Bad Actor Research Articles

Setting Sights on a Bad Actor

Setting Sights on a Bad Actor

Figures du faussaire et de l’enchanteur dramaturge

In his Arthurian play Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde, Cocteau links the process of rewriting with falsification and theatricality through the character of Merlin, actor, dramatist and forger. The enchanter’s voice is transposed into disembodied or strangely-embodied voices. Merlin becomes a negative character, master of artifices and director of a bad actor, Ginifer. He can be interpreted as the double of Cocteau himself, who proposes a false genealogy of his play; he forms a contrast with two figures of the poet represented by Galaad and Ségramor. The play has been criticised for an excess of phantasmagoria and kitsch, even though Cocteau managed to transform medieval into theatrical merveilleux, using irony and subordinating it to a reflection on theatrical tricks.

T1 N0 Triple Negative Breast Cancer: A Bad Actor

T1 N0 Triple Negative Breast Cancer: A Bad Actor

Dialogue With A Neurosurgeon: Toward A Dépeçage Approach To Achieve Tort Reform And Preserve Corrective Justice In Medical Malpractice Cases

Doctors are taking their frustrations about the costs of medical malpractice insurance premiums to the street; striking and even leaving certain states where premiums are higher have been staples of the news in the last year. Politicians are responding by shifting the blame to the “tort” system, which they characterize as dominated by “greedy” trial lawyers (with the implicit accusation that the lawyers are bringing unfounded claims against “good” doctors) and “runaway” juries (with the implicit assertion that juries render plaintiffs’ verdicts in unfounded cases and give away the insurer’s money with abandon through unjustifiably generous damages awards). The “bad actor” in the shared visions of many doctors and politicians is the civil legal system itself—and the “reforms” that are being touted (such as damages caps) are blunt instruments designed, it seems, to disable the ability of the legal system to adjudicate medical malpractice claims. To the extent that the civil legal system is a contributing factor to medical malpractice insurance premiums (an important topic beyond our ken here), the problem cannot be addressed in so sweeping a fashion. There are other key interests involved—principles of law, in the sense described by Ronald Dworkin, upon which the rules of medical malpractice litigation are based. Those principles of law, including the principle of corrective justice, will be sacrificed if such heavy handed measures are adopted. The real problem, however, can be viewed as a much more subtle one, requiring finer tools of analysis to diagnose and repair. The level of subtlety is deep—as deep as the elements of the traditional prima facie case of medical malpractice, and the standard of care in particular—and requires more sophisticated analytic constructs to understand, analyze, and ultimately reform. I hope to develop some of those analytic tools in this article.

Neurological and Behavioral Consequences of Childhood Lead Exposure

Among environmental chemicals, lead's reputation as a “bad actor” is confirmed in study after study. Over the past 30 years, we have learned that its toxicities are expressed in many forms, and, unfortunately, at levels of exposure that are still prevalent in the general population. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's current screening guidelines for preventing lead poisoning in young children suggest that screening should be targeted at identifying those with a blood lead level of 10 μg/dl or more [1]. However, this level has no special biological significance and certainly should not be interpreted as “safe.” Indeed, a “safe” level has yet to be found. Two new studies published in this issue of PLoS Medicine, both from the long-running Cincinnati Lead Study (CLS), extend our knowledge of lead's effects and their societal implications [2,3].

Primary Cutaneous Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma, Leg Type: The Bad Actor in the Group

Last year, we reported on the reclassification of primary cutaneous B-cell lymphomas (PCBCLs) under the new WHO-EORTC system. A French group now

Obesity in Adolescent Girls: Is Excess Androgen the Real Bad Actor?

Obesity in Adolescent Girls: Is Excess Androgen the Real Bad Actor?

“My buzzword is better than your buzzword”

Common pump failures, such as mysterious seal and bearing problems, are typically blamed on inadequate maintenance by the mechanics. In his latest article, Larry Bachus (aka The Pump Guy®) debunks this assumption and takes a broader look at the reasons behind such pump failures, proposing a team approach to eradicating ‘bad actor’ pumps.

Improved outcome with aggressive treatment of hyperglycemia

Over the years, the standard for ideal glycemic control in diabetic patients has moved closer and closer to achieving normal blood glucose levels. This evolution has been driven primarily by improvements in our technical ability to achieve more precise control. Through this process it has become clear that in diabetic patients, the better the glycemic control, the better the outcome. Hyperglycemia, however, is not confined to diabetics. It occurs in acutely ill patients with many disorders. In addition, hyperglycemic (diabetic and nondiabetic) patients have a worse outcome, be it in the setting of an acute myocardial infarction, intracerebral hemorrhage, acute ischemic stroke, head injury, or admission to a medical-surgical intensive care unit (ICU). What has remained unsettled is which is the horse and which is the cart: is hyperglycemia and epiphenomenon, simply a market of metabolic perturbations caused by the primary insult, or is it a bad actor directly contributing to morbidity and mortality? Van den Berghe et al. have recently provided compelling data that directly address this question. In 2001, …

Health effects engineering of coal and biomass combustion particulates: influence of zinc, sulfur and process changes on potential lung injury from inhaled ash

This paper is concerned with health effects of the ash aerosol formed from the co-combustion of municipal sewage sludge (a CO 2 neutral, ostensibly ‘green’ biomass fuel) with pulverized coal. To study, and mitigate, possible lung injury caused by inhalation of these ash particles, it is useful to employ ‘Health Effects Engineering’, which involves collaboration between combustion researchers and toxicologists. Health Effects Engineering attempts to build connections between mechanisms that form particulates during the combustion process and mechanisms that cause these ill health effects. By employing the methods of Health Effects Engineering, one can determine not only which fuel attributes are likely to contribute to lung injury, but also how tendencies of the ash to cause lung injury can be engineered out of the combustion process. Initial results showed that inhalation of ash from the co-combustion of municipal sewage sludge (MSS) and pulverized coal caused much greater lung damage in mice, as measured by lung permeability increase, than that of coal ash, or MSS ash, alone. MSS contains substantial quantities of zinc but little sulfur, while coal contains sulfur but little zinc. Therefore, systematic experiments were conducted to determine the health effects of combustion generated zinc particles and zinc plus sulfur particles. Zinc without sulfur led to ‘normal’ behavior as far as lung permeability was concerned. Zinc with sulfur added led to the ‘abnormal’ behavior noted also in the coal+MSS experiments. Therefore, the bad actor was identified to be zinc together with sulfur, and that was why the co-combustion of coal and MSS caused greater lung injury than the combustion of either fuel alone. Health effects engineering can also be employed to diminish this health risk caused by burning fuels containing both zinc and sulfur. Injection of a kaolinite sorbent downstream of the flame, but above the Zn dew point, can sequester the Zn, and react it to form a new species which was shown to be relatively benign.

CONSOLIDATION AND LABOR IN ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT: A PEEK AT CLEAR CHANNEL

In the past eight years the multinational, multimedia conglomerate Clear Channel has come to exemplify what opponents of media deregulation predicted would happen as a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Before 1996, Clear Channel was merely an obscure regional player in radio and TV. Today, on the strength of $22 billion in acquisitions, the company is an international powerhouse that dominates the radio, concert and live theater industries, and is a major owner of TV stations. Clear Channel has a long history with Bush family politics, exclusively promoting a conservative agenda, and regularly engaging in partisan politics. Still, the company is somewhat unique among its peers because it has quickly developed a near‐uniform reputation as a bad actor and has drawn comparisons to Wal‐Mart because of the way it victimizes workers, competitors, communities, and consumers. The company is overwhelmingly nonunion, and actively seeks to undermine work and employment standards for its employees. Clear Channel presents a huge organizing challenge to unions, because left unchecked, many of its worst cost‐cutting practices threaten to become the industry standard.

Communicating Effectively for Successful Hostage Negotiations and Crisis Intervention

ABSTRACT Whether it is a barricaded crisis situation or negotiations with a bad actor holding hostages, the keys to success are the skills of the negotiator or intervener to effectively communicate. Little else matters if communications is not established, maintained and utilized in such a way that management of the instant situation becomes possible. Most negotiators think that they are effective communicators. Some are. Many are not. Communications must be practiced over and over again to assure proficiency. This article provides the rudiments of the skills needed for success in the field.

All roads lead to runx: Several autoimmune diseases share one bad actor

All roads lead to runx: Several autoimmune diseases share one bad actor

Foreword: Addressing the Real World of Racial Injustice in the Criminal Justice System

U.S. Supreme Court criminal procedure jurisprudence inhabits an unreal world where law enforcement abuse of power and racist law enforcement practices are rare. The defendant who attempts to challenge this “raceless world” by making a claim of racially biased prosecution faces the nearly impossible task of proving that prosecutors acted with an intent to discriminate. The Supreme Court’s opinions in United States v. Armstrong and United States v. Bass made this task all that more difficult by holding that to gain discovery to support a selective prosecution claim, the defendant must first prove that “similarly situated” whites were treated more favorably. As Gabriel Chin summarizes: “one cannot even get discovery without evidence, and one can rarely get evidence which will satisfy a court without discovery.” In this article, I address the “real world” of criminal law enforcement. In the first section, I discuss the overwhelming empirical evidence of the criminal justice system’s unjust and unequal treatment of African Americans and Latinos. In section two, I criticize the Court’s response in Armstrong and Bass to claims of racially biased prosecution, demonstrating that the “similarly situated” standard is an indeterminate standard: by focusing on one potential area of similarity and ignoring others, courts hostile to these claims easily find that the defendant has failed to meet his burden. Finally, in the third section, I discuss the most prominent rationale for race disparities in federal drug enforcement arrests and prosecution: federal agents are focusing on violent street gangs engaged in large-scale drug trafficking and these gangs are predominantly African American in membership. The validity of the claim is weakened by research that finds that most federal prisoners convicted on drug charges are non-violent offenders and most are not affiliated with a criminal organization. Furthermore, it is largely impossible to disaggregate racial differences in arrests and prosecution that are the result of enforcement patterns from those that are the result of actual differences in offending. In the final analysis, the decision to define some drug sellers as gang members, some organizations as “gangs,” and to ascribe the violent behavior of some gang members to that of others is wholly within the discretion of the prosecutor and not subject to proof requirements. In the final section, I examine the potential for change in the racist operation of the criminal justice system. Changing white misperceptions of crime and criminal offending have the potential to result in legislative and policy changes. I identify four obstacles to changing white perceptions: (1) deeply imbedded racist stereotypes of black criminality; (2) the tendency of whites to understand race discrimination only in terms of intentional acts of a bad actor; (3) the invisibility of white privilege to whites. In conclusion, I examine the Innocence Movement for its potential to be a vehicle for challenging white support, or complacency regarding, racial injustice in the criminal justice system.

Bad, Mad, Sad or Rational Actor? Why the ‘Securitization’ Paradigm Makes for Poor Policy Analysis of North Korea

Bad, Mad, Sad or Rational Actor? Why the ‘Securitization’ Paradigm Makes for Poor Policy Analysis of North Korea

The Effect of the Surgeon and the Pathologist on Patient Survival After Resection of Colon and Rectal Cancer

The Effect of the Surgeon and the Pathologist on Patient Survival After Resection of Colon and Rectal Cancer

This month in J Lab Clin Med: Issue highlights for March 2002

This month in J Lab Clin Med: Issue highlights for March 2002

Belarus at the Crossroads by Sherman W. s> Garnett Robert Levgold (review)

570 SEER, 79, 3, 200I Machonic and Milan Tucek), Slovakia (John A. Gould and Sofia Szomolanyi), Hungary (Rudolf Tokes), Poland (Bogdan Mach and Wlodzimierz Weslowski), East Germany (Christian Wezel), and Serbia (Mladen Lazic); five chapters deal with economic elite change in Croatia (Dusko Sekulic and Zeljka Sporer), Hungary (Lengyel and Attila Bartha), amongst the Russian oil elite (David Lane), Bulgaria (Dobrinka Kostova) and comparatively in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (Akos R6na-Tas and J6sef Borocz). However, although the case study chapters generally confirm that the nature of elite configurations and elite circulation matter and are very worthwhile studies in their own right, they do not fully validate the theoretical framework of the first chapter. Higley and Lengyel's framework is used sparingly in the case study chapters. Only one chapter, the contribution by Gould and Szomolanyi on Slovakia comes close to using the Higley and Lengyel framework. The chapter on Serbia uses terms that are broadly comparable, but most of the other chapters simply, and not unreasonably, take circulation of elites to equate with progress away from state socialism. The uneven coverage also does not help to demonstrate the utility of the framework since complementary analysis of economic and political elites is provided for too few cases. Moreover, even where both a country's political and economic elite is covered, the terms of analysis are generally different so that lesson-drawing is complicated. Finally, although the marriage of elite theory and transitology is interesting, its development here is not sufficient to overcome the problems that beset transitological analysis such as that produced by Linz and Stepan. The problem of Linz and Stepan's work was that it was difficult to see how their classification of regimes added to analysis by explaining variance. The same is true of Higley and Lengyel's model. To put it at its simplest, if both Russia and Hungary were both post-totalitarian (as in Linz and Stepan's analysis) since they had unified elites (as in Higley and Lengyel's analysis), how do xve account for different outcomes? Elite configuration, just like the Linz and Stepan classification of regime types, explains nothing on its own. Higley and Lengyel recognise this by introducing institutional variance as a factor in both the collapse of state socialism and post-socialist development, but this in itself begs two questions: what caused and causes this variance and what is the dependent and independent variable, elite configuration/regime type or institutional design? Elite theory is not yet an answer to all of the problems that transitology has run into when confronted by post-communism. This is an interesting book that has many fine chapters and contains some interesting ideas, but it is not as path-breaking as the preface would lead us to believe. Department of Government andSociety NEIL ROBINSON UniversityofLimerick Garnett, Sherman W., and Levgold, Robert (eds). Belarusat theCrossroads. Carnegie Endowment for InternationalPeace, Washington,D.C., I999. vi + I99 pp. Map. Notes. $12.95 (paperback). THERE arefew good books on modern Belarus,and this is undoubtedlyone of the best. Its focus is mainly on geopolitics, but there is also a consistent REVIEWS 57I emphasis on the link between foreign and domestic politics, as in Belarus so much depends on how President Lukashenka himself interprets the geopolitical. The authors' starting point is that so 'much of Western opinion' about Belarus'restson analyticallythin ice' (p. I75). As a consequence, the country now 'occupiesthe worstof two worlds'(p. I31): it is eithercompletely ignored or assumedto be on its way back to Russia. All too often, despite its strategic location at so many 'crossroads' and interlocking regional 'subdivisions', Belarus 'falls through the cracks' (p. i) and fails to receive the attention it warrants. The authors do not dispute that this is in no small part because President Lukashenka has been 'increasingly viewed as a "bad actor", capriciousand authoritarian'(p. 137), but they arguethat Belarus'splace and position merit a reassessment.'By the accident of geography', they contend, 'Belarus'srole in Europe cannot be reduced to the bad example it setsamong states making the post-Soviet transition. Its location makes its role broader and more basic' (p. 5). Despite tragicomic episodes such...

God Bless Buffalo Bill

William E (Buffalo Bill) Cody gave Americans a real version of the West that depicted Indians as raw savages, cowboys as chivalrous knights, and both as products of nature. Courageous pioneers versus savage Indians seemed as natural an opposition as sun and moon. The Wild West (the term was omitted from the title to indicate that this was no fantasy), announced Cody's publicists, not the result of rehearsal, it is not acting, it is nature itself (Reddin, p. 61). Perhaps that is indictment enough against Cody and his Wild West show. Both Cody and his show sponsored, celebrated, and commemorated a racialized form of imperialism. Yet, as Joy Kasson (professor of American studies and English at the University of North Carolina) and Paul Reddin (professor of history at Mesa State College Colorado) show two new books on wild west shows, Buffalo Bill leaves us a quandary. It is impossible to celebrate Buffalo Bill wholeheartedly; yet it is impossible to condemn him outright. He did, after all, give Americans and Europeans of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries first-rate modern spectacles. Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows involved constant action, horsemanship, sharp shooting, and glitter enough for the Grand Ole Opry, putting the Wild West show a league with P.T. Barnum's circuses. More important, who would condemn a man who apologizes to a friend for being slow to respond to a letter because he had been in a hell of a toot (i.e., drunk), and who shouts to his wife the middle of a third-rate stage melodrama, Hello Mama! Oh, but I'm a bad actor (Reddin, p. 57)? Buffalo Bill was an ingenuous soul, at least the early stages of his entertainment career, and he defies simple judgment. The resurrection of Buffalo Bill, if he needs resurrecting, is far from complete, yet the more human he seems, the more likable he becomes. L.G.

Bad, Mad, Sad or Rational Actor? Why the ‘Securitization’ Paradigm makes for Poor Policy Analysis of North Korea

This article argues that the dominant paradigm for understanding and explaining north Korean domestic and international politics is in crisis. The dominant securitization paradigm is divided into its ‘bad’ and ‘mad’ elements and is derived from the crudest of Cold War politics and theories. The paradigm no longer provides a useful frame of reference for international policy-makers having to ‘do business’ with north Korea. The intervention of the humanitarian community in north Korea since 1995 has both shown the obsolescence of the securitization paradigm and provided the foundation for two alternative approaches—the ‘sad’ and the ‘rational actor’ conceptual framework. The article concludes by arguing for the utility of a historicized and contextualized rational actor model which, it is argued, offers a realistic underpinning for international policies that seriously wish to promote peace, stability and freedom from hunger on the Korean peninsula. South Korea's ‘sunshine’ policy is cited as one example of such an approach.