The Color of Kinship

This Article addresses the need for family law scholarship that better theorizes and grapples with how race informs American life in the 21st Century. Family law scholars have been instrumental in documenting and advocating for recognition of the “new kinship”—familial relationships and affective ties forged outside of marriage and amidst dramatic demographic shifts. In doing so, though, they have largely ignored race, focusing instead on matters such as gender or class. The assumption is that kinship is raceneutral. But, in fact, kinship has a color. Part II explores this reality by analyzing Cramblett v. Midwest Sperm Banks, LLC, a case involving a lesbian mother who filed a wrongful birth suit when the insemination process she underwent resulted not in the white baby desired, but a child who is partially black. Part III explains how the colorblind approach that informs much of family law scholarship undermines the ability of scholars in this area both to interrogate cases like Cramblett and to offer meaningful solutions to the problems that families confront. Part IV advocates for a new approach to issues of family and race, including whiteness. Mapping a research agenda and alternative vision for family law scholarship, this article urges greater attention to the ways in which race informs the functioning of all families and intersects with issues like sexual orientation and class. This article also makes the case that family law scholars can advance the national debate about race and inequality in the United States by offering insights into the ways in which family law systems and policies shape notions of race and structure inequality across a range of areas

Family Preservation Research: Where We\u27ve Been, Where We Should Be Going

Although the literature has provided many critiques of research done on family preservation programs, these critiques have usually been limited to the studies \u27 assumptions, approach, or methodology. Because of the nature of these critiques, suggestions for future research in this field of practice have been scattered throughout the literature and have not benefitted from a wider historical perspective. This paper examines the historical evolution of family preservation studies in child welfare and suggests future directions for research in the field. Among the suggestions the authors posit are (1) research questions should be framed by what we know about improvements in the lives of families and children served by family preservation programs; (2) future explorations should include areas that have received relatively little attention in current research, including the impact of organizational conditions on service fidelity and worker performance; (3) newer treatment models, particularly those that provide both intensive services during a crisis period and less intensive services for maintenance, should be tested; (4) data collection points in longitudinal studies should be guided by theory, and measures should change over time to reflect the theoretically expected changes in families; (5) complex measures of placement prevention and other measures that capture changes in family functioning, child well-being, and child safety, should be utilized to obtain a full picture of program effects; and (6) multiple informants should be used to provide data about program effectiveness. In addition, the authors will argue that the field should carefully consider the amount of change that should be expected from the service models delivered

Attack of the Clones: Legislative Approaches to Human Cloning in the United States

The legal concerns involving the application of cloning technology to humans should be of utmost concern, as the area is extremely complex. Cloning could potentially have great benefits or disastrous effects. Lawmakers have been careful to make certain that the legislation passed is comprehensive and useful for regulation of the ever-changing field of cloning. From debates on whether reproductive or therapeutic cloning should be permitted or banned, to concerns as to who has jurisdiction over cloning, the battle to develop cloning legislation has been difficult. However, this iBrief argues that the currently-proposed federal legislation is constitutional

Attack of the Clones: Legislative Approaches to Human Cloning in the United States

The legal concerns involving the application of cloning technology to humans should be of utmost concern, as the area is extremely complex. Cloning could potentially have great benefits or disastrous effects. Lawmakers have been careful to make certain that the legislation passed is comprehensive and useful for regulation of the ever-changing field of cloning. From debates on whether reproductive or therapeutic cloning should be permitted or banned, to concerns as to who has jurisdiction over cloning, the battle to develop cloning legislation has been difficult. However, this iBrief argues that the currently-proposed federal legislation is constitutional

The impact of stress on financial decision-making varies as a function of depression and anxiety symptoms.

Stress can precipitate the onset of mood and anxiety disorders. This may occur, at least in part, via a modulatory effect of stress on decision-making. Some individuals are, however, more resilient to the effects of stress than others. The mechanisms underlying such vulnerability differences are nevertheless unknown. In this study we attempted to begin quantifying individual differences in vulnerability by exploring the effect of experimentally induced stress on decision-making. The threat of unpredictable shock was used to induce stress in healthy volunteers (N = 47) using a within-subjects, within-session design, and its impact on a financial decision-making task (the Iowa Gambling Task) was assessed alongside anxious and depressive symptomatology. As expected, participants learned to select advantageous decks and avoid disadvantageous decks. Importantly, we found that stress provoked a pattern of harm-avoidant behaviour (decreased selection of disadvantageous decks) in individuals with low levels of trait anxiety. By contrast, individuals with high trait anxiety demonstrated the opposite pattern: stress-induced risk-seeking (increased selection of disadvantageous decks). These contrasting influences of stress depending on mood and anxiety symptoms might provide insight into vulnerability to common mental illness. In particular, we speculate that those who adopt a more harm-avoidant strategy may be better able to regulate their exposure to further environmental stress, reducing their susceptibility to mood and anxiety disorders

Modeling economic systems as locally-constructive sequential games

Real-world economies are open-ended dynamic systems consisting of heterogeneous interacting participants. Human participants are decision-makers who strategically take into account the past actions and potential future actions of other participants. All participants are forced to be locally constructive, meaning their actions at any given time must be based on their local states; and participant actions at any given time affect future local states. Taken together, these essential properties imply real-world economies are locally-constructive sequential games. This paper discusses a modeling approach, Agent-based Computational Economics, that permits researchers to study economic systems from this point of view. ACE modeling principles and objectives are first concisely presented and explained. The remainder of the paper then highlights challenging issues and edgier explorations that ACE researchers are currently pursuing

Foodplant Processing Adaptations in Four \u3ci\u3eHyalophora\u3c/i\u3e Species (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae): Regional and Taxonomic Specialization

To determine whether local populations of four Hyalophora species (Lepidoptera: Satumiidae) had improved survival or were physiologically adapted for rapid and/or efficient growth on their local hosts, a series of larval feeding studies were conducted using gravimetric techniques on several host plant species. Significantly better survival and growth performances were observed for H. columbia (a tamarack specialist) on its host, Larix laricina. Similarly, H. gloveri had the best growth performance on Elaeagnus angustifolia (its favorite) as did certain sympatric populations of H. cecropia on black cherry, Prunus serotina. Hyalophora gloveri and H. columbia are largely sympatric with Betula papyrifera and perform better than their allopatric congeners H. cecropia in the east and H. euryalus in the west. While survival of the tamarack specialist was poor, all three of the other North American Hyalophora species survived and grew very well on choke cherry, Prunus virginiana, which is sympatric with all four Hyalophora species. The extent to which these are genetically based adaptations is not known, nor are the specific mechanisms of biochemical adaptation involved in these differential performances of larvae

New Strategies for Latino Voter Mobilization: The Nevada Democratic Caucus as a Case Study

Describes the 2008 Democratic caucus in Nevada with a focus on the large Hispanic/Latino population. Reviews earlier efforts to raise historically low voter participation rates and the role of the media and suggests new models for voter mobilization

Some of Piaget's questions on moral judgment applied to some children in American schools

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit