Measuring Barriers to Help-Seeking Behavior in Adolescents

To construct and validate an instrument that would measure barriers to help-seeking behavior in adolescents. Method: A 37-item questionnaire based on prior help-seeking literature was constructed to yield a total score indicating strength of barriers to help-seeking behavior. The instrument was given to a sample of 280 high school students following a pilot study of 65 students. Results: The instrument was found to have good test–retest and internal reliability and adequate validity in the tested population. It shows promise in helping to identify adolescents who may be amenable to, and opposed to, therapeutic intervention, and may aid in understanding which barriers to help seeking are most significant in any given population.     

Combating Organized Financial Fraud and Money Laundering in the European Union: Recent Developments and Perspectives

In 1999 the European Union will enter the third and final stage of monetary union. The very precise timetable of economic and financial integration requires the growing de-velopment of the legal and administrative structures at Union level to prevent, to control and to punish organized financial crime at transnational level and money laundering of the proceeds of such fraud.     

Emergence of the battered woman syndrome: The impact upon the legal system

The purpose of this review article is to analyze the emergence of the battered woman syndrome and how it currently impacts the legal system. The battered woman syndrome is compared with other syndromes used in the courts and then unresolved issues surrounding the usage of the battered woman syndrome are discussed.     

Changing China

<正>Last summer,my wife and I returned to the small city of Huzhou in east China’s Zhejiang Province for the first time in three years.At the end of our stay,we visited a Buddhist temple atop a small hill near the col ege where I’d taught.As we stood on the temple’s veranda admiring the view of the sprawling city below us,an elderly nun came out of the courtyard and walked to one corner.Striking up a conversation with her,we learned that when the temple moved there about20 years ago,the same view was mostly all farmland,with only a small city center in the distance.I couldn’t imagine that.     

A rare mutation in the amelogenin gene and its potential investigative ramifications

Over the past few years, the Australian forensic science community has adopted a common methodology and technology in the application of DNA profiling for investigative and forensic purposes. The ultimate objective of this initiative is the establishment of a national DNA database similar to that used in the UK. An integral part of this methodology is the use of "Profiler Plus," a nonaplex of STRs combined with amelogenin, a locus utilized for sex determination. This paper reports the results from a case where a mutation in the annealing region of the amelogenin primers appears to have resulted in the failure to amplify the amelogenin Y-homolog from a phenotypically normal male. The result was confirmed using two different primer sets that amplify different regions of the amelogenin gene. This situation suggests that the genetic determination of sex based on the amelogenin sequences from specimens of unknown origin, such as crime scene samples, should not be considered infallible.