HIV infection in the South African construction industry

South Africa has one of the highest HIV prevalences in the world, and compared with other sectors of the national economy, the construction industry is disproportionately adversely affected. Using data collected nationally from more than 57,000 construction workers, HIV infection among South African construction workers was estimated, together with an assessment of the association between worker HIV serostatus and worker characteristics of gender, age, nature of employment, occupation, and HIV testing history. The HIV infection of construction workers was estimated to be lower than that found in a smaller 2008 sample. All worker characteristics are significantly associated with HIV serostatus. In terms of most at-risk categories: females are more at risk of HIV infection than males; workers in the 30–49 year old age group are more at risk than other age groups; workers employed on a less permanent basis are more at risk; as are workers not having recently tested for HIV. Among occupations in the construction industry, general workers, artisans, and operator/drivers are those most at risk. Besides yielding more up-to-date estimated infection statistics, this research also identifies vulnerable sub-groups as valuable pointers for more targeted workplace interventions by construction firms.     

Bernstein’s levels of movement construction: A contemporary perspective

Explanation of how goal-directed movements are made manifest is the ultimate aim of the field classically referred to as “motor control”. Essential to the sought-after explanation is comprehension of the supporting functional architecture. Seven decades ago, the Russian physiologist and movement scientist Nikolai A. Bernstein proposed a hierarchical model to explain the construction of movements. In his model, the levels of the hierarchy share a common language (i.e., they are commensurate) and perform complementing functions to bring about dexterous movements. The science of the control and coordination of movement in the phylum Craniata has made considerable progress in the intervening seven decades. The contemporary body of knowledge about each of Bernstein’s hypothesized functional levels is both more detailed and more sophisticated. A natural consequence of this progress, however, is the relatively independent theoretical development of a given level from the other levels. In this essay, we revisit each level of Bernstein’s hierarchy from the joint perspectives of (a) the ecological approach to perception-action and (b) dynamical systems theory. We review a substantial and relevant body of literature produced in different areas of study that are accommodated by this ecological-dynamical version of Bernstein’s levels. Implications for the control and coordination of movement and the challenges to producing a unified theory are discussed.     

基层医院伦理委员会建设存在问题及对策

基层医院以承担本地区人民群众的健康保障工作为首要任务,以临床工作为主,科研工作开展相对较少,伦理委员会的建设存在较大问题。针对基层医院伦理委员会在建设过程中存在认识和重视程度不足、独立性欠缺、规章制度不完善、人员组成及审查不规范以及缺乏有效指导和监管等问题,结合基层医院的特点和功能定位,在完善工作制度和流程、组建全面合理代表性强的伦理委员会以及加强培训提高认识等方面提出比较科学可行的对策,为基层医院伦理委员会的规范化建设提供参考。     

‘Categories We Share’: Mobilising Common In‐groups in Discourse on Contemporary Immigration in Greece

Prejudice reduction has been an important concern within social psychology both in theory and applied research. According to the premises of Social Identity Theory, redrawing of the category boundaries is often considered a necessary step in order to battle prejudice, because in‐group favouritism when the category boundaries change is diffused to the previously distinct identities. The present paper offers a review of the relevant research, and following a discourse analytic perspective argues that recategorisation can also be viewed as a rhetorical resource that people use in verbal interaction in order to achieve certain rhetorical ends. This point is exemplified using interview data from Greece with Greek participants who mobilise common in‐groups between themselves and the immigrants in Greece. Different common in‐groups were mobilised on the basis of common human nature, common ethnic descent and through the use of the common experience of migration that many Greek people have because Greece has been an emigrant sending country for the biggest part of the 20th century. Occasionally, these category constructions were used to differentiate between immigrants of different ethnic descent claiming that only certain immigrant groups can integrate to Greek society, whereas on other instances, these common in‐groups were used in order to inoculate speakers of accusations of prejudice. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mental Health and Adverse Childhood Experiences

The theoretical basis of occupational therapy interventions was investigated in two mental health facilities in the Midwestern United States. Using retrospective cohort and grounded theory designs, 121 medical records were reviewed and five occupational therapy practitioners were interviewed. Theoretical reasoning was not explicitly documented, but according to analysis, the behavioral/cognitive-behavioral model, client-centered models, and the model of human occupation were the most frequently used theories to guide interventions. Lack of documentation of theory use has significant implications for the value accorded to occupational therapy skills in health care. A larger study is recommended to increase external generalizability of the findings.     

Emotion,core affect,and psychological construction

As an alternative to using the concepts of emotion, fear, anger, and the like as scientific tools, this article advocates an approach based on the concepts of core affect and psychological construction, expanding the domain of inquiry beyond “emotion”. Core affect is a neurophysiological state that underlies simply feeling good or bad, drowsy or energised. Psychological construction is not one process but an umbrella term for the various processes that produce: (a) a particular emotional episode's “components” (such as facial movement, vocal tone, peripheral nervous system change, appraisal, attribution, behaviour, subjective experience, and emotion regulation); (b) associations among the components; and (c) the categorisation of the pattern of components as a specific emotion.     

Socio-cultural selection and the sculpting of the human genome: Cultures’ directional forces on evolution and development

This paper argues for culture as a significant determinant of the modern human genome. As progress in the fields of genetics and evolutionary biology have gained greater insights into evolutionary process, aspects of classical proposals explaining how phenotypic responses to environmental experience could make their way into the genotype have returned in new guises. Recent proposals recognize environmental context as a key source of genetic variation by directly altering selection pressures to mask and unmask adaptive value of expressed traits, by reorganizing the combination and expression of genes during ontogeny to provide novel variants for selection, and by influencing developmental trajectories through epigenetic systems acutely sensitive to ontogenetic contexts. The emergence of a robust human socio-cultural niche, shielding humans from more proximate evolutionary pressures that marked our ancestral evolution, has arguably provided the strongest directive force on modern human evolution. Language is discussed as an exemplar of a cultural niche with a powerful self-organizing dynamic and the potential to dramatically alter the human genome.     

Two boys—one event

The background of this paper is an investigation of child survivors from the Holocaust; in a study of interviews of these survivors, it could be concluded that past traumatic experiences are recovered not as memories (in the usual sense of the word), but as affects invading the present. Accordingly, affects seem to tell the story of the past traumatic experiences. In this paper, the author investigates two accounts (separately told by two survivors) of the same event in the Kielce ghetto. The two accounts present similarities, but also differences, and the author discusses these in relation to the concepts of historical and narrative truth, as well as in relation to construction and reconstruction, concluding that the interviews give a sketch of how the experiences have become idiosyncratically registered in the minds of the interviewees.     

Qualitative sales research: an exposition of grounded theory

The dominant research paradigm in sales research involves testing theory through empirical research. Nascent or underdeveloped research areas, however, may lack or have inadequate existing theories to explain sales-related phenomena. In these cases, sales researchers require a theory-generating methodological approach. Qualitative research designs are useful in this pursuit. The purpose of this article is to provide an exposition of one such qualitative research design – grounded theory. To this end, the foundational processes of grounded theory methodology are discussed. The results of a review of grounded theory examinations conducted in sales research are also provided, and current practices utilized by sales grounded theorists are discussed. Based on this review, future directions in substantive areas and methodological practices are provided. This article aims to serve as a resource for sales scholars wishing to know what grounded theory examinations have been conducted, how to implement grounded theory research and what avenues are available for future grounded theory sales research.