住房公积金制度对公务员住房消费的支持作用分析

本文提出,住房公积金制度对公务员住房消费具有促进住房消费资金的自我积累、实现住房消费互助、提供实现住房平滑消费的低成本信用工具、供给政策与商业性个人住房消费贷款组合产品、丰富住房分配货币化和住房保障途径等重要作用,并对这些作用的重要性进行了分析,以期为做好公务员的住房公积金管理工作提供理论依据。     

‘The backbone of the village’: gender,development, and traditional authority in rural Zanzibar

Recent processes of political decentralisation and the parallel movements asserting indigenous identity and autochthony have led to a resurgence of academic interest in ‘traditional’ and local forms of leadership and authority. Based on ethnographic research on the hirimu age-set system and related forms of traditional authority in the Zanzibari village of Jongowe, this article explores how these systems rooted in local history and identity are mitigated by contemporary national and international political circumstances. By examining how ‘traditional’ systems both create and circumscribe space for gendered expressions of power and how they work with the emerging forms of non-governmental organisation characteristic of contemporary development, the article considers how these dynamic local systems of governance maintain their legitimacy through both association with the past and engagement with contemporary politics. It argues for an understanding of ‘traditional authority’ that expands beyond hereditary leadership positions, and suggests that such forms of power, though embedded in historical collective identity, are expressions of contemporary forms of governance.     

A critique of quantitative measures of the degree of democracy in Israel

The question addressed in this study is: ‘How accurate and meaningful are quantitative measures of the degree of democracy in Israel?’ With the increasing use of such measures in studies of democracy, an answer to this question becomes increasingly important. The Freedom House and Polity IV measures of democracy in Israel contend that there is a very high level of democracy, but their characterization is contradicted sharply by the views of many scholars. In seeking to account for this contradiction, we will assess the accuracy and meaningfulness of the two quantitative measures. We find that both empirical and conceptual problems affect the utility of the measures. Empirical inaccuracies are suggested by three findings: the role in Israel's democracy of the largest minority group, the Israeli Arabs, is ignored or substantially discounted; the discrepancies between the two indices suggest that at least one of them is not capturing empirical reality accurately; and neither index seems very sensitive to democracy-related events in the country. The degree to which these empirical findings are indicators of inaccuracies is dependent upon the conceptualization of democracy. Conceptually, the indices differ from each other and from the concepts used by many others who examine Israeli democracy. Two conclusions are reached: the indices measure imperfectly what they call Israeli ‘democracy’. Furthermore, a prima facie look at the scores characterizing democracy in other countries suggests that the ‘democracy’ they measure in Israel is not the same as the ‘democracy’ they measure elsewhere. The implications are several: on the academic side, the accuracy of general knowledge developed using these measures becomes questionable. On the practical side, the indices contribute little to knowledge that may be applied to overcoming the complex problems democracy in Israel is facing or the building of democracy in other countries of the Middle East. Thus, their accuracy and meaningfulness is limited.     

汶川地震应对经验与应急管理中国模式的建构路径——基于强政府与强社会的互动视角

巨灾的频发使得风险治理的公共政策系统受到巨大挑战。由于特定的危机形势和政策制定系统的局限性,造成了各种各样的政策困境,尤其是汶川地震促使我们重新审视国家力量在巨灾应对中与社会力量之间的互动关系。基于以上背景,本文试图通过研究团队三年多来针对汶川地震应对的全景式实证性研究,并结合中国应急管理系统建设发展的历史性回顾揭示出相应的挑战和机遇,探索一个基于强政府与强社会互动的分析视角和发展路径。     

The temporal fate of drugs in decomposing porcine tissue

Drug levels in decomposed individuals are difficult to interpret. Concentrations of 16 drugs were monitored in tissues (blood, brain, liver, kidney, muscle, and soil) from decomposing pigs for 1 week. Pigs were divided into groups (n = 5) with each group receiving four drugs. Drug cocktails were prepared from pharmaceutical formulations. Intracardiac pentobarbital sacrifice was 4 h after dosing, with tissue collection at 4, 24, 48, 96, and 168 h postdosing. Samples were frozen until assay. Detection and quantitation of drugs were through solid phase extraction followed by gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer analysis. Brain and kidneys were not available after 48 h; liver and muscle persisted for 1 week. Concentration of drugs increased during decomposition. During 1 week of decomposition, muscle showed average levels increasing but concentrations in liver were increased many fold, compared to muscle. Attempting to interpret drug levels in decomposed bodies may lead to incorrect conclusions about cause and manner of death.