, and it illustrates the usefulness of a specific measure, the adjusted ratio of clustering score (ARC), for inferring memory structure. Assuming the operation of an associative network model, we argue that information about a political actor can be organized along three distinct dimensions: attribute type (differentiating between issue positions and personal attributes), partisanship (differentiating between characteristics typical of Republicans and Democrats), and evaluative type (differentiating between positively and negatively evaluated attributes). The results of a laboratory study indicate that organization along the attribute type dimension was most common, with some evidence of partisan organization. There was no evidence of organization along the evaluative dimension. The implications of the study for understanding individual differences in political reasoning, and the consequences of memory organization strategies, are discussed.     

Analyzing welfare effort: An appraisal of comparative methods

How do we measure and rate the social welfare efforts of nations? Most people consider the U.S. and Japan welfare laggards when compared with European countries. This view derives from a widely used measure of “welfare effort”—direct government outlays for social programs as the percentage of a nation's gross domestic product (GDP). This article challenges several assumptions implicit in the conventional measure and suggests an alternative approach in assessing “welfare effort.” By incorporating indirect tax expenditures and controlling for the differences in tax burdens and social need for welfare spending among countries, the alternative measure (the NET index) not only broadens the conceptual boundaries of welfare effort, but also affords a more meaningful standard for comparative analysis. To illustrate, this study compares the welfare effort levels of ten developed nations measured under several versions of the NET index.     

The Origin and Outcome of an Amicus Brief in Kumho Tire v. Carmichael (1999)

Law and Human Behavior -