Recommended Distributions for Exposure Factors Frequently Used in Health Risk Assessment

Although there has been nearly complete agreement in the scientific community that Monte Carlo techniques represent a significant improvement in the exposure assessment process, virtually all state and federal risk assessments still rely on the traditional point estimate approach. One of the rate-determining steps to a timely implementation of Monte Carlo techniques to regulatory decision making is the development of "standard" data distributions that are considered applicable to any setting. For many exposure variables, there is no need to wait any longer to adopt Monte Carlo techniques into regulatory policy since there is a wealth of data from which a robust distribution can be developed and ample evidence to indicate that the variable is not significantly influenced by site-specific conditions. In this paper, we propose several distributions that can be considered standard and customary for most settings. Age-specific distributions for soil ingestion rates, inhalation rates, body weights, skin surface area, tapwater and fish consumption, residential occupancy and occupational tenure, and soil-on-skin adherence were developed. For each distribution offered in this paper, we discuss the adequacy of the database, derivation of the distribution, and applicability of the distribution to various settings and conditions.     

The application of microcomputers in production management

The findings reported result from a questionnaire survey, and a number of company interviews. Further questions which need to be answered are identified, and a research project to provide these answers is outlined.     

Promoting the Children Act (1989) in Day Services to Disabled Children: Findings from an Action Research Project

SUMMARY: This article describes an action research project designed to assess and promote the implementation of the Children Act (1989) in day services to disabled children under five. Evaluations of six service were undertaken with staff in different local authorities in England and Wales. Each service was evaluated twice, in 1992 and again in 1993. The quality of care on offer to children was consistently high across services, and local authorities appeared to be adopting a flexible approach to the promotion of standards. In addition, services had made improvements in areas such as publicity and information, cultural sensitivity and partnership with parents. Some suggestions are made about factors which contributed to these developments, and issues requiring further attention are highlighted.     

Cognition in Situations

The symbolic interactionist tradition can contribute to advancing sociological studies of cognition by setting dual process models on more solid ground. I draw on Blumer's epistemological statements and the interactionist tradition more broadly to consider how dual process models of cognition could be applied to naturally occurring situations. I suggest that attending to the ways the past and the future are handled and modified within social interaction provides a usable inroad for the sociology of cognition to engage with situational analysis. I identify “resonance” and “iterative reprocessing” as concepts that are suitable to this end.     

Are Mothers and Fathers Interchangeable Caregivers?

Abstract

Recent debates about same-sex marriage have raised questions concerning the interchangeability of mothers and fathers. This paper provides three pieces of empirical evidence that highlight the distinct role that fathers and mothers play in the home. First, we use time-use data to show that fathers and mothers provide different amounts of time to their children regardless of who is the breadwinner in the household. Second, we show that men and women choose different occupations, with men more likely to choose occupations that have a protective role and mothers more likely to choose an occupation with a nurturing role. Third, we find that children are much less likely to experience domestic violence and neighborhood violence when there is a father in the home.     

Is the Case for Social Science Laws Strengthening?

The effectiveness of Kincaid's (1996) and McIntyre's (1996) cases for the possibility and actual existence of laws in social science is evaluated. The ways in which Kincaid and McIntyre argue against the confounding effects of four long-recognised barriers to the existence of social science laws are assessed. A brief review is presented first of definitions of causal (rather than regularity) laws. The four obstacles undermining causal laws are the non natural or social kind nature of the entities with which social science deals, the nature of mechanisms in social explanation, domain restrictions applying to causal explanation in social science, and the openness of the human systems encompassing socio-economic behaviour. Against the arguments of Kincaid and McIntyre, these four issues constitute fundamental a priori problems that continue to undermine the development of laws in social science, beyond those that can be derived by common sense, and that are potentially effective for policy-making.     

Schooling and violence in South Africa: Creating a safer school

The legacy of the brutality of apartheid in South Africa is a violent social context characterized by high levels of unemployment, extremes of wealth and poverty, continuing racism, the easy availability of guns and patriarchal values and behaviours. Violent crime is widespread in South Africa and schools in disadvantaged areas suffer from serious problems of gang-related crime. This article discusses a pilot project with a cluster of three schools in Durban which investigated whether intervention and training coupled with mutual support between cooperating schools, and between schools and the police, can reduce incidents of crime and violence. The idea behind the project was to see whether a small-scale, simple and inexpensive intervention could help to improve security in a relatively short time span. The article describes the nature of the project, evaluates its outcomes and discusses emergent issues for South African education. The overall conclusion stemming from the project is that South African schools are not helpless in the face of an onslaught of crime and violence. While there is no complete and foolproof solution to the problem, schools can nevertheless be helped to find simple, relatively cheap and practical measures to reduce crime and violence.