An autoethnography of hunting

To better understand why we do harm by killing and eating nonhuman animals, we engaged in autoethnography. We used reflections on our harmful behavior to understand harmful behavior more generally. Our method first and foremost was to be as honest as we know how to be. The process of reflecting on our behavior had us moving through a series of questions that organize the essay. We also referred to scholarly literature on violence and on hunting to challenge our thoughts. In this way we arrived at insights on aspects of doing harm, including the role of positioning the target in a certain way; not thinking about the harm and the institutional supports for not thinking; the particular lure of power through killing; and the problematic indictment of hunting by meat-eaters.     

The distribution of annual and long-run U.S. earnings, 1981-2004

Numerous authors have presented evidence of increased dispersion in the distribution of annual earnings in the United States from the late 1970s through 2004 or later. However, the dispersion of long-run earnings measured over many years has received relatively little attention because of the limited availability of appropriate data. This article uses the Social Security Administration's Continuous Work History Sample, which documents the earnings histories of 3.3 million workers, to examine changes in both the annual and the long-run distributions of earnings during 1981-2004 for men and women. For men, the results indicate an increase in long-run earnings inequality of roughly the same magnitude as the trend seen in annual earnings dispersion, but there has been very little increase in the dispersion of long-run earnings among women. If calculations are restricted to a sample of women who work every year of the observation period, a trend of increased earnings dispersion emerges, but much less so than that observed for men.     

Personality and Political Discussion

Political discussion matters for a wide array of political phenomena such as attitude formation, electoral choice, other forms of participation, levels of political expertise, and tolerance. Thus far, research on the underpinnings of political discussion has focused on political, social, and contextual forces. We expand upon this existing research by examining how individual personality traits influence patterns of political discussion. Drawing on data from two surveys we investigate how personality traits influence the context in which citizens discuss politics, the nature of the relationship between individuals and their discussion partners, and the influence discussion partners have on respondents’ views. We find a number of personality effects and our results highlight the importance of accounting for individual predispositions in the study of political discussion.     

The Family Antecedents and the Subsequent Outcomes of Early Puberty

The purpose of this study was to examine both the family antecedents and the outcomes of early puberty, with a particular focus on factors related to family socioeconomic status (SES). The study employed a comprehensive measurement of pubertal development and longitudinal data from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. The sample (N = 8,440; 49% girls) included four cohorts of children who were followed biennially for 10 years, starting from age 4–11 to 14–21 years. Data were drawn at different years of age from these cohorts of children. Girls whose fathers were unemployed were more likely to experience early puberty than those whose fathers were employed. For boys, those living with fathers who had not finished secondary school were more likely to experience early puberty. Early maturing girls tended to engage in smoking and drinking at an earlier age compared with their peers. These findings provide support for psychosocial acceleration theory and suggest that different aspects of low family SES may act as a psychosocial stress for early pubertal maturation in boys versus girls, which may lead to engagement in drinking and smoking at a younger age, at least for girls.     

SURVIVING BENCH STRESS

The article presents a discussion of judicial stress, along with proposed solutions. The authors gathered information on the topic of judicial stress from judges via a survey and attendance at two Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) conventions. Some of the daily stressors endorsed by judges included endless caseloads, severe time limitations, social isolation, lack of privacy, and the weight of deciding the fates of others. It is important for our judges to be provided with ways of relieving and preventing burnout and stress. Proposed bench stress solutions include incorporating the Psychologist Advocate Program into the judicial system and creating specific guidelines for judges to take sabbaticals, which will serve to enhance our judicial system and the entire community.     

The complications of controlling agency time discretion: FDA review deadlines and postmarket drug safety

Public agencies have discretion on the time domain, and politicians deploy numerous policy instruments to constrain it. Yet little is known about how administrative procedures that affect timing also affect the quality of agency decisions. We examine whether administrative deadlines shape decision timing and the observed quality of decisions. Using a unique and rich dataset of FDA drug approvals that allows us to examine decision timing and quality, we find that this administrative tool induces a piling of decisions before deadlines, and that these “just-before-deadline” approvals are linked with higher rates of postmarket safety problems (market withdrawals, severe safety warnings, safety alerts). Examination of data from FDA advisory committees suggests that the deadlines may impede quality by impairing late-stage deliberation and agency risk communication. Our results both support and challenge reigning theories about administrative procedures, suggesting they embody expected control-expertise trade-offs, but may also create unanticipated constituency losses.     

Fracture patterns on the infant porcine skull following severe blunt impact

The objective of this study was to document patterns of fracture on infant porcine skulls aged 2-28 days (n = 57) because of a single, high energy blunt impact to the parietal bone with rigid (nondeformable) and compliant (deformable) interfaces. Fracture patterns were mapped using Geographic Information System software. For the same generated impact force, the rigid interface produced more fractures than the compliant interface for all ages. This study also showed that this increased level of impact energy versus an earlier study using a lower energy resulted in new sites of fracture initiation and also caused previously defined fractures that propagate into an adjacent bone. Several unique characteristics of bone and diastatic fracture were documented as a function of specimen age, impact energy, and interface. These data describe some baseline characteristics of skull fracture using an animal model that may help guide future studies from forensic case files.