Parent/Guardian Visualization of Career and Academic Future of Seventh Graders Enrolled in Low‐Achieving Schools

These findings are from the first phase of a 5‐year longitudinal interpretive study that seeks an understanding of how students enrolled in academically low‐achieving schools located in economically disadvantaged areas socially construct their academic and career aspirations. This article describes the general perceptions that parents/guardians of 7th graders hold regarding the future of the students. The research revealed that although family support was evident, many students seemed to develop their ideas about their future in a nondirective environment in which parents/guardians frequently evoked a sense of regret about their own earlier decision making. Implications for practitioners and researchers are provided.     

Stay and play: transforming healthcare delivery

This paper provides further evidence to challenge the scepticism of successful interprofessional working. It is a story of a project to support families and children, more specifically, isolated mothers, and the use of continuous quality improvement and action research methodologies to engage a community and change service provision. Based on exploratory group work Stay and Play child development and learning sessions were set up for, and were well received by, parents. The project group worked initially with uncertainty and undefined needs; professionals involved eventually saw the benefit of changing their practice to meet local community needs.     

Career Theory From an International Perspective

The Career Theory in an International Perspective group highlighted 7 approaches: action theory, self‐construction model, transition model, dynamics of entering the workforce, narrative in career guidance, dilemma approach, and interactive identity construction. Three main characteristics appear to be common to these different contributions: (a) emphasis on contexts and cultural diversities, (b) self‐construction or development emphasis, and (c) a constructivist perspective. Such conceptualizations are quite distinct from the methods and tools most often used by career and school counselors in their daily activities. A proliferation of models was noted. The need for new models, methods, and materials probably originates (a) in the diversity of societal questions emerging in the field of career development and self‐construction and (b) in some differing points of view regarding goals of personal and career development interventions.     

Canada's Social Security Review – A Comment from the Outside

The voluntary sector in Canada made largely unavailing efforts to participate in Canada's Social Security Review from 1973 to 1977, although it was clear that it had a legitimate and direct interest in the outcome of the review. The story of these efforts highlights a dilemma facing the voluntary sector. It desires to promote improved federal/state coordination and planning in the social services and social security. At the same time it claims the right to participate in policies which will vitally affect it. The Canadian experience suggests that to promote the first leads to a retreat from the second. This is not necessarily inevitable but some would argue that the only satisfactory answer lies in a Freedom of Information Act which will force policy making processes out into the open.     

Multivariate Bayesian variable selection and prediction

The multivariate regression model is considered with p regressors. A latent vector with p binary entries serves to identify one of two types of regression coefficients: those close to 0 and those not. Specializing our general distributional setting to the linear model with Gaussian errors and using natural conjugate prior distributions, we derive the marginal posterior distribution of the binary latent vector. Fast algorithms aid its direct computation, and in high dimensions these are supplemented by a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach to sampling from the known posterior distribution. Problems with hundreds of regressor variables become quite feasible. We give a simple method of assigning the hyperparameters of the prior distribution. The posterior predictive distribution is derived and the approach illustrated on compositional analysis of data involving three sugars with 160 near infrared absorbances as regressors.     

Nonparametric smoothing using state space techniques

The authors examine the equivalence between penalized least squares and state space smoothing using random vectors with infinite variance. They show that despite infinite variance, many time series techniques for estimation, significance testing, and diagnostics can be used. The Kalman filter can be used to fit penalized least squares models, computing the smoothed quantities and related values. Infinite variance is equivalent to differencing to stationarity, and to adding explanatory variables. The authors examine constructs called “smoothations” which they show to be fundamental in smoothing. Applications illustrate concepts and methods.     

Skin Cancer and Inorganic Arsenic: Uncertainty-Status of Risk

The current U.S. EPA standard for inorganic arsenic in drinking water is 50 ppb (μg/L), dating to the National Interim Primary Drinking Water Regulation of 1976. The current EPA risk analysis predicts an increased lifetime skin cancer risk on the order of 3 or 4 per 1000 from chronic exposure at that concentration. Revision of the standard to only a few ppb, perhaps even less than 1 ppb, may be indicated by the EPA analysis to reduce the lifetime risk to an acceptable level. The cost to water utilities, and ultimately to their consumers, to conform to such a large reduction in the standard could easily reach several billion dollars, so it is particularly important to assess accurately the current risk and the risk reduction that would be achieved by a lower standard. This article addresses the major sources of uncertainty in the EPA analysis with respect to this objective. Specifically, it focuses on uncertainty and variability in the exposure estimates for the landmark study of Tseng and colleagues in Taiwan, analyzed using a reconstruction of the their exposure data. It is concluded that while the available dataset is suitable to establish the hazard of skin cancer, it is too highly summarized for reliable dose-response assessment. A new epidemiologic study is needed, designed for the requirements of dose-response assessment.