Creating the park cool island in an inner-city neighborhood: heat mitigation strategy for Phoenix, AZ

We conducted microclimate simulations in ENVI-Met 3.1 to evaluate the impact of vegetation in lowering temperatures during an extreme heat event in an urban core neighborhood park in Phoenix, Arizona. We predicted air and surface temperatures under two different vegetation regimes: existing conditions representative of Phoenix urban core neighborhoods, and a proposed scenario informed by principles of landscape design and architecture and Urban Heat Island mitigation strategies. We found significant potential air and surface temperature reductions between representative and proposed vegetation scenarios: 1) a Park Cool Island effect that extended to non-vegetated surfaces; 2) a net cooling of air underneath or around canopied vegetation ranging from 0.9 °C to 1.9 °C during the warmest time of the day; and 3) potential reductions in surface temperatures from 0.8 °C to 8.4 °C in areas underneath or around vegetation.     

Communicative Openness Within Adoptive Families: Adoptive Parents' Narrative Accounts of the Challenges of Adoption Talk and the Approaches Used to Manage These Challenges

Policy and practice relating to openness in adoption have changed substantially in the last 30 years. There is a growing body of empirical research that supports both structural and communicative openness, and there is widespread consensus that communicative openness is desirable within adoptive families. Despite this, there is evidence that some adoptive parents and their adopted children struggle to achieve the level of communicative openness to which they aspire. This paper presents data from a small-scale exploratory study of adoptive family life. It draws on the narrative accounts of adoptive mothers and fathers to explore some of the sensitivities of adoption talk, the communication challenges experienced by adoptive parents, and the ways that adopters manage these challenges. Finally, some suggestions are made for practice.     

Citizen Bodies: embodying citizens – a feminist analysis

The starting point for this paper is that bodies give substance to citizenship and that citizenship matters for bodies. However, the growing literatures on the body and on citizenship rarely 'speak to each other' in any straightforward sense. Feminist theory has made a significant contribution to both fields of thought,but once again the connections between these fields tend to be passing and underdeveloped. Feminist literature on citizenship – for example in discussions of participation – increasingly offers a critique of the model of the disembodied (supposedly universal) citizen as exclusionary and advocates taking bodies seriously (Lister; Yuval-Davis). Yet bodies appear in such discussions in quite limited ways and remain instrumentally conceived. On the other hand,the growing work on the body fromcontemporary feminist theorists has designated the body a political site par excellence (Grosz). Nevertheless, these writings are typically relatively abstract and philosophical, tend to perceive corporeal politics in circumscribed ways, and are positioned at a distance from political theorizing about implications for citizenship. We intend to consider how to flesh out the bodily element in feminist citizenship literature and how to interrogate the contextual sociality of the political in recent feminist theorizing of the body, in order to suggest ways of thinking about citizen bodies and related future directions for policy-making.     

Comparing Pansexual- and Bisexual-Identified Participants on Demographics,Psychological Well-Being,and Political Ideology in a New Zealand National Sample

Pansexuality, characterized by attraction to people regardless of their gender, is an emerging sexual identity. Research has started to explore the differences between those who identify as pansexual and those who identify as bisexual, typically defined as being attracted to both men and women. This article extends past research by testing for differences between those who identify as pansexual (n = 52) and bisexual (n = 497) in a nationally representative sample. We used the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (NZAVS) to test for differences in demographic variables, psychological well-being, and political ideology. We found that pansexual participants were younger, more likely to be gender diverse (transgender or nonbinary), and more likely to be from the indigenous Māori ethnic group than bisexual participants. Pansexual participants also reported higher psychological distress and were more politically liberal than bisexual participants. These results suggest that people who identify as pansexual are, on average, quantifiably different from those who identify as bisexual; this study adds to a new but growing body of research on emerging plurisexual identities.     

Direct and Indirect Effects of Newlywed Couples' Neuroticism and Stressful Events on Marital Satisfaction Through Mutual Problem Solving

This investigation examined the role of neuroticism, stressful experiences, and mutual problem solving in newlywed couples' marital satisfaction. The vulnerability-stress-adaptation model of marital development was used as the basis of the proposed hypotheses. Dyadic analyses and tests of indirect effects were performed on data from 186 couples in the first 5 years of their marriage. Results indicate that husbands' and wives' work, job–home interference, and family stress were significantly associated with their own lower marital satisfaction. Significant partner effects further indicated that husbands' and wives' family stress was negatively associated with the marital satisfaction of their partner. Additionally, the relationships between (1) neuroticism and marital satisfaction and (2) stressful events and marital satisfaction can be partially explained by mutual problem solving for both husbands and wives. This study emphasizes the important role of problem-solving communication in newlywed couples' experiences of stressful events and marital satisfaction.     

Family problem solving: A case study

Abstract

Working with the families of young offenders may often be the best method of helping those young offenders to change. Sometimes, however, social workers and others who work with young offenders are reluctant to work with family groups because they may feel that they lack skills in family counselling. This article presents a case study which illustrates a family counselling intervention. The case study uses Family Problem Solving, a method which involves the adaptation of mainstream social work skills to work with families. It is anticipated that the article might be of interest to social workers who work with families but who feel apprehensive about counselling family groups.     

Institutional investors: the vote as a tool of governance

Institutional investors are increasingly expected to engage with their investee companies to try to help ensure that the investee companies have an appropriate corporate governance structure and that they operate according to corporate governance best practice. There are a number of ‘tools of governance’ which institutional investors might utilise including constructive dialogue and voting. In this paper, the growth of institutional investors is discussed together with the development of the vote as one of the most powerful means that institutional investors have at their disposal. The cases of two of the UK’s largest and most active institutional investors are discussed to show how the vote is used in practice. The resolutions which tend to be the most contentious are those relating to the appointment/re-election of directors and board composition; remuneration packages and incentive schemes; and strategic issues that may impact on shareholders’ rights/ownership interests. The paper also contains an analysis of the resolutions which occur most frequently together with the average levels of dissent on such issues in various European countries: Austria, Belgium, France, the UK, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. The barriers to voting that may arise are examined; such barriers include control enhancing mechanisms which are prevalent in many European countries as well as on a wider global basis.