Comparison between occupational noise measurement strategies: why is it important?

The international standard ISO 9612:2009, regarding the determination of occupational noise exposure through an engineering method, establishes a methodology for evaluating the exposure of workers to occupational noise, through the specification of three different strategies, namely: task-based measurement (TBM); job-based measurement (JBM) and; full day measurement (FDM). In this work, questions are raised, "resulting in a literature review regarding the need to test the functionality of the three strategies, through the systematic comparison between them and analysis of their application impact at several levels. There is a need to test the compare these three strategies, since there are no peer-review studies in this domain. In fact, there are still no studies that systematically do the comparison between them and analyze the impact of their application at various levels, such as the precision and accuracy of the results, the required equipment, time spent and, most important, the estimation of the uncertainty associated to the measurements.     

Urban or rural fragments: which soil use in forest surroundings induces greater litter deposition?

Urban Ecosystems - The soil use in surroundings of forest remnants, as well as, variations in seasonality and rainfall totals from each year might influence the composition, structure, and...     

Conifer growth and reproduction in urban forest fragments: Predictors of future responses to global change?

Global change has a large and growing influence on forests, particularly in urban and urbanizing areas. Compared to rural forests, urban forests may experience warmer temperatures, higher CO₂ levels, and greater nitrogen deposition, with exacerbated differences at urban forest edges. Thus, comparing urban to rural forests may help predict future effects of global change on forests. We focused on the conifer western red-cedar (Thuja plicata) to test three hypotheses: at urban forest edges, relative to rural forests and urban forest centers, trees experience 1) higher temperatures and nitrogen levels, 2) lower seedling recruitment, and 3) greater growth. We additionally tested anecdotal reports that 4) tree seedling recruitment in urban and rural forests is much lower than in ??pristine?? old-growth forests. To test these hypotheses, we quantified air temperature, soil nitrate, adult T. plicata growth and seedling recruitment in five urban and three rural parks at both forest edges and centers. We also quantified T. plicata recruitment at five old-growth ??pristine?? sites. Temperatures were highest at urban forest edges, and soil nitrate was highest in urban forests. In urban relative to rural forests, we observed greater T. plicata growth, but no difference in seedling densities. However, seedling densities were lower in urban and rural forests than in old-growth forests. In all, our results suggest urban influences enhance adult T. plicata growth, but not seedling recruitment. Recruitment in urban and rural forests was reduced compared to old-growth forests, implying that fragmentation and logging reduce T. plicata seedling recruitment.     

Urban change in the third world: are recent trends a useful pointer to the urban future?

"This paper has three aims. The first is to examine the reliability of the data base for the statistics which are used as the basis for commenting on urban change in 'the Third World'. The second is to explore whether valid generalisations about urban change can be made for the Third World. And the third is to examine the validity of United Nations projections for the Third World's urban future."     

The Australian model of immigration and multiculturalism: is it applicable to Europe?

"The aim of this article is to examine the experience of Australia with regard to immigration and ethnic diversity since 1945, and to discuss the relevance of this experience for Western Europe." The author finds that "since 1945, over 5 million settlers have come from many different countries, leading to a situation of great cultural diversity.... Over the last twenty years, a policy of multiculturalism has emerged, giving rise to several special institutions. This has had profound effects both on social policy and on concepts of national identity. The relevance of the Australian model for Western Europe is discussed."     

Classification of Horn of Africa school children: is it appropriate for the educational authorities in England to refer to them as refugees?

Drawing on evidence from a PhD study, this paper raises questions about the appropriateness of English educational authorities to continue to refer to the Horn of Africa children, most of them born in the UK, as refugees. The word refugee, in its broad definition, seemingly masks fundamental differences and may reinforce stereotypical perceptions of immigrant children. Many Horn of Africa people tend to define themselves using their respective national identities. Thus, the paper recommends that when the educational authorities want to categorize children of Horn of Africa origin, they should consider using the Department for Children, Schools and Families’ extended ethnicity codes or preferably refer to them simply as Eritreans, Ethiopians, Somalis and Sudanese.     

Rural Community and Rural Resilience: What is important to farmers in keeping their country towns alive?

Many studies have highlighted the phenomenon of rural decline in parts of the developed world, summarised as a loss in agricultural employment leading to a decline in the number and size of rural settlements. This study of small towns in part of Australia’s inland rural “heartland” employs the concepts of interactional rural community of place and rural resilience to identify how farmers perceive their interactions with their local town. This study suggests that robust levels of ongoing engagement between farmers and town communities are important in maintaining rural populations and services along with both a strong local economy and environment. Face-to-face interviews with 115 farmers in two rural regions of New South Wales, Australia, highlight the importance of the local economy and jobs, the quality of the local environment and a strong sense of belonging, in contributing to a strong sense of local community and potential for resilience.     

Teaching children to save: What is the best strategy for lifetime savings?

We study the effect of alternative parental teaching strategies on the propensity to save and the amount saved during adulthood. Using a panel dataset from the Dutch DNB Household Survey we find that parental teaching to save increases the likelihood that an adult will save by 16%, and the saving amount by about 30%. The best strategy involves a combination of different methods (giving pocket money, controlling money usage, and giving advice about saving and budgeting). The effect of parental financial socialization is persistent with age, but decays at elder age for the propensity to save.     

Zyban: a new aid to smoking cessation treatment--will it work for psychiatric patients?

1. Psychiatric patients who smoke are more highly dependent on nicotine and are less likely to be successful at quitting. When they attempt to quit, depression is more likely to be a part of the withdrawal process. 2. Careful monitoring is required when psychiatric patients abruptly start or stop smoking. Clinicians must be aware that changes in smoking status will affect the actions and side effects of neuroleptic medications. Prescribing clinicians should ask about their patients' smoking patterns on a regular basis. 3. Psychiatric nurses have an ethical responsibility to identify individuals at risk of smoking-related disease, to inform current and future smokers about the risks of cigarette smoking, and to provide counseling and education for those who wish to quit.     

Labour market turnover in Latin America: How intensive is it and to what extent does it differ across countries?

The study of labour market turnover is particularly significant in Latin America, which is characterized by marked economic cycles and limited social protection coverage. This article estimates the intensity of transitions from employment in six countries in Latin America in the new millennium and decomposes the differences observed, furthermore evaluating the employment destinations of workers making such transitions. The countries under analysis show very different turnover rates, which are mostly explained by a dissimilar incidence of informal and temporary employment. In all cases, a large share of job exits imply transitions to precarious jobs or unemployment.     

The coping model: what is it and what might be its implications for social work practice?

This article examines whether a coping model developed as a framework for analysis of research interviews is useful in social work practice. The coping model emerged from a study involving qualitative interviews with social service clients in Norway, designed to explore how they coped with challenges in everyday lives, both on an individual level and in interacting with their environment. The model emerged from preliminary analysis and was then used in further analysis of the interview data. The study showed that the informants experienced two major challenges: (1) Unemployment and (2) living with a shortage of money over time, even though their life situations were heterogeneous. Some informants experienced potent coping strategies in finding employment and became independent of social services. Other informants experienced shortages in their capacities for work and continued to be dependent on allowances. They used their coping resources to achieve more meaningful life situations without employment. The coping model represents how coping is understood theoretically in the study and the present paper considers the model's relevance and implications for social work practice itself.     

Parental responsibilities: Reformulating the paradigm for parent–child relationships Part 2: Who has responsibilities to children and what are these responsibilities?

This is the second part of an article, Part 1 of which proposes the paradigm of parental responsibilities to replace the discourse of rights, custody, and visitation. This Part describes the scope of parental responsibilities; who, alongside or instead of the biological parents, may have parental responsibilities vis-à-vis the child; the roles of grandparents and members of the extended family, and partners of parents, are described. The principal categories of parenting tasks are described in detail. I also show how the concept of parental responsibilities is essential for properly dealing with children in need of protection, and how the paradigm applies to courts that deal with proceedings involving children.     

Shame and Cognitive Strikes: What Would it “Really” Mean for Queer Psychoanalysis to Enter the Perverse?

Clinical psychoanalysis and queer theory have at their core a deep exploration of sexuality. Although the link between shame and sex has generated a strong theoretical reflection (Butler, 1993; Dimen, 2013; Saketopoulou, 2013, 2014; Sedgwick, 1993; Stein, 1997, 2012; Straker, 2007), shame is in this literature primarily a threatening affect in need of psychic elaboration. In contrast, I look at shame as a critical and surprising intervention provoked by the analyst. I argue that analysts perform in their work not only psychic labor but also “excessive” nonverbal states which challenge the established boundaries of the analytic relationship. I show that such moments function as “cognitive strikes,” which can be productively deployed by analysts to reap their benefits.

The aim of my argument is to show that the analysts “enter the perverse” when they momentarily stop processing difficult mental states. According to the professional ideal of “mentalization” (Fonagy & Target, 1996), psychoanalysts are put in the position to permanently do cognitive work. Yet refusing this demand offers the analyst the freedom to shift the relationship between a paid laborer and a beneficiary of therapeutic work. I theorize these noncognitive acts of “excessive shame” to expand on and criticize theories of queer performativity such as Judith Butler’s and Eve Sedgwick’s. The first contribution of this article is to draw the attention of clinicians to queer work that theorizes the emergent materiality of affects. The second contribution is to ask queer psychoanalytic theorists to take seriously the potential of surprising interventions which interrupt the demand to incessantly perform mental labor for their clients.     

Anticipated Regret,Risk Perception,or Both: Which is Most Likely Responsible for Our Intention to Gamble?

The current study investigated whether risk aversion or regret aversion could be related to a lower intention to gamble, and whether the type of gambling was a moderator of this relationship. The study took place in Macau, often called “the Las Vegas of East Asia.” A total of 373 Macau residents completed a questionnaire survey dealing with thirteen types of gambling. The results showed that risk perception and anticipated regret had a significant negative effect on the intention to gamble. This negative effect was domain-specific, varying with the type of gambling. Our findings indicated that neither risk aversion nor regret aversion can uniquely explain an individual’s risk-taking tendency consistently. Instead, which factor plays a greater role in lowering the intention to gamble—regret aversion, risk aversion, or both—is itself dependent on the type of gambling involved. The finding that not all gambles are created equal could be useful in gambling prevention and advertising appeal by providing a basis for understanding the role that cognitive and emotional factors play in different types of gambling.     

Superstition effects versus cohort effects: is it bad luck to be born in the year of the fire horse in Japan?

The year of the fire horse (called “Hinoeuma” in Japanese) is one of the sixty Chinese zodiac symbols used to count years. According to superstition, fire horse women are said to have troubled marriages, to mistreat men, and to cause early deaths for their husbands and fathers. No such stigma applies to men born in these years. This paper attempts to investigate the impact of women’s birth in the most recent fire horse year (1966) on the outcome of their lives by using individual-level microdata. We find that there is no evidence of disadvantages to fire horse women in human capital investment, performance in the marriage market, or intra-household allocation of resources after marriage. We provide two plausible explanations for this lack of impact from the stigma: a cohort size effect and a dynamic transition in the share of arranged and love marriages. The latter affected parents’ decisions in 1966 as well as the performance of fire horse women in the marriage market and in intra-household resource allocation after marriage. This finding suggests the importance of careful attention to the dynamic effects of society and the economy that may occur before the emergence of a cohort size effect.     

Parental responsibilities: Reformulating the paradigm for parent–child relationships Part 1: What is wrong with the ways in which we deal with the children of separated parents and how to put them right

This is the first part of a two-part article, which calls for the removal of terms such as rights and custody, including joint and shared custody, and visitation from the legal discourse in relation to children and their parents. This part demonstrates how the current discourse, based on the competing rights of the parents, leads inevitably to competitiveness and litigation, which are highly damaging to the child. The proposed paradigm of parental responsibilities requires establishing the needs of the specific child when there are parental disharmony and separation, while emphasizing the joint responsibilities of both parents to ensure that those needs are adequately met. This part also addresses the question: who has parental responsibilities, when a child is born as a result of Assisted Reproductive Technology, and also the quasi-parental role of the court.