“Better safe than sorry”—Reasons for consulting care due to decreased fetal movements

Background

Experience of reduced fetal movements is a common reason for consulting health care in late pregnancy. There is an association between reduced fetal movements and stillbirth.

On Exact Simulation of Markov Random Fields Using Coupling from the Past

A general framework for exact simulation of Markov random fields using the Propp–Wilson coupling from the past approach is proposed. Our emphasis is on situations lacking the monotonicity properties that have been exploited in previous studies. A critical aspect is the convergence time of the algorithm; this we study both theoretically and experimentically. Our main theoretical result in this direction says, roughly, that if interactions are sufficiently weak, then the expected running time of a carefully designed implementation is O ( N log N ), where N is the number of interacting components of the system. Computer experiments are carried out for random q -colourings and for the Widom–Rowlinson lattice gas model.     

Are nurses more altruistic than real estate brokers?

We report results from a dictator game experiment with nurse students and real estate broker students as dictators, and Amnesty International as the recipient. Although brokers contributed substantial amounts, nurses contributed significantly more, on average 76% of their endowment. In a second part, subjects chose between a certain repetition of the experiment and a 50-50 chance of costly exit. About one third of the brokers and half of the nurses chose the exit option. While generosity was indeed higher among nurses, even when taking exits into account, the difference cannot readily be attributed to different degrees of altruism.     

Victim of and witness to violence: an interactional perspective on mothers' perceptions of children exposed to intimate partner violence

This article reports a study of how mothers perceive the effects of intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy and children's exposure to IPV: (a) Do interactional aspects of IPV have a negative impact on the fetus during pregnancy or on the newborn baby? and (b) Is there a relationship between interactional aspects of IPV and (a) children's risk of being exposed to IPV and (b) the age of the child when at risk for exposure to IPV? A representative sample of 137 IPV help-seeking mothers in Norway was interviewed. Severity of physical IPV and injury from sexual IPV increased the risk of consequences to the fetus. Frequency of physical and psychological IPV increased the likelihood of children's exposure. Duration of the partnership increased the risk of children's exposure to physical and sexual IPV. Finally, there was a negative linear association between children's age when exposed for the first time and frequency of physical and psychological IPV.     

Footing in bilingual play

In Goffman's classic paper (1979), bilingual code-switching was seen as a prototypical device for accomplishing shifts in footing. Yet his work has not informed research on code-switching to any great extent. The present study of primary school children's play interaction in an English-Swedish school setting combines a sequential approach to code-switching with an analysis of footing (cf. Auer 1984), extending prior work in showing that code-switches often involve subtle shifts of footing, both in terms of production formats and participation frameworks. Code-switches were employed as important rhetorical and dramaturgic play devices, e.g. when contextualizing changes of addressee and shifts of frame (e.g. serious, nonserious). In contrast to earlier, often speaker-centered work, reception is discussed in-depth in the present analyses, and it is shown that footings are truly interactional achievements.