Compulsive gambling in Britain

In 1968 England legalized casino gaming. Unlike their counterparts in America, legislators in the House of Lords actively debated ways to help compulsive gamblers. Parliament adopted the 48 hour rule, requiring players to wait two days before gambling, put severe restrictions on check cashing in casinos and, limited the number of slot machines to two per club. England considered, but rejected, other proposals: the method, used in France, of allowing compulsive gamblers to voluntarily put their names on a list of persons to be excluded and, complete prohibitions on casino credit. Although the legislative restrictions greatly reduced compulsive gambling among adult gamers; sadly, Parliament ignored what has become a growing source of compulsive gambling among children: the practically unlimited availability of public arcades with amusement machines paying small cash prizes.The author wishes to thank James Claber for assistance in this article.     

Women's erotic rape fantasies: an evaluation of theory and research.

This article is the first systematic review of the research literature on women's rape fantasies. Current research indicates that between 31% and 57% of women have fantasies in which they are forced into sex against their will, and for 9% to 17% of women these are a frequent or favorite fantasy experience. Erotic rape fantasies are paradoxical: they do not appear to make sense. Why would a person have an erotic and pleasurable fantasy about an event that, in real life, would be abhorrent and traumatic? In this article, the major theories of women's rape fantasies are evaluated both rationally and empirically. These theories explain rape fantasies in terms of masochism, sexual blame avoidance, openness to sexuality, sexual desirability, male rape culture, biological predisposition to surrender, sympathetic physiological activation, and adversary transformation. This article evaluates theory and research, makes provisional judgments as to which theories appear to be most viable, and begins the task of theoretical integration to arrive at a more complete and internally consistent explanation for why many women engage in erotic rape fantasies. Methodological critiques and programs for future research are presented throughout.     

How Real is that Smile? Mood Effects on Accepting or Rejecting the Veracity of Emotional Facial Expressions

Does mood influence people’s tendency to accept observed facial expressions as genuine? Based on recent theories of affect and cognition, two experiments predicted and found that negative mood increased and positive mood decreased people’s skepticism about the genuineness of facial expressions. After a mood induction, participants viewed images of faces displaying (a) positive, neutral, and negative expressions (Exp. 1), or (b) displays of six specific emotions (Exp. 2). Judgments of genuineness, valence, and confidence ratings were collected. As predicted, positive affect increased, and negative affect decreased the perceived genuineness of facial expressions, and there was some evidence for affect-congruence in judgments. The relevance of these findings for everyday nonverbal communication and strategic interpersonal behavior are considered, and their implications for recent affect-cognition theories are discussed.     

Ranking the Risks from Multiple Hazards in a Small Community

Natural hazards, human-induced accidents, and malicious acts have caused great losses and disruptions to society. After September 11, 2001, critical infrastructure protection has become a national focus in the United States and is likely to remain one for the foreseeable future. Damage to the infrastructures and assets could be mitigated through predisaster planning and actions. A systematic methodology was developed to assess and rank the risks from these multiple hazards in a community of 20,000 people. It is an interdisciplinary study that includes probabilistic risk assessment (PRA), decision analysis, and expert judgment. Scenarios are constructed to show how the initiating events evolve into undesirable consequences. A value tree, based on multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT), is used to capture the decisionmaker's preferences about the impacts on the infrastructures and other assets. The risks from random failures are ranked according to their expected performance index (PI), which is the product of frequency, probabilities, and consequences of a scenario. Risks from malicious acts are ranked according to their PI as the frequency of attack is not available. A deliberative process is used to capture the factors that could not be addressed in the analysis and to scrutinize the results. This methodology provides a framework for the development of a risk-informed decision strategy. Although this study uses the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus as a case study of a real project, it is a general methodology that could be used by other similar communities and municipalities.     

An Ethnography of Emerging Latino Music Scenes

We report on an ethnographic study of three emerging scenes in which Latino music is produced, performed, experienced, and celebrated in Houston, Texas: rock en Espanol, gay Latino dance music, and professional soccer supporters' music. Music is an important feature of Latino culture, since it informs migration, citizenship, spirituality, and other aspects of the contemporary Latino experience. Three interactionist concepts inform this study. The concept of scene directs our attention to the comprehensive social worlds driven by Latino music. The concept of idioculture directs our attention to the ways audience members experience Latino music within everyday life small groups. The concept of place directs our attention to how Latino music creates new locations to anchor the self in reference to country of origin, present music communities, or possible symbolic locations such as America or La Raza. We conclude with suggestions for a revised interactionist concept of music scene.     

Hardly Silent: Exploring Civic Engagement and Participation among a Panel of Adults Ages 85+

ABSTRACT

The past twenty years have seen a surge of resources for and public attention devoted to civic participation opportunities for older adults in the United States. At the same time, technology has transformed the way information related to political and social issues is spread and shared. As more older adults migrate to using a wider range of communication tools and the internet, technology-mediated forms of engagement represent a new way for the oldest old to participate in society. In this study, a panel of adults ages 85 and older was surveyed to understand their experiences engaging with political and social issues. Responses to a questionnaire (N = 24) and focus groups (n = 22) indicate the oldest old are interested in social and political issues, and there are opportunities for technology to facilitate the oldest olds’ civic and political action. This study identifies roles social workers may play in helping the oldest old engage with social and political issues in their communities.     

Barriers to girls' education in Mozambique at household and community levels: an exploratory study

Although education of children is universally accepted as a leading mechanism of poverty eradication and social development, many developing nations continue to struggle in achieving gender parity in primary and secondary education. While Mozambique has recently accelerated its efforts to reduce this gap, girls are still enrolled and attending school at a much lower rate than boys. The present study explored the barriers to children's – especially girls' – education in central Mozambique, based on information on 738 children in two separate communities. Household, child, environmental, and social/cultural factors are examined in the context of global and regional data. The study found girls to be impacted more negatively by every correlating factor, including the lingering practice, in rural areas, of early marriage. Policy and research implications are discussed.     

Optimal Acquisition and Sorting Policies for Remanufacturing

The condition of the used items acquired by remanufacturers is often highly variable, and sorting is an important aspect of remanufacturing operations. Sorting policies—the rules specifying which used products should be remanufactured and which should be scrapped—have received limited attention in the literature. In this paper, we examine the case of a remanufacturer who acquires unsorted used products as needed from third party brokers. As more used items are acquired for a given demand, the remanufacturer can be more selective when sorting. Thus, two related decisions are made: how many used items to acquire, and how selective to be during the sorting process. We derive optimal acquisition and sorting policies in the presence of used product condition variability for a remanufacturer facing both deterministic and uncertain demand. We show the existence of a single optimal acquisition and sorting policy with a simple structure and show that this policy is independent of production amount when acquisition costs are linear.