My student body: a high-risk drinking prevention web site for college students

The authors investigated the efficacy of an interactive Web site, MyStudentBody.com: Alcohol (MSB:Alcohol) that offers a brief, tailored intervention to help heavy drinking college students reduce their alcohol use. They conducted a randomized, controlled clinical trial to compare the intervention with an alcohol education Web site at baseline, postintervention, and 3-month follow-up. Students were assessed on various drinking measures and their readiness to change their drinking habits. The intervention was especially effective for women and persistent binge drinkers. Compared with women who used the control Web site, women who used the intervention significantly reduced their peak and total consumption during special occasions and also reported significantly fewer negative consequences related to drinking. In addition, persistent heavy binge drinkers in the experimental group experienced a more rapid decrease in average consumption and peak consumption compared with those in the control group. The authors judged MSB:Alcohol a useful intervention for reaching important subgroups of college binge drinkers.     

An Exploratory Investigation of Heterosexual Licensed Domestic Partners

In‐depth telephone interviews were conducted in four cities in an exploratory study of 23 licensed cohabitors to determine why they have chosen to legitimize their intimate unions through domestic partnership ordinances, rather than through legal marriage. The cohabitors in this sample are pursuing these licensed partnerships to obtain an economic benefit (e.g., health insurance coverage for a partner); as a substitute for legal remarriage; to legitimize their unions in a way other than through legal marriage; or as an ideological alternative to legal marriage. Regardless of motivations to pursue domestic partnership certificates, these respondents are divided over whether they should have the same rights and responsibilities as the married.     

Against all odds: Revitalization of local self-help alternatives by longterm mental health consumers

The article presents a grounded theory case study of a consumer-run alternative services organization, operated by and for people labeled chronically mentally ill in Michigan. We analyze the organization's emergence and development as a process of revitalization through which participants mobilized to transform their private and public identities. Innovations, including self-disclosure rituals and advocacy strategies, were developed by the group's founder during a period of social dislocation following deinstitutionalization. Subsequently, through their advocacy efforts for and with other consumers, group members laid the foundation for a unique form of locally-based political activism, blending innovative self-advocacy strategies with a critique of conventional mental health care. Active participants' efforts have created a mental health consumer organization that members perceive as an empowering and sometimes rehabilitative alternative within Michigan's public mental health care system.     

Parenting Stress,Parental Reactions,and Externalizing Behavior From Ages 4 to 10

The association between parenting stress and child externalizing behavior, and the mediating role of parenting, has yielded inconsistent findings; however, the literature has typically been cross‐sectional or unidirectional. In the current study, the authors examined the longitudinal transactions among parenting stress, perceived negative parental reactions, and child externalizing at 4, 5, 7, and 10 years old. Models examining parent effects (parenting stress to child behavior), child effects (externalizing to parental reactions and stress), indirect effects of parental reactions, and the transactional associations among all variables were compared. The transactional model best fit the data, and longitudinal reciprocal effects emerged between parenting stress and externalizing behavior. The mediating role of parental reactions was not supported; however, indirect effects suggest that parenting stress both is affected by and affects parent and child behavior. The complex associations among parent and child variables indicate the importance of interventions to improve the parent–child relationship and reducing parenting stress.     

The ‘spirit of the Schengen rules’, the humanitarian visa,and contested asylum governance in Europe – The Swiss case

ABSTRACT

The paper examines why Switzerland along with several other European countries introduced a Schengen visa to substitute for individual applications for asylum at the country’s embassy as a pathway to protect Syrian refugees. The case study highlights the inherent interest asymmetries in a tenuous arrangement of multi-layered governance, revealing a conflict over the interpretation of Schengen law in a collective governance environment – a conflict that was recently resolved by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Drawing on multi-layered governance, the paper discusses why the Swiss divergence from the ‘spirit’, but not the ‘letter’ of the Schengen code (a metaphor used by the EU Commission), could be considered as an example of ‘de-coupling’ from the negotiated, intergovernmental order. Whereas de jure the unity of the Schengen visa code is maintained, the amount of discretion which Switzerland and other Schengen countries have used to interpret the regulatory purpose behind the Schengen humanitarian visa went too far for the CJEU and the EU Commission. The case study illustrates how the interpretation of rules matters in a multi-layered framework of governance, possibly giving the ability to react to changing circumstances, but also bearing the potential for conflict.     

Species-specific facilitation shapes primary successional communities under nurse trees in an abandoned slag dump

Urban Ecosystems - Facilitation by nurse plants shapes community development during primary succession. Human activity—especially in urban settings—has created environments like...