Strength of Infants' Bimanual Reaching Patterns is Related to the Onset of Upright Locomotion

Infants typically exhibit a shift from unimanual to bimanual reaching toward the end of their first year, which has been linked to walking onset. Until now, however, it has been unclear whether it was the onset of walking per se that influenced reaching patterns or whether a more general shift to an upright posture might have prompted the reorganization of the motor system. To address this question, the current study longitudinally chronicled the uni‐ and bimanual reaching preferences of 25 infants every 3 weeks starting at 7 months, prior to the onset of pulling‐to‐stand and through the onset of cruising. Experimenters recorded infants' reaching behavior via a semi‐structured reaching procedure and documented their motor development. There was no relationship between the shift from uni‐ to bimanual reaching and the onset of pulling‐to‐stand. However, the onset of cruising was related to a shift in reaching pattern preference, suggesting that the increase in infants' bimanual reaching was prompted by a reorganization of the motor system in which the arms are recruited for use in new ways to support locomotion. We also discuss individual differences in the trajectory of reaching activity in terms of the pitfalls of using age as an explanatory variable.     

Resolving and avoiding conflict with the professional staff

The professional staff perspective radically diverges from that of management. Whereas the professional staff sees the hospital in terms of its providing quality health care to each individual patient, hospital executives see the hospital in terms of its financial and systemwide performance. Unless these divergent perspectives are effectively integrated to solve problems and formulate hospital policies, chronic conflict between hospital management and the professional staff is inevitable.     

Developing Young Leadership Within the Ethiopian Immigrant Group in Israel

When over 8000 Ethiopian Jews fled to Israel in 1982 and 1994, whole communities were uprooted from a longstanding traditional way of life. Their abrupt introduction to a Western-style Israeli culture, different language and customs contradicted their almost mystical expectations of their religious homeland, resulted in a culture shock that threatened their entire way of life—especially the hierarchical leadership of elders that they were accustomed to. This article offers a glimpse into the Ethiopian Jews' life prior to the migration, as well as the Israeli reality they now face. Our project, initiated in 1996 and lasting one year, sought to locate and train young immigrant Ethiopian leaders to help bridge the gap between their communities and their new life-preserving Ethiopian values and traditions while promoting adaptation. This article outlines the development of the model, from the conception of the idea through the formation of the multidisciplinary team, the establishment of criteria for locating and selecting the target leadership population, the training process, and the final evaluations and conclusions during the year-long operation of the project.     

Mothers' postdivorce earnings in the context of welfare policy change

We examined in this study the implications of divorce for mothers' earnings, comparing the 1990s and the 2000s, and illuminating developments in welfare policy for single‐parent families over those two decades. After the welfare reform of 2003, the economic autonomy of single mothers, established through a combination of welfare state‐based benefits and paid labour, was delegitimised, with a turn toward the marketplace. Using a unique data set created for this research by merging Israeli census files for 1995–2008, annual administrative employment records from the National Insurance Institute and the Tax Authority, and data from the Civil Registry of Divorce, we found that most mothers tended to increase their income from paid labor following divorce. However, they did so significantly more prior to the welfare cuts than after the cuts. The results can inform policy discussions about how mothers' postdivorce earnings might be affected by welfare policy shifts.