关注美国水处理导致的铝污染

2009年9月公布的一个事实让居住在美国的家长、学校员工和有关当局忐忑不安:许多美国学童用学校的饮水喷头一解口渴时,会摄入铅及其它污染物.然而,美联社对美国环境保护局(EPA)的数据进行分析后所作的令人担忧的报道可能只是豹之一斑,因为饮用水铅污染问题不仅发生在学校,还牵涉到千家万户.近年来,为了改善水质,水处理工艺在进行改变的同时,也带来了铅污染这一意想不到的结果.     

Risk and protective factors for recent alcohol use among African-American youth

A total of 7488 7th-12th grade African-American students completed a survey assessing factors associated with recent alcohol use. Results indicated that 13.6% used alcohol in the past month. A series of odds ratios revealed that making good grades, participating in school activities, attending church, and having parents/teachers talk about the dangers of alcohol and set/enforce rules regarding alcohol were associated with decreased recent use. Participating in risky behaviors such as getting into trouble, skipping school, and having friends who use alcohol and other drugs was directly related to recent use. Prevention specialists should encourage parents/teachers to engage youth in family, school, and community activities to deter alcohol use. Results may assist youth health professionals in developing prevention programs aimed at African-American youth.     

Sex(ualities) and Symbolic Interaction

What goes on sexually has to be placed in a context of meaning. This might seem a very simple and obvious idea. And yet this is what makes it so important: most people still cannot see sexuality in this way. We continue to think of our sexualities as remaining firmly locked in the chains of biology. Whereas for humans surely the biological is really the least interesting aspect of our sexuality. So, whilst there remain huge armies of sexologists studying the biological in its various guises, the radical importance of the social still fails to find its proper place in the study of the sexual. —Ken Plummer, “Memoriam for Bill Simon” (2001)     

The Use of Multicultural Curricula and Materials to Counter Racism in Children

Intervention programs designed to reduce racial stereotyping and prejudice among children using multicultural curricula and materials are reviewed. Specifically, the theoretical assumptions that have guided the development of multicultural programs for countering racism among children and the empirical limitations that characterize extant intervention studies are outlined. The failure to design more effective programs is attributed to a lack of breadth andsophistication in the theoretical models and empirical research on which intervention strategies have been based. Specific recommendations for expanding and evaluating the impact of multicultural curricula and materials are presented.     

Welfare Recipients' College Attendance and Consequences for Time‐Limited Aid*

Objective. I examine the association between total time on welfare and recipients' college attendance and graduation over a 20‐year period. Methods. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I model the determinants of college enrollment and graduation among welfare recipients, and the association between the total number of months a recipient receives aid and her college attendance and graduation. Models examine separately the effects associated with longer stays on aid while recipients attend school as well as reduced recidivism associated with college attendance and graduation. Results. Findings indicate that attending college is associated with more months on aid, but graduating largely offsets this increase through reductions in return to aid. Conclusions. Policymakers' concerns that including postsecondary education as a TANF activity would undermine the short‐term focus of the program are not fully supported. A greater concern is the low rate of graduation among welfare recipients, who reap the most benefits from college attendance and sacrifice the fewest months on aid.     

Community Support for a Gold Cyanide Process Mine: Resident and Leader Differences in Rural Montana*

Abstract Previous studies have established that community residents and leaders differ in their support for hazardous waste facility siting in rural areas (Spies et al. 1998). We examine whether these same differences exist in rural communities that face other high‐risk development decisions by analyzing resident and leader support for a proposed gold cyanide process (GCP) mine in Montana. Compared to proposed hazardous waste facilities, a much stronger predictor of both resident and leader support in the GCP mine context is recreancy, or distrust in institutions and outside interveners. However, perceived economic benefits remain key differences between residents and leaders in both the GCP mine and hazardous waste facility cases.     

Why Territorial Disintegration Has Not Occurred in Russia: Applying State Breakdown Theories to Explain Stability

Much has been written to explain the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Little attention, however, has been paid to understanding why post-1991 Russia has maintained stability despite continued economic and political turmoil throughout the 1990s. This paper attempts to answer this question by applying an integrated model of territorial disintegration to examine the political, economic, demographic, and geopolitical changes in the pre-1991 Soviet Union and post-1991 Russia. The integrated model is constructed by synthesizing Goldstone's demographic-structural model, Skocpol's and Collins' geopolitical model, and a modified version of Collins' argument of the destabilizing potential brought about by rapid market development as three alternative routes to territorial disintegration. It is found that improvement in Russia's geopolitical condition after 1991 is largely responsible for the decline in disintegrative potential. Slower population growth also rendered the demographic route less disintegrative during the 1990s. More effective taxation and the availability of foreign loans enabled the Russian state to handle its financial crises, thereby curbing the development of destabilizing forces through the dynamics proposed by Collins.     

Acoustic Packaging of Action Sequences by Infants

This study investigated whether acoustic input, in the form of infant‐directed speech, influenced infants' segmenting of action sequences. Thirty‐two 7.5‐ to 11.5‐month‐old infants were familiarized with video sequences made up of short action clips. Narration coincided with portions of the action stream to package certain pairs of clips together. At test, packaged and nonpackaged pairs of actions were presented side by side in silence. Narration heard during familiarization influenced how infants viewed the action units, such that at test, infants older than 9.5 months (but not younger) looked longer at the nonpackaged than the packaged action sequences. The role of infant‐directed speech as well as other types of acoustic input in assisting infants' processing of action is discussed.     

Predicting Community Satisfaction among Rural Residents: an Integrative Model*

Abstract Community satisfaction has often been linked to the level of satisfaction with a community's infrastructure, job opportunities, and social support networks. Yet most empirical analyses of community satisfaction have focused on only one aspect of the available theory to predict community satisfaction. In this paper we integrate multiple models to analyze community satisfaction of almost 4,000 rural Nebraskans. The integrated model indicates that social ties may have a greater role in predicting community satisfaction than had been thought previously.     

THE CASE FOR PARITY AND BIRTH-ORDER STATISTICS

Parity refers to the number of (live) births that a woman (or man) has had. Birth order refers to whether a birth is the first, second, third or higher‐order birth of the parent. In the context of low and shifting fertility, parity and birth‐order statistics are becoming increasingly important for understanding fertility trends and patterns, for policy, and for carrying out projections of future fertility. In Australia, the main sources of demographic data are birth, death and marriage registers, and the five‐yearly national census. Both the birth registers and the census are ideally placed to collect data required to calculate parity and birth‐order statistics. However not all Australian states and territories collect or code the necessary information in the birth registers, and the parity question ‘For each female, how many babies has she ever had?’ is only asked every second census; that is, once every 10 years. In this paper, we outline the importance and uses of parity and birth‐order statistics. We discuss the Australian data available at present and their gaps and shortcomings. We then describe the ‘gold standard’ of parity and birth‐order statistics and how Australia can achieve this standard through some minor changes to the data collection process.