Popular and Rejected Children's Reasoning Regarding Negative Emotions in Social Situations: The Role of Gender

Two studies compared popular and rejected children's reasoning regarding social interactions involving negative emotions. The first study, with 23 rejected and 23 popular 10‐ to 11‐year‐olds, involved hypothetical social scenarios where a classmate ‘victim’ was likely to experience a negative emotion. Although popular and rejected children both recognized negative emotions and were equally likely to suggest helping behaviour to aid the victim, there were gender effects on the type of helping behaviour suggested. Specifically, popular girls were significantly more likely to offer comforting behaviour than advice whereas popular boys offered advice more than comfort; no such preferences were exhibited by the rejected children. Furthermore, popular girls were significantly more likely than other children to refer to emotional states when justifying their helping response. In the second study, 30 popular and 30 rejected eight‐ to 10‐year‐olds identified the motives behind story characters' efforts to mask negative emotions. Popular girls were more likely to identify the target motives than rejected girls, but no such difference was apparent for the boys. The results are discussed in the light of evidence regarding gender differences in peer interaction patterns.     

Focus on the first years: Correlates of substantiation of child maltreatment for families with children 0 to 4

The overall purpose of this study was to examine the correlates of substantiation of child neglect or child abuse in children 0–48 months of age in five areas: (1) child characteristics, (2) parent characteristics, (3) home characteristics, (4) social characteristics, and (5) maltreatment characteristics. A second purpose was to compare the results of this study to the current body of child maltreatment research.This study uses an ex-post facto design. A random sample of cases from a large metropolitan area in the southwest was obtained. Families whose cases were substantiated for maltreatment were compared to families whose cases were not substantiated. The exposure of children to a dangerous environment and poor parental skill were predictive of the substantiation in the multivariate analysis. Parents with fewer parenting skills, such as the inability to effectively communicate, lack of impulse control and use of harsh discipline, were predictive of child maltreatment in the multivariate analysis. The bivariate analysis revealed additional 22 variables as correlates of the substantiation within the 5 factors.     

Violence Exposure and Drug Use in Central American Youth: Family Cohesion and Parental Monitoring as Protective Factors

Associations between witnessing serious violence and drug use, and the protective influences of family cohesion and parental monitoring, were investigated among 9,840 adolescents (50.5% female, M age=15.29 years, SD=1.76) living in Panama and Costa Rica. After accounting for demographics and parental and sibling substance use, witnessing serious violence was associated with greater drunkenness, tobacco use, number of illicit drugs used, and problems with drugs and alcohol. In every analysis, exposure to violence was associated with more drug use, while family cohesion and parental monitoring attenuated risk. Further, family cohesion and parental monitoring exerted a protective‐stabilizing effect on number of illicit drugs used and on problems with drugs and alcohol. There were few interactions with age. Implications for prevention are discussed.     

Labor Force Transitions after Childbirth Among Five Birth Cohorts in Sweden

This article describes part-time work in Sweden and performs a multivariate analysis of the choice between part-time work, full-time work, and other activities in connection with childbirth among five birth cohorts of women. Results show that the combination of market work and family is common, but heterogeneity exists among women in the sample analyzed. Previous labor force participation proves important when it comes to returning to the labor market. The extent of previous labor force participation is also important, regardless of sector of, when it comes to the return to part-time or full-time work. Career orientation and social background also prove significant, some indicators probably working indirectly through higher education and different preferences.     

Markov random-field models for estimating local labour markets

Summary. This work is motivated by data on daily travel-to-work flows observed between pairs of elemental territorial units of an Italian region. The data were collected during the 1991 population census. The aim of the analysis is to partition the region into local labour markets. We present a new method for this which is inspired by the Bayesian texture segmentation approach. We introduce a novel Markov random-field model for the distribution of the variables that label the local labour markets for each territorial unit. Inference is performed by means of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. The issue of model hyperparameter estimation is also addressed. We compare the results with those obtained by applying a classical method. The methodology can be applied with minor modifications to other data sets.     

Coalitional economies with public projects

We prove that the welfare theorems hold in the framework of coalitional exchange economies with public projects, both in case of pure exchange and in the presence of production. The space of agents is assumed to be non-atomic (single traders are negligible) and infinitely many commodities are allowed to be present on the market.     

Models of Neurotoxicity: Extrapolation of Benchmark Doses in Vitro

In risk assessment, no observed exposure level (NOAEL) and benchmark dose (BMD) are usually derived either from epidemiological studies in humans or from animal experiments. In many in vitro studies, concentration-effect/response curves have been analyzed using different mathematical models finalized to the identification of EC50. In the present article, we propose a model to fit dose-response curves in vitro. The BMD approach has been used to compare the cell viability (MIT assay) of different rat (C6 and PC12, glial and neuronal, respectively) and human cell lines (D384 and SK-N-MC, glial and neuronal, respectively) after 24-hour exposure to the following neurotoxic substances: manganese chloride (MnCl2), methyl-mercury (Me-Hg), and the enantiomers of styrene oxide (SO). For all rat and human cell lines, the potency of the examined compounds was: MnCl2 < S-SO < R-SO < Me-Hg. A preliminary comparison with in vivo toxicity data for these substances gave rise to consistent results. Whereas a reasonable agreement between in vitro and in vivo data has been found for Mn and styrene oxide, a wide scatter of LOAEL has been reported for Me-Hg and these appear to be either much higher or lower than the BMD for the MIT assay we observed in vitro.     

Quantitative Risk Assessment of FMD Virus Transmission via Water

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a viral disease of domesticated and wild cloven-hoofed animals. FMD virus is known to spread by direct contact between infected and susceptible animals, by animal products such as meat and milk, by the airborne route, and mechanical transfer on people, wild animals, birds, and by vehicles. During the outbreak of 2001 in the Netherlands, milk from dairy cattle was illegally discharged into the sewerage as a consequence of transport prohibition. This may lead to contaminated discharges of biologically treated and raw sewage in surface water that is given to cattle to drink. The objective of the present study was to assess the probability of infecting dairy cows that were drinking FMD virus contaminated surface water due to illegal discharges of contaminated milk. So, the following data were collected from literature: FMD virus inactivation in aqueous environments, FMD virus concentrations in milk, dilution in sewage water, virus removal by sewage treatment, dilution in surface water, water consumption of cows, size of a herd in a meadow, and dose-response data for ingested FMD virus by cattle. In the case of 1.6 x 10(2) FMD virus per milliliter in milk and discharge of treated sewage in surface water, the probability of infecting a herd of cows was estimated to be 3.3 x 10(-7) to 8.5 x 10(-5), dependent on dilution in the receiving surface water. In the case of discharge of raw sewage, all probabilities of infection were 100 times higher. In the case of little dilution in small rivers, the high level of 8.5 x 10(-3) is reached. For 10(4) times higher FMD virus concentrations in milk, the probabilities of infecting a herd of cows are high in the case of discharge of treated sewage (3.3 x 10(-3) to 5.7 x 10(-1)) and very high in the case of discharge of raw sewage (0.28-1.0). It can be concluded that illegal and uncontrolled discharges of contaminated milk into the sewerage system may lead to high risks to other cattle farms at 6-50 km distance of the location of discharge within one day. This clearly underlines current measures that prohibit such discharges, and also asks for strict control. This risk assessment clearly demonstrated the potential significance of FMD virus transmission via water, and the results will be useful on an international scale, and could also serve as a basis for other FMD risk-assessment models.