High time for high tech? China’s program for an indigenous high technology capability

Chinese policymakers have increasingly turned their attention to developing high technology. The state has, through a number of central directives, attempted to promote the production and commercialization of high tech products. Yet, the level of Chinese high technology products remains fairly low. This article argues that the state, especially in trying to recrease Silicon Valley in China, has learned the wrong lessons from the West’s experience. In order to promote the development of high tech, the state needs to build up a more adequate science and technology infrastructure and to define and protect property rights.     

Indexing civil commitment in psychiatric emergency rooms.

A reliable prototype index, Three Ratings of Involuntary Admissibility (TRIAD), was developed to reflect the way psychiatric emergency room clinicians apply legal criteria for involuntary commitment. The interrater reliability coefficients--Pearson's r--of the TRIAD system for rating patients are 0.94, danger-to-self score; 0.89, danger-to-other score; 0.77, grave-disability score; and 0.89, total-admissibility score. TRIAD scores accounted for 82 percent of 89 disposition decisions in two metropolitan county hospital psychiatric emergency rooms. Study results indicate that (1) psychiatric emergency room clinicians shared constructs of danger to self, danger to others, and grave disability; (2) these constructs are reliably applied in actual cases; (3) TRIAD is a valid reflection of these constructs; and (4) case disposition is predictable from the severity of the patient's status with regard to these criteria.     

Developing the relevance potentialities of national security and foreign policy research: Some proposed criteria

While effective foreign and national security policy-making increasingly requires research that is produced outside government, little is known about how such research affects the actions of policy-makers, or why it may or may not be policy-relevant to them. This essay poses a number of criteria which can be used to weigh the policy relevance of applied social science research for national security and foreign policy issues. These criteria can be divided into content and process categories, the former including aspects of time, issue salience, format, and confidence; and the latter incorporating questions related to the origin of research, the strategy which informs it, and the tactics by which it is presented. Hopefully, such criteria can be applied to existing works, serve as guidelines for future research, and perhaps illuminate the general role of social knowledge in policy formulation.The authors wish to express their appreciation for the opportunity to participate in the National Security Education Seminar held at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado, June 18–July13, 1973, directed by Fred A. Sondermann and conducted under the auspices of the National Security Program, New York University, Frank N. Trager, Director. This paper is a revised version of a report originally prepared for the seminar. The views presented here are those of the authors, and not necessarily of any of the institutions with which they are associated.     

Book review

Anthony Arnold, Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Perspective. Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1981. 126 pp. $9.95.

Michael Radu (ed.), Eastern Europe and the Third World. Eastbourne: Holt‐Saunders Ltd., 1981. 358 pp. £21.75.

E. J. Feuchtwanger and Peter Nailor (eds.), The Soviet Union and The Third World. London: Macmillan Press, 1981. 229 pp. £20.00

Wladyslaw Bienkowski, Theory and reality: the development of social systems. London & New York: Allison & Busby, 1981. 303 pp. £5.95.

Allen S. Whiting, Siberian Development and East Asia: Threat or Promise? Stanford: University Press, 1981. xv + 276 pp. $22.50.

Christopher D. Jones, Soviet Influence in Eastern Europe: Political Autonomy and the Warsaw Pact. Praeger, 1981. 322 pp. $29.95 cloth, $10.95 paperback.

Stephen Kaplan, Diplomacy of Power. Washington: Brookings Institution, 1981. 733 pp. $9.50 paper, $19.95 cloth.

Derek Leebaert (ed.), Soviet Military Thinking. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981. xii + 300 pp. £14.50 hardback, £6.95 paperback.

J. Brine, M. Perry and Andrew Sutton (eds.), Home, School and Leisure in the Soviet Union. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980. xiv + 279 pp. £15.00.

Manfred Melzer, Anlagevermögen, Produktion und Beschäftigung der Industrie im Gebiet der DDR von 1936 bis 1978, sowie Schätzung des künftigen Ange‐botspotentials. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1980. 250 pp.

Ilmari Susiluoto, The origins and development of systems thinking in the Soviet Union. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1982. 210 pp.

Michael Waller, Democratic Centralism, an Historical Commentary. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981. 155 pp. £14.50.     

A search for obligatory paternal alleles in a DNA database to find an alleged rapist in a fatherless paternity case

Abstract: A sexual assault case resulted in a pregnancy, which was subsequently aborted. The alleged father of the fetus was unknown. Maternal and fetal types were obtained using the 11‐locus AmpF?STR^® SGM Plus^® kit. The national DNA database was searched for the paternal obligatory alleles and detected two suspects who could not be excluded as father of the male fetus. Additional typing using the AmpF?STR^® Minifiler^? kit, containing three additional autosomal loci, was not sufficient to exclude either suspect. Subsequent typing using the PowerPlex^® 16, containing four additional loci, and Y‐Filer^? kits resulted in excluding one suspect. Searching a database for paternal obligatory alleles can be fruitful, but is fraught with possible false positive results so that finding a match must be taken as only preliminary evidence.     

Criminal law and behavioral law and economics: observations on the neglected role of uncertainty in deterring crime

Criminal sanctions are usually public, stable and predictable.In contrast, the practices governing the determination of theprobability of detection and conviction reinforce uncertainty.We invoke psychological insights to illustrate that criminalsprefer a scheme in which the size of the sentence is uncertainwhile the probability of detection and conviction is certain.Consequently, the choice to increase certainty with respectto the size of the sentence and to decrease certainty with respectto the probability of detection and conviction can be justifiedon the grounds that such a scheme is disfavored by criminalsand consequently has better deterrent effects.     

Oil Politics and Tribal Rulers in Eastern Arabia: The Reign of Shakhbut (1928–1966)

This paper examines one of the least known chapters of Middle Eastern history, that of Abu Dhabi before the discovery of oil. It reassesses the reign of Shakhbut bin Sultan al-Nuhayyan (1928–1966), which has been of little interest to scholars. This article's analysis has two strands. First, it examines the nature of the emirate of Abu Dhabi before the advent of oil, and in doing so looks at the complexity of tribe–state relations. Based on a kind of modus vivendi with the tribes, Shakhbut's Abu Dhabi provides some clear examples of how remote areas of tribal societies were administered. The second part of the analysis concerns developments in the 1960s, in particular the discovery of oil in Abu Dhabi and the British decision to withdraw from the Gulf and end British protection of the sheikdom and other Trucial States. These profound changes overwhelmed Shaykh Shakhbut and caused his tribal state to lose its vitality. A particular emphasis is given to the anomalous relationship between Shaykhbut and the British authorities, brought about by the changing circumstances, that eventually led to his removal from power.     

Homosexuals in Western Armed Forces

Among his books are Peacekeepers and Their Wives;and Recruiting for Uncle Sam.