Brown rats (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Rattus norvegicus</Emphasis>) in urban ecosystems: are the constraints related to fieldwork a limit to their study?

Nowadays, the majority of human beings live in urban ecosystems, with this proportion expected to continue increasing in the future. With the growing importance of urban rat-associated issues (e.g. damages to urban infrastructures, costs of rat-control programs, rat-associated health risks), it is becoming indispensable to fill the identified gaps in knowledge on the urban brown rat regarding, among others, its density, home range, genetic structure, and infectious status. In this context, live-trapping is a crucial prerequisite to any scientific investigation. This paper assesses the main constraints and challenges regarding the urban field and describes the major steps to be considered when planning research on urban rats. The primary challenges are i) the characterization of the urban experimental unit; ii) the choice of a trapping design: the use of live-trapping in capture-mark-recapture design, in association with modern statistics, is highly recommended to answer ecological questions (although these methods, mostly developed in natural ecosystems, need to be implemented for the urban field); iii) the potential ethical considerations with regard to animal welfare and field-worker safety; iv) the building of mutually-beneficial collaborations with city stakeholders, pest control professionals, and citizens. Emphasis must be put on communication to the public and education of field-workers. One major need of modern urban rat research is a peer-validated field methodology allowing reproducibility, repeatability, and inference from urban field studies and enabling researchers to answer long-standing key questions about urban rat ecology.     

Can a Self-Regulation Skills and Cultural Arts Program Promote Positive Outcomes in Mental Health Symptoms and Academic Achievement for At-Risk Youth?

ABSTRACT

Self-regulation skills programs focusing on emotional regulation and executive functioning and arts programs have separately demonstrated reductions in internalizing and externalizing disorders and academic difficulties and have shown improvement in self-regulation skills. This study sought to evaluate participants in Prodigy (a program synthesizing arts and self-regulation skills) regarding changes in mental health symptoms and academic performance. A quasi-experimental pretest–posttest was conducted with 108 at-risk adolescents and their parents. Significant reductions in internalizing and externalizing mental health symptoms and increases in academic self-efficacy with positive trends in improved academic achievement were noted. Future research regarding the potential of these two modalities is discussed.     

Intensity and persistence of individuals' social exclusion in Australia

We construct a measure of social exclusion that recognises its multidimensionality at the individual level, including its potential variability in intensity at a point in time and in persistence over time. We distinguish seven dimensions or domains of social exclusion: material resources; employment; education and skills; health and disability; social; community; and personal safety. For each of these seven domains, several indicators of social exclusion are produced. Our exclusion measure identifies 20 to 30 per cent of the Australian population aged 15 years and over as experiencing ‘marginal’ or worse levels of exclusion at any given point in time. However, there is considerable variation in both the extent and persistence of exclusion among the excluded. We further find that, although there are commonalities in the demographic composition of the socially excluded and the income poor, there are also some important differences. For example, persons 65 years and over represent a much smaller share of the most ‘excluded’ group than they do of the ‘poorest‘; and – adopting a household‐level measure of exclusion – children represent a larger share of the excluded than they do of the poor.     

Culture,the 'sick role' and the consumption of health

This paper revisits Parsons's conception of the 'sick role' and examines the relevance of his writings on the cultural understanding of sickness to the consumption of health in the contemporary era. In terms of current developments, I focus on the development of pro-active approaches towards the healthy body, and the growth of 'information rich' consumers of health care. These have become prominent themes in sociology, and while Parsons's writings are usually viewed as anachronistic I argue they remain highly pertinent to understanding the emergence of informed, body conscious lay people. If Parsons's analysis of health is more relevant to current circumstances than many critics assume, however, it is not unproblematic. The residual categories associated with the sick role obscure the continued utility of his work on the general cultural values informing health care. It is Parsons's analysis of these values, I suggest, that needs rescuing from restricted understandings of the sick role and highlighting as an important resource for contemporary theorists.     

The development of science achievement in middle and high school. Individual differences and school effects

Using data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY), hierarchical linear models (HLMs) were used to model the growth of student science achievement in three areas (biology, physical science, and environmental science) during middle and high school. Results showed significant growth in science achievement across all areas. The growth was quadratic across all areas, with rapid growth at the beginning grades of middle school but slow growth at the ending grades of high school. At the student level, socioeconomic status (SES) and age were related to the rate of growth in all areas. There were no gender differences in the rate of growth in any of the three areas. At the school level, variables associated with school context (school mean SES and school size) and variables associated with school climate (principal leadership, academic expectation, and teacher autonomy) were related to the growth in science achievement. Initial (Grade 7) status in science achievement was not associated with the rate of growth in science achievement among either students or schools in any of the three areas.     

Drinking Game Participation Among Undergraduate Students Attending National Alcohol Screening Day

Abstract

Objectives, Participants, Methods: Drinking game participation has increased in popularity among college students and is associated with increased alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems. The current study investigated drinking game participation among 133 undergraduates attending National Alcohol Screening Day (NASD) in April of 2007. Results: A large percentage of the sample reported lifetime (77%) and recent (52%) drinking game participation. Males were more likely to report recent participation and reported higher levels of consumption while playing drinking games. Drinking game participants were more likely to experience a range of alcohol-related problems, and the relationship between drinking game participation and alcohol-related problems was mediated by weekly alcohol consumption. Conclusions: These results suggest that drinking game participation is a risk factor for elevated levels of alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems. Programs should be developed to educate students about the risks of drinking game participation, and prevention programs like NASD should address drinking games.     

Counter-geographies: The campaign against rationalisation of agricultural research stations in New South Wales, Australia

This paper discusses an example of community action mounted in a rural region of New South Wales, Australia, in response to proposals by the State Government to rationalise agricultural research stations operated by the Department of Primary Industries. Informed by a Foucaultian understanding of power and the concept of governmentality, neoliberalism is theorised as being the broad governmental context in which rationalisation proposals were put forward. Recent literature drawing on this theoretical perspective has emphasised that neoliberalism is enacted through a relationship of power, and is not monolithic or inevitable. Neoliberalism is always negotiated by those seeking to govern and those who are the object of such governmental actions. This paper analyses how plans to rationalise publicly funded agricultural research stations were opposed by those seeking to keep research facilities open in the case study area. The paper discusses the methods and scope of community action and, drawing on interviews, identifies a series of discourses articulated by campaigners. Non-local actors were depicted as uncaring and insensitive. In contrast, campaigners discussed the emergence of a ‘city-country divide’ in domestic politics; the need for specialist agricultural knowledge given the region's unique geographical location; and local impacts of an economic, social and emotional nature. Central were discourses of maintaining community, tradition, and continuity in unique local places defined by their climate, biophysical environment and economy. These were ‘counter-geographies’ that sought (successfully, it would transpire) to disrupt the state's imagined geography of a homogenous and flexible administrative space in which research services could be relocated wherever most efficient. Important too were embodied resistances to the way rural industries and people were subjected. Campaigners refused to accept preferred codes of neoliberal behaviour (particularly mobility and rationality) and instead demanded respect for their careers, families and communities. Important considerations are suggested for further research on impacts and negotiations of neoliberalism. This study particularly highlights the successes—as well as contradictions and limitations—of arguments that construct rural places as socialised, unique and unfairly treated (by governments), in opposition to metropolitan dominance and ‘placeless’ neoliberalism.