bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Welfare Rights and Human Rights
Authors: Watson David
Published: January 2009

Recent discussions of a ‘welfare rights’ approach in social work have suggested that the European Convention on Human Rights might provide a useful framework, a list of service objectives against which present provision might be assessed. In the present paper the author argues that the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is to be preferred, because of its inclusion of social and economic rights. However, there are philosophical and political objections to such a wide-ranging list of human rights. The author attempts to answer these objections in order to release the Universal Declaration as a viable framework for a welfare rights approach.
Territorial Need Indicators: A New Approach Part I
Authors: Bebbington A. C. , Davies Bleddyn
Published: January 2009

Territorial indicators of need, describing variations in the characteristics of areas ranging from wards to standard regions of the United Kingdom, represent a mainstream application of social indicators in this country. The development of these indicators has, for the most part, been based on an intellectual tradition which has paid little attention to theoretical argument.

In Part I of this article, a typology of existing need indicators is developed. By analysis of some of the best-known and most sophisticated examples, it is illustrated how this lack of theory has severely limited their usefulness in policy practice, particularly with regard to resource allocation, where they are potentially very important. A predominant symptom of the problem encountered with empirically based need indicators is the difficulty of establishing criteria for testing their validity.

For the ‘meaning’ of a need indicator to be clear, the indicator must be theoretically based. More specifically, it should be rooted in theoretical conclusions about the policy of welfare interventions. In Part II of the article, the theory of the need judgement as a cost-benefit decision is used to provide a basis for a need indicator. This method is then explicated with regard to social services provision for the elderly, so as to provide an indicator which is in fact a standard level of expenditure for social services departments in England and Wales.
Marxism and Social Policy: a critique of the ‘contradictions of welfare’
Authors: Pemberton Alec
Published: January 2009

This paper looks critically at a central notion of the Marxist analysis of social policy – the contradictions of welfare. Two main variants of the argument are identified: the ‘paradox’ and ‘opposite effect’ contradictions respectively. Serious doubts are raised about the viability of a Marxist analysis of social policy which relies on the concept of the contradictions of the welfare state.
Inequality, Redistribution and Recession: The British Experience, 1976–1982
Authors: O'higgins Michael
Published: January 2009

The combination of economic recession and political reaction — which might be expected to lead to an increase in inequality — has been accompanied in the United Kingdom by an intellectual critique of the egalitarian impact of social welfare provision. This paper examines the pattern and trend of inequality and redistribution in recent years in the light of these economic, political and intellectual pressures. The paper demonstrates that inequality has increased since 1976 and that the increase has been more marked since 1979. The main factor causing this increase was the less equal distribution of market incomes, a major effect of the recession. Tax changes were a secondary factor, whilst changes in social benefit programmes had little effect. While social spending did not bring about greater overall equality, it combated and significantly modified the pressures towards greater inequality. The impact of recession is particularly apparent in the changing composition of the bottom of the income distribution: the elderly are being replaced by the unemployed as the inhabitants of the lowest levels of economic welfare.
Hospital Provision before the NHS: Territorial Justice or Inverse Care Law?
Authors: Powell Martin
Published: January 2009

It is often claimed that before the NHS areas with the highest need for health care had the least provision. In other words, it is asserted that the so-called ‘inverse care law’ (Hart, 1971) existed. This claim is empirically tested for the hospital sector, using needs and provision data from a number of sources. It is found that, for the voluntary hospital sector, both beds and staff were inequitably distributed. However, for the municipal hospital sector, it appears that high need areas tended to have more beds and staff than low need areas. When both sectors are aggregated to produce total provision there is little association between need and bed provision, but inequitable provision for staffing. Thus, it is concluded that municipal provision was successful to some extent in rectifying the inequitable nature of voluntary provision.
Adoption Policy in Great Britain and North America
Authors: Kirk H. David , Mcdaniel Susan A.
Published: January 2009

This paper has two purposes. First, to explore what existing adoption legislation may indicate about the meaning and function of adoption practices in North America and Great Britain. Second, to consider some possible policy implications revealed by clearer understanding of the social meaning of existing adoption laws. The first part of the paper summarizes briefly the history of legal adoption. The second examines what is explicitly and implicitly revealed by adoption law and policies about the social purposes of adoption and about prevailing social values concerning the family. The third part examines possible avenues of policy change in North America.
Tales From Another Country: Fictional Treatments of the Russian Peasantry, 1847–1861
Authors: Woodhouse Jenny
Published: January 2009

In 1846 a story entitled ‘Derevnia’ (The Village) appeared in the Russian press. It was the account of the life of a young peasant woman, from her birth, through her upbringing as an unwanted orphan, her unsuitable marriage staged to satisfy the whim of the landowner's wife, her sufferings at the hands of her husband's family, to her decline and early death. The story aroused the ire of Slavophil critics: ‘In it is assembled all the coarseness, outrage and harshness, that can be found in peasant customs. But what is striking is not specific details, but the profound lack of feeling and complete lack of moral sense in the whole way of life.’ It was praised by the radical Westernist critic V.G. Belinsky no less profusely than it was attacked by the Slavophil Yu. S. Samarin, not for its literary merits but for its truth to life: ‘[Grigorovich] displayed here much observation and knowledge of real life and succeeded in demonstrating both the former and the latter in simple, honest, true images, with remarkable talent.’
British National Identity and the English Landscape
Authors: Lowenthal David
Published: January 2009

Heritage is a messy concept ill-defined, heterogeneous, changeable, chauvinist – and sometimes absurd. In a TV programmer's words, just as ‘lifestyle has replaced life, heritage is replacing history'. Rather than ‘history’, Philadelphia's tourist boss now ‘talk[s] about heritage – it sounds more lively’. It is also more equivocal; as Walter Benjamin put it, every cultural treasure that is a ‘document of civilization is at the same time a document of barbarism’. Yet for all its ambiguity, ‘the idea of “Heritage” [is] one of the most powerful imaginative complexes of our time’.
Brewing and the Peasant Economy: Some Manors in Late Medieval Devon
Authors: Postles David
Published: January 2009

Brewing was an important part of the medieval peasant economy. There are different views, however, about the nature and position of those who brewed. It has been suggested that brewing was an integral part of the household economy, that is, at the fully developed stage of the household and family, whilst others have connected brewing with the early stages of the life-cycle of individuals, before household formation. Either as part of the household economy or before household formation, brewing may have supplemented income from agrarian activity, whether from the direct holding of land, or from wages for work on the land. Brewing may also have been a feature of the sexual division of labour within the household. Moreover, it has been proposed that brewing was more important for the household economy of cottagers and lesser landholders than for the tenants of standard holdings, who, perhaps, needed to supplement their income less than the smaller landholders. When related to the life-cycle of individuals, however, brewing may have been undertaken more consistently by those who would later acquire land and would then divest themselves of brewing as a major part of their income, although Chayanov believed brewing to relate more widely to the developmental cycle of all peasant households. His perception was that brewing would have been necessary at that stage of household development where there were many mouths to feed and many hands to perform the labour, whereas, when the siblings left the household, the supplementary income from brewing would no longer be required. There are thus a number of issues involved in the question of who, in the main, brewed, and at what stage of their life-cycle they did so.
Settlement, Poor Law and the Rural Historian: New Approaches and Opportunities
Authors: Snell K.D.M.
Published: January 2009

English and Welsh agrarian society, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was intimately tied to the poor law. That law was extensive in scope, encompassing settlement and removal, apprenticeship, illegitimacy, parochial rating and taxation, as well as welfare and unemployment provision. It continually swayed the rural labour market. It underlay the development of so-called ‘open’ and ‘close’ parishes, or as I would prefer to express it, the maintenance of a number of parishes (or hamlets or townships) as fundamentally estate units. It was an essential element in tenant farmers' judgements on profitability, and was routinely discussed in the General Views of Agriculture. Like the overhang of a George Morland tree, sometimes clutching, sometimes benign, it extended far over the lives of that majority of village inhabitants termed the ‘labouring poor’. Commentators like Arthur Young, John Howlett or Sir Frederick Eden discussed the poor law in the same paragraphs as they wrote about enclosure, agricultural improvement, depression and rural social relations. They paid close attention to poor-relief, making extensive connections between the poor law, rural poverty, rents, and agricultural innovation. To them such matters were closely entwined.
American Rural Planning, Development Policy and the Centrality of the Federal State: An Interpretative History
Authors: Lapping Mark B.
Published: January 2009

In just over two hundred years, the United States has been transformed from a very largely rural and wilderness nation into an urban one. Rural Americans have gone from being the first majority to the last minority, to paraphrase historian John Shover (Shover,1976). All through this time policies directly and indirectly oriented to rural areas and rural people have been enunciated by the federal government. Rarely was the coordination of policy sought or achieved, however. Also, for generations the easy assumption was made that agricultural policy constituted rural policy. Further, a form of rural fundamentalism, closely related to a neo-Jeffersonian social outlook, reinforced a false sense of ‘rugged individualism’ as the essence of personal and collective success. Such gross oversimplifications have tended to mask some of the truly substantive problems of poor housing, race and gender inequities, unemployment, illiteracy, poor health, and malnutrition faced by rural and small town populations.
Rural History: The Prospect Before Us
Authors: Bellamy Liz , Snell K. D. M. , Williamson Tom
Published: January 2009

Two questions will no doubt greet the arrival of this journal: why rural history? and why now? The current economic climate is hardly favourable for ventures of this kind. But recent developments in the numerous fields which touch on matters rural indicate a real academic need for a new forum for interdisciplinary exchange. Much exciting and innovative work has been carried out over the past decade – on the nature and structure of rural communities; on regional differences and identity; on how rural workers are defined and represented by others and by themselves; on the relationship between the urban and the rural. Yet this research has been scattered across a range of disciplines and subdisciplines, many of which tend to be regarded as marginal to the central thrust of historical investigation. In areas like folklore studies or art history, ideas of the rural have developed apace, and the terms of the analysis of the rural community have acquired considerable methodological complexity. Yet the study of ‘rural history’ continues to be rather narrowly defined, confined by an essentially economistic agenda that has excluded much of the most fascinating recent work. Rural history is often seen as synonymous with agricultural history, and although the latter has generated a great deal of valuable and interesting research, its privileging of the economic perspective has tended to preclude the methodological inclusiveness that now seems necessary to foster cross-fertilisation between the disparate areas in which the study of rural society is being pursued.
Landscape Archaeology, Prehistory, and Rural Studies
Authors: Fleming Andrew
Published: January 2009

This essay considers whether it is possible for landscape archaeologists, particularly those concerned with prehistory or with periods not significantly text-aided, to go beyond the pursuit of methodological virtuosity and the production of local studies, and make useful contributions to discussions on mainstream social and economic issues in human history. A major problem for landscape archaeologists – and indeed for prehistorians – is that as soon as they stray beyond routine archaeological description and analysis, they face the scepticism of anthropologists, historians and human geographers. I argue that we can learn from scholars from these other disciplines but should not try to ape them. We need to define more clearly our own field of operation. It has become fashionable to consider past landscapes as texts; comparisons between the contexts of ‘messages’ conveyed by documents and by landscapes lead me to suggest that ignorance of the nature of oral tradition and its articulation within material culture is one of the prehistorian's greatest blind spots. In choosing the most useful scale for analysis, the prehistorian should develop the concept of the small community, rather than the ‘site’ or the region, and consider the modification of such a community's ‘mental map’ of the landscape as a critical indicator of social process.
The Past, the Present and the Future in Medieval Rural History
Authors: Dyer Christopher
Published: January 2009

More books and articles are being published about medieval rural history, archaeology and geography than ever before. This is not just because academics have been told to improve their productivity, but mainly reflects the enthusiasm of authors and the demand of a numerous reading public. Publishers find that books on medieval subjects have a steady sale, both among young students, who, despite gloomy predictions, are still attracted to the Middle Ages, and among the thousands of older people who attend adult education classes. There are more ideas in circulation, more stimulating differences of opinion, and more cross-fertilisation between disciplines. One might sometimes regret a certain narrowness of view which prevents some experts reading the works of others, even to the point when their footnotes consist almost entirely of citations of their own publications. And one wishes that British scholars had more contacts with their counterparts in continental Europe. But in general these are expansive and stirring times in which to be involved with the study of the medieval countryside, and we can look forward to more important advances in the next decade. The long term is a different matter, in view of the decline in the numbers of postgraduate students, the pursuit of a spurious ‘relevance’ by such funding bodies as the Economic and Social Research Council, the squeezing of economic and social history as a separate discipline out of many universities in the interests of ‘rationalisation’, and the continued financial uncertainties for public archaeology.

But to return to the 1990s.
Rural Settlement and Regional Contrasts: Questions of Continuity and Colonisation
Authors: Roberts Brian K.
Published: January 2009

In this paper my intention is to discuss the diversity of rural landscapes, still detectable in spite of two centuries and more of industrialisation, and to point to the roots of this diversity, in a time when local differences in habitat were bonded to contrasts in culture, economy and society. The stimulus, perhaps even the courage, to write this essay came from reading Braudel's The Identity of France: History and Environment, for his joyous exploration of that country generates an awareness of the need for a deep sense of place as a foundation for understanding rural history. For me one key to this is seen in figure 1, a new map of settlement in England and Wales in the middle years of the last century, a product of my work on rural settlements. Everitt, using the case of Kent as a basis for an evaluation of the use of landscapes as a historical source, has emphasised the importance of countrysides in understanding the evolution of the landscapes of field, forest, heath, fell, fen, marsh, down and wald (Everitt, 1986: 6–13, 338–40; for wald see Everitt, 1986: passim and Ekwall, 1970: 491–2). Figure 1 is one measure of the diversity and a source of this discussion.
The Enclosure of English Social History
Authors: Wrightson Keith
Published: January 2009

It is now roughly a quarter of a century since the proponents of a new social history of early modern England offered students of the period a novel agenda and an unprecedented opportunity. Prior to the 1960s social history had been variously understood as the history of everyday life, of the lower classes and popular movements, or as a junior partner in the relatively recently-established firm of economic and social history (occupied in the main with the study of social institutions and social policy). As such, it had produced more than a few pioneering works of outstanding quality and lasting value (some of them about to enjoy a revived recognition after decades of relative neglect). But it was not a field close to the centre of historical preoccupation. It was at best contextual, at worst residual.

From the early 1960s, however, came a call for a social history of a new type, one conceived as the history of social relationships and of the culture which informs them and gives them meaning. The new agenda was deeply influenced by the social sciences and envisaged an ever closer relationship with sociology, social anthropology and demography. Peter Laslett wrote of ‘sociological history’ or ‘historical sociology’ and Keith Thomas of the need for a ‘more systematic indoctrination’ in the concepts and methodologies of the social sciences. As applied to history, all this was both radical and liberating. In the face of an established curriculum which appeared in many respects restrictive and in some dessicated, it proposed a massive and necessary broadening and deepening of historical concern: the creation of a range of historical enquiry appropriate to the preoccupations and understandings of the late twentieth century.
‘Gnawing it Out’: A New Look at Economic Relations in Nineteenth-Century Rural England
Authors: Reed Mick
Published: January 2009

Markets are ubiquitous, dominant, integrating all production nationally: that is interlocking markets in a national purchase and sale network at money price, organised on an economy-wide basis, a market network essential to all industrial and agricultural lines of production… Practically all farm output was sold for cash. All factors of production, land, labour, tools, transport, artificial fertilisers, were available on national markets for purchase at money price… Here we have total market dependence, for livelihood and the ubiquitous use of cash.
Labour History and the Rural Poor, 1850–1980
Authors: Howkins Alun
Published: January 2009

The history of the labouring poor in the late nineteenth century has been shaped by different and often competing ‘ways of seeing’. Rural labourers occur in histories of social policy as clients or victims of the Poor Law; to the historian of crime they are social bandits or deviants; even to the historian of conventional politics they are the ‘objects’ of reform. All these ways of seeing are important, but I want to concentrate on one in particular, that ‘created’ by the discourse of ‘labour history’. This area laid down, and to a limited extent still continues to define, a structure which concentrates on the formal and quasi-formal organisations of labour. As such it still owes a good deal to the Webb's view of a kind of inevitable and desirable progress from ‘barbarianism’ or non-organisation, through struggle with unjust wages and hard masters, to the organised union with the general secretary and the enlightened employer sitting down together to fix a fair day's work and a fair day's pay.
Political Economy Approaches and a Changing Rural Geography
Authors: Cloke Paul
Published: January 2009

As a ‘rural geographer’ it has been fascinating over the past few years to witness and participate in the rather ponderous lurch being made by the subject towards new theoretical approaches. In particular, ideas and concepts within the broader movement of critical social science, and under the umbrella of political economy, are now being widely discussed, but a fundamental and widespread adoption of new ideas has been both slothful and in some cases grudging. This is not to suggest that research in rural geography has remained unchanged through the 1980s. Indeed, a growth in the scale of rural research has been evident, and this research has become more applied and policy-oriented than ever before. Until quite recently, however, rural geography has lacked a vigorous push towards new theoretical ground and towards the analytical comparisons of these theories.
The Eleventh Hour? Monitoring the English Rural Tradition in the 1990s and Beyond
Authors: Widdowson J. D. A.
Published: January 2009

It is something of an irony that in many ways the rural tradition in English life was studied more intensively and systematically a century ago than is the case today. The burgeoning of scholarly interest in language, history, tradition and society at both local and national level in the late nineteenth century provided a wealth of data for modern researchers across a wide range of disciplines. While some of this material inevitably appears dated and indeed at times inaccurate or erroneous, there is a great deal of value in the records of rural life painstakingly set down by those pioneering chroniclers, notably in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and up to the time of the First World War. It has been fashionable in recent years to denigrate the work of these early writers and collectors, or indeed to dismiss them altogether. The label ‘antiquarian’, so glibly attached to several generations of nineteenth-century scholars, has become a pejorative, redolent of the amateur, the dilettante and the pedant. While it cannot be denied that a proportion of antiquarian writing is trivial, mundane or self-indulgent, it is manifestly incorrect to treat all such work with contempt. Indeed we are greatly indebted to these individuals, and especially to those whose methods and observations were as rigorous and scholarly as possible, given the criteria and standards of their day. Nor did they confine themselves within the constricting limits of our modern academic disciplines. Their interests were wide-ranging, and they closely observed the rural scene from many different perspectives, thus building up a much fuller picture of life and society in a given locality than would usually be the case today.
A Lost Social Institution: The Camping Close
Authors: Dymond David
Published: January 2009

The game of camping or camp-ball, best described as a blend of football and handball, was played for centuries in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex. It survived well into the nineteenth century, and indeed was consciously revived after the Napoleonic Wars. Furthermore, as a traditional form of recreation, it began to attract antiquarian interest at an early date, and was mentioned by several county and parochial historians of the eighteenth century Our evidence for the game is still regrettably scattered and circumstantial, but its quantity has increased appreciably in recent years. This, therefore, seems a good time to offer some new ideas on the subject, in the hope of getting closer to the real nature and social significance of a once popular regional sport.
The Relief of Poverty in Mid Nineteenth-Century Colyton
Authors: Robin Jean
Published: January 2009

The welfare state emerged in 1948 when the National Assistance Act finally abolished the New Poor Law Forty-two years later, as politicians and bureaucrats struggle to keep increasing expenditure within bounds, the existence of the welfare state in its present form is under threat. Just over 150 years ago, the Old Poor Law was presenting parish ratepayers with a similar problem of rising costs, leading in 1834 to a fundamental reorganisation into the New Poor Law It may therefore be profitable to see how effective in practice the New Poor Law was when it replaced a system widely regarded as profligate, and to consider the extent to which benefits payable through the welfare state were available a hundred years or more ago.

This study examines in detail how the New Poor Law, and other forms of relief, affected the whole population of the rural parish of Colyton, in south Devonshire, during the thirty years from 1851 to 1881. It will first describe the sources from which a poor person in Colyton in the mid nineteenth century could look for relief; next discuss how widespread poverty was and who the poor were; then look at what kinds of relief were available, under what conditions; and finally assess the comparative importance to the poor of the different agencies providing assistance.
Planning and the Myth of the English Countryside, in the Interwar Period
Authors: Jeans D. N.
Published: January 2009

A landscape is never so valuable as when it is under threat, and the English rural countryside has been the subject of alarm for centuries. Raymond Williams identified an ‘escalator’ on which literary representation continually looked back upon a past golden age of rural virtue, ensuring that the idea of a ‘true’ rural England has persisted into the twentieth century with extraordinary power Thus Howard Newby can write of the ‘stereotypes and myths which surround the popular image of the rural world’, while, at the same time, he claims this fallacious perception is ‘one of the major protecting illusions of our time’. This illusion has been reinforced by the nature of English society. Sir Lewis Narnier believed English society to be ‘amphibious’ in the eighteenth century, with no sharp divide between town and country among the interests of the ruling classes. By the end of the nineteenth century the countryside, under the influence of Romanticism and a changing class structure, had become the preserve of an upper-class society increasingly separated from industrialism and the great towns. Yet this upper class was cemented by the public schools and the universities to include not only landowners, but an array of occupations, including many intellectuals. Until the First World War, despite increasing mechanisation and specialisation in the countryside, the land presented a rural face largely unspoiled by the intrusion of industrial and urban uses. Land was held in large estates, farmed by tenants in a world of mostly irregular fields, lanes and hedgerows, with buildings that preserved vernacular styles.
Emerging role of the cannabinoid receptor CB2in immune regulation: therapeutic prospects for neuroinflammation
Authors: Cabral Guy A. , Griffin-Thomas LaToya
Published: January 2009

There is now a large body of data indicating that the cannabinoid receptor type 2 (CB2) is linked to a variety of immune events. This functional relevance appears to be most salient in the course of inflammation, a process during which there is an increased number of receptors that are available for activation. Studies aimed at elucidating signal transduction events resulting from CB2interaction with its native ligands, and of the role of exogenous cannabinoids in modulating this process, are providing novel insights into the role of CB2in maintaining a homeostatic immune balance within the host. Furthermore, these studies suggest that the CB2may serve as a selective molecular target for therapeutic manipulation of untoward immune responses, including those associated with a variety of neuropathies that exhibit a hyperinflammatory component.
Zur Funktion der nonverbalen Stimmungsmodulation des Therapeuten für den Therapieprozess und Sitzungserfolg
Authors: Flückiger Christoph , Znoj Hansjörg
Published: January 2009

Zusammenfassung. Theoretischer Hintergrund: Nonverbale Modulationsprozesse in der Therapeuten-Patienten-Interaktion werden in den letzten Jahren zunehmend emotionsspezifisch konzeptualisiert. Fragestellung: Modulieren die Therapeuten die Stimmung der Patienten emotionsspezifisch und welche Bedeutung hat die nonverbale Modulation auf das Sitzungsergebnis. Methode: Mittels des für die vorliegende Studie entwickelten Emotion-Rating-Inventars II (EMORATE-II) werden 84 verhaltenstherapeutische Sitzungen zu Therapiebeginn auf die nonverbale und konzeptuelle ( Gross, 2007 ) Emotionsmodulation des Therapeuten untersucht. Dieses Video-Rating Verfahren bildet mit relativ geringem Aufwand wesentliche in der Literatur beschriebene stimmungsmodulierende Strategien im Therapieprozess ab. Ergebnisse: Die Therapeuten modulieren die Emotionen ihrer Patienten sowohl nonverbal als auch konzeptuell. Den größten Zusammenhang ergibt sich in der zusammengefassten Skala „nonverbale Modulation” des Therapeuten, welche sich durch die Gegenmodulation angespannter Stimmung und der Verstärkung begeisterter Stimmung auszeichnet. Schlussfolgerungen: Nonverbale Modulationsprozesse der Therapeuten sind bedeutsame Prädiktoren für den Sitzungserfolg. Die Emotionsmodulation der Therapeuten erfolgt emotionsspezifisch.
Veränderungen interpersoneller Probleme in der Psychotherapie sozialer Ängste
Authors: Willutzki Ulrike , Teismann Tobias , Koban Christoph , Dymel Wibke
Published: January 2009

Zusammenfassung. Hintergrund: Im dualen Modell der Psychotherapie von Schulte (1996) wird angenommen, dass interaktionelle Auffälligkeiten den Therapieprozess behindern. Fragestellung: Inwieweit sind interpersonelle Probleme assoziiert mit dem Therapieprozess? Welche Merkmale des Therapieprozesses erleichtern die Reduktion interpersoneller Probleme? Methode: Im Rahmen einer Therapiestudie sozialer Ängste (N = 67) werden interpersonelle Schwierigkeiten in Beziehung zu Prozessvariablen (Allianz, Stimmung, therapieförderliches/-beeinträchtigendes Verhalten) gesetzt. Der prädiktive Wert von Prozessmerkmalen für Veränderungen interpersoneller Schwierigkeiten wird analysiert. Ergebnisse: Initiale interpersonelle Schwierigkeiten wirken sich nicht auf die Therapiebeziehung und therapieförderliches Patientenverhalten aus, gehen jedoch mit weniger positiver Stimmung und therapiebeeinträchtigendem Patientenverhalten einher. Negative Stimmung ist prädiktiv für eine geringere Reduktion interpersoneller Probleme. Schlussfolgerungen: Negativer Stimmung kommt Indikatorfunktion für ungünstige Verläufe zu – entsprechend sollte sie besonders beachtet und modifiziert werden.
The Ethics of Suicide Research
Authors: Lakeman Richard , FitzGerald Mary
Published: January 2009

Background. Good quality, ethically sound research is needed in order to better understand, appropriately respond to, and reduce the incidence of suicide. There is, however, a lack of clarity around the nature of ethical problems associated with suicide research and how to resolve them. This is a formidable challenge for ethics committee members in approving and monitoring research. Aims. To describe the views that members of health research ethics committee hold regarding ethical problems and ethical practice in research involving people who are, or who have, been suicidal. Methods. Ethics committee members were invited to complete an online survey addressing the risks, benefits, and ethical problems associated with suicide research. Findings were aggregated into themes using an inductive form of content analysis. Results. Concerns of ethics committees centered on accessing the population, potential harm to participants or the researcher, researcher competency, maintaining confidentiality, providing support to participants, and responding sensitively to the needs of family. Conclusions. Ethical research involving suicidal people requires both procedures to protect participants, and consideration of ethics as an ongoing negotiated process. The findings of this research provide a snapshot of views held by a number of ethics committee members.
Changes in Media Reporting of Suicide in Australia Between 2000/01 and 2006/07
Authors: Pirkis Jane , Dare Andrew , Blood R. Warwick , Rankin Bree , Williamson Michelle , Burgess Philip , Jolley Damien
Published: January 2009

Aims. To evaluate changes in Australian news media reporting of suicide between 2000/01 and 2006/07 against recommendations in the resource Reporting Suicide and Mental Illness. Methods. Newspaper, television, and radio items on suicide were retrieved over two 12-month periods pre- and postintroduction of Reporting Suicide and Mental Illness. Identifying and descriptive information were extracted for each item. Quality ratings were made for a stratified random sample of items, using criteria from the precursor to Reporting Suicide and Mental Illness. Results and Conclusions. There was almost a two-fold increase in reporting of suicide during the study period, with 4,813 and 8,363 items retrieved in 2000/01 and 2006/07, respectively. The nature of media reporting showed some variability, with an increased emphasis on items about individuals experiences and a reduced emphasis on policy and program initiatives. Most strikingly, there was significant improvement on almost all individual dimensions of quality and overall quality. These findings are positive, although there are still clearly some opportunities for improving the way in which the media report and portray suicide. In order to improve standards, continued support should be provided for the dissemination and evaluation of Reporting Suicide and Mental Illness.
The Big Five Personality Traits and Uses of Music
Authors: Chamorro-Premuzic Tomas , Swami Viren , Furnham Adrian , Maakip Ismail
Published: January 2009

The current study set out to replicate and extend a recent paper ( Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2007 ) on personality and uses of music using structural equation modeling. Responses to questionnaire data from 227 Malaysian university students showed that, in line with our hypotheses, individuals higher in Neuroticism were more likely to use music for emotional regulation (influencing their mood states), Extraversion positively predicted use of music as background or for distraction, and Openness to Experience predicted cognitive use of music. However, contrary to the target paper, Conscientiousness did not predict use of music for emotional regulation and Extraversion was positively rather than negatively linked with that use of music. Results are discussed in terms of the generalizability of previous findings on the Big Five as determinants of uses of music.
Attention and Intelligence
Authors: Burns Nicholas R. , Nettelbeck Ted , McPherson Jason
Published: January 2009

Carroll (1993 ) found few factor-analytic studies that addressed attentional abilities. We reviewed and reanalyzed some of these studies and concluded that an exploratory approach to the study of the relationships between tests of attention and cognitive abilities was warranted. We sampled N = 147 adults from the general community and administered 17 tests of attention, including well-known neuropsychological tests along with tests drawn from the differential and experimental literatures on attention. We also administered 14 tests of cognitive ability designed to measure constructs described in Carrolls taxonomy of intelligence, including a higher-order general ability factor. Regression of a general factor from the abilities battery onto a general factor from the attentional battery showed these two latent variables to be near identical (β = .98). Exploratory structural equation modeling, which allowed a model wherein the abilities part of the model was a confirmatory measurement model but the attention variables were modeled by three rotated exploratory factors, clarified this outcome. There were two sustained attention factors and one working-memory capacity factor with differential relationships with the latent abilities variables and with age. Results are discussed in the context of the network of processes that underlies a description of general cognitive ability at the psychological level, which includes mental speed, working memory, and sustained attention.
An update of observed stratospheric temperature trends
Authors: Randel William J. , Shine Keith P. , Austin John , Barnett John , Claud Chantal , Gillett Nathan P. , Keckhut Philippe , Langematz Ulrike , Lin Roger , Long Craig , Mears Carl , Miller Alvin , Nash John , Seidel Dian J. , Thompson David W. J. , Wu Fei , Yoden Shigeo
Published: January 2009

An updated analysis of observed stratospheric temperature variability and trends is presented on the basis of satellite, radiosonde, and lidar observations. Satellite data include measurements from the series of NOAA operational instruments, including the Microwave Sounding Unit covering 1979–2007 and the Stratospheric Sounding Unit (SSU) covering 1979–2005. Radiosonde results are compared for six different data sets, incorporating a variety of homogeneity adjustments to account for changes in instrumentation and observational practices. Temperature changes in the lower stratosphere show cooling of ∼0.5 K/decade over much of the globe for 1979–2007, with some differences in detail among the different radiosonde and satellite data sets. Substantially larger cooling trends are observed in the Antarctic lower stratosphere during spring and summer, in association with development of the Antarctic ozone hole. Trends in the lower stratosphere derived from radiosonde data are also analyzed for a longer record (back to 1958); trends for the presatellite era (1958–1978) have a large range among the different homogenized data sets, implying large trend uncertainties. Trends in the middle and upper stratosphere have been derived from updated SSU data, taking into account changes in the SSU weighting functions due to observed atmospheric CO2 increases. The results show mean cooling of 0.5–1.5 K/decade during 1979–2005, with the greatest cooling in the upper stratosphere near 40–50 km. Temperature anomalies throughout the stratosphere were relatively constant during the decade 1995–2005. Long records of lidar temperature measurements at a few locations show reasonable agreement with SSU trends, although sampling uncertainties are large in the localized lidar measurements. Updated estimates of the solar cycle influence on stratospheric temperatures show a statistically significant signal in the tropics (∼30°N–S), with an amplitude (solar maximum minus solar minimum) of ∼0.5 K (lower stratosphere) to ∼1.0 K (upper stratosphere).
Laboratory experiments and models of diffusive emplacement of ground ice on Mars
Authors: Hudson Troy L. , Aharonson Oded , Schorghofer Norbert
Published: January 2009

Experiments demonstrate for the first time the deposition of subsurface ice directly from atmospheric water vapor under Mars surface conditions. Deposition occurs at pressures below the triple point of water and therefore in the absence of a bulk liquid phase. Significant quantities of ice are observed to deposit in porous medium interstices; the maximum filling fraction observed in our experiments is ∼90%, but the evidence is consistent with ice density in pore spaces asymptotically approaching 100% filling. The micromorphology of the deposited ice reveals several noteworthy characteristics including preferential early deposition at grain contact points, complete pore filling between some grains, and captured atmospheric gas bubbles. The boundary between ice‐bearing and ice‐free soil, the “ice table,” is a sharp interface, consistent with theoretical investigations of subsurface ice dynamics. Changes of surface radiative properties are shown to affect ice table morphology through their modulation of the local temperature profile. Accumulation of ice is shown to reduce the diffusive flux and thus reduce the rate of further ice deposition. Numerical models of the experiments based on diffusion physics are able to reproduce experimental ice contents if the parameterization of growth rate reduction has expected contributions in addition to reduced porosity. Several phenomena related to the evolution of subsurface ice are discussed in light of these results, and interpretations are given for a range of potential observations being made by the Phoenix Scout Lander.
Exhumation of the Inyo Mountains, California: Implications for the timing of extension along the western boundary of the Basin and Range Province and distribution of dextral fault slip rates across the eastern California shear zone
Authors: Lee Jeffrey , Stockli Daniel F. , Owen Lewis A. , Finkel Robert C. , Kislitsyn Roman
Published: January 2009

New geologic mapping, tectonic geomorphologic, 10Be terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide, and (U‐Th)/He zircon and apatite thermochronometric data provide the first numerical constraints on late Cretaceous to late Quaternary exhumation of the Inyo Mountains and vertical slip and horizontal extension rates across the eastern Inyo fault zone, California. The east‐dipping eastern Inyo fault zone bounds the eastern flank of the Inyo Mountains, a prominent geomorphic feature within the western Basin and Range Province and eastern California shear zone. (U‐Th)/He zircon and apatite thermochronometry yield age patterns across the range that are interpreted as indicating: (1) two episodes of moderate to rapid exhumation associated with Laramide deformation during the late Cretaceous/early Tertiary; (2) development of a slowly eroding surface during a prolonged period from early Eocene to middle Miocene; (3) rapid cooling, exhumation, and initiation of normal slip along the eastern Inyo fault zone, accommodated by westward tilting of the Inyo Mountains block, at 15.6 Ma; and (4) rapid cooling, exhumation, and renewed normal slip along the eastern Inyo fault zone at 2.8 Ma. Fault slip continues today as indicated by fault scarps that cut late Pleistocene alluvial fan surfaces. The second episode of normal slip at 2.8 Ma also signals onset of dextral slip along the Hunter Mountain fault, yielding a Pliocene dextral slip rate of 3.3 ± 1.0 mm/a, where a is years. Summing this dextral slip rate with estimated dextral slip rates along the Owens Valley, Death Valley, and Stateline faults yields a net geologic dextral slip rate across the eastern California shear zone of 9.3 + 2.2/–1.4 to 9.8 + 1.4/–1.0 mm/a.
Mineral Physics Quest to the Earth's Core
Authors: Dubrovinsky Leonid , Lin Jung‐Fu
Published: January 2009

Because of its remoteness, together with pressures from 140 to 360 gigapascals and temperatures from 4000 to 7000 K, most direct observations of the Earth's core properties have come from teleseismic studies, requiring large earthquake sources and well‐positioned seismometers to detect weak wave signals that have traversed the Earth's deepest interior. The decoding of geochemical signatures of the core—potentially carried to the surface in plumes originating at the core‐mantle boundary—faces numerous challenges of the debated integrity of this hypothesis.

For these reasons, understanding the Earth's core requires multidisciplinary efforts. In the past two decades, deep‐Earth scientists have unveiled a number of unusual and enigmatic phenomena of the core, including inner core anisotropy, differential rotation of the inner core, fine‐scale seismic heterogeneity, and the possible existence of the prefer‐oriented hexagonal close packed (hcp, in which two closely packed layers stack alternately along a crystallographic axis) and/or body‐centered cubic (bcc, in which eight atoms reside at the corners and one atom resides at the center of the cubic cell) iron/nickel/light element alloys in the inner core (Figure 1). In this feature article, we summarize recent new findings and frontiers about the nature of the core from mineral physics research.
Paclitaxel delivery by micro/nano encapsulation using layer-by-layer assembly
Authors: Gupta Girish Kumar , Jain Vikas , Mishra Prabhat Ranjan
Published: January 2009

A novel formulation of paclitaxel (PTX) has been developed by providing multilayer assembly over drug loaded porous CaCO3 microparticles (CaCO3 MP) using combination of biocompatible and biodegradable polyelectrolytes (PE’s). PTX was encapsulated into the nanopores of preformed CaCO3 MP prepared by the co-precipitation method. Infrared (IR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) provides evidences that PTX has been encapsulated into nanopores of CaCO3 MP and not crystallized on the surface. PTX loaded CaCO3 MP (CaCO3-PTX) was found to be highly stabilized against thermal decomposition as evinced by thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA) indicating decomposition at 600°C and 250°C for CaCO3-PTX and PTX respectively. The multilayer assembly over CaCO3-PTX was effectuated by alternate deposition of protamine sulfate (PRM) and sodium alginate (SA) using LBL technique followed by subsequent core removal [PTX- (PRM/SA)5]. The pay load efficiency of PTX in this system was found to be 78.98±2.14%. The developed system was further evaluated for surface morphology, size and size distribution, surface charge, core removal and layer-by-layer growth due to sequential adsorption of PE’s. The release data of PTX-(PRM/SA)5 was comparable with marketed formulation of PTX (PTX-M) and CaCO3-PTX when performed in simulated intestinal fluid (SIF pH=7.4). The release profile of PTX-(PRM/SA)5 indicates that PEs based multilayer matrix is capable to provide barrier to PTX release as it has been found to follow first order matrix diffusion kinetics with 64±4.8% release within 24 hrs. The t50% of PTX-M, CaCO3-PTX and PTX-(PRM/SA)5 was found to be 70, 90 and 480 minutes respectively. This alternative delivery system of PTX disguised in the form of LBL assembly could have immense application for the treatment of metastasized mammary glands vis-à-vis existing formulation of PTX which is by and large criticized for having certain toxic excipients to be given parentrally. Moreover, the proposed system provides ample of opportunity to modify the surface for targeted application of PTX.