All Things Thrown and Wonderful,All Memories Great and Small

And the Lord God made them all. I went to Sunday school and like lots of other kids (though far from all) came to an age at which I simply stopped going. Nothing conscious about it, I don't think, it's just those sets of spaces stopped becoming; stopped like nothing physical can stop, like a car crashing into a wall and instead of rebounding being merely consumed in whole. I (re)member, in my naive teens (when is this? I do not know. Perhaps the time of the Iraq war, but maybe this was a different car journey) I once came out with the statement (which was not particularly naive especially) “I think God exists, how did we all get here otherwise”. Me, my sister that is two years older than me, my mum and dad, were on the road from Auchmuir Bridge towards Stirling around Loch Leven, the loch in Fife, Scotland, on which Mary Queen of Scots was held on an island. I have an image of a memory of going there as well. It is thus, however, that I (re)member the initiation into a different vision of the universe and everything. Yet it is a state clearly pleated bewilderingly. As an event it exists in what Deleuze and Guattari term a “rhizome, a burrow”, with “flights of escape” which have no beginnings or ends, mere initialities and finalities. 3 3 They talk of this in many places. See Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix , Anti‐Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia , ( London and New York : Continuum, 2004 ); Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix , Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature , Dana Polan trans., ( Minneapolis and London : University of Minnesota Press, 1986 ). For Deleuze alone also see Deleuze, Gilles , The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque , Tom Conley trans. ( London : The Athlone Press, 1993 ).
This is strange. It is not a polemic, nor does it have an explicit argument, except perhaps to ask the question that always dances on a pinhead – as Bohumil Hrabal once put it, “Pirouettes on a Postage Stamp” 4 4 Hrabal, Bohumil , Pirouettes on a Postage Stamp .
– is there any escape? I think I sang “All Things Bright and Beautiful” at my Gran's funeral, but it might have been something else. We stopped in the house of the priest and watched England lose the Cricket World Cup in 1999; they played in blue. That's how I (re)member the year of my Gran's funeral. The church I used to go to burned down. Arson, I think.     

Children and Families’ Involvement in Social Work Decision Making

This review summarises the research literature on children’s and parents’ involvement in social work decision making, which is regarded, in policy terms, as increasingly important. In practice, however, it tends to be messy, difficult and compromised. Different individuals or groups may have different understandings of participation and related concepts, while differences of age and disability also mediate effective user engagement. The literature highlights common themes in effective participatory practice with both children and their parents. Central to this are the establishment of relationships of trust and respect, clear communication and information and appropriate support to participate.     

Inconsistent Latino Self-Identification in Adolescence and Academic Performance

Research has documented important connections between ethnic identity and academic success. In the multiethnic context of the US, ethnic self-identification is a dynamic process that develops through social interaction within institutions. Understanding the emergence of a Latino self-identity within schools can provide insight into the meanings adolescents confer to a “Latino” identity and the relationship between a Latino self-identity and academic success. This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine (1) the association between a Latino self-identification in-school but not at home and academic well-being, (2) the association between a Latino self-identification in-school but not at home and school processes, and (3) whether school processes help to mediate the relationship between Latino self-identification in-school but not at home and academic well-being. Results suggest that while adolescents who identify as Latino at school but not at home come from families and neighborhoods with higher levels of economic and human capital, by the end of high school they have accumulated less educational capital then either consistently identifying Latinos or non-Latino whites. Much of this association can be explained by prior academic experiences, yet other factors associated with resistance to institutional norms and attending low performing schools may also be important. Results suggest that non-minority, underachieving adolescents may choose to self-identify as Latino in schools as a way to save face and avert identity crises and that perhaps youth in schools have come to associate a Latino identity with poor school performance.     

Patterns of Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Risk Behavior among Young Heterosexually Active Men

Intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization is linked to sexual risk exposure among women. However, less is known about the intersection of IPV perpetration and sexual risk behavior among men. This study used data from a diverse, community sample of 334 heterosexually active young men, aged 18 to 25, across the United States to examine whether and how men with distinct IPV-related behavior patterns differed in sexual risk–related behavior and attitudes. Participants were recruited and surveyed online, and grouped conceptually based on the types of IPV perpetration behavior(s) used in a current or recent romantic relationship. Groups were then compared on relevant sexual risk variables. Men reporting both physical abuse and sexual coercion against intimate partners reported significantly higher numbers of lifetime partners, higher rates of nonmonogamy, greater endorsement of nonmonogamy, and less frequent condom use relative to nonabusive men or those reporting controlling behavior only. This group also had higher sexually transmitted infection (STI) exposure compared to men who used controlling behavior only and men who used sexual coercion only. Findings suggest that interventions with men who use physical and sexual violence need to account for not only the physical and psychological harm of this behavior but also the sexual risk to which men may expose their partners.     

Dot Plots

Dot plots represent individual observations in a batch of data with symbols, usually circular dots. They have been used for more than 100 years to depict distributions in detail. Hand-drawn examples show their authors' efforts to arrange symbols so that they are as near as possible to their proper locations on a scale without overlapping enough to obscure each other. Recent computer programs that attempt to reproduce these historical plots have unfortunately resorted to simple histogram binning instead of using methods that follow the rules for the hand-drawn examples. This article introduces an algorithm that more accurately represents the dot plots cited in the literature.     

Models of Management System Standards: A Review of the Integration Issues

The subject of Integrated Management Systems in terms of quality, environmental and occupational health and safety management has become of increasing interest to researchers and business alike during the last 3 years or so. This paper focuses on a review of the various models of integration found in the academic literature and also those advocated by the standards bodies, such as the British Standards Institution and the International Organization for Standardization. A number of writers advocate alignment of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 and present models to facilitate this; however, integration into a single standard is, in general, not favoured. Various models have been developed to overcome these difficulties, but the authors believe that none is completely satisfactory. It is considered that a model of integration based on the EFQM Model for Business Excellence will allow the limitation of the standards to be overcome and the total systems approach to integration to be facilitated.     

'Clinton faces nation': a case study in the construction of focus group data as public opinion

This paper analyses the way in which a particular newspaper report constructs ‘public opinion’ based on data from small‐scale qualitative research. Using as a case study a report of a focus group discussion of Clinton's grand jury testimony, we show how these data are ‘worked up’ as representative, generalisable, and valid. By capitalising on the advantages of focus group data, while attending to and countering their disadvantages, the newspaper report is able to suggest that the views of ten people in San Francisco offer an authoritative indication of public opinion about Clinton across the USA. Finally, we sketch out some of the implications of this case study in relation to the construction of facticity more generally.     

Detecting homogeneous segments in DNA sequences by using hidden Markov models

In recent years there has been a rapid growth in the amount of DNA being sequenced and in its availability through genetic databases. Statistical techniques which identify structure within these sequences can be of considerable assistance to molecular biologists particularly when they incorporate the discrete nature of changes caused by evolutionary processes. This paper focuses on the detection of homogeneous segments within heterogeneous DNA sequences. In particular, we study an intron from the chimpanzee α-fetoprotein gene; this protein plays an important role in the embryonic development of mammals. We present a Bayesian solution to this segmentation problem using a hidden Markov model implemented by Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. We consider the important practical problem of specifying informative prior knowledge about sequences of this type. Two Gibbs sampling algorithms are contrasted and the sensitivity of the analysis to the prior specification is investigated. Model selection and possible ways to overcome the label switching problem are also addressed. Our analysis of intron 7 identifies three distinct homogeneous segment types, two of which occur in more than one region, and one of which is reversible.     

The meaning of empowerment: the interdisciplinary etymology of a new management concept

Empowerment has become a widely used management term in the last decade or so, though, in practical terms, it shares the ambiguity of its predecessors in the HRM tradition. This paper sets out to unravel the web of meaning surrounding empowerment to show what a contested concept it is, and hence why its application in organizational settings is fraught with misunderstanding and tension. It does so by taking an approach that contributes to the examination of HRM discourse and management rhetoric. To demonstrate the ambiguity of empowerment as a concept, the paper reviews the various ways in which the term has been used across non-management disciplines (women, minority groups, education, community care, politics), culminating with a review of the use of empowerment in contemporary management theory. The paper concludes that organizations and managers have chosen to coin a phrase which is open to different, sometimes contradictory, meanings and which, when applied, evokes both subjective attitudes and objective behaviour, means different things in varying contexts, and is affected fundamentally by individual differences in perception and experience. Unless organizations offer clear operational definitions when using empowerment, instead of purely acquiescing to a vague and seductive version of the concept, they are abdicating responsibility for the unpredictable consequences that result.