Program-level predictors of antipsychotic medication adherence among parolees

This study examined the impact of three program-level factors (coercion level, type of antipsychotic prescribed, and guardian supervision) on antipsychotic medication adherence among parolees mandated to an outpatient psychiatric clinic. Overall, 70.7% of the participants tested positive for their prescribed antipsychotic. Older patients were more likely to test positive for their prescribed antipsychotic than younger patients, and African American patients (relative to all other race/ethnic groups) were less likely. With regard to program-level factors, perceived coercion was not significantly associated with medication adherence. However, being prescribed an atypical antipsychotic and having a guardian were independently associated with increased adherence, and combined, these two factors were associated with nearly a tenfold increase in the likelihood of patients testing positive for their prescribed antipsychotic agent, relative to patients who were prescribed conventional antipsychotics and were not under guardian supervision.     

Optimization of DNA extraction from low-yield and degraded samples using the BioRobot EZ1 and BioRobot M48

Robotic extraction of DNA from dilutions of blood and semen using either the BioRobots EZ1 or BioRobots M48 consistently produced lower recoveries than standard organic extractions of the same samples. In an effort to increase the efficiency of robotically extracted DNA, glycogen and carrier RNA were added following cell lysis. The addition of glycogen, postlysis, resulted in no improvement in DNA recovery with the BioRobot EZ1. However, when carrier RNA was added to the cell lysate of limited and degraded samples extracted on the EZ1 or the M48, DNA recoveries dramatically increased four- to 20-fold. DNA yields obtained by robotic extraction in the presence of carrier RNA were as high, or higher, as those obtained by organic extraction lacking carrier RNA, while experiments that utilized carrier RNA in both types of extractions showed increased sensitivity for both methods. Furthermore, carrier RNA substantially increased the recovery of fragmented DNA with the EZ1.     

A collaborative study of the EDNAP group regarding Y-chromosome binary polymorphism analysis

A collaborative study was carried out by the European DNA Profiling Group (EDNAP) in order to evaluate the performance of Y-chromosome binary polymorphism analysis in different European laboratories. Four blood samples were sent to the laboratories, to be analysed for 11 Y-chromosome single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs): SRY-1532, M40, M35, M213, M9, 92R7, M17, P25, M18, M153 and M167. All the labs were also asked to submit a population study including these markers. All participating laboratories reported the same results, indicating the reproducibility and robustness of Y-chromosome SNP typing. A total of 535 samples from six different European populations were also analysed. In Galicia (NW Spain) and Belgium, the most frequent haplogroup was R1b*(xR1b1,R1b3df). Haplogroup F*(xK) is one of the most frequent in Austria and Denmark, while the lowest frequency appear in Belgium. Haplogroup frequencies found in this collaborative study were compared with previously published European Y-chromosome haplogroup data.     

Metric Sex Determination of the Human Coxal Bone on a Virtual Sample using Decision Trees

Decision trees provide an alternative to multivariate discriminant analysis, which is still the most commonly used in anthropometric studies. Our study analyzed the metric characterization of a recent virtual sample of 113 coxal bones using decision trees for sex determination. From 17 osteometric type I landmarks, a dataset was built with five classic distances traditionally reported in the literature and six new distances selected using the two-step ratio method. A ten-fold cross-validation was performed, and a decision tree was established on two subsamples (training and test sets). The decision tree established on the training set included three nodes and its application to the test set correctly classified 92% of individuals. This percentage was similar to the data of the literature. The usefulness of decision trees has been demonstrated in numerous fields. They have been already used in sex determination, body mass prediction, and ancestry estimation. This study shows another use of decision trees enabling simple and accurate sex determination.     

Comment on Kerry D. Vandell's “FHA restructuring proposals: Alternatives and implications”

Abstract

New Orleans, a highly segregated city with low homeownership, experienced a tremendous number of housing foreclosures between 1985 and 1990. This study highlights the process and impact of foreclosure in the urban housing market, which contributes to an understanding of their impact on the spatial structure of the city. Two aspects of foreclosure are examined: the differential impacts of foreclosure on low‐income and African‐American householders and changes in socioeconomic conditions (neighborhood change and the spatial structure of the city) resulting from foreclosure.

Conventional wisdom holds that urban neighborhood transformation is driven largely by white flight. The data presented in this article suggest a counterhypoth‐esis. Middle‐income professional whites employed in businesses impacted by recession who had recently bought housing with high loan‐to‐value ratios were forced to sell or have their houses foreclosed upon. The depressed market, in turn, made such housing affordable to middle‐class blacks interested in homeownership. Thus, black economic opportunity, rather than white flight, dramatically transformed the racial composition of many New Orleans East neighborhoods.     

Distinguishing city and Suburban Movers: Evidence from the American housing survey

Abstract

A significant amount of research has concentrated on the process of urban decentralization. Resulting patterns of urban development have far‐reaching effects on land use, transportation, regional fiscal structure, public services and facilities, economic development, and social equity. Because planning policies are being developed to attempt to revitalize the urban core, it is important to know which households may be deciding to relocate to the central cities and why.

A discriminant analysis is used to explore the similarities and differences among movers to central cities and suburban locations drawn from metropolitan samples of the 1989 through 1991 American Housing Survey. The analysis compares the reasons for relocation, demographic differences, and metropolitan characteristics between central‐city‐to‐suburb movers and suburb‐to‐central‐city movers. The results indicate that these two groups are very similar in some respects and that some metropolitan‐area characteristics may play a role in urban residential decentralization patterns.     

The Future of Belgian Federalism as Seen Through the Eyes of the Social Partners: A Continuing Obstacle to Social Policy Decentralization?

In this article, we take a look at the discussion on the devolution of social policy. Despite the pressure of strong nationalist movements to decentralize socio-economic matters, the federal welfare state does not erode. In their study up to the early 2000s, Béland and Lecours explain this relative standstill by pointing to the institutionalization of neo-corporatistic organizations. These organizations, which are strongly involved in the management of the welfare state, have not split along language lines and prevent the decentralization of socio-economic policies in order to preserve their power. Based on empirical evidence, this paper shows that federal social partners are an important obstacle to social policy decentralization in Belgium while the regional social partners have differing opinions on the devolution debate.     

The Limits of Studies in Comparative Development of East Asia and Latin America: the case of land reform and agrarian policies

This paper critically examines the widespread belief that the early implementation of comprehensive land reforms prior to the industrialisation process, coupled with subsequent agrarian state policies channelling the intersectoral transfer of resources, has been a central determinant of East Asia's (mainly Taiwan's and South Korea's) outperformance of Latin America. We argue that, although those agrarian policies should certainly be part of any comparative investigation of the course of capitalist development in each of these two regions, they cannot explain their divergence. The paper contends that the respective scope and timing of agrarian policies has been an expression of the specific contradictions of the early industrialisation process in each region, rather than an autonomous determinant of the course of the latter. Based on insights derived from the Marxian critique of political economy, the paper shows that each region's respective agrarian policies have expressed the differential resolution of the opposition between the rate of profit (industrial capital) and ground-rent (landed property) in the import substituting industrialisation process. In so doing, the paper takes issue with the claim that timely land reforms in Taiwan and Korea have facilitated the subsequent successful turn to an export-oriented industrialisation strategy. An alternative account of the different developmental paths in East Asia and Latin America based on the unfolding of the Marxian ‘law of value’ on a world scale is also provided.