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The COVID-19 pandemic has strained the resources of the world's healthcare systems. Most individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities (NDDs) experience significant mental health issues and face substantial barriers in accessing appropriate supports which have been exacerbated during the pandemic. It is unknown the extent to which COVID-19 impacted the demand for and effectiveness of inpatient care for those with NDDs. The impact of COVID-19 on the number of admissions of youth with NDDs to pediatric inpatient psychiatry units, as well as their functioning and length of stay during the first two years of the pandemic was analyzed using Bayesian structural time series models. Admission data of youth with NDDs from four pediatric inpatient units in Alberta, Canada (n = 2144) was examined. Inpatient admissions of youth with NDDs significantly increased following the onset of the pandemic. Compared to the period prior to the pandemic, patients with NDDs had significantly worse overall functioning and received fewer days of treatment. These findings highlight the need for increased resources to support the mental health needs of this vulnerable population and are consistent with other studies in the general population examining the utilization of inpatient psychiatric units during the pandemic.

Introduction: Pennsylvania's Student Assistance Program (SAP) began in the mid-1980s to address student barriers to academic success. SAP teams, groups of trained school and community professionals, review referrals, and connect students to services. State leadership conducts an annual SAP team survey, but capacity to evaluate data and affect change is limited. In 2020, leadership partnered with [institution name] to collaboratively review the survey data. Methods: Frequencies and percentages were calculated. Open responses were coded. Logistic regression models evaluated the association between SAP team size, team meeting frequency, and team maintenance. Results: The 2019 to 2020 survey had 1003 respondents. Median number of SAP team members was 8 (range 1-21). The majority (54%) indicated their SAP team met once per week/cycle for 30 to 90+ minutes. Larger teams met more often. Annual team maintenance occurred for 38% of teams, and was more common for larger teams. SAP team members identified mental health (68%), trauma (44%), and parent engagement (36%) as top training needs. Conclusions: An academic partnership successfully provided the capacity to review SAP survey responses, and informed evidenced-based discussion of best practice guidelines and realignment of staff professional development opportunities.

Two states that are more than 2,000 miles apart have a similar goal: to embed best practices in crisis preparedness. Arizona and Pennsylvania are motivated to use the "PREPaRE School Crisis Prevention and Intervention Training Curriculum," 3rd Edition (Brock et al., 2016) across their states to increase school and practitioner readiness and capacity to prevent, prepare for, and respond to crises. This article presents the "PREPaRE" model, along with its success and challenges.

Background: The Student Assistance Program (SAP) is mandated kindergarten to 12th grade in Pennsylvania schools to address barriers to student academic success. Following student referral, SAP teams use a systematic process to inform recommendations for school or community-based services. To evaluate program outcomes, a review of student SAP referral trends over a 5-year period was undertaken. Methods: The Pennsylvania Network for Student Assistance Services (PNSAS), the state leadership providing oversight of SAP, partnered with Penn State College of Medicine in a retrospective analysis of student referral data from 2013 to 2018. Public school enrollment demographics were used for comparison. Frequencies and percentages were calculated. Results: Referrals (total n = 352,640) increased by 24% over the 5 years; demographics 55% male, 69% non-Hispanic white, 16% non-Hispanic black, and 10% Hispanic. Referrals were most commonly for behavioral concerns (31%). Discontinued referrals (39%) were primarily for parent refusal/no permission. Trends included rising minority and elementary referrals over the study period. Conclusions: SAP referral demographics were consistent with state public school enrollment race/ethnicity breakdown suggesting lack of systematic bias. The proportion of behavioral referrals was consistent with rising youth behavioral health needs. PNSAS must consider strategies to support rising referral numbers and trends.

There is limited research that specifically explores paternal involvement during pregnancy and childbirth. To address this gap, we completed a series of focus groups with fathers to examine social, cultural, and environmental factors that influence behaviors among new fathers while also providing community perspectives on men's experiences seeking care pre- and postdelivery. We used a phenomenological thematic approach to analyze data from 10 focus groups from five of the six Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health-Community Care Initiative pilot sites collected between November 2021 and April 2022. The average age of fathers was 33.9 years (range = 24-61 years). The majority (86.25%) of men were African American, and approximately one sixth of focus group participants (16.25%) were Hispanic or Latino. Four key themes emerged: the importance and meaning of fatherhood, accessibility during pregnancy and childbirth, engagement during pregnancy and childbirth, and responsibility of fathers during pregnancy and childbirth. These fathers not only understood and embraced the awesome responsibility they had for their unborn child, but they also recognized and were invested in being present, accessible, engaged, and responsible to the pregnant woman during the pregnancy. Practitioners and policy makers should work to engage fathers as early in the pregnancy as possible; monitor father's mental health and financial stress; provide resources to educate fathers on maternal health, pregnancy, and childbirth; and emphasize fathers' rights, roles, and responsibilities.

Purpose: This study aims to present a pedagogical approach that allows students to discuss and debate the differences between two competing models of corporate governance -- the shareholder primacy philosophy and the stakeholder value viewpoint. Design/methodology/approach: This study first presents the conceptual bases for each framework, noting that while shareholder primacy is the historically dominant approach to corporate governance that guide strategic business actions in the USA, pressures from investor and societal groups and government agencies have forced publicly traded companies to recognize the need to take stakeholder interests into account in strategic decision-making, as is the dominant model in Europe and other parts of the world. This study then provides a pedagogical structure on how these opposing perspectives can be used to foster discussion, debate and reflection within the classroom. Findings: This paper presents a pedagogical structure that allows students to recognize the competing pressures that businesses face of maximizing profits versus concerns over social causes. There are a number of positive pedagogical outcomes that can be realized from a classroom discourse on the differing perspectives on strategic management, corporate governance and social responsibility. Practical implications: This pedagogical structure should help future business leaders throughout the world understand the differences between the two models of corporate governance. This study offers suggestions on how this pedagogical structure can be used in the student assessment process. Originality/value: This study fills a gap in the literature by providing a pedagogical structure to guide discussion and debate on the competing theories of corporate governance and how organizational decision-makers can devise strategies to manage the potential competing demands that can arise from the shareholder versus stakeholder models. It is highly relevant and well-suited for courses such as Business Law, Business Policy, Business and Society and Ethics.

We propose some theoretical and empirical advances by supplying the methodology for analyzing the factors that influence two sensitive variables when data are collected by randomized response (RR) survey modes. First, we provide the framework for obtaining the maximum likelihood estimates of logistic regression coefficients under the RR simple and crossed models, then we carry out a simulation study to assess the performance of the estimation procedure. Finally, logistic regression analysis is illustrated by considering real data about cannabis use and legalization and about abortion and illegal immigration. The empirical results bring out certain considerations about the effect of the RR and direct questioning survey modes on the estimates. The inference about the sign and the significance of the regression coefficients can contribute to the debate on whether the RR approach is an effective survey method to reduce misreporting and improve the validity of analyses.

Schools have the unique opportunity to identify and refer youth at risk for suicide. School-based gatekeeper training programs aim to improve staff's ability to talk to students about mental health concerns and refer them for an assessment. Unfortunately, progress in evaluating the available programs has been limited. In fact, the popular and widely used More Than Sad program has received no rigorous evaluation to date. This study sets out to evaluate the effectiveness of the More Than Sad program in a quasi-experimental, wait-list control design with a large number of school personnel, across geographically diverse communities. Fourteen school districts with over 1475 school personal received the training. A standardized assessment tool was used before and after the training and two months later. Half of the schools served as a wait list control before receiving the treatment. Results. Compared to wait-listed staff, school personal who received the training reported a significant increase in knowledge, preparedness, self-efficacy, and likelihood to refer. Self-reported and actual referral behavior also increased both for those that had made referrals in the past and those that had not. Gains were maintained at 2-month follow-up. More Than Sad can effectively improve suicide literacy and willingness to refer youth at risk for suicide to school mental health resources. With 90% of the training pre-recorded on DVDs, future research should explore implementation feasibility and effectiveness.

This study examined autism support teachers' attitudes about inclusion, as well as perceived barriers and resource needs. A survey was developed for this study and administered to 27 elementary teachers in autism support (AS) classrooms in a large, urban district. Approximately 75% of students in the sample were educated primarily in self-contained settings, although 70% had teachers who recommended more inclusion. AS teachers were more concerned about the readiness of general education teachers and their classrooms than the readiness of their students. The greatest needs were school-wide training (47%), acceptance of students with autism (38%), smaller class sizes (31%) and more support staff (31%). AS teachers' attitudes about student placement were somewhat conflicted, underscoring the need to build school-wide capacity and promote greater acceptance.

Previous research with typically developing children and adults shows that active control of the learning experience leads to enhanced episodic memory, as compared with conditions lacking this control. The present study investigates whether similar advantages can be found in children with autism spectrum disorder. In this study, 6-12-year-old autistic children (N=29) participated in a simple memory game on a touchscreen tablet, in which they were asked to remember 64 objects presented in four blocks of 16. In two of the blocks, children could decide the order and pacing of study (active condition), whereas in the other two blocks, they passively observed the active study decisions of a previous participant (yoked condition). We found that recognition memory was more accurate for objects studied in the active compared with the yoked condition, even after a week-long delay. The magnitude of the effect was comparable with that obtained in previous studies with typically developing children and adults, suggesting a robustness for the benefits of active learning that goes beyond what previously hypothesized, extending to special populations. We discuss how these findings may help develop pedagogical interventions that leverage the active learning approach to promote inclusive learning.

Students used an Excel spreadsheet and a Jupyter notebook located at https://chemcompute.org/jupyterhub/ to generate data in lieu of face-to-face laboratory instruction during COVID-19. This communication discusses strengths and weaknesses of both exercises. First, students generated absorbance data using an Excel spreadsheet, but they were overwhelmingly put off by simulated noise in their absorbance values. Second, students simulated running an HPLC using a Jupyter notebook and designed a method to separate three components of Excedrin. Students reported that the simulation helped them to understand HPLC and suggested that the online activity be used as a supplement when face-to-face laboratory instruction resumes. The main weakness of the online activities was that students did not perform any sample preparation. Therefore, they did not experience the extractions and dilutions required to prepare the analytical sample and had a difficult time working backward to calculate starting amounts from simulated sample concentrations. Concerns that students would extract answers from the equations used in the spreadsheet and Jupyter notebook were not realized.

Purpose: This paper discusses the well-publicized labor shortages in the building trades, reviews the causes for the deficiencies, and presents prescriptions for how career counselors and schools can play a critical role in encouraging young adults to consider construction occupations. Design/methodology/approach: Using data from government agencies, trade organizations, and scholarly publications, this paper describes the categories of the building trades as well as their employment trends and compensation prospects. It also reviews the personal and environmental factors that could lead to the "construction of a construction career." Findings: This article documents the reasons for the labor shortages in the construction industry and then offers recommendation on how younger adults could be encouraged to consider the building trades as viable career alternatives. Social implications: Labor shortages in the construction industry have a direct and indirect deleterious effect on the economic well-being of every country. This article provides suggestions on how to inspire young adults to consider the building trades as worthwhile career pursuits. Originality/value: There is a limited amount of scholarly attention given to career decision making related to occupations that do not require a college degree, including the building trades. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature by focusing on the individual characteristics and environmental factors that might prompt consideration of a career in the building trades. It also describes the educational, governmental, and corporate initiatives that work to encourage individuals, working in conjunction with their career counselors, to consider careers in the construction industry.

The effectiveness of a sight word intervention designed for Deaf students was investigated. Thirty students, grades 1-7, in an urban school for the Deaf received an 8-month intervention. A pretest/ posttest design using a teacher-designed instrument, the Cumulative Bedrock Literacy Sight Word Assessment, and the Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency (Mather, Hammill, Allen, & Roberts, 2004) assessed increases in the number of sight words students could identify and the rate at which they could identify them. Paired-samples and independent-samples t tests and Pearson product-moment correlations were used to analyze data. Results indicated a significant increase in the number of sight words participants could identify postintervention. Also, younger students increased their sight word vocabularies at a faster rate than older students. No significant differences based on home language or gender were found. The authors make suggestions for further research and program application.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among youth aged 10-25 years, and approximately one in six adolescents reported serious suicidal ideation in the past year (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] in Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS). http://webappa.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.exe, 2017). Schools are a unique environment in which to identify and respond to youth suicide risk, yet the research base for school-based suicide prevention programs is limited due to challenges with implementation and evaluation. The purpose of this article is to review best practice approaches and existing empirical support for school-based suicide prevention and to present a framework for how these efforts can be embedded within multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS). In line with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA] (Preventing suicide: a toolkit for high schools. https://store.samhsa.gov/shin/content//SMA12-4669/SMA12-4669.pdf, 2012) framework for suicide prevention in schools, the article overviews existing programs for student education, staff training, and screening, noting where these programs may be situated across tiers of intervention. This is followed by a review of school-related outcomes of existing suicide prevention programs, which highlights the limitations of existing research. Because there are only two school-based prevention programs with evidence for reducing suicide risk in students, the authors encourage school staff to implement best practice recommendations in collaboration with school mental health professionals who can provide ongoing evaluation of program effectiveness, as well as with researchers who are able to design and conduct outcome studies addressing the limitations of current research. Findings also underscore the need for greater integration of suicide prevention programming with existing school initiatives such as MTSS, which aligns with a growing focus in the field of suicide prevention on "upstream approaches."

Textbooks provide a rich site within which to investigate how members of a scientific discipline choose to represent their research to general audiences. We used critical contextual empiricism as a framework for interrogating how a scientific community is depicted via images in evolution textbook chapters on sexual selection. Textbooks that exhibit science within the tenets of critical contextual empiricism will depict uptake of disciplinary change and acknowledge the inseparability of the social and rational aspects of scientific knowledge construction. Sexual selection is an exemplary arena for this work because the field has undergone substantial change in the past few decades that has been driven by critique from within and among disciplines. We used quantitative methods and content analysis to examine images from the textbook editions and from a time series of editions to examine the portrayal of updated understandings of sexual selection. We found that most textbook images did not reflect the shift happening in the scientific community. Images highlighted primarily the classic view of sexual selection focused on males. Examples typical of a more realistic, complicated understanding received little attention even though the scientific literature on these topics appeared decades before these textbooks were published. Images of males were more common than images of females, females were depicted for fewer concepts than males, and images of males and females reinforced stereotypical sex roles. This study highlights an opportunity for acknowledging the inseparability of the social and the rational in scientific knowledge construction.

The authors present a pedagogical primer on the highly controversial business strategies of data mining and automated prediction. They provide a summary that allows business professors and students the opportunity to better understand the privacy and ethical issues that arise from high-tech, Internet-based organizations implementing programs to collect and analyze large quantities of personal data from the users of their systems, and then using this data to make assumptions and projections on individual behaviors. The teaching summary also includes a consideration of the role that governments can play in limiting the ability of large tech-based companies to mine personal information for commercial application.

Animal experimentation is a controversial topic, especially among the general public and the scientific community. Thirty-eight undergraduate students attending the College of Veterinary Medicine--São Paulo State University in the municipality of Araçatuba, São Paulo, Brazil, were followed up between 2008 and 2011 and were asked to complete an annual questionnaire focused on different aspects of animal experimentation, including the animal species involved, the objectives of the research, ethics, animal welfare and euthanasia. Most students agreed that animal testing is not morally incorrect, and the dynamics of students' attitudes were notable: undergraduates tended to change their opinion over time, with junior students opposing animal experimentation more than seniors do, indicating that the more scientific knowledge the students acquire, the more favourable to animal experimentation they become. Nevertheless, they agreed that research must consider the basic principles of animal welfare.

In this paper we re-visit the work of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and the social enterprise Fifteen Foundation and their development of a programme designed to train unemployed young people in the hospitality industry. We argue, drawing on the Foucauldian literature on governmentality and technologies of the self, that social enterprise-based transitional labour-market programmes can best be understood as neo-liberal technologies of the self that seek to transform persons. In the face of precarious forms of youth labour market participation, the self--the marginalised, unemployed young person--can ill afford to be a smart arse.

Training professionals have long acknowledged the necessity of conducting behavior-based (Level 3) and results-based (Level 4) evaluations, yet organizations do not frequently conduct such evaluations. This research examined training professionals' perceptions of the utility of Level 3 and Level 4 evaluations and the factors that facilitate or obstruct their attempts to perform them. The research was conducted using Brinkerhoff's Success Case Method and Gilbert's Behavior Engineering Model as its frameworks. The three key factors identified by study participants as having an impact upon their ability to conduct Level 3 and Level 4 evaluations were the availability of resources such as time and personnel, managerial support (organizational) and expertise in evaluative methodology (individual). The research findings indicated a need to further explore how training professionals interpret Level 3 and Level 4 and how they can better develop their evaluative expertise, which in turn may increase effectiveness in gaining organizational support for evaluation efforts.

Objective: The current study was a randomized controlled trial investigating the effect of an innovative, short-term lifestyle intervention on weight gain in female freshman college students. Participants: Ninety-five freshmen were recruited from a large public university in the United States. Methods: Participants completed baseline assessments and were randomized to a 5-session, 4-week intervention or wait-list control, with assessments at posttest and 3-month follow-up. Results: The hypothesized time by group interaction was not significant, p = 0.393; however, trends suggested that control participants maintained baseline weight, whereas intervention participants lost -2.07 kg by posttest but regained 1.05 kg at follow-up. Significantly more intervention participants (47.0%) decreased their daily caloric intake by = 200 kcal compared with control (31.7%), p = 0.050. Conclusion: Brief intervention to prevent weight gain was not effective in this sample. Future studies should investigate lengthening the intervention to enhance effectiveness and increasing recruitment to improve statistical power.

This paper reports on an examination of the perspectives of academics, enterprise enablers and graduate entrepreneurs of an entrepreneurial higher education institution (HEI). The research was conducted in Ireland among 30 graduate entrepreneurs and 15 academics and enterprise enablers (enterprise development agency personnel) to provide a triangulated perspective of the HEI. While acknowledging the presence of initiatives to promote entrepreneurship, the graduate entrepreneurs believed that the HEI does not prepare students for self-employment because HEIs are focused on preparing students for employment, because of the academic nature of entrepreneurship education (EE), and because a "'one size fits all" approach to EE fails to recognize the heterogeneity of learners' needs. However, they conceded that graduate enterprise programmes provided them with the necessary "breathing space" to develop their businesses. In contrast, some enterprise enablers believed that HEIs could be a "hiding place", protecting student and graduate entrepreneurs from the harsh realities of commercial life. While this paper provides a nuanced understanding of what constitutes good practice, the authors concede that there is no formulaic blueprint for an entrepreneurial HEI. More significantly, they conclude that the notion of an entrepreneurial HEI may yet be a step too far for many institutions, because entrepreneurship has yet to gain legitimacy, particularly in the Irish HE sector. (Contains 1 figure.)

Objective: Although behavioral weight-loss interventions produce short-term weight loss, long-term maintenance remains elusive. This randomized trial examined whether learning a novel set of "stability skills" before losing weight improved long-term weight management. Stability skills were designed to optimize individuals' current satisfaction with lifestyle and self-regulatory habits while requiring the minimum effort and attention necessary. Method: Overweight/obese women (N = 267) were randomly assigned to one of two 6-month interventions and assessed at baseline and at 6, 12, and 18 months. Maintenance First women participated first in an 8-week stability skills maintenance module and then in a standard 20-week behavioral weight-loss program. Weight Loss First women participated first in a standard 20-week behavioral weight-loss program and then in a standard 8-week problem-solving skills maintenance module. There was no intervention staff contact during the 12-month follow-up period (6-18 months). Results: As designed, Maintenance First participants lost the same percentage of initial weight during the 6-month intervention period as Weight Loss First participants (M = -8.6%, SD = 5.7, vs. M = -9.1%, SD = 6.9; t = -0.6, p = 0.52). However, Maintenance First participants regained significantly less weight during the 12-month follow-up period (6-18 months) than Weight Loss First participants (M = 3.2 lb, SD = 10.4, vs. M = 7.3 lb, SD = 9.9 [M = 1.4 kg, SD = 4.7, vs. M = 3.3 kg, SD = 4.5]; t = 3.3, p = 0.001, d = 0.4). Conclusion: Learning stability skills before losing weight was successful in helping women to maintain weight loss without intervention staff contact during follow-up. These results can inform the study design of future innovative interventions. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)

Purpose: Rural residents have higher rates of chronic diseases compared to their urban counterparts, and obesity may be a major contributor to this disparity. This study is the first analysis of obesity prevalence in rural and urban adults using body mass index classification with measured height and weight. In addition, demographic, diet, and physical activity correlates of obesity across rural and urban residence are examined. Methods: Analysis of body mass index (BMI), diet, and physical activity from 7,325 urban and 1,490 rural adults in the 2005-2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Findings: The obesity prevalence was 39.6% (SE = 1.5) among rural adults compared to 33.4% (SE = 1.1) among urban adults (P= 0.006). Prevalence of obesity remained significantly higher among rural compared to urban adults controlling for demographic, diet, and physical activity variables (odds ratio = 1.18, P= 0.03). Race/ethnicity and percent kcal from fat were significant correlates of obesity among both rural and urban adults. Being married was associated with obesity only among rural residents, whereas older age, less education, and being inactive was associated with obesity only among urban residents. Conclusions: Obesity is markedly higher among adults from rural versus urban areas of the United States, with estimates that are much higher than the rates suggested by studies with self-reported data. Obesity deserves greater attention in rural America. (Contains 4 tables.)

This article discusses an application of the Lewinian/Kolb experiential learning model in the context of undergraduate participation in the Missouri Community Action Poverty Simulation (CAPS) program. CAPS is designed to simulate common, everyday experiences among people living in poverty as participants take on the roles of family members working to make ends meet. The creators of CAPS emphasize that "CAPS is not a game" but "a unique tool that community action agencies are able to use to educate everyone, from policy makers to community leaders, about the day to day realities of life with a shortage of money and an abundance of stress." The authors facilitated the CAPS program with two large groups of undergraduate students enrolled in sociology, gerontology, and psychology courses at a medium-sized private college in south-central Pennsylvania. The analysis examines the experiential learning outcomes of the students as they reflect on their participation in the simulation. Following participation in CAPS, the students demonstrated an increased awareness of the material conditions of everyday life among families living in poverty. (Contains 2 figures and 2 notes.)

Semantic priming paradigms have been used to investigate semantic knowledge in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). While priming effects produced by prime-target pairs with associative relatedness reflect processes at both lexical and semantic levels, priming effects produced by words that are semantically related but not associated should reflect only semantic activation processes. This study was aimed at further investigating automatic semantic priming effects in AD patients when semantically related concepts with little to no lexical association are used. Twenty patients with mild to moderate AD and 20 matched controls (NCs) performed a lexical decision task on 30 concept pairs (15 in the living and 15 in the non-living domain) in an automatic semantic priming paradigm. In order to investigate the relationship between priming alteration and semantic damage, we chose concepts from a database. This allowed us to quantify semantic indexes relative to the structural representation at the feature level. No priming was found in NCs or mild AD patients, probably because feature similarity was insufficient in the concept pairs used. Similar to the hyperpriming observed in previous studies, the appearance of priming in the moderate AD group suggests early semantic damage in which attribute knowledge is partially affected. Furthermore, the finding that priming was predicted by the level of sharing (in the semantic system) of features common to the two concepts in the pairs indicates that the level of redundancy of attribute information is the main factor responsible for resiliency to neurological damage in AD.

Outcomes and findings from an evidence-based approach to targeting primary school students' developmental reading comprehension levels for effective learning are described. Nineteen schools participated in a literacy assessment project designed to monitor and improve the reading comprehension achievement levels of their students. The project integrated a developmental approach to learning and teaching, information derived from standardised reading comprehension assessments, and professional development for teachers. Reading comprehension achievement across the schools increased at a higher rate than typically expected. Teacher discourse about teaching and learning changed from discrete skill and resource focused, to developmentally focused. The centrality of a professional learning team approach to change for the student, teacher and school is discussed. (Contains 1 table and 3 figures.)

There is now a large body of evidence suggesting that color and photographic detail exert an effect on recognition of visually presented familiar objects. However, an unresolved issue is whether these factors act at the visual, the semantic or lexical level of the recognition process. In the present study, we investigated this issue by having Alzheimer's patients and normal controls name figures in four presentation displays (PDs): black and white and colored line drawings, and black and white and color photographs. We also collected image agreement (IA) values (a measure of the extent to which the presented figure matches the stored structural description of the depicted object) for the same stimuli and compared the effects of PD on IA and naming accuracy. Our results suggest that color acts on naming by assisting semantic processing of the stimuli to be recognized; by contrast, photographic detail seems to benefit visual processing by increasing IA. (Contains 2 figures.)

In the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi civilians have witnessed their country descend into profound and often deadly chaos. HNK and Aunt Najma are two young voices from post-Saddam, post-invasion Iraq who write www-based diaries (blogs) on life in post-invasion Iraq. Through their voices, and via the voices of many other Iraqi bloggers, different fragments of the reality of post-invasion Iraq enter the globalised, unruly, digital spaces of cyberspace and create not only accounts of these realities, but what we will call "digital selves." We will identify and discuss the selves that HNK and Aunt Najma "practise" via the use of Michel Foucault's later work on the care of the self and governmentality; and we suggest that HNK and Aunt Najma's digital diaries (blogs) provide a real-time, unfolding, reflexive, and often interactive window into particular life-worlds in post-invasion Iraq, life-worlds that provide glimpses into what it means to grow up female in post-Saddam Iraq.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a teaching methodology for improving the understanding of ethical decision making. This pedagogical approach is applicable in college courses and in corporate training programs. Design/methodology/approach: Participants are asked to analyze a set of eight ethical dilemmas with differing situational contingencies and to choose from among alternatives for handling the dilemma. Group discussion then focuses on a comparison of participants' choices relative to their personal ethical orientations as measured by a standardized self-report instrument. Findings: The experiences of the authors with this methodology indicates that participants are able to gain a better understanding of the factors, both individual and situational, that frame an ethical dilemma. This methodology can also show how individuals can be influenced to make unethical choices based on the presence of certain contextual factors. Originality/value: This paper describes a novel instructional approach for improving the understanding of the factors that frame and influence ethical decision making. This approach is innovative in that it uses vignettes describing real-life ethical dilemmas in conjunction with an assessment of individual differences in ethical orientation. (Contains 1 table.)

Purpose: To compare the costs of parent-only and family-based group interventions for childhood obesity delivered through Cooperative Extension Services in rural communities. Methods: Ninety-three overweight or obese children (aged 8 to 14 years) and their parent(s) participated in this randomized controlled trial, which included a 4-month intervention and 6-month follow-up. Families were randomized to either a behavioral family-based intervention (n = 33), a behavioral parent-only intervention (n = 34), or a waitlist control condition (n = 26). Only program costs data for the parent-only and family-based programs are reported here (n = 67). Assessments were completed at baseline, post-treatment (month 4) and follow-up (month 10). The primary outcome measures were total program costs and cost per child for the parent-only and family interventions. Findings: Twenty-six families in the parent-only intervention and 24 families in the family intervention completed all 3 assessments. As reported previously, both intervention programs led to significantly greater decreases in weight status relative to the control condition at month 10 follow-up. There was no significant difference in weight status change between the parent-only and family interventions. Total program costs for the parent-only and family interventions were $13,546 and $20,928, respectively. Total cost per child for the parent-only and family interventions were $521 and $872, respectively. Conclusions: Parent-only interventions may be a cost-effective alternative treatment for pediatric obesity, especially for families in medically underserved settings.

A category-specific naming effect penalizing living things has often been reported in patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease (AD) and in other brain damaged populations, while the opposite dissociation (i.e., lower accuracy in naming nonliving than living things) is much rarer. In this study, we investigated whether the use of line drawings (rather than color photographs) in picture-naming tasks could be a relevant factor in the emergence of a category effect penalizing living things and found evidence in favor of this hypothesis. We administered the same naming tasks comprising living and nonliving items to 10 subjects suffering from AD and 10 normal controls. Once the stimuli were line drawings and once color photographs. A reliable Group x Semantic domain interaction, indicating a disproportionate impairment for living things in the AD group, was only found when line drawings were presented. Results are discussed with reference to two competing approaches to category-specificity in brain damaged people. One assumes that category effects are due to the differential involvement of dedicated neural subsystems, the other emphasizes the role of cross domains imbalances in processing demands. We conclude that our findings lead support to the latter approach. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.)

In this article, the authors present a framework for the teaching of conflict management in college courses. The framework describes an experiential learning approach for helping individuals understand the influence of contextual factors in the selection of conflict handling strategy. It also includes a comparison of participants' choice of style, as based on contextual factors, versus their expected choice of conflict handling approach, as based on their primary orientation, as given by a standardized self-report instrument. Under this format, participants were asked to analyze a set of five conflict episodes with differing situational contingencies and to choose action courses from among alternatives for handling the conflict. Group discussion then focused on a comparison of participants' choices of the situationally appropriate or optimal response and their personal conflict-handling orientations. The authors also discuss the conceptual framework guiding the development of the conflict scenarios. (Contains 1 figure.)

A Web site is described that facilitates use of the free computational chemistry software: General Atomic and Molecular Electronic Structure System (GAMESS). Its goal is to provide an opportunity for undergraduate students to perform computational chemistry experiments without the need to purchase expensive software.

Although the theory of evolution is the foundation of modern biology, students too rarely have an opportunity to watch selection operate in natural populations of animals. This lack may be partially responsible for the unfortunate ignorance of many people regarding the significance of evolution in biology. Laboratory exercises that directly study evolutionary processes can help to increase understanding of the principles of evolution. This article describes a laboratory exercise that focuses on the process of sexual selection. In this exercise, students first go into the field to observe and collect soldier beetles. They use observations they make in the field to develop hypotheses about sexual selection, and then they test their own hypotheses by collecting morphological measurements in the lab. Here, the authors describe the procedure used for testing hypothesis: these instructions include collecting observational data that allow students to determine whether female choice is occurring and whether male-male competition is influencing mating patterns. Following these instructions, the authors briefly discuss other hypotheses that might be tested using similar procedures. (Contains 4 figures.)

Analyzes the cost of specialized education for individuals belonging to "non-competing groups." (Contains 17 references.) (PKP)

Frances Mullen was a significant contributor to the development of international school psychology. With Calvin Catterall and others she helped to initiate the international committee that would evolve into the International School Psychology Association. Her life and contributions provide a better understanding of the historical development of school psychology. (Contains 33 references.) (Author)