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This review surveys anthropological and other social research on bureaucratic documents. The fundamental insight of this literature is that documents are not simply instruments of bureaucratic organizations, but rather are constitutive of bureaucratic rules, ideologies, knowledge, practices, subjectivities, objects, outcomes, even the organizations themselves. It explores the reasons why documents have been late to come under ethnographic scrutiny and the implications for our theoretical understandings of organizations and methods for studying them. The review argues for the great value of the study of paper-mediated documentation to the study of electronic forms, but it also highlights the risk of an exclusive focus on paper, making anthropology marginal to the study of core bureaucratic practices in the manner of earlier anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many social scientists rely on the rule of law in their accounts of political or economic development. Many, however, simply equate law with a stable government capable of enforcing the rules generated by a political authority. As two decades of largely failed efforts to build the rule of law in poor and transition countries and continuing struggles to build international legal order demonstrate, we still do not understand how legal order is produced, especially in places where it does not already exist. We here canvas literature in the social sciences to identify the themes and gaps in the existing accounts. We conclude that this literature has failed to produce a microfoundational account of the phenomenon of legal order. We then discuss our recent effort to develop the missing microfoundations of legal order to provide a better framework for future work on the rule of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interdisciplinary research has long been suspect within the disciplines. Because the disciplines control recruitment, tenure, and promotion, it is difficult for interdisciplinary scholarship to gain traction in the academic world. Within socio-legal scholarship, the Law and Society Association has been instrumental in fostering interdisciplinary and, more recently, transnational research. The association's latest and certainly one of its most promising interdisciplinary and international initiatives is the creation of Collaborative Research Networks (CRNs). These CRNs, while of relatively recent origin, have already contributed impressively. On the one hand, they have established structures and processes that provide opportunities, training, and rewards for interdisciplinary scholars. On the other hand, the CRNs have demonstrated the multiplicity of ways in which socio-legal scholarship can bring all manner of research tools to bear on topics that cross disciplinary and national boundaries--incorporating the global and the local as well as the mediating forces and institutions betwixt and between.public [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global environmental standards are emerging as an increasingly important influence on the environmental performance of industry. In this chapter, we develop a new definition and a categorization of global environmental standards that reflect the different agents involved in their development and the particular network architecture through which environmental standards achieve global reach. We examine new forms of global environmental standards, such as firm-based standards and standards initiated by third-party organizations, such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and industry associations. The growing interest in global environmental standards is shown to arise from processes of economic globalization as well as from increasing external pressure on firms and industries with respect to environmental concerns. The chapter reviews what is known about the prevalence of different types of global environmental standards and the efficacy of these standards in influencing the environmental performance of firms and industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on organizations is increasingly informed by analysis of community context. Community can be conceptualized as sets of relations between organizational forms or as places where organizations are located in resource space or in geography, In both modes, organizations operate interdependently with social institutions and with other units of social structure. Because such relationships channel flows of resources, opportunities are granted or withheld from social actors depending in part on their organization connections. Such considerations encourage analyses of organizations in ways that spread the relevance of results beyond organizationally defined research problem areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is it possible for people to join their way to good citizenship? Contemporary thinking, both academic and popular, often leaves the impression that it is, but a careful investigation of the evidence raises serious doubts. In actuality, belonging to voluntary associations is a woefully inadequate foundation for good citizenship for three primary reasons: People join groups that are homogeneous, not heterogeneous; civic participation does not lead to, and may turn people away from, political participation; and not all groups promote democratic values. Good citizens need to learn that democracy is messy, inefficient, and conflict-ridden. Voluntary associations do not teach these lessons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Watson & Crick's 1953 description of the structure of DNA, significant progress has been achieved in the control of congenital disorders, most of which has benefited industrialized countries. Little advantage accrued to developing nations, most of which in the same time frame achieved a significant epidemiological transition, resulting in congenital disorders attaining public health significance. The burden of congenital disorders in these lower-resource countries is high and they need to develop medical genetic services. We present a new pragmatic approach for the care and prevention of congenital disorders in these countries, pioneered initially by the World Health Organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until the late 1990s the rich Hyades and the sparse UMa clusters were the only coeval, comoving concentrations of stars known within 60 pc of Earth. Both are hundreds of millions of years old. Then beginning in the late 1990s the TW Hydrae Association, the Tucana/Horologium Association, the β Pictoris Moving Group, and the AB Doradus Moving Group were identified within ∼60 pc of Earth, and the η Chamaeleontis cluster was found at 97 pc. These young groups (ages 8--50 Myr), along with other nearby, young stars, will enable imaging and spectroscopic studies of the origin and early evolution of planetary systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I was born in 1914 in Amsterdam. I grew up there, filling my teenage years with activities as an amateur astronomer. I later studied at Leiden University and volunteered at Leiden Observatory. From 1938 to 1945, I was assistant at the Kapteyn Institute in Groningen, including during the war years 1940--1945, returning to Leiden in October 1945. After prolonged stays at Yerkes Observatory in 1947--1948 and 1952, and participation in Leiden's astrometric Kenya expedition in 1949--1950, I became associate professor at Yerkes Observatory in the fall of 1953. In 1957, I returned to the Kapteyn Institute and soon became involved in the creation of ESO, of which I became scientific director in 1968 and director general from 1970 to 1974. In 1975, I joined Leiden Observatory again, staying until my retirement in 1981, and since then I have enjoyed the hospitality of the Kapteyn Institute. I was president of the IAU from 1976 to 1979. From 1982 to 1989, I was chairman of the Scientific Programs Selection Committee for the European Space Agency's satellite, Hipparcos. My principal research interests have been in galactic structure and star formation, with emphasis on stellar associations. In addition to my astronomical interests, I have researched and published on Dutch village history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine scholarship on the role and influence of advocacy organizations in the U.S. political process. We identify common theoretical questions in the disconnected literatures on social movements, interest groups, and nonprofits, and we propose a unifying conceptual framework for examining advocacy organizations. Focusing on the post-1960s growth in advocacy organizations, we examine major organizational characteristics including organizational structures, membership and participation, resources, and interorganizational networks and coalitions. Our analysis of organizational influence focuses on five dimensions of the policy process: (a) agenda setting, (b) access to decision-making arenas, (c) achieving favorable policies, (d) moni-toring and shaping implementation, and (e) shifting the long-term priorities and resources of political institutions. Finally, we identify recurrent theoretical and method-ological problems, including the compartmentalization of research within disciplines, an overreliance on studies of large national organizations, a disproportionate focus on recruitment and selective incentives, and limited research on the influence of advocacy organizations. We conclude by highlighting productive pathways for future scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of the new National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) has its roots in the organized activities of the biomedicalimaging and bioengineering communities beginning around 1970s. The remarkableadvances in biomedical engineering and imaging in the past few decades,with strong support from government agencies, especially the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and private foundations, particularly the Whitaker Foundation, have led to important contributions to the enhancement of health and the development of new methods for diagnosis,treatment, and prevention of disease. A series of actions in Congress and the presidential signing of Public Law 106 - 580 led to the establishment of the NIBIB,whose mission is improving health by the promotion of fundamental discoveries,design, and development and the translation and assessment of technological capabilities in biomedical imaging and bioengineering, in coordination with the relevant programs of other agencies and institutes and centers (ICs) of the NIH. The emphasis of the NIBIB is to foster biomedical imaging and bioengineering activities that cut across institutional boundaries and to complement such programs in other NIH ICs. Currently, the NIBIB funds approximately 15% of all NIH grants related to biomedical imaging and bioengineering. Following its formal establishment in April 2001, the NIBIB has made significant progress .Dr. Roderic I. Pettigrew took office as Director in September 2002, and the National Advisory Council for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering was formed and held its first meeting in January 2003. The NIH consulted extensively with the extramural community in establishing the NIBIB; Dr. Pettigrew and Dr. Donna Dean, first as Acting Director and later Deputy Director, spoke at more than 70 professional meetings and visited more than 40 academic institutions. The appropriation of a new budget starting in fiscal yea [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We take as our starting point the insights of Downs (1957) into two-party competition. A careful reading of Downs offers a much more sophisticated and nuanced portrait of the factors affecting party differentiation than the simplistic notion that, in plurality elections, we ought to expect party convergence to the views of the median voter. Later scholars have built on Downsian ideas to see what happens vis-á-vis party differentiation when we modify key assumptions found in the basic Downsian spatial model. Recent work allows us to turn what is taken to be the Downsian view on its head: Although there are pressures in two-party competition for the two parties to converge, in general we should expect nonconvergence. Moreover, contra the negative portrait offered by Green & Shapiro (1994) of the limited or nonexistent value of research on party competition models in the Downsian tradition, we argue that, when viewed as a whole, neo-Downsian models--especially those of the past decade--do allow us to reconcile theory and data in terms of a multi-componented theory of party competition with testable implications for comparative statics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) in 1998 as a part of the National Institutes of Health was catalyzed by the increasing interest and use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) modalities by the public. This article presents an overview of CAM, summarizes similarities and differences between the regulatory requirements for drugs and CAM/botanical products, identifies several challenges and opportunities for conducting research to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of CAM therapeutics, and highlights the role of NCCAM in supporting and stimulating research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on developments in biological anthropology. It highlights the career of seasoned anthropologist Earnest Albert Hooton. The concept of physical anthropology was defined and illustrations of its application were offered. The article also discussed in length the history of the American Association of Physical Anthropology, which was organized in 1929, by the anthropologist, Ales Hrdlicka to provide a venue for practitioners to exchange views, develop new techniques and improve the profession.

The recent cultural turn in American sociology has inspired a number of more scientifically oriented scholars to study the meanings that are embedded within institutions, practices, and cultural artifacts. I focus here on research that (a) emphasizes institutional (rather than individual) meanings, (b) uses a structural approach to interpretation, and (c) employs formal algorithms or quantitative procedures for reducing the complexity of meanings to simpler structural principles. I discuss two core methodological issues-the assessment of similarities and differences between items in a cultural system and the process by which structure-preserving simplifications are found in the data. I also highlight the importance of two-mode analytic procedures and review some of the perceived benefits and criticisms of this style of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]