A "Civilised Amateur": Edgar Holt and His Life in Letters and Politics

Now largely forgotten, Edgar George Holt (1904–1988) was a leading journalist and public relations officer in the middle decades of twentieth–century Australia. This article examines his prominent journalistic career in the 1930s and 1940s, his presidency of the Australian Journalists' Association, and his work as the Liberal Party of Australia's public relations officer from 1950 to the early 1970s. The article explores the evolution of his cultural and political views, considering how a literary aesthete and poet came to be at the forefront of the 1944 newspaper strike and then an important player in Australian conservative machine politics and the emerging industry of political public relations.     

Testing telephone and web surveys for studying men's sexual assault perpetration behaviors

Three pilot studies were conducted to obtain information about sexual assault perpetration from adult men in the United States. Each used the same random digit-dial sampling and recruitment strategy. One pilot was administered by telephone and two via the Web. Response rates in all pilots were low. Although results cannot be generalized beyond the sample, of the 97 men who completed the surveys, approximately 40% in each pilot reported some sexual assault behavior, broadly defined. Contrary to expectations, telephone respondents reported a wider range of sexual assault behaviors. Suggestions for improving response rates include offering a choice of participation methods.     

Susceptibility of Current Adaptive Behavior Measures to Feigned Deficits

The current study examined the susceptibility of the Adaptive Behavior Assessment System—2nd edition (ABAS-II; Harrison & Oakland, 2003) and the Scales of Independent Behavior—Revised (S1B-R; Bruininks, Woodcock, Weatherman, & Hill, 1996) to the feigning of adaptive functioning deficits. Using four different instruction sets, the authors evaluated whether the provision of diagnostic information (a form of coaching) improved participants’ ability to simulate adaptive deficits commensurate with a diagnosis of mental retardation. The authors found that the ABAS-II was quite vulnerable to believable manipulation by raters, while the SIB-R was not. In fact, exaggeration on the SIB-R was easily detected regardless of the information provided. Implications regarding the use of these measures in Atkins mental retardation evaluations are discussed.

Using the State for Change: Towards an Effective Labour Government

The capacity of the state to deliver transformative social and economic change appears more limited today than since Labour was last in government. A future Labour government will therefore need to reckon with the challenges this presents when it comes to harnessing the power of the state to distribute power, wealth, and opportunity, effectively. This article considers two aspects of state power. The first is the ability of the state to enforce laws, and in doing so shape social and economic norms. With reference to past successes and failures, there is discussion of how laws and regulations could be made more effective. The second aspect is state intervention in the economy, and the circumstances in which it is possible and desirable to nationalise key industries. The case is made for a thorough assessment of the efficiency and efficacy of such interventions in the economy, especially when weighed against other policy priorities.     

Pubertal Timing Fluctuations across Middle School: Implications for Girls’ Psychological Health

The relative nature of pubertal timing has received little attention in research linking early pubertal development with psychological adjustment. The current study examines the dynamic association between pubertal timing and internalizing symptoms among an urban, ethnically diverse sample of girls (n?=?1,167; 50% Latina, 30% Black/African American, 11% Asian, 9% White). By relying on six waves of data, we detected substantial within-person variability in pubertal timing, which in turn related to fluctuations in depressive symptoms, global self-worth, and social anxiety in multilevel analyses. Within-person changes in the direction of more advanced development compared to peers consistently predicted more depressive symptoms; however, more advanced development was related to lower self-worth only at the beginning of middle school. By the end of middle school, less advanced development predicted social anxiety. Results challenge the notion that pubertal timing is a stable individual characteristic, with implications for studying the psychosocial correlates of pubertal development across multiple years.     

Daily Stress and Use of Aggressive Discipline by Parents during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Journal of Family Violence - To assess the relationship between stress throughout the day and aggressive discipline practices by parents during COVID-19 stay at home orders. For this study,...     

The importance of thin layer chromatography and UV microspectrophotometry in the analysis of reactive dyes released from wool and cotton fibers

Samples of reactively-dyed wool and cotton were obtained from a range of dye manufacturers, dye distributors and the Forensic Science Service (FSS) Fibre Data Collection. The wool fibers were red in color and had previously been compared using comparison microscopy (CM), visible range microspectrophotometry (VS) and thin layer chromatography (TLC). The cotton fibers were blue and black in color and had not been previously compared. Red, blue and black fibers were chosen because they are often encountered in casework. The usage of reactive dyes to color fibers has increased over the last 10-15 years and these are often seen in casework. Before techniques were available that allowed reactively-dyed fibers to be compared using TLC only CM and microspectrophotometry were routinely carried out. Many laboratories, who had a microspectrophotometer, only had a visible range instrument. It was therefore important to see which techniques provide additional information, that gives greater individuality to fibers, to that obtained from CM. The color was released from the wool and cotton fibres using alkaline hydrolysis and a cellulase enzyme respectively. Many of the red wool samples were differentiated from each other using CM. More differentiation was found using VS and even more when ultraviolet range microspectrophotometry (UV) or TLC was used. Two samples could only be differentiated using TLC because CM, VS and UV failed to separate them. The black cotton samples were predominately differentiated using CM but VS allowed for further differentiation. With the samples used in this project UV and TLC failed to separate the samples further. The blue cotton samples benefited from the use of CM, VS and either UV or TLC to reduce the number of matching pairs. All techniques aided differentiation although with this set TLC and UV proved to be complementary techniques. Results demonstrate that TLC and UV both yield important information over and above that obtained from CM and VS. Although in some parts of the project TLC and UV are complementary if the concentration of the dye in the fiber is not sufficient for TLC or the scientist doesn't wish to 'destroy' the fiber UV would be of more use than TLC.     

Servicing “intimate publics”: Johannesburg and Baltimore department stores in the 1960s

ABSTRACT

Based on archival and interview research in the US and South Africa, this paper examines two moments of public debate around access to the space of department stores in Johannesburg and in Baltimore in the 1960s. In Baltimore, African American students organized a sit-in protest at lunch counters and restaurants of major department stores to contest not being served. In Johannesburg, the National Union of Distributive Workers (NUDW), campaigned against job reservation in service and clerical work in stores in Johannesburg to argue for black workers’ access to employment. The paper contends that as “intimate publics,” department stores offer a site to compare the affective articulations of race, class, and gender in both places, which track differing political imaginaries at a moment when consumption was expanding and workforces were changing.     

Geopolitics and the Regulation of Economic Life

The nation‐state should be a central unit of analysis for research into international and transnational regulation. Considering the research implications of this, we focus on the emergence stage of the regulatory process. We discuss how knowledge is contested in discussions between states over regulatory problems. We argue that a range of factors, not just a narrowly conceived national interest, influence their incentive to cooperate. Research is needed into whether regulatory problems at this level pose new or additional issues for states. Other stages of the regulatory process need to be similarly examined, likewise the interaction between the stages themselves.