Medicine on the line? Computer‐mediated social support and advice for people with diabetes

The advent of thousands of Usenet groups on the Internet, covering a vast range of medical and welfare issues and ostensibly devoted to the mutual social support of participating members, has raised the potential for the development of new forms of 'virtual' health care. This article critically analyses the use by people with diabetes of one such Usenet group. It seeks to establish, first, the extent to which such a site provides some demonstrable measure of social support to its participants. This is approached by undertaking a structural analysis of the site to identify the extent of usage, and the nature of supporting interventions using a fivefold classification (instrumental, informational, esteem and social companionship and other). Second, the article attempts to identify any disparity between the lay health-knowledge in evidence and biomedical opinions proffered by the use of a panel of consultant diabetiologists. The results of the analysis suggest that the diabetes newsgroup provides an example of an active forum for largely well-informed participants who routinely use the media as an aid to the reflexive management of their medical condition. It also raises the prospect of a renegotiated relationship between medical knowledge and lay experience based upon shared learning     

Modelling data from single-photon emission computerized tomography

The completely random character of radioactive disintegration provides the basis of a strong justification for a Poisson linear model for single-photon emission computed tomography data, which can be used to produce reconstructions of isotope densities, whether by maximum likelihood or Bayesian methods. However, such a model requires the construction of a matrix of weights, which represent the mean rates of arrival at each detector of photons originating from each point within the body space. Two methods of constructing these weights are discussed, and reconstructions resulting from phantom and real data are presented.     

African American Children's Adjustment: The Roles of Maternal and Teacher Depressive Symptoms

This study examined the unique and interactive roles of mother and teacher depressive symptoms in child adjustment in 277 African American single mother‐headed families, as well as whether the associations differed depending on the age and gender of the child. Findings revealed a significant association between maternal depressive symptoms and child depressive symptoms in girls, but not boys. Moreover, the combination of higher levels of both mother and teacher depressive symptoms was associated with the highest level of child depressive symptoms and, for younger children, externalizing symptoms. The importance of considering the multiple social contexts in which children interact is discussed.     

The influence of risk and protective factors on burnout experienced by those who work with maltreated children

The aim of the study was to explore the degree (and type) of burnout and trauma symptoms, personal histories and coping strategies retrospectively reported by those who work with maltreated children and their families. A self‐selected sample of workers (N = 44) completed a self‐report questionnaire assessing childhood maltreatment, family background characteristics, current adjustment, coping strategies and burnout. Workers reported high levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, and a low to moderate sense of personal accomplishment. Family background characteristics predicted the occurrence of maltreatment and current adjustment, and a personal history of maltreatment predicted current trauma symptoms, but not burnout. Workers most frequently used problem‐focused coping strategies and sought social support; however, coping strategies were not associated with the level of either trauma symptoms or burnout. Despite employing positive coping strategies, their efficacy may be affected by other interpersonal, intra‐individual and job resource issues. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Citizenship,Pluralism, and Modern Public Space

The article begins with the realist assumption in political science that posits that political violence and chaos occurs in the absence of the state, and that the international system is congenitally anarchic. Using the Y2K problem and the 11 September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York as two instances of violent political phenomena within global modernity, this article examines notions of citizenship, pluralism, and their relationships with modern public space through the lens of 'public disaster' scenarios in which the breakdown of centralized systems of power tends to lead to chaos. However, public disasters also appear to create the opposite effect of bonding communities together in the face of adversity that leads to greater social cohesion rather than the breakdown of social institutions. The article tries to resolve this apparent enigma through several theories of public space, democracy, and civil society.     

Organisationsentwicklung als Thema von Erwachsenenbildung und Supervisionscurricula

Zusammenfassung  Der Beitrag beschreibt Planung, Verlauf und abschlie?ende Beurteilung eines gruppendynamischen Seminars, in dem für angehende Supervisorinnen und Supervisoren das Thema Organisations-Entwicklung dargestellt und vermittelt werden sollte. Ausgangspunkt war die Kl?rung des Inhaltsraums von Organisations-Entwicklung als geplantem sozialen Wandel, der auf sozialwissenschaftlicher Grundlage zielgerichtet, strategisch und mit Zeitperspektive in der Zusammenarbeit zwischen externer und interner Sach-, Prozess- und Entscheidungskompetenz durchgeführt wird. Als Ziele des Seminars wurden festgelegt, Organisations-Entwicklung als sozialwissenschaftliches Instrument zu begründen, Organisations-Entwicklung-Schritte zu konzipieren und sie kollegial zu kommunizieren. Darüber hinaus wurden Qualit?tskriterien für das Seminar formuliert: Praxisn?he, Kl?rung des Inhaltsraum Selbstorganisation, Selbststeuerung, Ressourcenaktivierung, Konfliktregulierung, Analyse des Gruppenprozesses, Nutzung von Feldkompetenz und Verhaltensmodellen, Etablierung von Feedbackschleifen, Koordination und Synergie, kollegialer Austausch und Kl?rung pers?nlicher Organisations-Entwicklungs-Fragen. Bausteine und Lernorte des Seminars waren das Plenum, die Lernpartnerschaft, das OE-Team, die Beobachterfunktion, die Tagesreflexion, die Sitzung Frage und Antwort, die Darstellung von Praxisf?llen, das Plenum-Feinsteuerung, die Analyse der Arbeitsprozesse des OE-Teams sowie Transfer und Auswertung. Der tats?chliche Verlauf des Seminars wird aus der Perspektive des Leiters kommentiert. Anhand von Verlaufsbeobachtungen und Teilnehmer?u?erungen wird der Eindruck begründet, dass diese Form des Vorgehens als lernintensiv, autonomief?rdernd und für die zu erwerbende Supervisionskompetenz als praxisrelevant betrachtet werden kann.

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This article describes the plantification, progress and final evaluation of a group-dynamic seminar for future supervisors in which the topic organization development was presented and introduced. The content of organization development was first defined as a planned social change which is executed based on social sciences in a goal-oriented, strategic way which considers the time perspective of the cooperation between external and internal specialised-, process- and decision competence. Goals of the seminar were to justify that organisation development is a social science tool, to plan organization development steps and to communicate them to peer seminar participants. Further more, the following quality criteria for the seminar were formulated: practice orientation, definition of self-organisation content, self regulation, resources activation, conflict regulation, group process analysis, field competence and behaviour models usage, feedback establishment, coordination and synergy, mutual peer exchange and finding answers to personal questions about organization development. The building blocks and learn places of the seminar were the plenary sessions, the learning partnership, the od-teams, the observer function, the day analysis, the questions and answers session, the case study presentation, the analysis of the work processes as well as transfer and evaluation. The progression of the seminar is commented from the point of view of the seminar leader. Progress observations and participant’s feedback justify the impression that this way to conceptualise provides an intensive learning experience, supports autonomy and provides relevant and practical supervision competence.

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J?rg Fengler ist Professor der Psychologie an der Universit?t zu K?ln, Heilp?dagogische Fakult?t. Arbeitsschwerpunkte sind u.a. P?dagogische und Klinische Psychologie. Er ist Herausgeber dieser Zeitschrift.     

Input-output evaluation of rural development: a forestry-centred application

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of forestry in the rural economy of Scotland. The Generation of Regional Input-Output Tables (GRIT) technique is applied to the estimation of input-output tables for rural Scotland. This is followed by a forestry-centred multiplier analysis. The results suggest that the forestry planting and harvesting sectors offer great potential for improving economic activity. However, their backward linkages with other rural industries seem to be limited. On the other hand, the backward linkages of wood-processing industries with the rest of the economy are strong. From this analysis, it is concluded that the joint development of forestry and wood-processing industries would promote economic development in rural Scotland.     

Physiologically Based Liver Modeling and Risk Assessment

Because of the inherent complexity of biological systems, there is often a choice between a number of apparently equally applicable physiologically based models to describe uptake and metabolism processes in toxicology or risk assessment. These models may fit the particular data sets of interest equally well, but may give quite different parameter estimates or predictions under different (extrapolated) conditions. Such competing models can be discriminated by a number of methods, including potential refutation by means of strategic experiments, and their ability to suitably incorporate all relevant physiological processes. For illustration, three currently used models for steady-state hepatic elimination--the venous equilibration model, the parallel tube model, and the distributed sinusoidal perfusion model--are reviewed and compared with particular reference to their application in the area of risk assessment. The ability of each of the models to describe and incorporate such physiological processes as protein binding, precursor-metabolite relations and hepatic zones of elimination, capillary recruitment, capillary heterogeneity, and intrahepatic shunting is discussed. Differences between the models in hepatic parameter estimation, extrapolation to different conditions, and interspecies scaling are discussed, and criteria for choosing one model over the others are presented. In this case, the distributed model provides the most general framework for describing physiological processes taking place in the liver, and has so far not been experimentally refuted, as have the other two models. These simpler models may, however, provide useful bounds on parameter estimates and on extrapolations and risk assessments.