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Psychologists, psychotherapists, social workers, counselors, and other people involved in the mental-health fields are increasingly working with American Indians who practice various religious ceremonies and life ways foreign to Western-oriented epistemologies and ontologies. The American Indian Church and its sacramental use of peyote is one such example. This paper provides a brief history of the American Indian Church and its use of peyote, as well as the American Indian beliefs behind the use of peyote and the psychopharmacological data concerning peyote. It is shown that the sacramental use of peyote by the American Indian Church members is not a deviant hallucinogenic disorder and that in fact it provides a means of achieving and maintaining health, balance, respect, and a sense of community among participants and their social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous cultures throughout the world have struggled to maintain many of their traditional lifeways and cultural identity in the face of pressure from modernizing forces (industrialization, population and demographic changes, globalization, and modern socioeconomic and sociopolitical forces). These forces have particularly affected the Nez Perce of the Plateau culture area in north-western North America. This article discusses how these forces have impacted the Nez Perce for well over a hundred years, though major impacts did not begin until the damming of the Clearwater and Snake Rivers, when access to salmon became an issue. In this regard, the Nez Perce are an informative case in the study of cultural preservation, cultural change, and cultural identity in the face of these forces. Using Elias Canetti's idea of 'crowd symbol' and Sherry Ortner's idea of 'key symbol', this article argues that salmon play a similar role in the formation and maintenance of Nez Perce cultural preservation and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although subsampling is a common method for describing the composition of large and diverse trawl catches, the accuracy of these techniques is often unknown. We determined the sampling errors generated from estimating the percentage of the total number of species recorded in catches, as well as the abundance of each species, at each increase in the proportion of the sorted catch. We completely partitioned twenty prawn trawl catches from tropical northern Australia into subsamples of about 10 kg each. All subsamples were then sorted, and species numbers recorded. Catch weights ranged from 71 to 445 kg, and the number offish species in trawls ranged from 60 to 138, and invertebrate species from 18 to 63. Almost 70% of the species recorded in catches were "rare" in subsamples (less than one individual per 10 kg subsample or less than one in every 389 individuals). A matrix was used to show the increase in the total number of species that were recorded in each catch as the percentage of the sorted catch increased. Simulation modelling showed that sorting small subsamples (about 10% of catch weights) identified about 50% of the total number of species caught in a trawl. Larger subsamples (50% of catch weight on average) identified about 80% of the total species caught in a trawl. The accuracy of estimating the abundance of each species also increased with increasing subsample size. For the "rare" species, sampling error was around 80% after sorting 10% of catch weight and was just less than 50% after 40% of catch weight had been sorted. For the "abundant" species (five or more individuals per 10 kg subsample or five or more in every 389 individuals), sampling error was around 25% after sorting 10% of catch weight, but was reduced to around 10% after 40% of catch weight... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an obituary for John Graham Jones, a former occupational health physician and assistant chief medical officer to the British Steel Corporation in south Whales.