Impact of soil compaction on soil biodiversity – does it matter in urban context?

Soil invertebrates are poorly studied in an urban context. Here we examine soil compaction in an urban environment, focusing on its persistence and its impact on biodiversity. This is achieved by studying a sensitive taxon, the collembolan (springtails). Soil core samples were taken in different location of a residential neighbourhood under construction, and collembolan species were extracted using a Berlese-Tullgren funnel. Soil compaction was determined by measuring bulk density. We documented soil compaction, ranging from 1 g/cm3 to 1.6 g/cm3. While collembolans are normally affected by compaction, such an effect was not observed in terms of species diversity, which remains relatively constant under all compaction levels. However, compaction was correlated with differences in the structure of collembolan communities. Indeed, we were able to discriminate different levels of compaction using collembolan community data alone. Moreover, this study confirms that compaction decreases with time. However, differences in species community structure can be observed one year after the end of the disturbance. Finally, we provide some insights into the reality of soil compaction in an urban environment, and highlight that the classical biodiversity indices may be insufficient for assessing the impact of an environmental disturbance, and that more detailed analyses at the community level may be very useful, or even indispensable.     

Automation: is it really different this time?

This review examines several recent books that deal with the impact of automation and robotics on the future of jobs. Most books in this genre predict that the current phase of digital technology will create massive job loss in an unprecedented way, that is, that this wave of automation is different from previous waves. Uniquely digital technology is said to automate professional occupations for the first time. This review critically examines these claims, puncturing some of the hyperbole about automation, robotics and Artificial Intelligence. The review argues for a more nuanced analysis of the politics of technology and provides some critical distance on Silicon Valley's futurist discourse. Only by insisting that futures are always social can public bodies, rather than autonomous markets and endogenous technologies, become central to disentangling, debating and delivering those futures.     

Reported job satisfaction: what does it mean?

We emphasize the major influences of experienced utility gaps or regret, i.e. the difference between what happened and what might have happened, on job satisfaction. The main prediction that we test is that job satisfaction correlates with the wage gaps experienced in the past and present, holding other job-related satisfactions constant, with the possible exception of young workers. We further test that this effect of wage gaps on job satisfaction declines with working experience. We find evidence on a Canadian cross-section that the past matters.     

Contraceptive self-efficacy: does it influence adolescents' contraceptive use?

This research investigates the relationship between contraceptive self-efficacy and contraceptive use, measured one year later, among adolescent boys and girls. Data are obtained from the two waves of the restricted use sample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 3,577). Employing multiple regression and logistic regression strategies, we examine whether demographic and background characteristics influence contraceptive self-efficacy, and whether contraceptive self-efficacy increases the likelihood of contraceptive use. We find that adolescents who are female, older, live with step-parents, and whose mothers approve of contraceptive use report higher contraceptive self-efficacy, while adolescents whose mothers did not complete high school report lower contraceptive self-efficacy. Results partially support the expectation that adolescents with higher contraceptive self-efficacy act accordingly by using contraceptives.     

Utilitarianism or welfarism: does it make a difference?

We show that it is possible to reconcile the utilitarian and welfarist principles under the requirement of unanimity provided that the set of profiles over which the consensus is attained is rich enough. More precisely, we identify a closedness condition which, if satisfied by a class of n-tuples of utility functions, guarantees that the rankings of social states induced by utilitarian and welfarist unanimities over that class are identical. We illustrate the importance of the result for the measurement of unidimensional as well as multidimensional inequalities from a dominance point of view.     

Evaluating physician competency: What difference does it make?

There are a number of skills that professional experts believe physicians in training should learn in order to be labeled competent practitioners. The beliefs of the experts should be subjected to the rigors of scientific investigation. This paper presents a system for evaluating clinical competency which is designed to test the beliefs of the experts as well as the skills of the practitioner. Four measures of clinical competency are included: data collection completeness, problem identification accuracy, interview skills, patient and physician assessment. Preliminary results suggest a more careful re-examination of beliefs about the skills considered necessary and sufficient in determining clinical competency.     

Child development in foster family care – what really counts?

Previous research has demonstrated that children who grow up in foster family care – along with other child welfare recipients – manage less well in adulthood compared to those children who do not. Given this challenge, this integrative literature review locates the critical factors that either positively or negatively affect a child’s development in foster family care. The articles were analysed using theory-driven content classification in relation to Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological framework on child development. The results of the review suggest that there is a wide range of factors that could impact on a child’s development in foster family care. Child­related factors such as the child’s age, gender, behavioural or mental health problems, etc. were mentioned most often in the data. Micro­environmental factors are also essential to a child’s development. Linkages taking place between two or more of the child’s circumstances, such as the relationship between the child’s birth and foster families and between the foster family and the social worker, were also identified as being influential. Service usage and political and legislative factors, as well as attitudes towards children in care, were also indicated to be strongly influential. It is suggested that the factors identified in this review should be carefully considered as important aspects of care for fostered children and care documentation.     

Styling locally, styling globally: What does it mean?

In discussion of the papers in this special issue, we note that styling and crossing are not new phenomena, but are found world wide and are very old. This suggests that analyses of styling and crossing in comparative and historical perspective would be highly desirable. Such analysis will require rigorous macroanalytic characterizations of speakers and interlocutors in order to make comparison possible. The complex pragmatic effects of styling challenge both theory and method in pragmatics, but we will not fully understand what these challenges are until we attempt relatively formal analysis of these effects, which must include very large-scale phenomena such as domination and appropriation versus transgression and liberation.     

Programming for preventing sexual abuse and abduction: what does it mean when it works?

Many kinds of educational programs and other approaches to teaching children about the dangers of sexual abuse and abduction by strangers can have the "side effect" of creating new anxieties in the children. The program described in this article is effective without introducing negative, anxiety-producing stories, examples, and other warnings.     

Personal charisma: Immediate or gradual? How long does it take to judge?

Personal charisma can be defined as the perceived ability of an individual to be a good communicator who is inspiring and visionary, is honest and reliable, attracts other people's attention and is dominant in uncertain situations. Students judged their teacher's charisma after knowing her for just 3 min and then again at the end of the semester. The results indicated that subjects changed their opinions on four out of six dimensions of charisma.     

Participation and inclusiveness in private rule-setting organizations: does it matter for effectiveness?

Governance, from local to global levels, relies increasingly on private governance arrangements. Private actors, specifically corporations and civil society organizations, increasingly design, implement and monitor rules and standards that guide and prescribe behavior in a range of policy areas, including sustainability, banking and international security, to name a few. Even though the involvement of private actors in global politics is not a new phenomenon, the creation of cooperative arrangements in the form of organizations that lead to private regulation – thus complementing traditional ways of political influence – is relatively novel. This paper focuses on private rule-setting organizations that have emerged in the global governance of sustainability. It starts from the observation that, despite seemingly performing similar roles and functions, organizations differ both in terms of outputs they produce as well as rules of participation and decision-making. Accordingly, the paper evaluates whether organizations providing a more inclusive and participatory approach in relation to others have different implications for the quality and relevance of rules (outputs). Hence, it aims to shed light on the way private rules and standards are decided and the associated implications, in view of their increasing role and relevance in sustainability governance. In more detail, we contend that there is no linear relation between democratic legitimacy and effectiveness. While inclusiveness and representativeness in the standard-setting process will probably lead to more stringent and comprehensive rules, those regulatory systems with high stringency will be the ones least taken up. Empirically, the paper illustrates its argument with a comparison of five private rule-setting organizations that have emerged in the global governance of fisheries sustainability: the Marine Stewardship Council, Friend of the Sea, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, the Global Aquaculture Alliance and GlobalGAP.