The Passing of the Practice Teaching Award: History,Legacy, Prospects

This article reviews the origin, development and prospective demise of the Practice Teaching Award, as a prelude to considering the scope for reconfiguring practice teacher training and assessment on the GSCC landscape of social care codes of practice, qualifying programmes in social work and an integrated post‐qualifying framework. As a bridge from the past to the future, the article highlights a rich PTA ‘legacy’, identifying a particularly valuable ‘bequest’ in the ‘mainstreaming’ of portfolio assessment. Transcending the sphere of education and training as such, the reflective self‐assessment characteristic of effective portfolio construction is identified as a major contribution to the ‘professionalisation’ of social work practice as a whole.     

The Relationship Between Punishment History and Skin Conductance Elicited During Swearing

Despite its theoretical importance, the effect of past punishment on verbal behavior is often overlooked in research due to the difficulty of measuring it. The present study explores the relationship between physiological arousal in humans and swearing; a behavior likely to have been punished in the typical conditioning history of an individual. Participants'' skin conductance was measured as they read aloud a list of words containing swear words, emotionally salient words, and neutral words. The association between SCR measurements and participants'' scores on questionnaires on previous punishment for swearing was then analyzed. Findings suggest that people have significantly higher physiological arousal when saying swear words than neutral words, and that this arousal is higher for participants who have previously received more frequent punishment for swearing, according to self-report.     

Researchers’ Views of the Acceptability of Restrictive Provisions in Clinical Trial Agreements with Industry Sponsors

We conducted a mail survey of 884 U.S. medical school faculty active in clinical research to elicit their views about the acceptability of provisions in contracts for industry-sponsored clinical trials that would restrict investigators’ academic freedom and control over trials. We compared their responses to results from a similar survey of research administrators at 107 medical schools. There was substantial variation among clinical researchers in their acceptability judgments, with a relatively large proportion of clinical trial investigators willing to accept provisions that give industry sponsors considerable control over the dissemination of research results. There were significant differences in the perceptions of clinical trial investigators versus other recently published clinical researchers; investigators with a high versus low percentage of research support from industry; junior versus senior faculty; and investigators at institutions with high versus low National Institute of Health (NIH) funding ranks. There was also a significant divergence of views in a number of areas between clinical trialists and research administrators who negotiate clinical trial contracts on their behalf. Medical school faculty could benefit from additional guidance about what their institution views as acceptable parameters for industry-sponsored clinical trial agreements.     

Reflexive Research Ethics in Fetal Tissue Xenotransplantation Research

For biomedical research in which the only involvement of the human subject is the provision of tissue or organ samples, a blanket consent, i.e., consent to use the tissue for anything researchers wish to do, is considered by many to be adequate for legal and Institutional Review Board (IRB) requirements. Alternatively, a detailed informed consent provides patients or study participants with more thorough information about the research topic. We document here the beliefs and opinions of the research staff on informed consent and the discussion-based reflexive research ethics process that we employed in our fetal tissue xenotransplantion research on the impact of environmental exposures on fetal development. Reflexive research ethics entails the continued adjustment of research practice according to relational and reflexive understandings of what might be beneficent or harmful. Such reflexivity is not solely an individual endeavor, but rather a collective relationship between all actors in the research process.     

Sex Worker Victimization,Modes of Working,and Location in New South Wales,Australia: A Geography of Victimization

This article examines the association among victimization, modes of sex working, and the locations used by sex workers through an analysis of “Ugly Mug” reports detailing 528 crime acts in 333 reported incidents in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. These forms, voluntarily lodged between 2000 and 2008 by members of NSW's estimated 10,000 sex worker population, suggest that street-based work has a higher victimization rate than other modes of working, including escort work, work in commercial premises, and private work. Although this ostensibly supports the commonly held view that “outdoor” working is more dangerous than “indoor” work, this analysis suggests that most instances of victimization actually occur in private spaces. Hence, it is argued that risks of victimization in sex work are influenced by a variety of environmental characteristics relating to concealment, control, and isolation, suggesting that not all off-street locations are equally safe. We conclude with recommendations for policy regarding sex work.     

Guerrilla USA: The George Jackson Brigade and the Anticapitalist Underground of the 1970s

The purpose of this profile is to address the Spanish 15M movement from a gender perspective, focusing, on the one hand, on the role played by feminist demands within it and, on the other, on how feminism may have contributed to the 15M, its internal debate and its further developments unfolding in the current Spanish political context. In order to do that, we first explore how feminist demands were initially received in the camps and the reactions they raised among the media and citizenship. Second, we tackle how this case of overlap between a larger group and feminist groups is different from previous collaborations and confrontations. Finally, we focus on how the 15M movement has transformed (or not) as a result of feminism and the implications of this process towards rethinking the role of feminism within contemporary Spanish politics.     

Call my bluff

Poker used to be the card game of choice for hard men late at night in smoke-filled rooms. Now online poker is bidding for respectability and a site on the home computer. Phil Woodward gives us the straight dope.     

Reactions to Genetically Modified Food Crops and How Perception of Risks and Benefits Influences Consumers'' Information Gathering

Previous research has reported strong consumer perception that genetically modified (GM) food crops may lead to adverse outcomes in a number of different areas. This is despite the widespread promulgation of the potential benefits and opportunities ascribed to the same technology by many scientists and other experts. A computer-based information gathering and evaluation task was completed by 198 adults to assess the extent to which their initial focus on the dangers or opportunities of genetic modification, or both, could be ascribed to the manner in which they gathered information on the topic (heuristically vs. systematically). Results did not confirm the hypothesis that initial focus (risks, benefits, or both) predicted ongoing information gathering and evaluation behavior. Moreover, also contrary to prediction, most participants primarily used systematic strategies when deriving their initial position, regardless of that opinion. Participants found it difficult to achieve a balanced perspective on GM food crop, even though balanced argument, as measured by order of story selection and time spent reading, was preferred as the source of information. Perceived importance is probably the most influential variable determining information gathering about issues or events to which a level of risk is attached.     

Top tip: ways of dealing with analytical constraints in pharmaceutical technology

In this paper several methods are presented for managing analytical constraints in support of formulation optimization and drug delivery studies. These methods rely on the sequential analytical analysis of pharmaceutical technology studies. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.