Practice supervisors’ perceptions of social work students and their placements – an exploratory study in the Norwegian context

Practice placement has been a basic component in Social Work Programmes for many decades in Norway as elsewhere, and supervision of students has been a valued role for social workers. Here, we have carried out a pilot study of nine supervisors from various practice settings, dealing with their experience with and views about supervision of students. The aim was to get more knowledge of student supervision today and the meaning of student supervision in different practice settings. We found that the content of supervision depended on the agency context. Supervision embodies core agency values. There was a lack of common ground between supervisors and the school of social work, and between supervisors and the students.     

Caloric restriction minimizes aging effects on the femoral medial condyle

This study aimed to analyze the effects of caloric restriction on aged femoral articular cartilage of Wistar rats. Three groups of eight animals each were considered: young (YC) and old (OC) control groups fed with a normal diet and old caloric restriction group (OCR) composed of 18-month-old animals fed with a 31% less caloric diet from 6-months of age. Articular cartilage was studied through morphometry and immunohistochemistry. Body mass was 12% less in the OCR group than in the OC group. The articular cartilage from OC rats show thinner medial condyles, fewer chondrocytes, smaller chondrocytes nuclear volume and, in both condyles, a predominance of collagen type II and less collagen density compared to both YC and OCR groups (p?p?相似文献   

Tracking weight change,insulin resistance,stress, and aerobic fitness over 4 years of college

Objective: To determine if weight gain is accompanied by development of insulin resistance (IR) during 4 years in college. Participants: Two cohorts of college students were enrolled in fall semesters 2009 and 2010 and tracked for 4 years. Methods: Following a 12-hour fast, subjects reported for measurement of body mass index (BMI), perceived stress (PSS), aerobic fitness, and blood glucose, insulin, and lipids. Results: In the first year, 33% of subjects were overweight or obese, and 20% were hyperinsulinemic. Year 4 had 29 remaining subjects with disproportionate attrition of overweight and obese individuals. Just over half the subjects gained weight (WI), whereas nearly 30% lost considerable amounts (WD). WD showed significant decline in fasting insulin, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, and PSS from year 1. WI was primarily highly fit men who did not demonstrate increased IR. Conclusion: WI was not associated with IR over 4 years of college.     

Internet gambling in relation to Internet addiction,substance use,online sexual engagement and suicidality in a Greek sample

Research has found gambling to be related to a variety of other addictive behaviours. The study objective was to evaluate the association of Internet gambling with Internet addiction, online sexual engagement, suicidality and substance use, in a sample of Greek adults. The study sample consisted of 789 military personnel. During their annual medical examination the study participants anonymously completed a series of self-reported questionnaires in relation to socio-demographic data, Internet gambling practices, online sexual engagement, Internet addiction, suicidality and psychoactive substance use. We found that Internet addiction significantly predicted engagement with online gambling, followed by substance use in general, and, in particular, the use of cocaine or heroin. Finally, two other predictive indicators were self-reported suicide attempts and engagement with online sex. Online gambling is associated with various behaviours related to impulsivity such as Internet addiction, online sexual engagement, suicidality and substance use. Future research will increase our knowledge on the contribution of new technologies and the Internet in Internet gambling dimensions, as well as on the associations with other high-risk behaviours such as substance use, pornography and suicidality.     

Education and Employment among Muslims in Indian Jammu and Kashmir

Muslims constitute about 14% population of India and are the largest religious minority community spread over the length and breadth of the country. The minority community in question has been relegated to the lowest socio-economic stratum in Indian society especially after the partition and independence of the country. However, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, Muslims are in majority constituting about 67% population of the state. In the current study, the Concentration Index of Muslim population, variation in literacy rate and work participation, occupational structure across region and religion, as well as the interrelationship between concentration of Muslim population, literacy rate and work participation in Jammu and Kashmir has been explored and explained. The present study is based upon secondary information obtained from Census 2001 and is also supplemented with government reports, published work wherever necessary. As far as share of Muslims in the sphere of education and employment in the state of Jammu and Kashmir is concerned, they have reported lower share among the population of literates, category of other workers and higher share in the occupational category of cultivators, agricultural labourers, household industry workers and non-workers in comparison to all religious groups. This means that despite being in majority, their situation is similar to their co-religionists at the all India level.     

‘Family money’ and ‘business money’: bankrupt entrepreneurs in a ‘question situation’

This paper addresses the question of bankruptcy and honesty in local contexts, and especially the problem of the bankrupt small businessman in conveying ‘honesty’ to the local community. Studying bankrupt entrepreneurs, the analysis explores a tacit dialogue between the failed businessmen and the small town communities where they live and work. The bankrupts respond to their seemingly mistrustful surroundings by demonstrating their respect for the dividing line between two social categories of money: ‘company money’ and ‘family money’. This discursive resource expresses business ethics and respectability, both essential for the bankrupt entrepreneur to start another business in the local community. The empirical material in the study consists of interviews with 22 businessmen who had created small businesses and experienced at least one bankruptcy, half of them in small towns. The entrepreneurs were found through court records and word of mouth. Interviews were conducted by the author and by graduate students from the Department of Sociology in Lund. All interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim.     

Commercial sex between men: A prospective diary‐based study

This paper describes the results of a self‐reporting dairy completed by 186 male sex workers (MSWs) over a 2‐week period in Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne, Australia. The diary was completed following each commercial sex encounter by the MSW. The results reveal that MSWs reported 2088 commercial sex encounters during the study period, with an average of 11.2 encounters per MSW. The majority of sex encounters took place in either the client's or the MSW's residence, with significant variations by city. The average sexual encounter lasted 70 minutes, and comprised two sexual acts, masturbation and oral sex. Condom use was reported in 67.4% of all the encounters. Using the AIDS Council safe‐sex classification system, the majority of the commercial sex encounters fell in the “safer sex” category; however, there were significant differences by source of clients and place of the encounter. Use of drugs and alcohol reveal interesting patterns: Clients were more likely to use alcohol, while MSWs had significant differences of usage of the different drugs. This study demonstrates that the majority of MSWs are offering and practicing safe sex behaviours, however, MSWs working in the street setting are still likely to be practising unsafe sex. Male sex work is becoming an organised business and this provides opportunities to implement further public health interventions.     

Naturalistic Observation in the Laboratory

Symbolic interactionists generally eschew laboratory research in favor of naturalistic observation in field settings. This is consistent with the recommendations of Blumer, who argued that social processes and relationships, which are the appropriate subject matter for sociology, cannot be studied adequately within the laboratory. In this statement, I argue that when the laboratory is used as a “provocative stage,” the integrity of social action and social relationships as they are manifest in social process can be as adequately studied in the laboratory as they can be in the field. I further argue that when the laboratory is used in the manner specified here, Blumer's recommendations are more adequately met than they are in field studies.     

Evaluation of a method for setting confidence intervals on the common mean of two normal populations

Let X₁, , X₂, …, X be distributed N(µ, σ² _x), let Y₁, Y₂, …, Y"_n be distributed N(µ, σ² _y), and let X , X , … X_m, Y₁, Y₂, …, Y_n be mutually independent. In this paper a method for setting confidence intervals on the common mean µ is proposed and evaluated.