DO MANUFACTURERS POLLUTE LESS UNDER THE REGULATION‐THROUGH‐INFORMATION REGIME?

Because past studies on the effects of right-to-know laws have relied on highly aggregated data, it is still unknown whether being located in a state with a funded right-to-know program has a significant effect on the environmental performance of individual manufacturing plants. Nor has it been shown that such effects exist net of other plant characteristics that are known to increase pollution. To remedy this situation, we have used plant-level data from the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory to test the effects of states' right-to-know programs on the toxic emissions of chemical plants in 1990 and 2000. Consistent with several organizational theories (neoinstitutionalism, organizational ecology, and the resource dependence framework) that stress how regulatory policies are just one of several institutional forces that bear on organizations, our findings reveal that states' right-to-know programs have had no significant net effect on plants' toxic emissions. In addition to raising questions about the efficacy of information disclosure laws, our results underscore the importance of approaching pollution as an organizational phenomenon and studying organizations where they most directly impact the environment-at the site of production.     

The Renewal of Population Loss in the Nonmetropolitan Great Plains

Abstract An analysis of population trends in 293 nonmetropolitan Great Plains counties from 1950 to 1990 reveals that the population turnaround of the 1970s has indeed ended. During the 1980s, 84 percent of these nonmetropolitan counties had total population declines, a proportion greater than any other decade studied. A majority of counties had natural population increase, but such increases were offset by net outmigration as 96 percent of the counties had such losses during the 1980s. The influence of the independent variables on population change shifted from decade to decade. The most important variable in producing positive population trends was the ability of the county to attract retirement migrants.     

Relationship Satisfaction Trajectories Across the Transition to Parenthood Among Low‐Risk Parents

Numerous studies have established that new parents, on average, experience declines in relationship satisfaction, yet many sources suggest not all parents experience the transition to parenthood in the same way. The authors argue that new parents experience changes in relationship satisfaction in heterogeneous patterns, with only subgroups demonstrating steep declines. Furthermore, on the basis of the Vulnerability‐Stress‐Adaptation model, they examined actor and partner prenatal risk factors for experiencing different patterns of change. Among a sample of 206 new parents, they found the majority of mothers (79.4%) and about half of fathers (51.0%) experienced only moderate amounts of change, whereas smaller subgroups demonstrated steep declines. Results from analyses of the predictors of subgroup membership supported interdependence theory, because it was almost exclusively partner risk factors that predicted subgroup membership. Specifically, paternal positive support and anxiety predicted maternal subgroup membership and paternal positive support, maternal self‐esteem, and maternal daily stress predicted paternal subgroup membership.     

Using Personal Quality Assessment for Selection of Social Work Students

Abstract

The social work profession has long struggled to find fair and effective ways of selecting students into their education programs. A psychometric test battery, gathered together under the title “Personal Qualities Assessment” (PQA) has been developed at the University of Newcastle to identify a range of qualities in aspiring health professionals. Two of its components were used to determine whether there was a relationship between scores obtained by social work students in these tests and scores achieved in an empathic listening and critical review hurdle assessment prior to the first field placement. The results showed that social work students who were moderately empathic, not narcissistic, and moderately libertarian in their moral orientation performed better on the assessment than students who were less empathic, more narcissistic, or extreme in their moral orientation. These results suggest that measurement of these qualities could be useful in selecting the most suitable individuals for social work programs.     

Measles and Rubella on College Campuses: The Need to Act

Abstract

The lack of immunization requirements at the nation's colleges and universities threatens the maintenance of the interruption of indigenous measles in the United States. The high susceptibility rates in some college populations coupled with the high mobility of college students who may travel to countries where measles is endemic or epidemic increases the potential for measles outbreaks.

Preventing measles in college-age populations is particularly important because the disease can be more serious in adults. In view of the importance of preventing measles in college students, the Immunization Practices Advisory Committee (ACIP) of the U.S. Public Health Service has recommended that officials strongly consider immunization requirements for college entry.

The ultimate goal of rubella immunization is the protection of a future fetus against damage from intrauterine infection. Although rubella cases are reported routinely on college campuses, most colleges make no effort at controlling these outbreaks or instituting immunization requirements. The ACIP strongly urges educational institutions to require proof of immunity to rubella for registration or employment.     

Gambling Participation and Problem Gambling Severity among Rural and Peri-Urban Poor South African Adults in KwaZulu-Natal

Poor South Africans are significantly poorer and have lower employment rates than the subjects of most published research on gambling prevalence and problem gambling. Some existing work suggests relationships between gambling activity (including severity of risk for problem gambling), income, employment status and casino proximity. The objective of the study reported here is to establish the prevalence of gambling, including at risk and pathological gambling, and the profile of gambling activities in two samples of poor South African adults living in a rural and a peri-urban community. A total of 300 (150 male, 150 female) adults in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa in communities selected using census data, completed the Problem Gambling Severity Index and a survey of socioeconomic and household information, and of gambling knowledge and activity. It was found that gambling was common, and—except for lottery participation—mostly informal or unlicensed. Significant differences between rural and peri-urban populations were found. Peri-urban subjects were slightly less poor, and gambled more and on a different and wider range of activities. Problem and at risk gamblers were disproportionately represented among the more urbanised. Casino proximity appeared largely irrelevant to gambling activity.     

Toward integrated global models: From economic engineering to social science modeling

It is argued that political and military variables are so crucial in decision making that they ought to be included in world models. Three projects, including our own, are described in brief to give a sense of the theories and data that have been employed in some existing global modeling efforts based on this assumption. The project entitled Computer Simulations for Decision Making in International Affairs utilizes an adaptive macromodel of global political, military, and economic processes into which a host of empirically based minimodules are introduced. The Nations in Conflict studies have focused thus far on an econometric model comprised of three primary components: domestic growth and external expansions, competition for foreign resources, market, allies, and strategic advantage, and the dynamics of crisis behavior. The Alker simulation studies have utilized artificial intelligence techniques to study the structuring and restructuring of international systems of social interaction.The theoretical and empirical materials developed in these projects are highly relevant to the enterprise of integrated global modeling. The earliest efforts were begun to build models of the political and military components of international processes. Subsequent world modelers of the Forrester-Meadows inspired genre focused on the economic aspects of the globe, including its demography. It is argued that the convergence of these two traditions be accomplished in a synthetic fashion in ongoing as well as future work.     

Slash fiction and human mating psychology

The stark contrasts between romance novels and pornography, both multibillion dollar global industries, underscore how different male and female erotic fantasies actually are. These differences reflect the different selection pressures males and females faced over human evolutionary history and highlight the utility of using unobtrusive measures to study aspects of human nature. Salmon & Symons (2001) examined slash (the depiction of a romantic or sexual relationship between typically heterosexual male television protagonists, such as Kirk and Spock from Star Trek) as an erotic genre, placing it in the context of romance and female sexual psychology. The topic is revisited here with attention also being paid to slash between two female television characters and the appeal to people of fiction in general.