Sexual agreements and intimate-partner violence among male couples

Objectives: In the United States, HIV continues to disproportionately affect men who have sex with men. One promising area of research that may inform the development of behavioral interventions among male–male couples is within the realm of sexual agreements. Methods: The purpose of our analysis was to determine whether respondents who report having an open agreement or an agreement breakage also report a higher incidence of recent (within the previous 12 months) intimate-partner violence (IPV) compared to respondents who report having a monogamous agreement or no agreement breakage after controlling for demographic variables. Results: Results showed that men who have an open agreement are less likely to report recent physical IPV. Conclusions: The results highlight the need to develop dyadic behavior interventions that address sexual agreements and stress management.     

Form Perception of Partly Occluded Shapes in 4‐Month‐Old Infants

Two habituation experiments were conducted to investigate how 4‐month‐old infants perceive partly occluded shapes. In the first experiment, we presented a simple, partly occluded shape to the infants until habituation was reached. Then we showed either a probable completion (one that would be predicted on the basis of both local and global cues) or an improbable completion. Longer looking times were found for the improbably completed shape (compared to probable and control conditions), suggesting that the probable shape was perceived during partial occlusion. In the second experiment, infants were habituated to more ambiguous partly occluded shapes, where local and global cues would result in different completions. For adults, the percept of these shapes is usually dominated by global influences. However, after habituation the infants looked longer at the globally completed shapes. These results suggest that by the age of 4 months, infants are able to infer the perceptual completion of partly occluded shapes, but for more ambiguous shapes, this completion seems to be dominated by local influences.     

Book Reviews

Michael Seltzer, Christian Kullberg, Soren Peter Olesen, Ilmari Rostila (eds): Listening to the Welfare State. Aldershot, Ashgate, 2001. 267 pp, ISBN 0-7546-1565-0, £45.00     

An alternative to farmer age as an indicator of life-cycle stage: The case for a farm family age index

In studies of farming, the age of the principal decision-maker (PDM) has been associated with numerous farm structural and managerial features and has been widely accepted as a good indicator of the influence of life-cycle factors on decision-making. As such, it has become an important aspect of many quantitative studies of agricultural change. However, contemporary studies of family farming demonstrate that the concept of a single PDM in family farms is becoming an anachronism as alternative enterprises, pluriactivity and the scale of family farms force more diffuse management/operating systems. This raises questions concerning whether the age of the PDM can still be taken as representative of farm structure, strategy or life-cycle stage? Using a study conducted in the Grampian Mountains region of Scotland in 2003 this note investigates the impact of using an alternative index—compiled by averaging the age of family members working on the farm. It suggests that PDM age is a relatively poor indicator of farm structural and managerial features compared to a family age index and calls for researchers to think about alternative approaches to measuring ‘age’ as an indicator.     

Sustainable societies in the information age

This article interweaves the ideas of sustainable development, sustainable societies, and the power of advanced information technologies toward developing recommendations for social science research on information technology in society. Worldwide concern has arisen over the potentially catastrophic consequences of global climate and environmental change. As a result, sustainable development (i.e., the simultaneous protection of both the global environment and the global economy) is receiving considerable attention. Necessary for achieving sustainable development are sustainable societies, which are capable of designing, implementing, managing and evaluating long-term environmental programs. This article presents ten characteristics that describe sustainable societies and discusses how information technologies, from wireless personal digital assistants to intelligent agents to multi-media database systems, could support the evolution of sustainable societies. Topics for social science research related to designing and ameliorating the negative consequences of eight hypothetical computer-based systems are presented. Bruce E. Tonn is leader of the policy systems analysis group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and co-principal investigator of the National Center for Environmental Decision-making Research. His research interests include environmental and energy policy, computers in society, decision making, and futures studies. He is past president of the Social Science Computing Association. His research focuses on planning, assessment and evaluation, energy use and conservation, and education.     

Understanding manager resistance to blockchain systems

Blockchain technology has received much attention in the media and there is an increasing interest amongst organizations within financial services due to the potential benefits. As blockchain-based systems are a nascent technology, the requirements of the technology need to be understood, to allow blockchain systems to be successfully integrated within financial service organizations. There are gaps in academic research in understanding how managers evaluate the value of a blockchain-based system. This study develops a model to explain manager resistance to implementing blockchain-based systems in financial services organizations. This research advances the theoretical understanding of managers’ perspectives on blockchain-based systems and models their resistance to blockchain technology.     

Power, Politics, and the Framing of Environmental Illness

The medical community, along with other government agencies, has created its own frame of environmental illness. This frame has been generally accepted by the American public. In this paper we discuss framing in general and the factors related to how the environmental illness frame has been constructed and maintained. We offer a brief history of the medical institution and illustrate the frame with its definitions of environmental illness. Qualitative data from a study of Oak Ridge, a contaminated community located in Tennessee, are examined to analyze the consequences of challenging the environmental illness frame. Implications for future research are discussed.