Modern Medicine and Pregnancy

A study of the relationship between anxiety and health attitudes in a group of women in first pregnancy demonstrates a significant correlation between the variables. Body threat scores on a projective test remain high despite reported realistic attitudes to health. The possible conflict between a rational, scientific approach to pregnancy and the primitive, irrational fears of the primigravida is discussed.     

Mentoring as a Bridge to Positive Outcomes for Teen Mothers and Their Children

This paper compares historical and psychosocial realities of teenage parenting to prevailing contemporary myths. The authors explore the negative consequences of current remedies based on these myths. Community volunteer mentoring programs are suggested as a cost-effective intervention that can benefit communities and promote positive outcomes for at-risk pregnant teenagers. The authors suggest strategies for implementation of a community volunteer mentoring program based on an existing program in an urban community health center. Detailed information for social workers in community agencies is provided with regard to community education, recruitment, training, and ongoing support and supervision of mentors; funding requirements; and program evaluation.     

Alune incantations: Continuity or discontinuity in verbal art?

Throughout this century some Alune-speaking villages in the eastern Indonesian province of Central Maluku have experienced rapid sociopolitical and ecological change. Concomitant with these changes, language shift from Alune to the regional Malay variety, Ambonese Malay, is also occurring. This paper draws on a corpus of 45 incantations collected in two Alune villages which have been dissimilarly affected by the processes of change. The utilisation of a limited corpus of modern incantations in one village indicates a substratum of specialised indigenous sociocultural knowledge which has persisted in that site despite language shift and sociopolitical change. Comparison between traditional and contemporary forms of this genre of verbal art reveals structural differences and the extensive use of lexical items from languages other than Alune. Despite linguistic discontinuity, the endurance of incantations in this contemporary Christian society provides some continuity with pre-Christian Alune practices and may be viewed as a response to external events which are driving social, cultural and linguistic change.     

The role of close friends in African American adolescents' dating and sexual behavior

This study examined the role of close friends in the sexual lives of African American adolescents. Fifteen African American adolescents residing in an urban neighborhood participated in individual in-depth qualitative interviews. The findings suggest that close friends play a critical role in the dating and sexual behaviors of inner-city African American adolescents, as they appear to serve as socializing agents that impact how adolescents conceptualize and socially construct dating and sexual roles and behaviors. Close friends also play a significant role in acquiring new dating and sexual partners and in determining the course of dating and sexual relationships. Although females and males expressed similar expectations regarding sexual fidelity and condom use, they differed with regard to their method and process of talking with friends about dating and sex, their shared social constructions about dating and sexual roles and expectations, and their perceptions of the meaning of dating. We discuss the implications of the findings in terms of involving close friends in interventions focused on improving the sexual health of African American adolescents. Future directions for research with African American adolescents and sexuality are also discussed.     

Maintaining an Illusion: Abuse, Somatization, and the Elaboration of Meaning

Many clinicians who have treated adult survivors of abuse have known for some time what is now confirmed by the empirical literature: these clients often suffer from a host of physical complaints for which their doctors tell them there is no physical cause. The symptoms as well as the response of the doctors are frequently quite disturbing to the client. Both aspects of the clients' experiences are also very difficult to treat. Relational theory may provide a perspective that will enhance the understanding of somatization in survivors of abuse. The resulting thesis is that somatization may be the result of deficits in meaning, which are in turn due to conflicts between distinct levels of meaning. This theory weds two previously opposed perspectives: the deficit and conflict models of psychopathology. While the hypothesis may be interesting on the level of pure theory, the ultimate aim of the paper is to apply the theory to the treatment of somatic symptoms among adult survivors of abuse, expanding upon existing interventions. First, the clinician must assess for deficits in the levels of meaning, then utilize interventions appropriate to specific levels. To safeguard that no new conflicts arise, the clinician must ensure that the meanings elaborated in treatment support an integration of meaning on all three levels. To this end, he or she must target interpretations to the client's zone of proximal meaning. These principles are illustrated in a case example.     

Impact of Microbial Ecology of Meat and Poultry Products on Predictions from Exposure Assessment Scenarios for Refrigerated Storage

A novel extension of traditional growth models for exposure assessment of food-borne microbial pathogens was developed to address the complex interactions of competing microbial populations in foods. Scenarios were designed for baseline refrigeration and mild abuse of servings of chicken broiler and ground beef Our approach employed high-quality data for microbiology of foods at production, refrigerated storage temperatures, and growth kinetics of microbial populations in culture media. Simple parallel models were developed for exponential growth of multiple pathogens and the abundant and ubiquitous nonpathogenic indigenous microbiota. Monte Carlo simulations were run for unconstrained growth and growth with the density-dependent constraint based on the "Jameson effect," inhibition of pathogen growth when the indigenous microbiota reached 10(9) counts per serving. The modes for unconstrained growth of the indigenous microbiota were 10(8), 10(10), and 10(11) counts per serving for chicken broilers, and 10(7), 10(9) and 10(11) counts per serving for ground beef at respective sites for backroom, meat case, and home refrigeration. Contamination rates and likelihoods of reaching temperatures supporting growth of the pathogens in the baseline refrigeration scenario were rare events. The unconstrained exponential growth models appeared to overestimate L. monocytogenes growth maxima for the baseline refrigeration scenario by 1500-7233% (10(6)-10(7) counts/serving) when the inhibitory effects of the indigenous microbiota are ignored. The extreme tails of the distributions for the constrained models appeared to overestimate growth maxima 110% (10(4)-10(5) counts/serving) for Salmonella spp. and 108% (6 x 10(3) counts/serving) for E. coli O157:H7 relative to the extremes of the unconstrained models. The approach of incorporating parallel models for pathogens and the indigenous microbiota into exposure assessment modeling motivates the design of validation studies to test the modeling assumptions, consistent with the analytical-deliberative process of risk analysis.     

Vegetative characteristics of urban land covers in metropolitan Tucson

In this study we developed a methodology that associated land cover categories to aerial photographs. We selected 4, 42-mile (10 km2) study sites within metropolitan Tucson, Arizona for our pilot study. Land uses within these sites covered the range of landscapes found within Pima County, Arizona, although not necessarily in proportions representative of the metropolitan area. We designated land cover categories within the pilot sites based on recent (March, 1990) aerial photographs and developed a geographical information system (GIS) database of these land cover categories. We measured vegetation attributes on randomly selected samples within each land cover category and classified vegetation occurring on specific land cover categories according to the Brown et al. (1979) system. Our land cover classification system was nominal with a hierarchical structure, facilitating organization and providing flexibility for adding new categories.Our results showed that although neighborhood parks contained the greatest vegetated areas within our four study plots, very low density housing (4 acres/house), rivers whose banks were partially stabilized, naturally occurring washes (with no bank stabilization), and natural open space contained the highest percentage of native vegetation. Within our four study sites, low density housing (4 acres/house), rivers with partially stabilized banks, naturally occurring washes (no bank stabilization), and natural open space land cover categories contained the most area that was covered with vegetation providing escape cover.