The Minister Goes on Medical Leave: A Trigger for Conflict in the Congregation

The impact of a minister’s illness on the congregation can be temporary or serious and long-term. The following factors are reviewed: stress at the denominational level; the role of the area bishop; the interim minister’s task; personality characteristics of those who react negatively when their minister takes medical leave; and the dynamics of persons who draw together dissatisfied members into a power group. Suggestions are offered to ameliorate the effect of the minister’s medical leave in congregations at risk of dysfunction.

Just a Cog in the Machine? The Individual Responsibility of Researchers in Nanotechnology is a Duty to Collectivize

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) provides a framework for judging the ethical qualities of innovation processes, however guidance for researchers on how to implement such practices is limited. Exploring RRI in the context of nanotechnology, this paper examines how the dispersed and interdisciplinary nature of the nanotechnology field somewhat hampers the abilities of individual researchers to control the innovation process. The ad-hoc nature of the field of nanotechnology, with its fluid boundaries and elusive membership, has thus far failed to establish a strong collective agent, such as a professional organization, through which researchers could collectively steer technological development in light of social and environmental needs. In this case, individual researchers cannot innovate responsibly purely by themselves, but there is also no structural framework to ensure that responsible development of nanotechnologies takes place. We argue that, in such a case, individual researchers have a duty to collectivize. In short, researchers in situations where it is challenging for individual agents to achieve the goals of RRI are compelled to develop organizations to facilitate RRI. In this paper we establish and discuss the criteria under which individual researchers have this duty to collectivize.     

Adolescents' attitude toward gender roles within work and its relationship to gender,personality type,and parental occupation

Sex Roles - Information was obtained from 184 females and 157 males enrolled in grade 11 in six urban high schools. The majority of the students were of European descent (70%), but there were...     

Differences in paper-and-pencil versus computerized line bisection according to ADHD subtype and hand-use

Two versions of the line bisection task, paper-and-pencil and computerized, were administered to non-medicated children (5-12 years) with and without Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Fifteen children were classified with ADHD-Inattentive type (ADHD-I), 15 were classified with ADHD-Combined or Hyperactive-Impulsive type (ADHD-C), and 15 children served as controls. During the paper-and-pencil task, and irrespective of hand-use, participants with ADHD-C bisected lines with a right bias, whereas participants with ADHD-I showed a leftwards bias. Interestingly, during the computerized version, an opposite pattern of hemineglect was observed with a leftwards bias for participants with ADHD-C and a rightwards bias for participants with ADHD-I. These findings suggest that different task demands are associated with the paper-and-pencil and computerized tasks. The findings also suggest that the two subtypes differ according to their cognitive profile, and possibly differ as to their underlying neural impairment.     

“The Sleeping Army”: Necropolitics and the Collateral Consequences of Being a Sex Offender

The current study examines responses from 188 registered sex offenders to assess the impact of collateral consequences and situate such experiences within a framework of necropolitics. Two research questions are addressed: How can the experience of collateral consequences be explained through necropolitics; and, do sex offenders use necropolitics in resistive efforts? Results demonstrate that exclusion from social and political institutions results in a “death in life” for sex offenders. Last, this article discusses an alternative lens for conceptualizing policy initiatives towards sex offenders by juxtaposing Luckmann’s “life-worlds” with Mbembe’s “death worlds.”     

Differential Effect of Two Mental Stress Tasks on Arterial Stiffness

Acute mental stress is believed to induce transient arterial dysfunction, but relatively few data are available. We therefore examined the effect of mental stress tasks that could induce differential hemodynamic responses on arterial dysfunction. Forty‐eight participants conducted either a mental arithmetic (MA) task or a mirror‐tracing (MT) task. Cardiovascular indices and arterial stiffness were measured before, during, and after these tasks. Analysis revealed that increases in arterial stiffness during the task and during recovery were more pronounced for the MA than for the MT, and that evoked hemodynamic response was more myocardial for MA than for MT. These results clearly show that MA and MT tasks that induce differential hemodynamic responses have a differential effect on arterial stiffness. This finding sheds light on the underlying mechanism that may account for the relationship between cardiovascular reactivity and cardiovascular disease.