R ule violation is critical for biological conservation worldwide. Conventional questionnaires are not suitable to survey these violations and specialized questioning techniques that preserve respondents' privacy, like the forcedresponse RRT, have been increasingly adopted by conservationists. However, most of these approaches do not measure multinomial answers and conservationists need a specialized questioning technique for real-world settings where noncompliance could occur in different forms. We developed a multidimensional, statistically-efficient, RRT which is suitable for multinomial answers (mRRT) and which allows researchers to test for respondents' noncompliance during completion. Then, we applied it to measure the frequency of the various forms of illegal restocking of European catfish from specialized anglers in Italy, developing an operational code for the statistical software R. A total of 75 questionnaires were administered at a large fishing fair in Northern Italy, in winter 2018. Our questionnaires were easily compiled and the multinomial model revealed that around 6% of respondents had moved catfish across public freshwater bodies and private ponds. Future studies should better address their characteristics, and the mRRT could allow for modeling the effect of covariates over restocking behavior. The multinomial Characterizing noncompliance in conservation: a multidimensional Randomized Response Technique for multinomial responses mRRT could be adopted to measure many forms of rule violation in conservation that could take different forms, like various forms of fish restocking or different modes of wildlife persecution.
Liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (LC/MS) has been increasingly used for screening purposes in forensic toxicology. High versatility and low time/resource consuming are the main advantages of this technology. Numerous multi-analytes methods have been validated in order to face the analytical challenge of the new psychoactive substances (NPS). However, forensic toxicologists must keep the attention also on “classical” psychoactive substances and medicines, such as benzodiazepines (BDZ) and prescription opioids. In this paper, a new method for simultaneous detection of 169 substances (120 NPS and 49 other drugs) in hair by LC-MS/MS was described. After decontamination of hair sample with dichloromethane, a 20-mg aliquot was added with 1 mL of methanol (0.1% of formic acid) and then sonicated at room temperature for 2 h. The mixture was then dried under nitrogen stream and reconstituted with 100 µL of methanol. The LC separation was achieved with a 100-mm long C18 column in 35 min and the mass acquisition was performed in dynamic MRM mode and in positive ionization. The analysis resulted very sensitive, with limits of quantification from 0.07 to 10.0 pg/mg. Accuracy and precisions were always within the acceptable criteria. Matrix effect and recovery rate ranges were -21.3 – +21.9% and 75.0 – 99.3%, respectively. The new method was successfully applied in a preliminary study on the prevalence of NPS, BDZ and other substances in case on driving licence issues. In 14% of cases, BDZ/antidepressants (mainly trazodone, diazepam/nordiazepam and flunitrazepam) were found. Codeine, ketamine, methylone and mephedrone were also detected.
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