Toxicologic findings in the USS Iowa disaster.

The toxicologic results from the 47 victims of the explosion on the USS Iowa are presented. Good correlation between carboxyhemoglobin saturations and cause of death was found. There were no correlations between blood cyanide concentrations and causes of death. Volatile analysis suggested postmortem ethanol production rather than antemortem ethanol ingestion. No drugs except nicotine were detected in any of the victims.     

Ten-Year outcome in adolescent onset anorexia nervosa

The purpose of the present study was to characterize the psychopathology measured ten years posttreatment in 51 women who had an adolescent onset of anorexia nervosa. Outcome status was determined using the modified categories of Ratnasuriya et al.[1991]. Anorexia Nervosa: Outcome and Prognostic Factors After 20 Years, British Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 158, pp. 495–502). Psychopathology was assessed using a number of self-report questionnaires: Beck Depression Inventory, Hamilton Depression Inventory, Leyton Obsessionality Inventory, Social Adjustment Scale, and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Within this adolescent age of onset sample of anorexia nervosa, age of onset was not, in and of itself, associated with increased psychopathology at follow-up. Rather, severity of eating disorder outcome was associated with general psychopathology, with patients in the poor outcome group displaying elevations on several of the measures of psychopathology.Received Ph.D. in psychology from Rutgers Univesity. Major research interests are in eating behavior and attitudes toward foods in anorexia and bulimia nervosa, preoccupations and rituals associated with eating disorders, and comorbidity and eating disorders.Received M.D. from the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey. Research interests are in eating disorders.Received M.D. from University of Minnesota Medical School-Minneapolis, MN. Major research interests are anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders.Received M.D. from the University of Iowa—Iowa City. Research interests are in eating disorders.     

Applying a Dynamic Performance Management Framework to Wicked Issues: How Coproduction Helps to Transform Young People’s Services in Surrey County Council,UK

ABSTRACT

This article explores how a dynamic performance management (DPM) approach can give policy makers a more integrated, time-related understanding of how to address wicked problems successfully. The article highlights how an outcome-based approach to solving wicked policy problems has to balance three very contrasting objectives of stakeholders in the policy making process – improving service quality, improving quality of life outcomes and improving conformity to the principles of public governance. Simultaneous achievement of these three objectives may not be feasible, as they may form an interactive dynamic system. However the balancing act between them may be achieved by the use of DPM. Policy insights from this novel approach are illustrated through a case study of a highly successful co-production intervention to help young people with multiple disadvantages in Surrey, UK. The implications of DPM are that policy development needs to accept the important roles of emergent strategy and learning mechanisms, rather than attempting ‘blueprint’ strategic planning and control mechanisms. Some expectations about the results may indeed be justifiable in particular policy systems, as clustering of quality of life outcomes and outcomes in the achievement of governance principles is likely, because behaviours are strongly inter-related. However, this clustering can never be taken for granted but must be tested in each specific policy context. Undertaking simulations with the model and recalibrating it through time, as experience builds up, may allow learning in relation to overcoming barriers to achieving outcomes in the system.     

Schönheitschirurgie-Patientinnen als „ugly dopes“? Zur Medialität der Entscheidungsfindung für plastisch-chirurgische Eingriffe

The mass media’s view on the current practices of aesthetic surgery is typically negotiated in the social sciences within the realm of ideology critique: The claim is that the mass media culture industry encourages particularly female consumers to undergo surgical interventions in order to optimize their body and thus instructs them to better market themselves (their entrepreneurial self). Furthermore, this process is not sufficiently reflected by the patients; according to the discourse in social science, they mutate to “ugly dopes” who are not truly aware of the conditions to which their decision for physical optimization is subject. This paper proposes a different reading of the mediality of plastic surgery, based on an empirical analysis of interviews with plastic surgery patients. The media certainly play a crucial role as carriers of format templates for body images, but they also are being translated in particular practical contexts. There is no continuum between the body images that are displayed by the media and their individual acquirement. The medial format templates must be actively incorporated into the conflictual everyday contexts of decision making. The effect of the media is therefore accounted for by their connectivity to life-world and has a permanent, continuous irritation as a result, caused by body images.     

Relationship of life events and social support with psychological dysfunction among adolescents

Relationships among major life events, perceived social support, and psychological disorder were assessed in a sample of older adolescents. Negative life events and satisfaction with social support were significantly and independently related to a range of psychological symptoms. Further, the relationship between negative events and disorder was moderated by gender, the types of events experienced, and anticipated change in the psychosocial environment. The importance of the use of standardized and psychometrically sound measures of life events, social support, and psychological disorder is highlighted.Received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1980. An assistant professor, he is currently investigating stress and coping among children and adolescents.Received her Ph.D. from the University of Vermont in 1985. An assistant professor, she is currently studying social support.Received Ed. M. from Harvard Universtiy. He is a doctoral student in clinical psychology interested in the role of social support in coping with stress during adolescence.Received her BA from the University of Vermont. She is a doctoral student in clinical psychology.     

Political tolerance and stages of moral development: A conceptual and empirical alternative

The latest revisionism in the study of political tolerance has produced some of the most provocative well-designed research in the field of political science. In particular, the work by Sullivan, Piereson, and Marcus offers one of the most fully specified and rigorously executed models of public opinion formation. Yet this contemporary revisionism is flawed. This paper argues that these researchers misconceptualize tolerance, that this misconception contaminates their measurement process, that the resulting model is misspecified, and that the political conclusions offered are not supported in fact or principle. More generally this paper argues that the field of public opinion as a whole has been trapped by limited conceptions about the nature of cognitive constraint and by simplistic and inadequate methods for measuring and identifying this constraint. To remedy this, a developmental measure of cognitive moral stages is fashioned along lines suggested by Kohlberg. This measure satisfies a number of tests for both validity and reliability and appears to be one of the most powerful predictors of tolerance and intolerance — if not the most powerful single predictor.