Structural and Textural Dimensions of Territorial State Organisation

In the framework of devolution, British scholars have inquired how to assess the constitutional position of the local government in the UK and its effect for improving or hindering autonomy and democracy at the local level. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the same topic from a more general and comparative perspective, combining conceptual tools of continental public law and political science. To do this the paper proposes to differentiate three concepts of territorial state configuration. These concepts are territorial structure, territorial texture, and vertical diffusion of state authority. This paper asserts that the confusion of these three dimensions has not only impaired an adequate assessment of the constitutional position of local governments, but that the structural dimension has been under-theorised, thus distorting measurements of subnational authority. Moreover, scholars have underestimated structural constraints upon changes in the local government position within the polity. Finally, an operationalisation of the new findings is offered by plotting selected countries in a Cartesian system comparing them from the perspective of territorial structure and vertical authority diffusion.     

The Spanish Intelligence Community: A Diffuse Reality

The functioning and composition of the Spanish Intelligence Community is not regulated in detail by any legal regulations, and neither the intelligence service nor the government have specified these despite the repeated references they make to them. This article sets out to establish what actually constitutes the Intelligence Community in Spain; thus, after a brief theoretical discussion in which the two major categories of members – consumers and producers – are identified, a model of the intelligence community in Spain is set forth on the basis of the interrelations between its members and their roles in the decision-making process. In its preparation, besides analyzing the existing legislation, 52 interviews were carried out with individual participants in all the structures, so as to reach an understanding of the role played by each one, to evaluate its performance and to propose some guidelines for improvement.     

Assessment of age and sex by means of DXA bone densitometry: application in forensic anthropology

An effective way to reveal the history of drug abuse is to determine the parental drug and its metabolites in hair. Here, a quantitative HPLC-Chip-MS/MS method was developed for simultaneous measurement of ketamine and its metabolite norketamine in human hair. Ketamine and norketamine were extracted from hair by acid hydrolysis, and then enriched by organic solvent extraction. The chromatographic separation was achieved in 15 min, with the drug identification and quantification by a tandem mass spectrometer. The linear regression analysis was calibrated by deuterated internal standards with a R(2) of over 0.996. The limit of detection (LOD) and the limit of quantification (LOQ) for ketamine and norketamine were 0.5 and 1 pg/mg of hair, respectively. The standard curves were linear from the value of LOQ up to 100 pg/mg of hair. The validation parameters including selectivity, accuracy, precision, stability and matrix effect were also determined. In conclusion, this method was able to reveal the present of ketamine and norketamine with less hair from the drug abusers, and which had the sensitivity of ～1000-fold higher than the conventional method. In addition, the amount of ketamine and norketamine being detected in different hair segments would be useful in revealing the historical record of ketamine uptake in the drug abusers.     

Psychological and behavioral adjustment in female youths with high or low psychopathic traits

The aim of the present study was to analyze the role of psychopathic traits in female juvenile delinquency. Using a sample of 236 young females from the Juvenile Detention Centers of the Portuguese Ministry of Justice and schools in the Lisbon area, a group of female youths with high psychopathic traits (n = 118; M = 15.84 years of age; range = 14–18 years of age) and a group of female youths with low psychopathic traits (n = 118; M = 15.77 years of age; range = 14–18 years of age) were formed based on the Portuguese version of the Antisocial Process Screening Device-Self-report (APSD-SR). The results showed that young females with high psychopathic traits start engaging in criminal activities and come into contact with the justice system earlier in life; exhibit higher levels of behavioral problems, conduct disorder, delinquent behaviors and serious criminality; and demonstrate lower levels of self-esteem and pro-social behavior. The importance of some variables in predicting group membership (high versus low psychopathic traits) was established through a binary logistic regression. Our findings reinforce the importance of the psychopathy construct for the early identification of potentially high-risk female youths and for the assessment of female youths who have already come into contact with the judicial system.     

A comparative pharmacokinetic study of ethanol in the blood, vitreous humour and aqueous humour of rabbits

The pharmacokinetics of ethanol in the blood, vitreous humour and aqueous humour of the rabbit after intravenous administration of single dose have been compared. Ethanol levels were determined by gas-liquid chromatography. Certain parallelism between ethanol levels in these body fluids were observed after 80 min.     

Use of solid-phase microextraction (SPME) for the determination of methadone and EDDP in human hair by GC-MS

Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) is a new extraction technique with many advantages: small sample volume, simplicity, quickness and solvent-free. It is mainly applied to environmental analysis, but is also useful for the extraction of drugs from biological samples. In this paper the use of SPME is proposed for the determination of methadone and its main metabolite EDDP in hair by GC-MS. The hair samples were washed, cut into 1-mm segments, and incubated with Pronase E for 12 h. A 100-micron polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) film fibre was submerged for 30 min in a diluted solution of the hydrolysis liquid (1:4 with borax buffer) containing methadone-d3 and EDDP-d3 as internal standards. Once the microextraction was concluded the fibre was directly inserted into the CG injection port. Linearity was found for methadone and EDDP in the range studied, 1.0-50 ng/mg hair, with correlation coefficients higher than 0.99. Interassay relative standard deviation (R.S.D) was determined to be less than 13.30% for methadone and less than 8.94% for EDDP, at 3.0 and 30.0 ng/mg. Analytical recoveries were close to 100% for both compounds on spiked samples. The method was applied to the analysis of real hair samples from eight patients of a methadone maintenance programme. The concentration of methadone in hair ranged from 2.45 to 78.10 ng/mg, and for EDDP from 0.98 to 7.76 ng/mg of hair.