Legal abortion worldwide: incidence and recent trends

CONTEXT: Information on abortion levels and trends can inform research and policies affecting maternal and reproductive health, but the incidence of legal abortion has not been assessed in nearly a decade. METHODS: Statistics on legal abortions in 2003 were compiled for 60 countries in which the procedure is broadly legal, and trends were assessed where possible. Data sources included published and unpublished reports from official national reporting systems, questionnaires sent to government agencies and nationally representative population surveys. The completeness of country estimates was assessed by officials involved in data collection and by in-country and regional experts. RESULTS: In recent years, more countries experienced a decline in legal abortion rates than an increase, among those for which statistics are complete and trend data are available. The most dramatic declines were in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where rates remained among the highest in the world. The highest estimated levels were in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, where surveys indicate that women will have close to three abortions each on average in their lifetimes. The U.S. abortion rate dropped by 8% between 1996 and 2003, but remained higher than rates in many Northern and Western European countries. Rates increased in the Netherlands and New Zealand. The official abortion rate declined by 21% over seven years in China, which accounted for a third of the world's legal abortions in 1996. Trends in the abortion rate differed across age-groups in some countries. CONCLUSIONS: The abortion rate varies widely across the countries in which legal abortion is generally available and has declined in many countries since the mid-1990s.     

Poetry and patronage: Azariah de’ Rossi’s elegies for Margaret of Savoy

The death of Margaret of Savoy in 1574 created a momentous stir in literary and political circles. This renowned patroness of arts and protector of minorities had extended her protection to the Jews and conversos living in the realm of her husband, Emannuel Philibert. Jews, too, lamented her demise. The purpose of this paper is to interpret the elegies written by the Jewish Italian scholar, Azariah de’ Rossi, setting them in their historical and literary context. De’ Rossi’s extant poems in Hebrew, Aramaic and Latin are printed here in their entirety for the first time. An analysis of their content demonstrates how de’ Rossi, the scholar, adopts the medium of the elegy in order to “exalt and exhort” Margaret’s widower, the ruler Emannuel Philibert of Piedmont, implicitly, therefore, pleading the Jewish cause.     

Music preferences and tobacco smoking

This study investigated the association of music preferences with tobacco smoking in a group of 152 high school and college students. Both the questionnaire and the listening survey indicated a higher preference for music associated with anxiety and depressed mood among smokers. These findings may reflect a common etiology of tobacco addiction and a specific type of music preferences. To elucidate this phenomenon further studies are needed.     

The meaning of life (events) predicts changes in attachment security

Building on prior research, which has failed to find consistent effects of life events on change in self-reported adult attachment security over time, the present study tested the hypothesis that it is the meaning people attach to events, rather than the objective features of events, that is associated with changing levels of security. Participants engaged in an 8-week daily diary study, during which they completed daily self-report measures of attachment security, negative life events, perceptions of loss associated with events, and mood. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that perceptions of greater interpersonal (but not achievement) loss associated with life events were significantly associated with greater insecurity on a day-to-day basis, even controlling for objective features of events and for mood. Trait levels of security did not moderate this association. Results are discussed with regard to social-cognitive models of attachment security and the utility of understanding the meaning of life events to understand how attachment models may be confirmed or disconfirmed.     

Risk perception and acceptance--one process or two? The impact of aspirations on perceived risk and preferences

The experiments discussed here are aimed at determining whether risk perception and risk acceptance are two distinct psychological processes. This study is motivated by the idea of a double-criterion model of choice. In particular, in line with risk-value (R-V) models, in which risk is treated as a primitive, it is tested whether risk is independent of aspirations and whether preferences depend on aspirations. In two experiments, 305 university students were presented with pairs of risky projects and were asked to compare their riskiness and select one. The aspiration level, defined as the target return on the project, was set through an explicit instruction. In Experiment 1, a within-subject designwas applied, and thus aspirations were set at two different levels. In Experiment 2, with a between-subject design, two different aspiration levels were set for each group. The results indicate that risk ordering is insensitive to changes in aspirations, but preferences are sensitive to those changes. This supports distinctness of risk perception and risk acceptance. The findings are discussed in terms of the CPT and SP/A models and the R-V approach. It appears that double-criterion models provide better and psychologically sounder predictions of subjects' preferences.     

Food caching by western scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica) is sensitive to the conditions at recovery

Western scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica) cached perishable and nonperishable food items, which they could recover after both short and long retention intervals. When perishable items were always degraded at recovery, jays decreased the number of perishable items cached and increased their caching of nonperishable items, relative to a control group whose caches were always fresh at recovery. Jays reduced the number of nonperishable items cached, however, when highly preferred food items were degraded only after the long retention intervals. The findings are discussed in terms of the role of retrospective and prospective processes in the control of caching.     

Letter detection in very familiar texts

In the present study, we investigated whether patterns of letter detection for function and content words in texts are affected by the familiarity of the material being read. In Experiment 1, subjects searched for target letters in sentences that had been rehearsed prior to performing the letter detection on them as well as on unfamiliar sentences. In Experiment 2, subjects searched for target letters in highly familiar verses (e.g., nursery rhymes) and in unfamiliar sentences that were matched to the familiar verses. A disadvantage in letter detection for function as compared with content words consistently found with unfamiliar passages was reduced significantly with the familiar material in both experiments. Specifically, letter detection for content words grew worse in familiar text, but letter detection for function words showed a contrasting modest, though nonsignificant, improvement. The results are consistent with the proposition that in very familiar texts, parafoveal analysis permits the identification of generally less familiar content words. Simultaneously, the normal pattern of weighing the structure and content elements of text changes so that more fixations on function words occur than when one is reading unfamiliar texts.     

How Frameworks Can Help Operationalize Sustainable Development Indicators

After nearly three decades of discussion about sustainable development are we any nearer to achieving it? And do we even know what a sustainable world will look like for future generations? Early definitions of sustainable development were so broad as to allow a range of interpretations based largely on individual interests and anthropocentric needs. We are measuring the performance of countless indicators of sustainable development, but is this more an exercise in applying data than meaningful progress? This article explores the ultimate goals of sustainable development and the most important means of achieving this by analyzing and comparing two frameworks designed to direct attention to the fundamental means and the ends of sustainable development.     

Recollections of Childhood Religious Identity and Behavior as a Function of Adult Religiousness

People have a strong motivation to maintain a self-concept that is coherent and consistent over time. Religion is a central source of social identity for many people, but its importance is prone to dramatic change across the life course. To maintain a consistent perception of self, recollections of one's own past religiousness may shift to better fit with the present. This study examined changes between early and middle adulthood in retrospective perceptions of religious behavior and identity in childhood. Data from a population-based birth cohort sample were matched with data from individuals who participated in at least 2 of 3 adult follow-up studies, at intervals of approximately 10 years. Logistic regression was used to analyze the association of final recollections of childhood behavior and identity with previous recollections and current religious characteristics. Consistent with the predictions of temporal self-appraisal theory, participants' perception of their religious identity as children tended to change over time to match their adult religious identity. Recollections of childhood religious behavior were more stable than recollections of religious identity, and change was unrelated to adult behavior. These results have implications for studying religious characteristics using retrospective measures, regarding their accuracy and their independence from contemporary measures.