Relationship among grip strength,functional outcomes,and work performance following hand trauma

This study examined the relationship among the recovery grip strength, functional outcomes, and work performance following occupational therapy intervention for hand trauma. This study had a sample size of 15 participants whose recovery grip strength was measured using a Jamar dynamometer, whose satisfaction with outcomes was measured by the Michigan Hand Outcomes Questionnaire (MHQ), and whose compliance with the home therapy program was measured by a visual analog scale (VAS). A Pearson r correlation demonstrated a significant relationship between recovery grip strength and two MHQ subset scores: overall hand function (r = 0.59, p = 0.019) and activities of daily living (ADL) performance (r = 0.61, p = 0.016). The participants' self-rating of compliance did not predict or influence either recovery grip strength or MHQ scores. A moderate positive correlation approaching significance (r = 0.51, p = 0.052) was found between grip strength and overall MHQ scores. The researchers concluded that a recovery grip strength measure should be used along with functional measures to appropriately assess overall hand function following hand trauma.     

Teaching Note—Challenges in the Classroom on LGBTQ Topics and Christianity in Social Work

This article provides guidance in facilitating the development of culturally sensitive skills for working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) populations that take into account power and privilege. Social work faculty and students have an ethical obligation to be competent and aware of privilege. When working with LGBTQ populations, this means addressing personal and social values and beliefs about gender and sexuality. Faculty may not feel prepared to address the influence of Christianity, the dominant religion in the United States, on social forces affecting LGBTQ populations and on social workers’ religious feelings when working with these individuals. This article describes pedagogical techniques and provides guidance for developing faculty and student competence and awareness when working with LGBTQ populations.     

Mediating Effects Between Objective and Subjective Indicators of Urban Quality of Life: Testing Specific Models for Safety and Access

Enhancing the urban quality of life (QoL) is an explicit policy goal of many countries, yet it is rarely studied using models that relate objective measures of the urban environment to the subjective evaluations of residents. It thus often remains unclear how planning interventions in the urban environment may influence residents’ satisfaction with their living conditions. In particular, during periods of significant urban growth, such as those recently observed in Switzerland, which result in diverse, unwanted threats to the local QoL (e.g., loss of green spaces, traffic congestions, and fear of crime). This study uses data from a sample of 1,693 residents that participated in a postal survey about urban QoL. The responses were combined with objective attributes of residential conditions, using geographic information systems. Structural equation models were calibrated to examine the direct and indirect effects of important indicators of urban QoL, namely safety in public spaces and access to central urban facilities. The study sheds further light on the mediating effects between objective characteristics and subjective evaluations that influence the urban QoL. The results showed predominantly low correlations between objective characteristics and subjective evaluations of urban QoL, which confirmed the findings of the few previous studies on this topic. Surprisingly, this study also found a strong link between objective access and perceived accessibility. This relation was explained by the spatial scope of the study region and suggested that the scale discordance theory should be tested in future research. The findings implied that variations in objective measures do not reliably represent differences as evaluated by residents.     

Linking urban form, land cover pattern, and hydrologic flow regime in the Puget Sound Lowland

The mismatch between political and watershed boundaries, jurisdictional differences in urban form, and data availability can limit the utility of past research findings that relate measures of urban development to urban stream function. This research complements existing research by building a quantitative link between urban form, land cover pattern, and the resulting hydrologic flow regime. Five land cover pattern measurements responded to urban form and were found to be resistant to the influence of watershed size and shape. Lot coverage had the strongest association with hydrological metrics measuring flashiness. The land cover metrics associated with hydrologic impacts were the interspersion and juxtaposition index for grass, aggregation index of high urban, and percent forest cover.     

Neighbourhood in a high rise, high density city: some observations on contemporary Hong Kong

Most of the contemporary literature on the neighbourhood comes from US or European sources where there are sharp contrasts with East Asian cities in terms of the physical form, residential densities and in relation to ideas of community and kinship. This paper reports on a study carried out in Hong Kong which was designed to explore the extent to which western preoccupations with neighbourhood resonate in a high rise, high density Chinese city. As a precursor to a larger scale study interviews were carried out with fifteen individuals in three contrasting locations: a New Town estate, an older, inner city area and a middle class housing estate. The interviews explored inter alia neighbourhood perceptions, ideas of community, sense of belonging and sense of place among contemporary Hong Kong residents. When Yuan Ssu became Confucius' steward he was given nine hundred measures of grain, which he declined. The Master said, ‘Can you not find a use for it in helping the people in your neighbourhood?’ (The Analects, Book VI).     

The Political Economy of “Transnational Business Feminism”

This article traces the emergence of a politico-economic project of “transnational business feminism” (TBF) over the past decade. This project – which is being developed by a coalition of states, financial institutions, the UN, corporations, NGOs and others – stresses the “business case” for gender equality by arguing that investments made in women can (and should) be measured in terms of the cost savings to families and communities, as well as in terms of boosting corporate profitability and national competitiveness. This article uses a feminist historical materialist framework to argue that TBF is facilitating the further entrenchment of the power of corporations to create “expert” knowledges about both “gender” and “development.” Using the Nike-led “Girl Effect” campaign as an example, it is argued that TBF is promoting a naturalized and essentialized view of women and gender relations that ignores the historical and structural causes of poverty and gender-based inequality. It is also helping to reproduce the same neoliberal macroeconomic framework that has created and sustained gender-based and other forms of oppression via the global feminization of labor, the erosion of support for social reproduction and the splintering of feminist critiques of capitalism.     

Cross Talk: Dialogue Between the Edge and the Center

This essay was inspired by Robert Gober's moving and brilliant creation of a room of Forrest Bess's work and life, set within Elisabeth Sussman's paradigm smashing 2012 Biennial. I read Bess as an artist and a man in struggle, creatively and personally, with several binaries: inside/outside, metropolitan and hometown, gender binaries, and binaries in artistic practice. In all spheres, highly consciously and perhaps also unconsciously, Bess's encounter with, defeat by, and victory over these binaries produced an extraordinary body of work. In this very postmodern modernist, we see the complexity of materiality in body, sexuality, gender, and art.     

To Whom Does the Subject Speak? Between the Relational and Lacanian Schools of Psychoanalysis: A Conversation With Adrienne Harris and David Lichtenstein,Moderated by Chris Christian

Relational psychoanalysis is a relatively new but increasingly present school in contemporary psychoanalysis. Lacanian psychoanalysis is a dominant presence in France and South America but far less so in the English-speaking clinical world. And there is little contact between them. Adrienne Harris, one of the founders of relational psychoanalysis, and David Lichtenstein, a prominent New York-based Lacanian-influenced psychoanalyst, came together in the spring of 2012 for a rare conversation about the differences, similarities, and potential meeting points between these two psychoanalytic movements. The conversation spanned a wide psychoanalytic landscape from the origins and influences of these two movements to their conceptualization of basic psychoanalytic notions such as the unconscious, the self, the process and purpose of the psychoanalytic project, the nature of trauma, the work of interpretation, and the role of the analytic relationship. Ferenczi, Winnicott, and Bromberg offered common theoretical ground for this comparative conversation.