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The legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado has complicated the relationships between local, state, and federal governments. Such challenges have trickled down to proprietors, managers, and employees within the new billion-dollar industry. Dispensary owners and managers often must navigate the implementation of new laws and policies in how they operate their business. The current study surveyed marijuana dispensaries across Colorado to explore owners’ and managers’ perceptions of operating their business while considering federal banking laws and concerns with state laws conflicting with federal laws, particularly in context of the 2016 presidential election.

Critical responses to changes in UK higher education have emerged from various quarters. This article suggests that some of these responses are collusive with neo-liberalism and that a greater attention might be paid to the possibilities of the word ‘liberal’ and to the more democratic implications of certain US initiatives.

Researchers interested in public policy have noted that laws may have a symbolic or an instrumental function. The example of sex offender legislation is used to look for both instrumental and symbolic effects of this legislation. Although the symbolic effects of sex offender legislation have been examined by prior research, less is known about the instrumental effects of this legislation. This research examines the instrumental functions of sex offender legislation using survey data that asked about whether members of the public have checked the sex offender registry and the reasons behind their answer. The findings of this study suggest largely symbolic effects of sex offender registry legislation, and implications of this finding are discussed.

Abstract Many protocols have been used in clinical and research settings for collecting systolic blood pressure (SBP) measurements to calculate the ankle–brachial index (ABI); however, it is not known how useful it is to replicate measurements and which measures best reflect cardiovascular risk. Standardized measurements of ankle and arm SBP from 5140 overweight or obese individuals with type 2 diabetes were used to estimate sources of variation. Measurement characteristics of leg-specific ABI, as calculated using a standard algorithm based on the highest SBP of the dorsalis pedis or posterior tibial arteries, were projected using simulations. Coefficients of variability ranged from 2% to 3% when single SBP measurements were used and ABI was overestimated by 2–3%. Taking two SBP measurements at each site reduced standard errors and bias each by 30–40%. The sensitivity of detecting low ABI ranges exceeded 90% for ABI within 0.05 of the 0.90 clinical cut-point. The average and the minimum of the two (i.e. right and left) leg-specific ABI values had similar U-shaped relationships with Framingham risk scores; however, the average leg ABI had slightly greater precision. Replicating SBP measurements reduces the error and bias of ABI. Averaging leg-specific values may increase power for characterizing cardiovascular disease risk.

In this article the argument is made that the increased concern with the nature of contemporary love relationships overlooks the extent to which such a concern has been a feature of western culture throughout history. Examining these narratives of romantic love challenges the assumption that perceived changes to attitudes towards love, marriage and intimacy are unique characteristics limited to the context of the late 20th century. Thus the need to recognize both continuity and change in seeking to assess and theorize the nature of intimate relationships.

This article suggests that an understanding of love which allowed for a rational discourse about human relationships was proposed at the time of the Enlightenment but was subsequently contested and replaced by an ideology of romantic love. Romantic love, far from emancipating human understanding and behaviour, trapped individuals in a narrow and often negative set of expectations and aspirations.

Universities are often enjoined to ‘get’ with the ‘real world’. In this article, Mary Evans gives an account of interpretations of literary realism in order to consider the ‘coercive realism’ of the contemporary university. The prevailing assumptions that universities must contribute to the ‘real’ world are damaging the complexity of the process of learning and the idea of ‘knowledge’ that underpins it.

Young women are increasingly diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV. The aim of this study was to test various types of mass media and their associations with interpersonal communication about sex and HIV or AIDS among female college students, stratified by race. The study used a nonexperimental cross-sectional design and an electronic survey. The sample consisted of female college students ( N = 776) at a 4-year public university in the southeast. We found that the race of college women influenced their preferred media source for reception of information about sex and HIV/AIDS, which subsequently either motivated or was insignificant to communication with parents and/or partners.

‘If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties' (Bacon 1605). Four centuries later, one of the greatest of contemporary philosophers — Sir Karl Popper — has consistently maintained that knowledge advances by refutation of false doctrines and not by verification of true ones (which, indeed, can never be completely verified). ‘Error is unavoidable; it can be rational, and when responsibly made and honestly reported, is not even culpable’ (Laor 1985). The desire to verify an hypothesis rather than to seek to refute it can be responsible for the suppression of deviant data. There is a fine distinction between bias, which may afflict honest investigators, and fraud, which is always dishonest. Even a true statement can be tainted by bias, and Ronald Fisher concluded that Mendel's published figures on the genetics of peas were so close to the expected ratio of 3:1 that it would have taken ‘an absolute miracle of chance’ to produce them (Hamblin 1981).

Examines the problematic and divisive attitudes which bourgeois and socialist feminists take to the question of the links between patriarchy and capitalism and the importance of class conflict as a major cause of women's subordination.

The concept of medicalization suggests that a wider range of behaviors is becoming defined as legitimate for medical intervention. Through a comparison of the arrest rates of mental patients released during 1968 and 1975 with the general population rates, the relevance of this process to criminal behavior is examined. In both years the arrest rates for the patient groups exceeded those of the general population, these higher rates being explained by the increasing number of patients with prior police records. Patients without prior arrests had lower arrest rates after release than the general population for all crime categories except property crimes. Comparison of our data with data gathered on patients released in 1946-47 shows that over a 30-year period the proportion of males admitted to psychiatric facilities with police records has steadily and consistently increased. These findings are discussed within the framework of the increasing medicalization of society, with particular concern for adapting this concept to changes resulting from administrative pressures where corresponding changes in ideology are absent.