Hair zinc status and its correlation with height indicator in pre-school and school children from a mixed income, low density (mild) community in southern Ghana

Objectives: To determine and assess the chronic zinc nutritional status of pre-school and school children living in a mixed-income, low-density (mild) community in southern Ghana and determine if zinc deficiency was implicated in growth stunting of the children. Design: Prospective/comparative study. Setting: A cluster of schools, made up of a nursery, two primary schools and two Junior Secondary School pupils living in Kwabenya, a village recently transformed into an urban community. Subjects: Three hundred and fourty four pupils, aged two and half to eighteen years. Main outcome measures: Levels of hair zinc were determined in three hundred and fourty four pupils, aged two and half to eighteen years, using Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer. Age was assessed from birth baptismal certificates while height was determined using stainless steel stadiometer. The socio-economic status of the children was also assessed using pretested, weighted and structured questionnaires. Results: The chronic zinc nutritional status was generally good. Out of 344 pupils, 72% (248/344) had adequate status, while 11% were zinc deficient and 9.5% marginally deficient. Excess zinc status was found in 7.5% (26/344) of the children. It appears that growth stunting was not associated with zinc deficiency neither was zinc status affected by the socio-economic status of the children's families. Conclusion: Nutritional education should be mounted to families of children with deficient, marginally-deficient and excess zinc status and to encourage those with adequate status to maintain their zinc status. East African Medical Journal Vol.81(1) 2004: 42-4

The effect of fertilization, mowing and additional illumination on the structure of a species-rich grassland community

http://www.ester.ee/record=b4338626~S58*es

The choice between allocation priciples

One hundred and ninety participants (95 undergraduates and 95 employees) responded to a factorial survey in which a number of case-based organizational allocation tasks were described. Participants were asked to imagine themselves as employees in fictitious organizations and chose among three allocations of employee development schemes invested by the manager in different work groups. The allocations regarded how such investments should be allocated between two parties. Participants chose twice, once picking the fairest and once the best allocation. One between-subjects factor varied whether the parties represented social (i.e., choosing among allocations between two different work groups) or temporal comparisons (i.e., choosing among allocations between the present and the following year). Another between-subjects factor varied whether participants’ in-group was represented by the parties or not. One allocation maximized the outcome to one party, another maximized the joint outcome received by both parties, and a third provided both parties with equal but lower outcomes. It was predicted that equality, although always deficient to both parties, would be the preferred allocation when parties represented social comparisons and when choices were based on fairness. When parties represented temporal comparisons, and when choices were based on preference, maximizing the joint outcome was hypothesized to be the preferred allocation. Results supported these hypotheses. Against what was predicted, whether the in-group was represented by the parties or not did not moderate the results, indicating that participants’ allocation preferences were not affected by self-interest. The main message is that people make sensible distinctions between what they prefer and what they regard as fair. The results were the same for participating students who imagined themselves as being employees and participants who were true employees, suggesting that no serious threats to external validity are committed when university students are used as participants

Is there a pro-self component behind the prominence effect? Individual resource allocation decisions with communities as potential beneficiaries

An important problem for decision-makers in society deals with the efficient and equitable allocation of scarce resources to individuals and groups. The significance of this problem is rapidly growing since there is a rising demand for scarce resources all over the world. Such resource dilemmas belong to a conceptually broader class of situations known as social dilemmas. In this type of dilemma, individual choices that appear ''rational'' often result in suboptimal group outcomes. In this article we study how people make monetary allocation decisions between the community where they live and a neighbouring community, with the aim of finding out to what extent these decisions are subject to biased over-weighting. The manuscript reports four experiments that deal with the way individuals make such allocation decisions when the potential beneficiaries are such communities. The specific goal of these experiments is to gauge the amount of bias in the weights that people assign to the various beneficiaries. Taken together, the results from all the four experiments suggest that making the gain of the neighbouring community prominent to a higher extent de-biases the outcomes (the prominence effect) compared to when own community gain is made prominent. Place identity is discussed as a potentially important factor in this connection. Hence, it may be argued that there seems to be some kind of a pro-self component that is able to explain a large part of the variance observed for the prominence effect. Connections between such a factor and in-group favouritism are discussed. A strength of the study was that these major results appeared to be quite robust when considered as task effects, as the salience of the manipulated context factors in the studies (in terms of reliable main or interaction effects) did not distort them

Is there a pro-self component behind the prominence effect?

An important problem for decision-makers in society deals with the efficient and equitable allocation of scarce resources to individuals and groups. The significance of this problem is rapidly growing since there is a rising demand for scarce resources all over the world. Such resource dilemmas belong to a conceptually broader class of situations known as social dilemmas. In this type of dilemma, individual choices that appear ‘‘rational’’ often result in suboptimal group outcomes. In this article we study how people make monetary allocation decisions between the community where they live and a neighbouring community, with the aim of finding out to what extent these decisions are subject to biased over-weighting. The manuscript reports four experiments that deal with the way individuals make such allocation decisions when the potential beneficiaries are such communities. The specific goal of these experiments is to gauge the amount of bias in the weights that people assign to the various beneficiaries. Taken together, the results from all the four experiments suggest that making the gain of the neighbouring community prominent to a higher extent de-biases the outcomes (the prominence effect) compared to when own community gain is made prominent. Place identity is discussed as a potentially important factor in this connection. Hence, it may be argued that there seems to be some kind of a pro-self component that is able to explain a large part of the variance observed for the prominence effect. Connections between such a factor and in-group favouritism are discussed. A strength of the study was that these major results appeared to be quite robust when considered as task effects, as the salience of the manipulated context factors in the studies (in terms of reliable main or interaction effects) did not distort them