Tracing ‘driver’ versus ‘modulator’ information flow throughout large-scale,task-related neural circuitry

Primary objective: To determine the relative uses of neural action potential (‘spike’) data versus local field potentials (LFPs) for modeling information flow through complex brain networks. Hypothesis: The common use of LFP data, which are continuous and therefore more mathematically suited for spectral information-flow modeling techniques such as Granger causality analysis, can lead to spurious inferences about whether a given brain area ‘drives’ the spiking in a downstream area. Experiment: We recorded spikes and LFPs from the forelimb motor cortex (M1) and the magnocellular red nucleus (mRN), which receives axon collaterals from M1 projection cells onto its distal dendrites, but not onto its perisomatic regions, as rats performed a skilled reaching task. Results and implications: As predicted, Granger causality analysis on the LFPs—which are mainly composed of vector-summed dendritic currents—produced results that if conventionally interpreted would suggest that the M1 cells drove spike firing in the mRN, whereas analyses of spiking in the two recorded regions revealed no significant correlations. These results suggest that mathematical models of information flow should treat the sampled dendritic activity as more likely to reflect intrinsic dendritic and input-related processing in neural networks, whereas spikes are more likely to provide information about the output of neural network processing.     

基于政府行政管理职能构建统计体系的基本思路与方法

对某个具体的政府行政职能部门而言,其数据供给和需求常常是不对称的。如何构建一套统计体系,将与其有关的统计数据信息采集、加工、应用、发布通过一个信息系统来实现,以满足其对外的数据供给和对内的数据需求？本文以北京市住建委为例,给出了政府行政职能部门统计体系设计的四个基本步骤：解析行政管理职能,构造统计体系的基本框架,分模块进行具体统计内容设计,落实统计报送周期、数据来源和传输渠道。     

企业非市场与市场行为及其竞争特点对企业绩效的影响研究

随着我国企业步入激烈的动态竞争时代,企业的成功不仅依赖于产品和服务、分销渠道、供应链、价格等市场行为,也依赖于企业与政府、社会公众以及各种利益相关者之间的关系等非市场行为.本文首先提出了一个企业非市场、市场行为(或回应)及其竞争特点与企业绩效关系的理论模型及其相关假设,然后以2004年至2006年我国钢铁、汽车、医药、日化、电力和电信等六个行业中的30家企业的非市场与市场行为为样本,通过结构内容分析方法对有关企业竞争行为新闻报道的编码数据进行处理和信效度检验,接着在对各种非市场与市场行为频数统计和独立样本T检验的基础上,运用回归方程模型进一步分别检验了非市场与市场行为及其竞争特点对企业绩效的影响.最后,本文将研究结果与中国企业现实情况进行了相互对照,并提出了研究结论和相关启示.     

女性领导力行动研究：本土化的路径与实践

通过行动研究在我国边远农村地区提升女性领导力是西方行动研究范式在我国的本土化实践.行动研究的独特价值在于,经过一个螺旋式发展过程,参与者在行动过程中实现自我的改变和成长.女性领导力行动研究以本土化的方式实践并探究了这一过程,其中计划和结果导向的行动研究流程、合作伙伴关系的搭建、赋权特色的培训都是促成参与者认识与行为改变的有力条件;而过程中的困难主要体现在协同合作关系的维持,辨识行动与研究之间的复杂关系以及个体成长的持续推动.行动研究本土化的关键在于发挥自上而下的行政倡导与自下而上的草根力量之间的联动.     

Strategies,Action Repertoires and DIY Activism in the Animal Rights Movement

Following Tilly, this paper argues that a social movement is what it does as much as why it does it. This approach is particularly important in the case of the animal rights movement, which is often demonized as extremist and violent. Critics of the movement claim that animal activists use letter bombs, arson attacks and threats to intimidate those they see as animal abusers and that violent direct action of this kind is typical of the movement as a whole. The present paper argues that the mainstream animal movement – in the USA, the UK and Australia – is overwhelmingly non-violent and that its core strategies and tactics have two broad aims, namely to gain publicity for the movement and to challenge conventional thinking about how we treat non-human animals. This is achieved primarily by the deployment of the key tactical mechanisms of persuasion, protest, non-cooperation and intervention. These tactics may be deployed collectively or as DIY (Do-It-Yourself) activism which many grassroots animal activists – ‘caring sleuths’ to use Shapiro's apt term – seem to prefer. The paper focuses on demonstrations and pamphleteering as examples of publicity strategies or liberal governance strategies as well as critical governance strategies or interference strategies such as the hunger strike, ethical vegetarianism and undercover surveillance.     

Temporal stability of entries and predictors for entry into out-of-home care before the third birthday: A Danish population-based study of entries from 1981 to 2008

Objective

Placing a child in out-of-home care is one of the most radical measures a child protection system can decide to take. There is an essential interest in understanding the probability of entering care and what circumstances are related to the decision to place a child in out-of-home care. This study investigates the temporal stability of rates and predictors for entry into care.

Method

Data were obtained by linking several registration systems. The study population was defined as all children entering care before their third birthday from birth cohorts 1981–2008 (N = 11,034). Furthermore, a control population consisting of a randomly assigned quarter of the Danish child population from the same birth cohorts was used (N = 515,773). Rates of entry and Cox regression models from six periods from 1981 to 2008 were used to model co-variates associated with entry into out-of-home care.

Results

The overall likelihood for entering care is found to be decreasing over time. Furthermore, results reveal two trends: relative rates of entry are significantly decreasing for children whose mother has a psychiatric history prior to the child's birth; relative rates are significantly increasing for children whose mother or father was unemployed in the year prior to the child's birth.     

Making Practice Learning Part of Our Core Business: A Case Study of Organisational Change

Implementing the new degree in social work in Britain will require practice agencies to deliver an increased number of practice learning opportunities to students undertaking social work training. Indeed the Practice Learning Taskforce (2004 Practice Learning Taskforce. ‘Making change work for us’. London [Google Scholar]) estimates that, in London, a 70% increase from 2002/3 to 2006/7 will be needed. In order to achieve this practice agencies are being urged to transform themselves into learning organisations. Given that social work programmes in many areas are already struggling to find sufficient placements for their students this is likely to be hugely challenging. Research carried out by Lindsay &; Tompsett suggests that, in order to achieve this, social work agencies need to bring planning for practice learning more centrally into the organisation's strategic planning. This paper presents a case study of the author's experience in an English social services department that attempted this. It concludes that practice agencies, in moving towards becoming learning organisations, need to pay attention both to the structural arrangements they develop and the organisational processes involved.     

Community development--action research in community settings

This paper considers the concept of resilience and how the natural qualities supportive of resilience in children and families can best be nurtured. It argues that there is an emerging crisis in bureaucratised child protection systems that alienates and undermines both social workers and clients, and that runs counter to the spirit of resilience‐led practice. Responding to this crisis requires a new emphasis on relationships, strengths and the clients' social context in child and family social work. It also requires practitioners and students to reflect carefully on the nature of helping. The paper explores some of the implications of these ideas for social work practice, education and policy.     

Searching for a Capacity Building Model in Social Work Education in China

This paper contains our reflections about our experiences in employing a capacity building model for training social workers to conduct community development work in rural China. Unlike the conventional approach to social work practicum, our approach advocates an educational practice of capacity building; not only for local people and learners, but for educators as well. It stresses that the educator should assume a non‐expert role in relating to his/her students so that the students will do the same with local people. We challenge the concept of the social work educator as an expert because it gives a teacher the power and authority to dominate students, which disempowers students during the learning process. In the same vein, we challenge the desire of social work students to become experts in rural development, which in turn disempowers local people from taking charge of the future direction of their lives in rural China. The capacity building approach subscribes to a critical pedagogy that calls for a re‐invention of self by challenging tradition and culture, and by developing academic knowledge, the habit of inquiry and critical curiosity about society, power, inequality, and social change.     

Making Records Meaningful: Creating an Identity Resource for Young People in Care

Abstract

The Who Am I? research was an interdisciplinary, action research project focused on the past and present record-keeping practices for people growing up in out-of-home care in Australia. This paper reports on two of the nested projects directed at current record-keeping practices. For the 100+ Points of Identity study, a tool was developed (the Document Accessibility Exercise or “Daesy”) to determine the number of personal records critical to identity that could be accessed by practitioners prior to a young person leaving a placement. The Backpack of Identity project developed a further iteration of the action research cycle, as the first project identified the vulnerability of the record when placements for the young person changed. A number of implications for practice arose, including the need for greater attention to the development of personal records (as against an administrative record) and the need for practitioners to understand their responsibilities for the story “of the record” as well as the story “in the record”.