Who's in Charge?: Coparenting in South and Southeast Asian Families

In light of the evolving roles of parents and the involvement of extended family within Asian cultures, the traditionally Western dyadic coparenting construct must be reconceptualized to include not only the coparenting relationship, but also other caregivers within the coparenting network. Theoretical and empirical evidence on coparental systems are discussed and two studies from South and Southeast Asian cultures are presented to highlight subcultural variations in cocaregiving networks. Results indicated that mothers were the primary caregivers across both cultural contexts. Extended family members assumed important coparental responsibilities in both cultural contexts. These findings highlight the need to reconceptualize and expand the dyadic coparental unit to include extended family members. We also discuss the relevance of the broader coparental network in examining the Asian childs education as well as cognitive and socioemotional development.     

No postnatal maternal effect on male aggressiveness in wild-derived strains of house mice

Male aggressiveness is a complex behavior influenced by a number of genetic and non-genetic factors. Traditionally, the contribution of each of these factors has been established from experiments using artificially selected strains for high/low aggressive phenotypes. However, little is known about the factors underlying aggressive behavior in natural populations. In this study, we assess the influence of genetic background vs. postnatal maternal environment using a set of cross-fostering experiments between two wild-derived inbred strains, displaying high (STRA, derived from Mus musculus domesticus) and low (BUSNA, derived from Mus musculus musculus) levels of aggressiveness. The role of maternal environment was tested in males with the same genetic background (i.e. strain origin) reared under three different conditions: unfostered (weaned by mother), infostered (weaned by an unfamiliar dam from the same strain), and cross-fostered (weaned by a dam from a different strain). All males were tested against non-aggressive opponents from the A/J inbred strain. Resource-holding potential was assessed through body weight gains and territory ownership. The STRA males were shown to be aggressive in both neutral cage and resident-intruder tests. On the contrary, the BUSNA males were less aggressive in all tests. We did not find a significant effect of postnatal maternal environment; however, we detected significant maternal effect on body weight with differences between the strains, fostering type and interactions between these factors. We conclude that the aggressiveness preserved in the two strains has significant genetic component whose genetic basis can be dissected by quantitative trait loci analysis.     

OGAMA (Open Gaze and Mouse Analyzer): Open-source software designed to analyze eye and mouse movements in slideshow study designs

In the present article, a new software is introduced that allows the recording and analyzing of eye- and mouse-tracking data from slideshow-based experiments in parallel. The Open Gaze and Mouse Analyzer (OGAMA) is written in C#.NET and has been released as an open-source project. Its main features include slide-show design, the recording of gaze and mouse data, database-driven preprocessing and filtering of gaze and mouse data, the creation of attention maps, areas-of-interest definition, and replay. Eyetracking and/or presentation soft- and hardware recordings in ASCII format can be imported. Data output is provided that can be used directly with different statistical software packages. Because it is open source, one can easily adapt it to suit one’s needs.     

Building information systems as universalized locals

We report on our experiences in a participatory design project to develop ICTs in a hospital ward working with deliberate self-harm patients. This project involves the creation and constant re-creation of socio-technical ensembles that satisfy the various, changing and often contradictory and conflicting needs in this context. Such systems are shaped in locally meaningful ways but nevertheless reach beyond their immediate context to gain wider importance and to be integrated with the larger environment. currently working on a participatory design project developing IT systems for psychiatrists working in a toxicology ward of a large general hospital. His research focuses on the local co-production of technologies which he currently explores in a production management context. His research interests lie in the field of human factors and interactive systems design, particularly approaches to IT systems design and development, the relationships between work and technology, and inter-disciplinary approaches to the design of dependable computing systems. carrying out a number of ethnomethodologically informed studies in a variety of applications. He holds a Ph.D. in ethnomethodology from the University of Manchester and is currently involved in research on computer-aided prompting systems for radiological work. He has interests in ethnomethodology, CSCW, SSK and the philosophy of social sciences. where he convenes an interdisciplinary research programme on ‘the social shaping of technology’.     

Das Absetzen antiandrogener Medikation im ambulanten Setting

In the Forensic Therapeutic Outpatient department in Berlin a total of n?=?20 individually justified, therapeutically accompanied withdrawals from antiandrogenic treatment have been implemented. The sample was compared with n?=?20 patients under antiandrogenic treatment. Patients with withdrawal have been significantly older, than patients without withdrawal. No differences were found regarding their duration of further imprisonment and standardized risk-assessment (HCR-20, LSI-R, Static-99, Stable-2007, PCL-R). Firsts results of the monitoring of the withdrawals indicate, that the symptom-checklist SCL-90-R is not appropriate for that purpose. However, post-hoc both known sexual reoffendings could be identified by the Massachusetts General Hospital Sexual Functioning Questionnaire. By means of practical experience results are getting discussed.     

Self-compassion reduces parental burnout: Mediation roles of parental psychological control and support

This study investigated the mediating role of parental psychological control (PPC) and support in the relationship between self-compassion and parental burnout syndrome. The study participants included 1185 Vietnamese parents who completed questionnaires regarding demographic information, parental burnout, self-compassion, parental support of the child, and PPC. We used data analyses, including structural equation modeling, to test the mediation roles of PPC and parental support of the child. Our main findings include: (1) self-compassion had a significant negative effect on parental burnout; (2) the mediation roles of PPC and parental support of the child were also significant. These results suggest that parents with high self-compassion tend to provide more support for children in daily parenting, which helps reduce parental burnout. In contrast, parents with low self-compassion were more likely to use PPC, which exacerbated their burnout. The results from this study provide suggestions for creating effective interventions in the family context to reduce parental burnout and improve parenting effectiveness.     

Charles V as Last World Emperor and Jewish Hero

Charles V, king of Spain and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, ruled over vast regions of central and western Europe and the Americas for much of the first half of the sixteenth century. This concentration of power, together with the emperor’s claim to universal monarchy, polarized his contemporaries’ views of him. Pro- and anti-imperial rhetoric and historiography abound, casting Charles V as hero or villain, protagonist or antagonist, depending on the author’s religious, dynastic, or national affiliations, political thinking, and pragmatic interests. While scholars have discussed competing Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim perspectives toward this emperor, Jewish views have not previously been analyzed. This article illuminates how sixteenth-century Jews evaluated Charles V as their own hero. It explores how Jewish witnesses of Charles’s reign perceived the Catholic emperor and his politics of crusade and church reform, contextualizing their reactions within Jewish messianic thought, on the one hand, and political realism, on the other. The article demonstrates that selected contemporaneous sources in Hebrew depict Charles V as a shared hero for European Jews and Christians. Jewish historiographical and prophetic writings from that time drew on the Christian apocalyptic notion of the “Last World Emperor,” adopting widespread Christian tendencies to identify Charles V as the glorious universal monarch who would reign at the culmination of human history as a quasi-messianic figure. Applying Amos Funkenstein’s and David Biale’s approach of counterhistory to these Jewish sources reveals the entangled history of a heroic image that was common to early modern Jews and Christians, albeit ideologically contested.     

Performance on a measure of category fluency in cognitively impaired elderly

ABSTRACT

Measures of verbal fluency are widely used in the assessment of cognitive functioning of the elderly. However, limited research has evaluated patterns (across specific timed intervals) of performance on tasks of language fluency in different forms of dementia. The current study investigated semantic fluency in 488 elderly individuals (249 with Alzheimer's dementia, 97 Vascular dementia, 97 Mild Cognitive Impairment and 45 cognitively intact) across 15-second intervals in an animal naming task using retrospective chart review. Normal controls produced significantly more exemplars and AD patients produced fewer animal names than the other groups. After the first 15- second time interval, the demented groups produced significantly fewer exemplars than the non-demented. At the end of 30 seconds it was possible to differentiate normal aging from MCI who no longer differed from the VaD group. Overall, it appears that the greatest and most clinically meaningful differences between the diagnostic groups were detected in the first three 15-second intervals. The present findings support the use of time intervals and total scores on tasks of verbal fluency in clinical settings and for research purposes.     

Stances on Assisted Suicide by Health and Social Care Professionals Working With Older Persons in Switzerland

This qualitative study investigated the personal and professional stances of 40 health and social care professionals confronted with assisted suicide of older persons living in nursing homes or supported by social welfare or home care and support services in French-speaking Switzerland. Requests of assisted suicide triggered questions with regard to the professional mission, the quality of accompaniment, values, and ethical principles. Four types of stances emerged from the analysis performed according to the principles of the grounded theory: favorable in principle, professional compromise, personal compromise, and opposed in principle. Each stance results from the combination of several dimensions: personal or professional concordance or compatibility with assisted suicide; implication in, and impact of, the process; appreciation of the process; and satisfaction with the resources at disposal. The differentiated stances adopted by professionals depend largely on their way of interpreting their mission, deontology, and the relationship to the older person.