Changing Frameworks in Attitudes Toward Abortion

For more than two decades, legal abortion has been the subject of heated political debate and adversarial social movement activity; however, national polls have shown little change in aggregate levels of support for abortion. This analysis examines how the determinants of abortion attitudes have changed between 1977 and 1996, using data from the General Social Surveys. While in early time periods, whites were more approving of abortion than blacks, that pattern had reversed by the late 1980s. After controlling for other factors, older people are more accepting of abortion throughout the two decades, while gender is generally unrelated to abortion views. Catholic religion weakens slightly as a predictor of abortion attitudes, while religious fundamentalism and political liberalism increase in explanatory power. The associations between attitudinal correlates and abortion approval also change over this time period. Religiosity becomes a less powerful predictor of abortion attitudes, while respondents' attitude toward sexual freedom and belief in the sanctity of human life increase in their predictive power. Support for gender inequality remains a weak but stable predictor of abortion attitudes. This pattern of results suggests that the public is influenced more by the pro-life framework of viewing abortion than by the pro-choice perspective.     

Frontier spaces of vulnerability: Regional change,urbanization, drought and fire hazard in Santarém,Pará, Brazil

Fire hazard is a mounting concern in tropical rainforests of the Brazilian Amazon and has raised awareness within the science community of the links between agricultural fire use, drought and accidental fire. As a result, fire is being addressed as a crisis event with mitigation focused on those who light fires, particularly smallholder agriculturalists. Little attention is paid to the historical and ongoing ways in which Amazon landscapes and peoples have been made more susceptible to fire. Frontier regions of the Brazilian Amazon serve a variety of functions within the larger Brazilian society, including as extractive reserves for economic development, as social safety valves to reduce population pressures, and as areas to support urban regional integration. Each of these functions has impacted frontier environments in ways that create more flammable landscapes and/or shape the vulnerability of people to fire hazard. This paper uses a case study inthe Brazilian Lower Amazon to understand how vulnerability to fire hazard develops. It argues that if fire mitigation remains centered on fire as a crisis event, an understanding of what constitutes frontier spaces of vulnerability, both in landscape and in populations, will be limited.     

Frustration in Infancy: Implications for Emotion Regulation,Physiological Processes,and Temperament

A study sample of 162 six‐month‐old children was selected from a larger sample of 346 infants on the basis of parents' report of their infants' temperament and a laboratory assessment of temperament. Infants were classified as easily frustrated and less easily frustrated and compared on a number of emotion regulation, physiology, and temperament measures. Results indicated that male and female infants were equally likely to be classified as frustrated and less easily frustrated; however, male infants were less able to regulate physiologically. Easily frustrated infants used different emotion regulation strategies and were observed to be less attentive and more active than less easily frustrated infants when observed in the laboratory. These infants were also characterized by their parents as more active, less attentive, and more distressed to novelty. Infants classified as easily frustrated were more reactive physiologically and less able to regulate physiological reactivity than their less easily frustrated counterparts. It is hypothesized that this cluster of characteristics may constitute a unique temperamental type that may have implications for other types of behavioral functioning. Limitations of the study are that observations are based on a single brief assessment of the infant, modest effect sizes were found, and the study is cross‐sectional.     

Editorial

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Editorial

     

水资源污染与水资源的减少

工业的发展在带给人类福音的同时 ,也给江河湖泊、地下水源及海洋造成了污染 ,并对人类的生存与发展构成了严重威胁     

论唯物史观的三大基本特征

唯物史观具有三大基本特征, 即: 实践原则与主体性原则的内在一致, 它为唯物史观奠定了彻底的唯物主义理论基础; 历史发展过程的客体制约性与主体创造性的辩证统一, 它为唯物史观赋予了辩证的理论品格; 人的自由解放与历史进程的高度一致, 它使唯物史观获得了明确的价值指向。这三大基本特征有着内在的逻辑联系, 使唯物史观与其它一切历史观从根本上区别开来。     

从巴比特的人性沉浮看辛克菜·刘易斯的艺术成就

辛克莱·刘易斯在其代表作品《巴比特》中 ,继承了西方传统的人道主义和人性论的精髓 ,对人性的内涵及其表现形式作了深入的探索和挖掘。在巴比特身上 ,我们发现真真切切的人性沉浮。这正是刘易斯对 2 0世纪美国文学最杰出的贡献