Practical Methods for Meeting Remediation Goals at Hazardous Waste Sites

Risk-based cleanup goals or preliminary remediation goals (PRGs) are established at hazardous waste sites when contaminant concentrations in air, soil, surface water, or groundwater exceed specified acceptable risk levels. When derived in accordance with the Environmental Protection Agency's risk assessment guidance, the PRG is intended to represent the average contaminant concentration within an exposure unit area that is left on the site following remediation. The PRG, however, frequently has been used inconsistently at Superfund sites with a number of remediation decisions using the PRG as a not-to-exceed concentration (NTEC). Such misapplications could result in overly conservative and unnecessarily costly remedial actions. The PRG should be applied in remedial actions in the same manner in which it was generated. Statistical methods, such as Bower's Confidence Response Goal, and mathematical methods such as "iterative removal of hot spots," are available to assist in the development of NTECs that ensure the average postremediation contaminant concentration is at or below the PRG. These NTECs can provide the risk manager with a more practical cleanup goal. In addition, an acute PRG can be developed to ensure that contaminant concentrations left on-site following remediation are not so high as to pose an acute or short-term health risk if excessive exposure to small areas of the site should occur. A case study demonstrates cost savings of five to ten times associated with the more scientifically sound use of the PRG as a postremediation site average, and development of a separate NTEC and acute PRG based on the methods referenced in this article.     

Illinois's child welfare research agenda: an approach to building consensus for practice-based research

This article presents a consensus-building initiative to develop a statewide research agenda that responds to the needs of Illinois's child welfare community. Researchers conducted this process through a university-community partnership to engage those interested in child welfare services. The process and findings resulted in a living document that will guide child welfare research throughout the state. Findings of the inquiry suggest that the development of best practice models may be one of the most important contributions research can make to practice.     

The joint contribution of experiencing and witnessing violence during childhood on child abuse in the parent role

This article examines adult respondents' abuse of children as a consequence of their own childhood experiences of abuse, both direct experiences of childhood violence (hitting) and exposure to interparental violence (witnessing). In particular, the study examines the extent to which these factors function interactively: Are both experience and exposure necessary or is either sufficient to increase disproportionately the probability of child abuse? Using data from the Second National Family Violence Survey, results of a logistic regression analysis show that either or both factors produced higher than average and relatively similar rates of child abuse. Only respondents with neither form of family violence reported lower than average rates of abuse of their own children. The analysis controlled for gender, race, family income, and family structure; race was the only control variable to be significantly associated with child abuse. Finally, no control variable modified the interaction between the family violence variables.     

PRN medication use in inpatient psychiatry

1. Administration of p.r.n. medications occurs frequently for staff nurses in inpatient psychiatry. 2. The appropriate use of p.r.n. medications is not well addressed in nursing textbooks or hospital policies and procedures. 3. Thorough assessment of patients is an essential step in the safe administration of p.r.n. medications. 4. Concise, accurate clinical evaluations may be the most successful way to determine the best dose of medication for each patient.     

Differentiating Processes of Control and Understanding in the Early Development of Emotion and Cognition

In this study, we examined the hypothesis that preschoolers' performance on emotion and cognitive tasks is organized into discrete processes of control and understanding within the domains of emotion and cognition. Additionally, we examined the relations among component processes using mother report, behavioral observation, and physiological measures of emotion control. Participants were 263 children (42 percent non‐White) and their mothers. Results indicated that the three approaches of measuring emotion control were unrelated. Regardless of the measurement method, a four‐factor solution differentiating emotion control and understanding and cognitive control and understanding fits the data better than did either of two two‐factor models, one based on domains of emotion and cognition across processes, and one based on processes of control and understanding across domains. Results of this research replicate those of Leerkes et al. in describing a differentiated underlying structure of emotion and cognition processes in early childhood while also extending these conclusions across samples and across measurement approaches for assessing emotion control.     

Eighth Conference of the Australian Advisory Council for the Physically Handicapped

Abstract

While Burnside is today well known for the services it provides to families and children throughout western Sydney, information about its early history is less well known. This article describes the background to the establishment of Burnside at North Parramatta, the role played by Sir James Burns of Burns Philp &; Co, the impact of the Second World War when the Homes were evacuated to the Blue Mountains, and demonstrates how the impact of changes to child welfare policy this century affected the Homes. As different theories of appropriate care for children and the resultant policy measures were introduced, the Homes were transformed from being one of the largest residential child care institutions in New South Wales in the era of the Great Depression, to their current role of providing services to large numbers of families and children of a more preventive nature.     

Getting Paid in Smiles: The Gendering of Child Care Work

Based on four and a half years of participant‐observation field research and focused interviews with men and women child care workers, the author examines the occupational processes of the entry and tenure of workers, paying particular attention to gender as it manifests in the meanings and actions involved in becoming and continuing as a child care worker. As men and women workers go about the business of becoming and being child care workers, they become active agents in the reproduction of child care as low‐wage, low‐status, women's work. Through the construction of particular gendered “accounts” and “vocabularies of motive,” workers play a key role in sustaining the status of child care as a gendered occupation.     

Contraceptive determinants in three leading countries

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relative importance of access to family planning and the motivation to restrict fertility in determining contraceptive use in three countries that have led the fertility transitions in their regions: Colombia, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe. A structural equations model is estimated where endogenous fertility intentions are allowed to affect contraceptive method use. Simulation methods are then used to quantify the size of the impact of intentions and access on method choice for the three countries. The results demonstrate that even after controlling for fertility intentions, family planning program variables still have important effects in all three countries.