Crossing the Threshold: The Spillover of Community Racial Diversity and Diversity Climate to the Workplace

We examined the spillover of community diversity to the workplace using a sample of 2,045 professionals living in communities across the U.S. Spillover effects were examined using 2 measures of community diversity: the degree to which employees were racially or ethnically similar to others in their community and perceptions of their community's diversity climate. Aligned with theories of group threat and racial segregation, Whites who were racially dissimilar to their communities expressed stronger intentions to leave their communities, and ultimately their workplaces, than those living in primarily White communities. However, community diversity climate offset these relationships; Whites who lived in communities that were racially dissimilar to them, but experienced the climate as inclusive, had lower moving intentions than those in communities that were experienced as racially intolerant. In contrast, for people of color, community diversity climate, rather than racial similarity to the community, predicted moving intentions. For both groups, the diversity climate in the community predicted moving intentions, which in turn predicted work turnover intentions, job search behaviors, and physical symptoms of stress at work. These findings suggest that the intention to leave one's community, and ultimately one's workplace, is influenced by community experiences and the community's perceived diversity climate.     

Non-work Domain Control as an Additional Dimension of Psychological Empowerment of Women Teachers

This paper extends Work/Family Border Theory in the context of psychological empowerment. It describes the development, validation and application of an additional dimension of empowerment, termed as “non-work domain control”. This dimension incorporates an employee’s ability to take decisions at household and immediate community level, not related to formal workplace. The study has three parts involving women primary school teachers of India. It included development of a measure and examining the pattern of variation in non-work domain control (n=401) among primary school teachers. The results showed that age, educational qualification, salary, and class-size affect some scale items. The result of structural equation modeling confirmed that non-work domain control is an additional dimension of psychological empowerment.     

Blame Without Punishment for Addicts

Philosophia - On the moral model of addiction, addicts are morally responsible and blameworthy for their addictive behaviours. The model is sometimes resisted on the grounds that blaming addicts is...     

Socio-Demographic Variables Affecting Well-Being: A Study on Indian Rural Women

The women in Indian villages perform multiple roles that include looking after the various needs of the family members, participating in home bound income generating activities (e.g. animal husbandry, agricultural activities) and holding jobs outside the home. Against this backdrop this study addressed two related goals: (a) to understand the perception of the dual role by the rural women, their work status and preferences and the attitude of their families and society towards women and (b) to explore variation in their well-being as a function of chronological age, level of education and work status. A large sample of 221 rural women (age range 18 to 56 years) drawn from villages of Haryana participated in the study. The relevant data were obtained through interview and observation. The findings showed that family and society appreciated the efforts of the rural women. Age and level of education emerged as significant factors in determining the experience of well-being.     

Facing the third millennium: An evolutionary crisis

We are witnessing the birth of the first global civilization on our planet earth due to the accelerative progress of science and technology. This is also accompanied by a crisis in health care, pollution and other environmental disasters, a rising wave of violence and crime, stresses due to globalization, and so on. Recently, we formulated “An Action Plan for Human Survival” (Reference 24).

This article explores in depth the challenges in bringing about a peaceful transition to a global civilization. It explores global civilization, environmental crisis and population. It reveals that the stresses generated by globalization and environmental crisis cannot be resolved by dualistic thought, or concepts, or ideals, or intellectual constructions; as these are sterile in bringing mutation in the human psyche. We see that the emergence of global consciousness is not keeping pace with the globalization, and it is feared that globalization may turn out to be abortive and ultimately self‐destructive.

The crisis is not political, or economic, or social. It is evolutionary in character. We have to explore nature's evolutionary impulse. The challenge is to resolve the “crisis of perception,” or to allow the mutation to happen in the mind‐brain system. The only technology for radical transformation or mutation of human psyche is purification or deconditioning of the human psyche. This leads to new relationship between man and man, and between man and environment. It ends all pain, sorrow and travails and ushers a new era of freedom, peace and bliss. This is the key to human survival, progress and fulfillment.     

Ductility enhancement in nanoglass: role of interaction stress between flow defects

Using a thermodynamically consistent non-local plasticity model, the mechanistic origin of enhancement in ductility and suppression of dominant shear banding in nanoglasses (NGs) is analysed. It is revealed that the interaction stress between flow defects plays a central role in promoting global plasticity of NGs. Specifically, we find that the intrinsic length associated with this stress provides a scaling for the shear band width and its coupling with grain size governs the level of enhancement in the deformation behaviour of NGs. The present work may provide useful insights in developing highly ductile NGs for practical engineering applications.     

The Effects of Acute Aerobic Exercise on the Primary Motor Cortex

ABSTRACT. The effect of aerobic exercise on primary motor cortical excitability is a relevant area of interest for both motor learning and motor rehabilitation. Transient excitability changes that may follow an exercise session are a necessary precursor to more lasting neuroplastic changes. While the number of studies is limited, research suggests that a session of aerobic exercise can create an ideal environment for the early induction of plasticity. Potential mechanisms include the upregulation of neurotransmitter activity, altered cerebral metabolism and cortisol levels, and increases in brain-derived neurotrophic factor. While there is considerable evidence that chronic physical activity positively impacts brain health and function, studies examining cortical excitability changes and motor performance after a single session of exercise are lacking. Further research is required to determine the clinical utility and feasibility of aerobic exercise.     

Cross-National Replication of the Gender Identity Interview for Children

We administered the Gender Identity Interview for Children, a 12-item child-informant measure, to children referred clinically for gender identity problems in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (N = 329) and Amsterdam, The Netherlands (N = 228) and 173 control children. Confirmatory factor analysis identified a Cognitive Gender Confusion factor (4 items) and an Affective Gender Confusion factor (8 items). Patients from both clinics had a significantly higher deviant total score than the controls, and the Dutch patients had a significantly higher deviant score than the Toronto patients. In this cross-national study, we are the first to report on the validity of this measure to discriminate children with gender identity disorder from controls outside of North America.