Particular polyglots: multilingual students with autism

Many American children with autism live in multilingual environments. Yet an almost diametric contrast exists between the advice of practitioners and the recommendations found in scholarly literature. Whereas practitioners almost unanimously counsel that children on the autism spectrum be exposed to English alone, an increasing number of scholars have argued the potential benefits for these children of learning their parents’ native language as well. This paper argues that, in fact, language recommendations for children on the spectrum should fall somewhere between these two poles and be tailored to individual children and their families.     

LEGITIMATING TRANSPHOBIA

Transgender persons are strangers to the law; or put more accurately, the legal imagination is so deeply entrenched in normative gender binarism as to effectively render transsexuals a ‘freakish’ anomaly to law. This essay attempts to offer a reflection on transgenderism, law and sexual crime from a human rights and criminal law perspective. It focuses on one of the most violent types of institution in society – the prison – and asks: what are the legal imagination and practice surrounding transgender prisoners as they are linked to social and cultural transphobia? What ‘human’ rights can be practiced for a dehumanized class? It first surveys the legal predicament of transgender prisoners in the US prison system in relation to Eighth Amendment rights provided by the US Constitution. The US situation has seen cases that have importantly shed light on other jurisdictions when engaging with the combined questions of prisoners’ rights and transgender rights together. The analysis is then taken to the context of Hong Kong prisons in a modest application. In contrast to some other Asian contexts (such as Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia), critical cultural studies of transgenderism are non-existent in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, human rights studies of the same have only emerged through the work of legal scholar Robyn Emerton. It is hoped that a rights-based approach will emerge in Hong Kong for the protection of transgender inmates from sexual violence in local correctional facilities.     

POLITICIANS AT WORK: THE PRIVATE RETURNS AND SOCIAL COSTS OF POLITICAL CONNECTIONS

We quantify the private returns and social costs of political connections exploiting a unique longitudinal dataset that combines matched employer–employee data for a representative sample of Italian firms with administrative archives on the universe of individuals appointed in local governments over the period 1985–1997. According to our results, the revenue premium granted by political connections amounts to 5.7% on average, it is obtained through changes in domestic sales but not in exports, and it is not related to improvements in firm productivity. The connection premium is positive for upstream producers for the public administration only, and larger (up to 22%) in areas characterized by high public expenditure and high levels of corruption. These findings suggest that the gains in market power derive from public demand shifts towards politically connected firms. We estimate that such shifts reduce the provision of public goods by approximately 20%.     

Influences on Authorship Issues: An Evaluation of Receiving,Not Receiving,and Rejecting Credit

A survey on credit issues was conducted of academic chemists in Ph.D. granting institutions in the United States. Six-hundred faculty members responded representing 16% of the survey recipients. Fifty percent of the respondents reported not receiving appropriate credit for contributions they had made to published projects. Neither the number of years after receiving their Ph.D., their fields of expertise, their total number of publications, nor their total number of single-author publications showed any significant relationship with the perception of not receiving appropriate credit. Twenty percent of the respondents had discovered that they were an author of a paper, after that paper had been submitted to a journal. Forty-nine percent reported that they had asked to have their name deleted as an author. Relationships between these perceptions and academic background factors were examined. For example, respondents who had asked to be removed from authorship were more likely to give authorship or an acknowledgement to others and were also more likely to have had an authorship problem with others, both of these factors being related to longevity as a publishing scientist.     

Advance Care Planning in the Delivery of Adult Protective Services

ABSTRACT

In ensuring the safety and protection of older adults from abuse and exploitation, adult protective services (APS) workers face a variety of situations involving serious illness and end-of-life conditions. Many older adults encountered in APS will present with one or more chronic conditions that may warrant discussion of advance care planning with clients and their families. This study surveyed APS workers (n = 508) in 21 states regarding encounters with end-of-life situations and the practice of future care planning. Results revealed that three-fourths of APS workers encounter clients with serious illnesses and about two-thirds do discuss planning in advance for care. More than one-half of the respondents indicated client incapacity and refusal to address future care needs as barriers to discussing planning in advance for care. Recommendations to enhance advance care planning among APS workers are discussed.     

Social Worker as Client: My Education as a Family Member in a Nursing Home

A social worker's professional experience in providing a service does not necessarily ease her own personal stress when she is the recipient of that same service. The author is a nursing home social worker whose own mother was a resident in the facility where she works. Her first-hand experience with the "system" and with her emotions brought new enlightenment to the practice of her profession.     

Gay,Lesbian, and Bisexual Elders

Abstract

Although the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual (GLB) senior population is growing, there has been little attention given to identifying and understanding the needs and concerns of this growing population. This paper will present results from a series of focus groups and in-depth interviews with GLB elders from three select areas in the Midwest. Content analysis of the expressed beliefs, attitudes, and opinions from participants revealed that there were seven major areas of importance for GLB elders (physical health, legal rights, housing, spirituality, family, mental health, and social networks). The needs, concerns, range of issues, common issues, opinions, and attitudes expressed across the three focus groups are discussed and recommendations are provided.     

The Great Departure: Rethinking National(ist) Common Sense

This article argues that, in order to overcome the national(ist) common sense that continues to haunt everyday political and scholarly interpretations of mobility, scholars need not diagnose nationalism with greater vigour, but should rather move beyond facile diagnoses of nationalism. The article calls for a meticulous tracing of relations and practices of emplacement and displacement that ubiquitous national(ist) interpretive frames both co-opt and exceed simultaneously. The argument is elaborated on the basis of an analysis of historical articulations of emplacement and displacement in Latvian understandings of ‘the good life’. The article pays particular attention to the ways in which the figure of the migrant has emerged historically as an aberration to Latvian understandings of the good life. It also considers how this ethical configuration is being unsettled through massive labour migration to Western Europe—or ‘the Great Departure’.     

对转式永磁无刷直流电机无位置检测控制策略研究

研究对转式永磁无刷直流电机基于反电势过零点的无位置传感器控制策略,通过理论推导和实验验证该策略能够运用于对转式永磁无刷直流电机。针对静止状态下启动困难问题,基于d轴正向增磁、反向去磁导致铁芯饱和程度不同而产生电感差异及q轴到d轴之间电感差异的原理,提出了一种通过施加6个短时电压脉冲即可判断磁极转子初始位置的检测方法,以及施加2个短时导通相电压脉冲获得换相时刻的启动加速方法,并进行实验验证。结果表明：基于电感差异原理提出的磁极转子初始位置检测和启动方法能够有效解决启动困难题,扩大了对转式永磁无刷直流电机的运用范围,提高对转式永磁无刷直流电机无位置检测控制性能。