Why is there so much genetic variation for wing dimorphism?

Wing dimorphism appears in general to be determined either by a single locus, 2 allele system in which brachyptery is dominant, or by the additive action of numerous loci. In the latter case studies indicate that the heritability is typically quite large. It is generally postulated that wing dimorphism is under strong selection: why then is genetic variation not eroded? In this paper I consider three possible explanations. First, genetic variation may not be exposed to selection because environmental heterogeneity effectively makes heritability zero. Because wing dimorphisms are known to evolve it seems unlikely that this is the primary factor. Second, directional selection on a threshold trait may push the population almost to monomorphism but erodes genetic variance at a very slow rate. This mechanism cannot preserve variation but makes it possible for other factors to more easily maintain variability. Finally, I demonstrate that in a heterogeneous environment spatio-temporal variation in fitness will itself maintain a genetic polymorphism for wing dimorphism. This paper is dedicated to Professor Sinzo Masaki, whose work on the evolution of wing dimorphism and diapause has been so important to our understanding of the evolution of dimorphic variation.     

Multivariate Failure Time Analysis when only the Time to First Failure is Observed

We propose a log-linear mixed model to assess covariate effects on the unobservable, catheter-related time-until-infection (TUI), utilizing the observable time-until-first-infection (TUFI). The model assumes that both log (TUI) and the common (random) patient effect follow an extreme value distribution, and TUIs of the same patient are conditionally independent. This model enables the assessment of covariate effects on TUI, accounting for both patient-level (age) and catheter-level (e.g., difficulty of insertion) covariates and the within-patient correlation. The efficient likelihood estimators of fixed-effects and scale parameters of random effects are shown to be consistent and asymptotically normal and appear to perform well in simulations. The methods are illustrated using an example.     

Adoption by foster carers: a profile of interest and outcomes

This paper looks at the issue of adoption by foster carers and in particular its financial aspects. The findings stem from a wider study of remuneration and performance in foster care. Drawing on a survey of 1181 foster carers, this paper examines the characteristics of those who have considered adoption. The outcomes of such consideration, including the part played by financial concerns and anticipated loss of support in decisions to proceed with adoption or not, are also examined. The findings reveal a significant level of interest in adoption on the part of foster carers, to which three particular sets of characteristics are found to be associated. First, interest is greater among those more extensively involved in foster care in terms of experience, specialisms and range of placements offered. Second, it is associated with relatively less concern with payment and less ‘professional’ views of foster care. Third, there is evidence that adoption is more commonly pursued by those who feel less valued by social workers. Fears of losing financial help and support were cited as reasons by more than half of all foster carers who had considered but not pursued adoption.     

Developing Anti‐oppressive Ethics in the New Curriculum

This paper describes the development of an anti‐oppressive ethics and values module appropriate for the new social work degree. It is contended that there has been insufficient attention paid to ethics teaching in social work education generally in the UK, and in particular there has been:

• ?failure to develop discrete modules on ethics and values in social work;

• ?minimal critique of conventional ethics with social work values that take oppression and diversity seriously;

• ?insufficient use of recent feminist ethical contributions relevant to social work;

• ?limited development of interprofessional ethics teaching that take service user and social work values seriously; and

• ?neglect of ethical decision‐making guides that can encompass legal, ethical and social work values.

The paper proposes a rationale for an anti‐oppressive ethics module that will enable traditional ethical theories to be placed within an anti‐oppressive social work values context, and aim to provide students with a more adequate guide for decision‐making. The module will be developed in consultation with service users and interprofessional colleagues. It will take into account the British legal and policy framework, the General Social Care Council code of practice, as well as the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education requirements, but placing them within an anti‐oppressive framework drawn from the authors' current and previous work in this area, and will have special reference to recent feminist moral philosophy. The authors have recently been re‐located into a Faculty of Health and Applied Social Studies and will be developing the new module on ethics in consultation with health lecturer colleagues specialising in ethics with the aim of developing interprofessional co‐operation and sharing of perspectives between staff and students. They write with long experience of both practising and teaching social work, and with diverse experiences of ‘race’, gender, class, and also being both service users and providers.     

Petrified life

How might we read temporality, that is, the psychical and social experience of time, as an index of the prevailing political and intersubjective impasses of the apartheid and post-apartheid eras? This paper explores three perspectives on this broad problematic. Achille Mbembe’s thoughts on repetition and nostalgia provide, firstly, a means of understanding one characteristically post-apartheid mode of temporality: that of suspended history. Crapanzano’s notion of waiting, elaborated as a means of grasping the white anxiety of the late apartheid period, allows us, secondly, to conceptualise the de-realised experience of a muted or deadened time. A third source, an unpublished text contributed to the Apartheid Archive concerning a fantasised scene of violence, enables us to sketch a third form of temporal experience common to apartheid and post-apartheid experiences alike, namely that of imagined retribution. These ostensibly separate and distinct modes of temporality can be read as interlocking forms of “petrified life,” a term I use to link temporalities of immobilisation characterised by suspension, stasis and fear.     

Implementation of a Posted Schedule to Increase Class-Wide Interobserver Agreement Assessment

The present study investigated the impact of an antecedent intervention in the form of a daily posted schedule on the interobserver agreement (IOA) assessment of educational goals implemented within a classroom at a private school serving individuals with disabilities. During baseline, the percentage of academic goals with interobserver agreement was low and stable (M?=?5%). Teacher performance improved during the intervention (M?=?92%). A reversal replicated this effect and performance maintained during 6-week, 6-month, and 1-year follow-up probes. Results suggest a daily posted schedule can effectively increase interobserver agreement assessment by direct-care teaching staff.     

Using computerized ambulatory diaries for the assessment of job characteristics and work-related stress in nurses

Abstract

Much research into work-related stress is based on retrospective self-reports, whereas records made at the time could be more valuable. In this study the primary components of two models of work stress, Karasek's demand-control (DC) model and Siegrist's effort-reward imbalance (ERI), were assessed in trained nurses using ambulatory diaries and traditional questionnaire methods. The diaries were entered on small hand-held computers and the method used has been termed ecological momentary assessment (EMA), in which recordings are made in real time in the working environment. The participants were 36 nurses who completed standardized questionnaires evaluating ERI, strain (from DC model), and, over three shifts, computerized behavioural diaries that measured effort-demand, control, reward, and stress every 90 minutes on average, enabling determination of strain and ERI repeatedly in the work situation. A total of 674 observations were recorded. Using multilevel linear modelling, it was found that the questionnaire and computerized diary derived measures of strain (DC) and ERI were reliably correlated. In addition, the ambulatory measures of both strain (DC) and ERI correlated with ratings of stress taken at the same time. From this study it would appear that ambulatory diaries could be a powerful and flexible way of assessing work related stress and its putative determinants in a real life work setting.     

Designing Service Level Agreements for Inventory Management

Service level agreements (SLAs) are widely employed forms of performance‐based contracts in operations management. They compare performance during a period against a contracted service level and penalize outcomes exceeding some allowed deviation. SLAs have a number of design characteristics that need careful tuning to ensure that incentives are properly aligned. However, there is little theoretical research in this area. Using an example of an SLA for outsourcing inventory management, we make a number of recommendations. First it is preferable, if possible, that penalties be proportional to the underperformance rather than lump‐sum ones. This goes a long way towards mitigating strategic (“gaming”) behavior by the supplier. Second, it might be thought that giving “bonuses for good performance” rather than “penalties for bad performance” are essentially identical apart from the former being a more positive approach to management. This turns out to be incorrect in the case of large percentage service rate targets and that penalties will normally be preferred by the buying firm. Third, in order not to incorrectly penalize underperformance resulting purely from “noise” rather than supplier efforts, management might think it best to make allowed deviations from the target generous. Again intuition is not a helpful guide here: for proportional penalties, acceptable performance deviations should be close to the target. Although these results come from a particular inventory application, it is likely that the lessons are applicable to SLAs in general.     

Dignity,happiness and being able to live a ‘normal life’ in the UK – an examination of post-accession Polish migrants' transnational autobiographical fields

This article examines data from a qualitative study of post-accession Polish migrants living in the UK. We examine themes from our interviews such as ‘dignity’, ‘normality’, ‘happiness’ and the ‘affordability’ and ‘ease’ of life in the UK (compared to Poland). We focus on the autobiographical or intra-personal discursive practices that define what Habib calls migrants' continuing relationship with their ‘homeland’. We draw on Emirbayer and Mische's analysis of the relationship between ‘agency’ and what they call ‘embedded temporalities’ to examine the interaction between our participants' recollections of life in Poland and their evaluation of their present lives in the UK in order to examine the impact of these on their future plans (to stay in the UK or return to Poland). We locate this analysis in what we call a transnational autobiographical field which is a modification of what Levitt and Glick Schiller call a transnational social field. Rather than examine, for example, how decisions to migrate, settle and re-migrate are embedded in inter or trans-personal social relations and networks, in this article we examine the self-dynamics associated with our participants' articulation of their intra-personal and autobiographical embedded temporalities. Our argument is that articulations of individuals' pasts, presents and anticipated futures are also significant factors shaping their migration, settlement, and re-migration decisions.     

Monitoring Perceptions of the Causes of Poverty in South Africa

This study explored how people perceive the causes of poverty. Literature revealed that there are three broad theoretical explanations of perceptions of the causes of poverty, namely individualistic explanations, where blame is placed squarely on the poor themselves; structural explanations, where poverty is blamed on external social and economic forces; and fatalistic explanations, which attribute poverty to factors such as bad luck or illness. To examine South Africans perceptions according to these dimensions secondary analysis was employed on one of the Human Sciences Research Council’s (HSRC) national representative client surveys. Approximately 3,498 respondents across South Africa were surveyed between 18 April and 30 May 2006. The bivariate analysis revealed that South Africans in general attribute poverty to structural over individualistic and fatalistic dimensions of poverty. Ordinary least square regressions revealed that these perceptions of poverty interacted with a host of socio-demographic and economic variables such as race and peoples’ lived experiences of poverty. In this regard, all three ordinary least square regressions showed that lived poverty had a significant impact in predicting respectively structural, individualistic and fatalistic perceptions of the causes of poverty. The second regression predicted individualistic perceptions and showed that being white was the most significant predictor. The third regression predicted fatalistic perceptions and established that being coloured was the most significant predictor.