A case for a duty to feed the hungry: GM plants and the third world

This article is concerned with a discussion of the plausibility of the claim that GM technology has the potential to provide the hungry with sufficient food for subsistence. Following a brief outline of the potential applications of GM in this context, a history of the green revolution and its impact will be discussed in relation to the current developing world agriculture situation. Following a contemporary analysis of malnutrition, the claim that GM technology has the potential to provide the hungry with sufficient nourishment will be discussed within the domain of moral philosophy to determine whether there exists a moral obligation to pursue this end if and only if the technology proves to be relatively safe and effective. By using Peter Singer's duty of moral rescue, I argue that we have a moral duty to assist the third world through the distribution of such GM plants. I conclude the paper by demonstrating that my argument can be supported by applying a version of the Precautionary Principle on the grounds that doing nothing might be worse for the current situation.     

Not All Visual Expertise Is Holistic, but It May Be Leftist: The Case of Chinese Character Recognition

ABSTRACT— We examined whether two purportedly face-specific effects, holistic processing and the left-side bias, can also be observed in expert-level processing of Chinese characters, which are logographic and share many properties with faces. Non-Chinese readers (novices) perceived these characters more holistically than Chinese readers (experts). Chinese readers had a better awareness of the components of characters, which were not clearly separable to novices. This finding suggests that holistic processing is not a marker of general visual expertise; rather, holistic processing depends on the features of the stimuli and the tasks typically performed on them. In contrast, results for the left-side bias were similar to those obtained in studies of face perception. Chinese readers exhibited a left-side bias in the perception of mirror-symmetric characters, whereas novices did not; this effect was also reflected in eye fixations. Thus, the left-side bias may be a marker of visual expertise.     

UK responses to the asylum issue: A comparison of lay and expert views

There is much political and media discussion about asylum in Britain and opinion polls indicate public hostility towards asylum seekers. The current research aims to contribute towards a greater understanding of public responses to this issue by exploring the social representations of asylum seekers. Social representations theory provides a useful framework for research on asylum as it conceptualizes public understandings of new and challenging social objects. Semi‐structured interviews conducted with lay participants and experts working in support of asylum seekers were thematically analyzed and the results were compared with existing media representations. These comparisons suggest that public representations of asylum seekers differ from formal discourses and are closer to media portrayals. Public respondents perceived public hostility to be greater than the attitudes evinced by the current sample would suggest. The findings suggest that opinion polls may exaggerate public negativity towards asylum seekers and indicate the need for accurate information to be disseminated through publicly accessible sources and for public engagement in debate about the issue. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Unmet Educational Agenda in Integrated Care

One of the reasons integrated care has not become a dominant service delivery model is the unmet training agenda. This article argues that the typical mental health professional is not trained to adequately address the challenges of integrated care. To insure competency both a macro and clinical training agenda are needed. At the macro-level, mental health professionals need to understand healthcare economics and basic business principles as any integrated care service delivery system is embedded and driven by economic forces. Integrated care practitioners also need some basic business skills to understand these forces and to create and manage a financially viable system, given the future flux of the system. Traditional mental health professionals also do not have the clinical skills to implement integrated care. Integrated care is not simply placing a traditionally trained mental health professional and letting them practice specialty mental health in a medical setting. Thus, the special skills needed in integrated care are enumerated and discussed. Finally, a new degree program is described as it is time given the huge need and advantages of integrated care to develop specialty training in integrated care.     

Impact of Traumatic Life Events in a Community Sample of Toddlers

Toddlers may be at particularly high risk for a number of psychiatric, developmental and neurobiological consequences in the aftermath of trauma. The social and emotional impact of potentially traumatic life events experienced between 6 and 36-months of age was assessed in an epidemiological birth cohort of 18- to 36-month-olds from the Greater New Haven Area. Event-exposed toddlers evidenced greater symptom severity on the ITSEA Internalizing, Externalizing, Dysregulation, Atypical and Maladaptive scales, as well on the CBCL Internalizing and Externalizing scales than those not exposed. Approximately one-fifth of event-exposed toddlers were reported by their parents to have experienced a dramatic change in functioning following the event, and were described as experiencing higher levels of symptoms consistent with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), namely re-experiencing and arousal, than exposed toddlers whose parents did not report a change in their functioning. Implications for clinicians and child care providers working with toddlers and their parents are discussed.     

Use of treatment analysis following ambiguous functional analysis results

The present study used a treatment analysis following ambiguous functional analysis results to evaluate potential treatments to reduce the SIB of a 32‐year‐old male with profound mental retardation. In addition, effective treatments were determined for increasing compliance with increasingly more complex self‐care tasks. The results indicated that a positive reinforcement procedure with extinction was useful toward reducing SIB and increasing compliance during three increasingly more complex tasks. The usefulness of treatment analysis procedures following ambiguous functional analysis results are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consultation to the court in infant/toddler custody cases

This paper describes a special component of an infant mental health program wherein infants are referred by the Department of Social Services for assessment and treatment. The infants in these cases are frequently in foster care and under court supervision for abuse and neglect. This paper describes the special role of the infant mental health specialist in establishing a working alliance with the family and in providing consultation to the Department of Social Services and the court. Note is made of the role of the infant mental health specialist within the legal system.     

Job Satisfaction of Child Welfare Workers in an Urban Setting: Status and Predictors

Large urban areas present many challenges to those children and adults who reside in those settings. The social service workers in urban areas have clients with complex, multiple needs. Reliable and consistent workers are essential to successfully working with these families. In the current study, the job satisfaction of 29 social service workers in an urban child welfare agency was assessed using the Job Satisfaction Scale (JSS). The JSS measures satisfaction in 7 areas of one's job (i.e., work, supervision, coworkers, pay and promotion, work environment, training, and position). Data indicated that the staff were relatively satisfied, that satisfaction did not vary by staff position (family worker vs. social worker/supervisor), and that neither demographic factors nor prior experiences were predictors of job satisfaction. Implications for agency management and the provision of social services to urban families are discussed.     

Everything Here is Fine: Protective Buffering by Military Spouses During a Deployment

To minimize potential distractions for deployed military service members (SMs), some nondeployed romantic partners have reported engaging in protective buffering, or intentionally withholding information or concerns to protect their deployed partner. This study assessed the associations of protective buffering and psychological distress and marital satisfaction for military couples during and after deployment. Additionally, the study explored whether protective buffering was related to SM reports of being distracted during deployment by family matters. A total of 54 couples provided data before, during, and after an Army deployment. In multilevel models, higher protective buffering by partners was associated with higher psychological distress and lower marital satisfaction for both SMs and partners during, but not after, deployment. Additionally, partners reported frequent use of protective buffering during deployment; however, protective buffering was not significantly correlated with family related distraction for SMs during deployment. Limitations and implications of these findings are discussed.     

A comparison of displacement and reinforcer potency for typically developing children

Previous researchers found that individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities tend to prefer edible over leisure stimuli, although leisure stimuli may still function as reinforcers. We replicated and extended previous research in a 2-part experiment with typically developing children. In Experiment 1, we evaluated 15 children's preference for leisure and edible stimuli. Five of 15 participants preferred edible over leisure stimuli, 3 of 15 participants preferred leisure over edible stimuli, and the remaining 7 of 15 participants did not show a preference for a stimulus class. In Experiment 2, we compared the reinforcer potency of the top-ranked stimulus from each class with 7 of the 8 participants who showed displacement of one stimulus class. Four of 7 participants allocated more responding to the task associated with the top-ranked stimulus and 3 of 7 participants showed no differences in responding to the task regardless of the stimulus rank.