Avoidance of Heights on the Visual Cliff in Newly Walking Infants

Work with infants on the “visual cliff” links avoidance of drop‐offs to experience with self‐produced locomotion. Adolph's (2002) research on infants' perception of slope and gap traversability suggests that learning to avoid falling down is highly specific to the postural context in which it occurs. Infants, for example, who have learned to avoid crossing risky slopes while crawling must learn anew such avoidance when they start walking. Do newly walking infants avoid crossing the drop‐off of the visual cliff? Twenty prewalking but experienced crawling infants were compared with 20 similarly aged newly walking infants on their reactions to the visual cliff. Newly walking infants avoided moving onto the cliff's deep side even more consistently than did the prewalking crawlers. Thus, in the context of drop‐offs in visual texture, our results show that once avoidance of drop‐offs is established under conditions of crawling, it is developmentally maintained once infants begin walking.     

Effects of uncertainty and risk on the allocation of time of married women

This article develops a model in which the existence of uncertainty in the rate of return to household production is shown to reduce the number of hours allocated to work at home. Empirically, the implications of the theoretical model are tested for married women with data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The findings indicate that uncertainty variables are significant determinants both of participation in the market and of hours allocated to work, home work, and leisure. Specifically, permanent income and measures of uncertainty exert a stronger influence on the allocation of time of married women than do transitory changes in income. In addition, women for whom the probability of divorce is high are both more likely to work in the market and to work more hours in this sector than are women for whom the probability of divorce is low.She is currently engaged in research on a comparative crossnational analysis of family policy.     

Hospital social work in Sweden and the UK: Access to chances of physical health and well-being

In Swedish and UK practice, interest is developing in social work's contribution to tackling service users' unequal chances and experience of physical health. This is through alleviating disadvantaged social conditions such as relative poverty which service users face and which are associated with health inequalities. Ready access to social work services is an essential preliminary if service users are to gain the material and social resources services can provide, to alleviate their adverse social circumstances and thereby improve their health prospects. However, despite hospital social work's well-established position, its significance as an access point for services has tended to be marginalized. Drawing on a comparative account of Swedish and UK practice featuring two action research projects, we explore how hospital social work is a key point of access to services for service users experiencing profound disadvantage. We analyse major barriers to such access, notably the underfunded nature of hospital social work, discriminatory procedures, and unequal professional service user power relations. Nevertheless, the action research projects show how these barriers may be breached to some degree, enabling service users as patients and carers to access resources which contribute to more equal chances of health and well-being in ill-health.     

HEALTH RISK ANALYSIS AND SOCIOMEDICAL TECHNOLOGIES OF THE SELF: PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE GETS INTO HEALTH PROMOTION

In October 1994 the then Australian Federal Minister for Health, Dr. Carmen Lawrence, announced that Medicare, the Australian universal national healthcare fund was considering introducing Healthtrac a computerised health promotion program. The change of government in 1995 put paid to this plan, however, lifestyle based health promotion programs, including computerised programs, are an increasing trend in contemporary health care. Research from the United States indicates a growing interest by private insurers and Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs) in funding and encouraging members, particularly older members and retirees, to engage in healthy lifestyle programs, some of which provide written reports, periodic up-dates and checks to members as well as summary advice to employers and insurers. In this article we argue that while many of these programs are well researched programs that take cognisance of the contradictions surrounding scientific research related to lifestyle behaviours, disease and disability, they take a narrow approach to health promotion. Further, in the hands of private insurers and HMOs these programs have the potential to become sociomedical techniques (Stone 1989) of dominance, arising out of risk analysis that informs and refines techniques of governance of the self (Burchell 1993; Rose 1993). Consistent with Stevensen and Burke (1991) we see health promotion not as a new social movement, but as a political strategy of the state and capitalism to deal with among other things, escalating health care budgets. Given this, health promotion strategies that overly focus on risk analysis for the individual citizen reinforce techniques of self-governance by linking lifestyle behaviour to immorality as well as potentially creating a culture of anxiety - surely a public health problem in itself.     

Embodied Women at Work in Neoliberal Times and Places

In this article five women explore (female) embodiment in academic work in current workplaces. In a week‐long collective biography workshop they produced written memories of themselves in their various workplaces and memories of themselves as children and as students. These memories then became the texts out of which the analysis was generated. The authors examine the constitutive and seductive effects of neoliberal discourses and practices, and in particular, the assembling of academic bodies as particular kinds of working bodies. They use the concept of chiasma, or crossing over, to trouble some aspects of binary thinking about bodies and about the relations between bodies and discourses. They examine the way that we simultaneously resist and appropriate, and are seduced by and appropriated within, neoliberal discourses and practices.     

A Comparison of Statistical Methods for Age-related Reference Intervals

Age-specific reference intervals are commonly used in the routine monitoring of individuals, where interest lies in the detection of extreme values, possibly indicating abnormality. Here, a review is given of the wide range of statistical techniques which have been proposed for the construction of these intervals and issues such as the estimation of confidence bands and goodness of fit are discussed. Three methods, thought to be the most widely applied approaches, are considered in more detail. Comparisons are made on the basis of reference interval estimation for three real data sets.     

The Nurse Practitioner: History,Current Conflicts,and Future Survival

Abstract

“A Community-Based Outbreak of Infection With Penicillin-Resistant Neisseria Gonorrhoeae Not Producing Penicillinase (Chromosomally Mediated Resistance),” HAWAZIN FARUKI, et al. From February through November of 1983, 199 cases of penicillin-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae infection were identified in a localized epidemic in Durham, North Carolina. The isolates did not produce beta-lactamase but were usually resistant to penicillin (minimum inhibitory concentration, 2.0 to 4.0 μg per milliliter), and 15 of 16 patients treated with 4.8 million units of penicillin G procaine plus 1.0g of probenecid did not respond to therapy. Recognition of the outbreak was impeded by a lack of routine surveillance for resistance other than that mediated by beta-lactamase. All epidemic isolates had a single serotype, auxotype, and antibiotic-susceptibility profile. The outbreak was halted by changing the treatment for all patients and their contacts to spectinomycin, and by intensive epidemiologic case-finding efforts. The emergence of such resistant strains poses potential major public health problems and indicates a need for reassessment of current surveillance procedures. (New England Journal of Medicine 1985;313:607–11.)

“Primary Tubal Infertility in Relation to the Use of an Intrauterine Device,” JANET R. DALING, et al. Women who use an intrauterine device (IUD) are at increased risk of acute pelvic inflammatory disease, but the relation of the IUD to subsequent infertility is not established. We interviewed 159 nulligravid women with tubal infertility to determine their prior use of an IUD. Their reponses were compared with those of a matched group who conceived their first child at the time the infertile women started trying to become pregnant. The risk of primary tubal infertility in women who had ever used an IUD was 2.6 times that in women who had never used one (95 per cent confidence interval, 1.3 to 5.2). The observed difference between cases and controls was not uniform for different types of IUD. The relative risk associated with use of a Dalkon Shield was 6.8 (1.8 to 25.2), and that associated with use of either a Lippes Loop or Saf-T-Coil IUD was 3.2 (0.9 to 12.0). The smallest elevation in risk was found among users of copper-containing IUDs (relative risk, 1.9 [0.9 to 4.0] for all women who had ever used a copper-containing IUD). The relative risk for women who used only a copper-containing IUD was 1.3 (0.6 to 3.0).

We conclude that use of the Dalkon Shield (and possibly of plastic IUDs other than those that contain copper) can lead to infertility in nulligravid women. (New England Journal of Medicine 1985;312:937–41.)     

The U.S. Destinations of Contemporary Mexican Immigrants1

Although U.S. Latinos continue to be concentrated in particular places, many have shifted to “new” locations around the country. This study employs data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP107) to examine the relationship between individual‐level characteristics and diverse U.S. destinations chosen by post‐1965 Mexican immigrants. Multinomial logistic regression analyses confirm the importance of human capital, social networks, and temporal context in directing immigrants to particular U.S. sites. The findings also suggest that employing a typology of U.S. destinations is useful for understanding the spatial distributions of contemporary Mexican immigrants.     

A Physician's Overview of Oral-Dental Problems at a Student Health Service

Abstract

This is a review of oral-dental problems for nurses and physicians in a student health service with the typical college-age population. The proper technique for an adequate physical examination of the oral cavity and surrounding structures is described.

Numerous common lesions are described which will undoubtedly face the clinician at a university health service, and some current treatment regimens are given for each condition. The sequence used for the presentation will follow in accordance with anatomic location, e.g. lips, labial and buccal mucosa, hard and soft palate and oropharynx, tongue (dorsal, lateral, and ventral surfaces), floor of the mouth, and the teeth and the gums. Benign and malignant tumors of the oral cavity, and accidental injuries of the teeth are discussed. Preventive dental care including methods for good oral hygiene are reviewed. The effects of actinic radiation on the lips, and the effects of tobacco and alcohol on the oral cavity are discussed.

The physician and dentist both have an opportunity and responsibility to detect oral lesions. Until each student health service has a dental consultant on a regular basis, it is the responsibility of nurses and physicians to increase their proficiency in examining, diagnosing, and treating oral-dental lesions.