The “Perverse Result” of Disability Rights: Deregulating Care Workers’ Labor Unions in the Supreme Court

In Harris v. Quinn (2014), the United States Supreme Court used disability rights rhetoric of independence and control to argue that disabled people—not the State—are the real employers of in-home care workers. Consequently, the State cannot force care workers to pay labor union fees. Justice Alito’s majority decision interprets the employment contract as a capacity contract: a device that uses the recognition of equal cognitive capacity to obscure domination. Alito ignored the vulnerability of disabled people and in-home care workers to legitimize neoliberal cutbacks. In her dissent, Justice Kagan argued that disabled people, care workers, and the State forge multiple and iterative contracts. Using Kagan’s dissent, Charles Mills’s critique of ideal theory, and Susan Burgess and Christine Keating’s participatory social contract, I argue that an emancipatory contract must replace cognitive capacity as the condition of membership with the recognition of shared human vulnerability amid oppressive conditions.     

A validated SPME-GC-MS method for simultaneous quantification of club drugs in human urine

A solid-phase microextraction-gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric (SPME-GC-MS) method has been developed and validated for measuring four club drugs in human urine. These drugs include gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), ketamine (KET), methamphetamine (MAMP), and methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). These drugs are referred to as 'club drugs' because of their prevalence at parties and raves. Deuterium labeled internal standards for each of the four drugs was included in the assay to aid in quantitation. The drugs were spiked into human urine and derivatized using pyridine and hexylchloroformate to make them suitable for GC-MS analysis. The SPME conditions of extraction time/temperature and desorption time/temperature were optimized to yield the highest peak area for each of the four drugs. The final SPME parameters included a 90 degrees C extraction for 20min with a 1min desorption in the GC injector at 225 degrees C using a splitless injection. All SPME work was done using a 100microm PDMS fiber by Supelco. The ratio of pyridine to hexylchloroformate for derivatization was also optimized. The GC separation was carried out on a VF-5ht column by Varian (30m, 0.25mm i.d., 0.10microm film thickness) using a temperature program of 150-270 degrees C at 10 degrees C/min. The instrument used was a ThermoFinnigan Trace GC-Polaris Q interfaced with a LEAP CombiPal autosampler. The data was collected by using extracted ion chromatograms of marker m/z values for each drug from the total ion chromatograms (TIC) (full scan mode). Calibration curves with R(2)>0.99 were generated each day using the peak area ratios (peak area drug/peak area internal standard) versus concentration. The validated method resulted in intra-day and inter-day precision (% R.S.D.) of less than 15% and a % error of less than 15% for four concentrations in the range of 0.05-20microg/mL (MAMP) and 0.10-20microg/mL (GHB, KET, and MDMA). This method has the advantage of an easy sample preparation with acceptable accuracy and precision for the simultaneous quantification of these four drugs of abuse and shows no interference from the urine matrix.     

The persistence of early childhood physical aggression: Examining maternal delinquency and offending,mental health,and cultural differences

Purpose

To examine the persistence of physical aggression in preschoolers and associated correlates (i.e., socio-demographic, socioeconomic, criminality, parenting practices, maternal mental health).

Methods

One-year follow-ups are completed with 240 mothers and their preschool children (boys and girls) from the Vancouver Longitudinal Study on the Psychosocial Development of Children. A series of structural equation models are examined.

Results

Maternal psychological symptoms, juvenile delinquency, and adult offending are associated with higher levels of physical aggression in their offspring. Children of non-Caucasian mothers and those born outside of North are less physically aggressive. Cultural differences in the correlates of physical aggression were identified.

Conclusions

Maternal past delinquency, current adult offending, and mental health are important factors in the development of children’s physical aggression. The findings suggest that there are multiple pathways leading to chronic physical aggression, which may be culturally-based. Cultural differences should be taken into account when developing programs and intervening with families of children with behavioral problems.     

Self-Reported Communication Variables and Dating Violence: Using Gottman’s Marital Communication Conceptualization

Communication behaviors, while extensively studied within the marital field, have received only peripheral attention in violent dating relationships. The purpose of this research was to better establish empirical continuity between the marital and dating literatures by exploring communication variables that have been identified in marital relationships broadly and their self-reported manifestation in violent dating relationships. Using Gottman’s (1999) marital communication conceptualization, individuals were assessed on adaptive and maladaptive communication variables and relationship aggression. Results suggested that negative communication behaviors were associated with, and predicted, aggression in participants’ dating relationships, consistent with findings from the marital literature. However, repair attempts, generally considered an adaptive communication behavior, predicted aggression victimization. Implications and how these data fit within the context of recent research on positive marital communication behaviors are explored.