Positive practices : solution-focused and narrative therapeutic techniques with children with sexually harmful behaviours

This article explores the use of solution-focused and Narrative Therapeutic approaches with a boy who had sexually harmful behaviours. The paper will highlight the practical challenges of working with someone who is 'problem-saturated' through institutionalisation and who is also subjected to powerful discourses claiming the 'truth' about him. The use of solution-focused and Narrative Therapeutic principles and approaches will be demonstrated in the work described, in a way that allows the reader to reflect on how these may differ from modernist understandings and responses to this behaviour

Solar cycle variation of the statistical distribution of the solar wind ε parameter and its constituent variables

We use 20 years of Wind solar wind observations to investigate the solar cycle variation of the solar wind driving of the magnetosphere. For the first time, we use generalized quantile-quantile plots to compare the statistical distribution of four commonly used solar wind coupling parameters, Poynting flux, B 2, the ε parameter, and vB ,between the maxima and minima of solar cycles 23 and 24. We find the distribution is multicomponent and has the same functional form at all solar cycle phases; the change in distribution is captured by a simple transformation of variables for each component. The ε parameter is less sensitive than its constituent variables to changes in the distribution of extreme values between successive solar maxima. The quiet minimum of cycle 23 manifests only in lower extreme values, while cycle 24 was less active across the full distribution range

HIPASS High-Velocity Clouds: Properties of the Compact and Extended Populations

A catalog of Southern anomalous-velocity HI clouds at Decl. < +2 deg is presented, based on data from the HI Parkes All-Sky Survey (HIPASS). The improved sensitivity (5sigma: T_B = 0.04 K) and resolution (15.5') of the HIPASS data results in a substantial increase in the number of individual clouds (1956, as well as 41 galaxies) compared to previous surveys. Most high-velocity emission features, HVCs, have a filamentary morphology and are loosely organized into large complexes extending over tens of degrees. In addition, 179 compact and isolated anomalous-velocity objects, CHVCs, are identified based on their size and degree of isolation. 25% of the CHVCs originally classified by Braun & Burton (1999) are reclassified. Both the entire population of high-velocity emission features and the CHVCs alone have typical HI masses of ~ 4.5 D(kpc)^2 solar masses and have similar slopes for their column density and flux distributions. On the other hand, the CHVCs appear to be clustered and the population can be broken up into three spatially distinct groups, while the entire population of clouds is more uniformly distributed with a significant percentage aligned with the Magellanic Stream. The median velocities are V_GSR = -38 km/s for the CHVCs and -30 km/s for all of the anomalous-velocity clouds. Based on the catalog sizes, high-velocity features cover 19% of the southern sky and CHVCs cover 1%. (abridged)Comment: 32 pages, 26 figures in gif format, 2 ascii tables, to appear in the Jan 2002 issue of The Astronomical Journal, high resolution version available at http://origins.Colorado.EDU/~mputman/pubs.htm

What Do Unions Do for Economic Performance?

Twenty years have passed since Freeman and Medoff's What Do Unions Do? This essay assesses their analysis of how unions in the U.S. private sector affect economic performance - productivity, profitability, investment, and growth. Freeman and Medoff are clearly correct that union productivity effects vary substantially across workplaces. Their conclusion that union effects are on average positive and substantial cannot be sustained, subsequent evidence suggesting an average union productivity effect near zero. Their speculation that productivity effects are larger in more competitive environments appears to hold up, although more evidence is needed. Subsequent literature continues to find unions associated with lower profitability, as noted by Freeman and Medoff. Unions are found to tax returns stemming from market power, but industry concentration is not the source of such returns. Rather, unions capture firm quasi-rents arising from long-lived tangible and intangible capital and from firm-specific advantages. Lower profits and the union tax on asset returns leads to reduced investment and, subsequently, lower employment and productivity growth. There is little evidence that unionization leads to higher rates of business failure. Given the decline in U.S. private sector unionism, I explore avenues through which individual and collective voice might be enhanced, focusing on labor law and workplace governance defaults. Substantial enhancement of voice requires change in the nonunion sector and employer as well as worker initiatives. It is unclear whether labor unions would be revitalized or further marginalized by such an evolution

The Interstellar Environment of our Galaxy

We review the current knowledge and understanding of the interstellar medium of our galaxy. We first present each of the three basic constituents - ordinary matter, cosmic rays, and magnetic fields - of the interstellar medium, laying emphasis on their physical and chemical properties inferred from a broad range of observations. We then position the different interstellar constituents, both with respect to each other and with respect to stars, within the general galactic ecosystem.Comment: 39 pages, 12 figures (including 3 figures in 2 parts

Connecting research and practice in TESOL: a community of practice perspective

In line with a growing interest in teacher research engagement in second language education, this article is an attempt to shed light on teachers’ views on the relationship between teaching and practice. The data comprise semi-structured interviews with 20 teachers in England, examining their views about the divide between research and practice in their field, the reasons for the persistence of the divide between the two and their suggestions on how to bridge it. Wenger’s (1998) Community of Practice (CoP) is used as a conceptual framework to analyse and interpret the data. The analysis indicates that teacher experience, learning and ownership of knowledge emerging from participation in their CoP are key players in teachers’ professional practice and in the development of teacher identity. The participants construe the divide in the light of the differences they perceive between teaching and research as two different CoPs, and attribute the divide to the limited mutual engagement, absence of a joint enterprise and lack of a shared repertoire between them. Boundary encounters, institutionalised brokering and a more research-oriented teacher education provision are some of the suggestions for bringing the two communities together

Polyphenol-rich fruits attenuate impaired endothelial function induced by glucose and free fatty acids in vitro in human endothelial cells

Elevated concentrations of plasma glucose and free fatty acids (FFA) are associated with impaired endothelial function increasing risk of cardiovascular diseases. Previous studies suggested that fruits rich in polyphenolic compounds modulate endothelial cell migration and capillary-like tube formation via a redox-sensitive mechanism. We hypothesized that polyphenol-rich extracts of strawberry (SB) and wild blueberry (WB) would attenuate relatively high concentrations of glucose and/or FFA–mediated impaired cell migration and capillary-like tube formation in vitro in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs). HUVECs treated with high FFA and combinations of glucose and FFA showed significantly reduced cell migration and capillary-like tube formation compared to the PBS control (p<0.05). However, HUVEC pre-treated with SB or WB extracts significantly increased cell migration and capillary-like tube formation in cells treated with FFA or a combination of FFA and glucose compared to cells exposed to the same nutrients/combinations alone. The results from this study suggest that berry fruits may play a role in promoting cardiovascular health especially in individuals with high blood glucose and/or FFA levels