Empowering women through the positive birth movement

Childbirth has been positioned as a life changing event that has profound long-term psychological effects upon women. This paper adopts a community psychology approach to explore the role that the Positive Birth Movement (PBM) may have in tackling negative birth experiences by supporting women before and after birth. Six women who all regularly attend UK-based PBM meetings and had given birth to at least one child participated in one to one semi-structured interviews designed to explore the support they received before, during and after their birth, as well as their experiences with the PBM. A Foucauldian inspired discourse analysis explores themes relating to the lack of support and information provided by the NHS and the function of the PBM as a transformative community space which offers social support and information. Within these themes a focus on neoliberalism, choice and the woman’s position as an active consumer of health care is critically discussed. It is argued that the PBM has the potential to prepare women for positive birth experiences but more attention needs to be paid to the wider contexts that limit women’s ability to make ‘free’ choice.     

Members of parliament and governments in Western Europe: Agency relations and problems of oversight

Abstract. The vast majority of West European polities feature an agency relationship between members of parliaments and members of cabinets as the latter depend on the confidence of the majority of the former to remain in office. In this article, the terminology used by principalagent theory to characterise oversight activities – contract design, screening, monitoring and the use of institutional checks – and elements of transaction cost economics are applied to the agency relationship between members of parliaments and cabinet members in Western Europe. Traditional studies of parliamentary oversight have narrowly concentrated on monitoring, although parliaments (with considerable cross–national variations) use a broad range of oversight mechanisms including equivalents of contract design, screening and institutional checks. In addition, traditional studies have focused almost exclusively on one particular type of monitoring often referred to as 'police–patrol oversight', whilst neglecting or underestimating the effectiveness and low transaction costs associated with 'fire–alarm oversight'. Despite the valuable insights the principal–agent framework has already added to the study of executive–legislative relations in parliamentary democracies, future research will have to account more realistically for the role and organisation of political parties which structure the delegation process, help to solve a number of co–ordination problems in parliaments (for example, the co–ordination of committees and floor activities) and generate important internal agency relationships that are fundamental to an understanding of executive–legislative relations in Western Europe.     

The Powell Hypothesis: Race and non-capital sentences for murder in Kentucky, 1976–1991

The 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision McCleskey v. Kemp ruled, in part, that the findings of the Baldus study, offered by the petitioner to support a claim of racial bias in death penalty cases, were insufficient to demonstrate unconstitutional discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Lewis Powell offered additional justification for the ruling when he wrote, “If we accepted McCleskey’s claim that racial bias has impermissibly tainted the capital sentencing decision, we could soon be faced with similar claims as to other types of penalty. ” This statement has become labeled as the “Powell Hypothesis. ” This paper tests the “Powell Hypothesis” to determine whether race has an impact on sentences levied in noncapital murder cases in Kentucky between 1976 and 1991. The results indicate racial factors influenced sentence length in these cases.     

IDENTIFYING HEALTH CARE COST CRISES IN OECD NATIONS

This study develops an empirical model for determining whether a nation's health care expenditures are experiencing a crisis based on the trend over time of the ratio of total health spending to total domestic expenditures. A dynamic regression model is applied to 22 OECD nations for the 1960–1994 period to estimate whether or not levels of health spending are converging towards a stable equilibrium and, if they are, what this equilibrium is and how long it will take to reach it. Crisis is defined as an empirically divergent process. The principal findings from this analysis are that: 1) three nations (France, Greece, and the United States) are experiencing a crisis according to this definition; 2) although the crisis potential is relatively high in all the OECD nations, there appears to be a critical region or threshold where the tendency towards crisis increases dramatically; 3) the time to reach equilibrium is generally quite long, indicating the opportunity for substantial policy intervention; and 4) Denmark stands out as a successful case where health costs have been contained.     

Digital Social Multitasking (DSMT), Friendship Quality,and Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction Among Adolescents: Perceptions as Mediators

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Most existing research assumes “phone use during face-to-face interactions” to be psychosocially detrimental. Drawing on the digital social...     

Values,conflict, and trust in participatory environmental planning

The need for greater public involvement in environmental decisionmaking has been highlighted in recent high‐profile research reports and emphasized by leaders at all levels of government. In some cases, environmental agencies have opened the door to greater participation in their programs. However, there is relatively little information on what can be gained from greater public involvement and what makes some programs work while others fail. This article presents an evaluation of public participation in several cases of environmental planning in the Great Lakes region, focusing on how effectively these efforts introduced public values into government decisionmaking, resolved conflict among stakeholders, and built trust in environmental agencies. Data for the analysis came from a “case survey” method in which the authors systematically coded information from previously written case studies. The research findings support an optimistic view of public participation—although not without important caveats—and emphasize the importance of communication and commitment in the participatory process. © 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The Personal Sources of Responsiveness. Introduction to a Special Section

Responsiveness is a core value in democratic politics. Individual legislators are important mechanisms for implementing this concern in real‐world settings and thus facilitating responsive government. This introduction to the special section on this topic starts out by highlighting the special relevance of individual legislators in this regard and by sketching important theoretical considerations that emerge from the political science literature on this issue. In its main part, it summarizes the key findings of the contributions in relation to its main theme, namely the personal sources of responsiveness. We end with a short conclusion that reflects on possible tensions between responsiveness and the personalization of representative systems.     

Results of the 2018 Rapid DNA Maturity Assessment

Three commercially available integrated rapid DNA instruments were tested as a part of a rapid DNA maturity assessment in July of 2018. The assessment was conducted with sets of blinded single-source reference samples provided to participants for testing on the individual rapid platforms within their laboratories. The data were returned to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for review and analysis. Both FBI-defined automated review (Rapid DNA Analysis) and manual review (Modified Rapid DNA Analysis) of the datasets were conducted to assess the success of genotyping the 20 Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) core STR loci and full profiles generated by the instruments. Genotype results from the multiple platforms, participating laboratories, and STR typing chemistries were combined into a single analysis. The Rapid DNA Analysis resulted in a success rate of 80% for full profiles (85% for the 20 CODIS core loci) with automated analysis. Modified Rapid DNA Analysis resulted in a success rate of 90% for both the CODIS 20 core loci and full profiles (all attempted loci per chemistry). An analysis of the peak height ratios demonstrated that 95% of all heterozygous alleles were above 59% heterozygote balance. For base-pair sizing precision, the precision was below the standard 0.5 bp deviation for both the ANDE 6C System and the RapidHIT 200.     

Abusive Pediatric Thoracolumbar Fracture Due to Forced Hyperextension: Case Report,Biomechanical Considerations,and Review of the Literature

Pediatric thoracolumbar fractures are rare due to the physiological differences which afford greater resilience to the immature spine. Most pediatric thoracolumbar fractures occur as the result of high energy trauma, such as motor vehicle accidents, and modes of reasonable accidental injuries are limited by age and developmental capabilities of the child. These fractures can occur as the result of inflicted blunt force trauma and child abuse, and in most cases, the mechanism of injury to the spine is not known. We report the death of a 29-month-old man due to blunt force trauma to the back and forced hyperextension of the thoracolumbar spine causing fracture of the fourth lumbar (L4) vertebral body. A complete forensic examination revealed a previous healing fracture of the anterior aspect of the L4 vertebral body, with acute disruption of the anterior longitudinal ligament overlying the fracture site, complete fracture of the vertebral body, and fatal retroperitoneal hemorrhage. We present a review of the biomechanical considerations of the pediatric spine, a survey of pediatric spinal fractures, and a review of the literature on pediatric abusive thoracolumbar fractures. In this case, there was never a provided explanation for how the injury occurred; however, understanding the biomechanics of the pediatric spine allowed for the determination of the mechanism, force required to produce this specific pattern of abusive spinal injury, and the manner of death.