Re-assessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers

The study of the core executive has been dominated by discussion of the Prime Ministers and Cabinet with only limited serious treatment paid to ministers. However, ministers and departments are crucial actors in the core executive. This article examines the multiple roles and varying impacts of ministers. More particularly, we initially develop a classification of ministerial roles, which builds upon, but develops, work by Headey, James and Norton. Subsequently, we use this classification to pose two key questions. Which roles do particular ministers stress? In what ways has the balance between these roles changed in the last twenty‐five years?     

An attempt to detect “pregnancy susceptibility” in indigent adolescent girls

Programs for widespread dissemination of birth control information and devices among adolescents are subject to strong resistance from many groups and may be ineffective anyway. An alternative approach to reducing the alarming frequency of unplanned pregnancy among unmarried adolescents might be group or individual counseling for those most susceptible, to unplanned pregnancies. Accurate identification would be necessary to implement this alternative. Developed in this paper is an inferential strategy for identifying in well-defined groups unmarried adolescents who seem susceptible. When carefully evaluated, an inferential strategy, based, on several concepts from Bayesian inference theory, appears remarkably accurate as a means of identification. Besides specific predicReceived her M. A. in education and Ph.D. in psychology at University of Houston. Main interest was adult development. Deceased in 1971.Received his M.D. from Baylor Pediatric internship and residency at University of Michigan Hospital. Main interest is adult development.Received his Ph.D. in psychology at Ohio State University. Main interest is probability (decision) theory.Received her Ph.D. in educational psychology at University of Texas in Austin. Main interest is adult development.Received from M.D. Johns Hopkins, School of Medicine. Main interest is obstetrics and gynecology.Received her M.A. in English at Southern Methodist University. Main interest is research communications.     

Participation in and frequency of delinquent behavior: A test for structural differences

In this paper we address whether there are distinctive differences in the processes determining participation in offending vs frequency of offending. We develop a number of tests to examine not only whether the correlates of participation and frequency are similar but also whether the same underlying statistical model is consistent with the data on both these dimensions of a criminal career. The tests are applied using data from the first two waves of the National Youth Survey. While the findings are not without ambiguities, they do not support the idea that distinguishing among the dimensions of a criminal career is a fundamental requirement for conducting sound research on the causes of crime and delinquency.     

Quantification and aging of the post-blast residue of TNT landmines

Post-blast residues are potential interferents to chemical detection of landmines. To assess the potential problem related to 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT), its post-blast residue was identified and quantified. In the first part of this study laboratory-scale samples of TNT (2 g) were detonated in a small-scale explosivity device (SSED) to evaluate the explosive power and collect post-blast residue for chemical analysis. Initiator size was large relative to the TNT charge; thus, issues arose regarding choice of initiator, residue from the initiator, and afterburning of TNT. The second part of this study detonated 75 to 150 g of military-grade TNT (typical of antipersonnel mines) in 55-gal barrels containing various witness materials (metal plates, sand, barrel walls, the atmosphere). The witness materials were analyzed for explosive residue. In a third set of tests, 75-g samples of TNT were detonated over soil (from Fort Leonard Wood or Sandia National Laboratory) in an indoor firing chamber (100 by 4.6 by 2.7 m high). Targeted in these studies were TNT and four explosive-related compounds (ERC): 2,4-dinitrotoluene (DNT), 1,3-dinitrobenzene (DNB), 2- and 4-aminodinitrotoluene (2-ADNT and 4-ADNT). The latter two are microbial degradation products of TNT. Post-blast residue was allowed to age in the soils as a function of moisture contents (5 and 10%) in order to quantify the rate of degradation of the principal residues (TNT, DNT, and DNB) and formation of the TNT microbial degradation products (2-ADNT and 4-ADNT). The major distinction between landmine leakage and post-blast residue was not the identity of the species but relative ratios of amounts. In landmine leakage the DNT/TNT ratio was usually greater than 1. In post-blast residue it was on the order of 1 to 1/100th of a percent, and the total amount of pre-blast residue (landmine leakage) was a factor of 1/100 to 1/1000 less than post-blast. In addition, landmine leakage resulted in low DNT/ADNT ratios, usually less than 1, whereas pre-blast residues started with ratios above 20. Because with time DNT decreased and ADNT increased, over a month the ratio decreased by a factor of 2. The rate of TNT degradation in soil observed in this study was much slower than that reported when initial concentrations of TNT were lower. Degradation rates yielded half-lives of 40 and 100 days for 2,4-DNT and TNT, respectively.     

'The story of Abraham,Isaac and Jacob" or "am I my brother's keeper?"

Presented is a case report of a violent sexual assault where the DNA profile obtained from an item of evidence was compared to a suspect's profile. The profiles did not match, but the sharing of such a large number of alleles raised the suspicion that perhaps the real perpetrator was a blood relative of the suspect. The investigators requested a sample from the suspect's brother, and a match was defined. In an era of technological breakthroughs in the field of forensic DNA analysis, the importance of the scientist's attention to the evidence presented in each case is stressed.     

The gander disaster: dental identification in a military tragedy

The authors record the contributions of dentistry to the identification of victims of one of the most significant disasters in aviation and U.S. military history--the December 1985 crash of a DC-8 charter airliner near Gander, Newfoundland (now known as Newfoundland and Labrador), Canada, which killed 248 Army personnel and 8 crewmembers. Most of the dental records of the military victims were destroyed in the crash, and, as a result, this loss hampered dental identification. Nevertheless, dental identification was the primary means of identification for many because a very high percentage of the bodies were severely burned and fragmented. Many phases of the U.S. identification efforts have been reported, but the dental-investigation aspects have been mentioned only in passing. Therefore, this article documents the dental team's organization, methodology, and a variety of remarkable problems that the team encountered.     

Comparison of daily urine,sweat, and skin swabs among cocaine users

This study (1) compares urine, skin swabs, and PharmChek sweat patches for monitoring drug use; (2) measures possible environmental contamination in recent cocaine (COC) users; and (3) evaluates various immunoassays (IA) for screening COC in diverse matrices. Unique aspects include daily urine monitoring of 10 participants for 4 weeks, multiple monitoring methods, analysis for all specimens by IA and gas chromatography (GC)/mass spectrometry (MS), and the potential for continued illicit drug use by participants. Urine served as the "gold standard" specimen for determining drug use. Only cocaine and related substances were detected.Trace amounts of drugs were found on the skin (<50 ng per swab) of urine-negative participants' hands or forehead. In contrast, larger quantities of COC were found on the skin of individuals with BE-positive urines or individuals living with drug users (up to 20 microg per swab). Patch COC amounts among the three regular users (250-9000, 0-240, 160-22,000 ng per patch) exceeded BE (50-950, none, 30-2200 ng per patch). Pre-swabs, valuable for interpreting the source or time frame of positive patch results, contained substantial COC (38-1160, 0-152, 34-762 ng per swab) prior to patch application; therefore, patch results may represent current use, prior use, contamination, or a combination. In three individuals with no indication of cocaine use, false positives (defined as sweat patch positive when urine specimens were <300ng BE/ml) occurred at a 7% rate. Proposed cut-off concentrations of 75 ng cocaine per patch and 300 ng BE/ml urine curtail the incidence of false positives in this limited population. Three immunoassays were compared to screen specimens for cocaine: a modified, manual Microgenics CEDIA; a Cozart ELISA; and an OraSure ELISA. CEDIA's limit of detection (LOD) was 81ng/ml, compared with LODs of 4 ng/ml for the Cozart ELISA and 1.5 ng/ml for the OraSure ELISA. Cozart correlated with OraSure results for COC concentrations <2000 ng per swab (n=117), r(2)=0.79.     

Jürgen Habermas's Theory of Cosmopolitanism

In this paper we explore the sustained and multifaceted attempt of Jürgen Habermas to reconstruct Kant's theory of cosmopolitan right for our own times. In a series of articles written in the post‐1989 period, Habermas has argued that the challenge posed both by the catastrophes of the twentieth century, and by social forces of globalization, has given new impetus to the idea of cosmopolitan justice that Kant first expressed. He recognizes that today we cannot simply repeat Kant's eighteenth‐century vision: that if we are to grapple with the complexities of present‐day problems, it is necessary to iron out certain inconsistencies in Kant's thinking, radicalize it where its break from the old order of nation‐states is incomplete, socialize it so as to draw out the connections between perpetual peace and social justice, and modernize it so as to comprehend the “differences both in global situation and conceptual framework that now separate us from him.” ¹ 1 Karl‐Otto Apel, “Kant's Toward Perpetual Peace as historical prognosis from the point of view of moral duty,” in James Bohman and Matthias Lutz‐Bachmann, eds., Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant's Cosmopolitan Ideal (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1997), 87. Jürgen Habermas, “Kant's Idea of Perpetual Peace, with the Benefit of Two Hundred Years Hindsight,” ibid., 113–53; and in Jürgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 165–202. His basic intuition, however, is that Kant's idea of cosmopolitan right is as relevant to our times as it was to Kant's own. If it was Kant's achievement to formulate the idea of cosmopolitanism in a modern philosophical form, Habermas takes up the challenge posed by Karl‐Otto Apel: to “think with Kant against Kant” in reconstructing this idea. What follows is a critical assessment of Habermas's response to this challenge. We focus here on the dilemmas he faces in grounding his normative commitment to cosmopolitan politics and in reconciling his cosmopolitanism with the national framework in which he developed his ideas of constitutional patriotism and deliberative democracy.