Children’s Health in a Legal Framework

The interdisciplinary periodical Future of Children has dedicated an issue to children’s health policy. This contribution to the issue maps the legal landscape influencing policy choices. The authors demonstrate that in the U.S. legal system, parents have robust rights, grounded in the Constitution, to make decisions concerning their children’s health and medical treatment. Following from its commitment to parental rights, the system typically assumes the interests of parents and children are aligned, even when that assumption seems questionable. Thus, for example, parents who would limit their children’s access to health care on the basis of the parents’ religious belief have considerable latitude to do so, unless the child’s life is imminently threatened. There are some exceptions to this legal regime. Adolescents have the right to obtain some health services independently; in these contexts, social welfare needs such as pregnancy prevention trump parental rights. Minors also have access to abortion (although this right is more restricted than for adults). Moreover, the state has the power to intervene when parents place their children’s health at risk through abuse or neglect. A hallmark feature of the legal regime based on parental rights is that the state has no affirmative obligation to help parents care for their children’s health needs. This libertarian framing of the family-state relationship has profound implications for the development of public policy. To the extent the state provides support for families and children, it is doing so as a matter of policy choice (as with Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program) and not enforceable legal obligation. The importance of family autonomy thus results in a weak conception of shared responsibility for children. The framework also means that the state often takes a reactive approach to child wellbeing, intervening primarily when families have broken down or parents have seriously defaulted on their duties. Appreciation of the legal framework underscores the need to develop political support for any initiative to improve health services for children. Often, as this article shows, the state intervenes to promote children’s health only in response to compelling social welfare needs such as crime or disease prevention, or to crises in which parents abuse their children or fail to provide adequate care

Class size, pupil attentiveness and peer relations

BACKGROUND: Despite a long-running debate over the effects of class size differences on educational performance there is little evidence on the classroom processes that might be involved. AIMS: The effects of class size differences are examined in relation to social and behavioural adjustment to school, in terms of two dimensions: attentiveness and peer relations. It was predicted that as class size increased there would be more inattentiveness in class and more signs of social difficulties between children in the form of more rejection, asocial, anxious and aggressive behaviour, and less prosocial behaviour. SAMPLES: Data came from a large-scale longitudinal study of children over KS1 (4-7 years). The observation study was based on a subsample of 235 children in 21 small (average 19 children) and 18 large (average 33 children) reception classes (aged 5 years). The PBR sample involved over 5,000. METHODS: There were two complementary methods of data collection: first, a systematic observation study of pre-selected target children in terms of three 'social modes' - when with their teachers, other children and when not interacting - and in terms of work, procedural, social and off-task activities; and, second, a teacher administered Pupil Behaviour Rating (PBR) scale comprising over 50 items rated on a 3-point scale grouped into six 'factors': hyperactive/distractible, aggressive, anxious/ fearful, prosocial, asocial, and excluded. RESULTS: Observations showed that children in large classes were more likely to show off-task behaviour of all kinds, and more likely to interact with their peers in terms of off-task behaviour, social, and also on-task behaviours. Connections between class size and PBR factors were not strong. There was no support for the view that peer relations are better in smaller classes; indeed, there was a slight tendency for worse peer relations, in terms of aggression, asocial and excluded, in the smallest classes. CONCLUSIONS: There was confirmation that children in large classes are more distracted from work and more often off task. The unexpected result, based on teacher ratings, that small classes may lead to less social and more aggressive relations between children is discussed, along with implications for teachers of a tendency for more peer-related contacts in large classes

An overview of the effect of probiotics and exercise on mood and associated health conditions

The present paper provides a review of the current knowledge relating to the health benefits of probiotics, specially focused on the effects they may have together with physical exercise on mood disorders and related chronic medical conditions. With both these conditions being a substantial contributor to the global disease burden any alternative therapy must be considered. Probiotics influence the gut microbiota through a complex network of events which can influence mechanisms leading to development of mood disorders such as depression and anxiety. Similarly, through a complex interaction between psychological and neurobiological mechanisms, exercise has been found to play a key role in mood enhancement

Risk assessment and relationship management: practical approach to supply chain risk management

The literature suggests the need for incorporating the risk construct into the measurement of organisational performance, although few examples are available as to how this might be undertaken in relation to supply chains. A conceptual framework for the development of performance and risk management within the supply chain is evolved from the literature and empirical evidence. The twin levels of dyadic performance/risk management and the management of a portfolio of performance/risks is addressed, employing Agency Theory to guide the analysis. The empirical evidence relates to the downstream management of dealerships by a large multinational organisation. Propositions are derived from the analysis relating to the issues and mechanisms that may be employed to effectively manage a portfolio of supply chain performance and risks

Relationships between class size and teaching: a multi-method analysis of English infant schools

Research and debate on class size differences has focused on relations with achievement, and there is little relevant research on what mediating classroom processes might be involved. In this article we investigate connections between class size and teaching interactions. We adopt a multimethod approach, integrating qualitative in formation from teachers' end-of-year accounts and data from case studies with quantitative information from time-allocation estimates and systematic observations. Our data come from a longitudinal study of two cohorts of more than 10,000 children altogether for 3 years after enrollment in English infant schools (aged 4-7 years). Our results show, overall, that in smaller classes there is more individualized teacher support for learning. We interpret the results in the context of teacher time allocation, research on effective teaching, and post-Vygotskian approaches to teaching. It is suggested that direct models of teacher influences on pupils need to be adapted to allow for class size as a contextual factor that influences both teachers and pupils

Validating Network Value of Influencers by means of Explanations

Recently, there has been significant interest in social influence analysis. One of the central problems in this area is the problem of identifying influencers, such that by convincing these users to perform a certain action (like buying a new product), a large number of other users get influenced to follow the action. The client of such an application is a marketer who would target these influencers for marketing a given new product, say by providing free samples or discounts. It is natural that before committing resources for targeting an influencer the marketer would be interested in validating the influence (or network value) of influencers returned. This requires digging deeper into such analytical questions as: who are their followers, on what actions (or products) they are influential, etc. However, the current approaches to identifying influencers largely work as a black box in this respect. The goal of this paper is to open up the black box, address these questions and provide informative and crisp explanations for validating the network value of influencers. We formulate the problem of providing explanations (called PROXI) as a discrete optimization problem of feature selection. We show that PROXI is not only NP-hard to solve exactly, it is NP-hard to approximate within any reasonable factor. Nevertheless, we show interesting properties of the objective function and develop an intuitive greedy heuristic. We perform detailed experimental analysis on two real world datasets - Twitter and Flixster, and show that our approach is useful in generating concise and insightful explanations of the influence distribution of users and that our greedy algorithm is effective and efficient with respect to several baselines

How Stress Can Reduce Dissipation in Glasses

We propose that stress can decrease the internal friction of amorphous solids, either by increasing the potential barriers of defects, thus reducing their tunneling and thermal activation that produce loss, or by decreasing the coupling between defects and phonons. This stress can be from impurities, atomic bonding constraints, or externally applied stress. Externally applied stress also reduces mechanical loss through dissipation dilution. Our results are consistent with the experiments, and predict that stress could substantially reduce dielectric loss and increase the thermal conductivity.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

The effect of prior upper body exercise on subsequent wingate performance

It has been reported previously that the upper body musculature is continually active during high intensity cycle ergometry. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of prior upper body exercise on subsequent Wingate (WAnT) performance. Eleven recreationally active males (20.8 ± 2.2 yrs; 77.7 ± 12.0 kg;  1.79 ± 0.04 m) completed two trials in a randomised order. In one trial participants completed 2 × 30 s WAnT tests (WAnT1 and WAnT2) with a 6 min recovery period; in the other trial, this protocol was preceded with 4 sets of biceps curls to induce localised arm fatigue. Prior upper body exercise was found to have a statistically significant detrimental effect on peak power output (PPO) during WAnT1 (P < 0.05) but no effect was observed for mean power output (MPO) (P > 0.05). Handgrip (HG) strength was also found to be significantly lower following the upper body exercise. These results demonstrate that the upper body  is meaningfully involved in the generation of leg power during intense cycling

Collaborative technologies, higher order thinking and self-sufficient learning: A case study of adult learners

The inclusion of online elements in learning environments is becoming commonplace in Post Compulsory Education. A variety of research into the value of such elements is available, and this study aims to add further evidence by looking specifically at the use of collaborative technologies such as online discussion forums and wikis to encourage higher order thinking and self-sufficient learning. In particular, the research examines existing pedagogical models including Salmon’s five-stage model, along with other relevant literature. A case study of adult learners in community-based learning centres forms the basis of the research, and as a result of the findings, an arrow model is suggested as a framework for online collaboration that emphasises the learner, mentions pre-course preparation and then includes three main phases of activity: post, interact and critique. This builds on Salmon’s five-stage model and has the benefit of being flexible and responsive, as well as allowing for further development beyond the model, particularly in a blended learning environment

THE IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES ON THE OFF-FARM LABOR SUPPLY OF FARM OPERATORS

In addition to farm work, most farm families have someone working in off-farm employment. The purpose of this paper is to examine if, and how, the change in the nature of government farm programs in the recent past has affected the labor allocation of farm operator households to off-farm employment activities. The ultimate goal of this research is to investigate the potential impacts of decoupled payments on farm output.Labor and Human Capital,