Dreams of Bicycles and Baseball

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. It\u27s 7:30 p.m. and I sit on the couch of my cold, weather-beaten trailer with my peanut butter and jelly sandwich in hand, and Joey, my kid brother, sitting at my feet. It\u27s March and our parents died last December, right before the holidays\u27 They were out Christmas shopping for Joey\u27s big gift. They found his new green and blue mountain bike tangled in the mess, which later, they confirmed was their car. Life just hasn\u27t been the same without extra laughs and hugs. Somehow, Joey has been handling it better; he has baseball to keep his mind busy

Task Persistence: A Potential Mediator of the Income-Achievement Gap

Background: The pervasive gap in achievement among impoverished children has been investigated primarily in terms of parental investments, specifically parent to child speech and other forms of cognitive stimulation (e.g., toys, print materials). This research extends that literature by considering the role of a non-cognitive factor, namely task persistence, in the income-achievement gap. Using task persistence as the hypothesized mediator, duration of childhood in poverty is used to predict two educational variables - perceived academic competence and educational attainment. Although bivariate relationships between each of the variables have been demonstrated in past research, a full model linking task persistence with the income-achievement gap has not been investigated thus far. Methods: Using multiple waves of longitudinal data, duration of childhood poverty (ages 0-9) is used to predict both perceived academic competence (age 17) and educational attainment (age 23) with task persistence (average of ages 9, 13, 17) as a mediator. Results: With task persistence included in each model, the relationships between duration of childhood in poverty and both perceived academic competence and educational attainment are significantly reduced, confirming a mediational influence of task persistence. Conclusions: As hypothesized, task persistence statistically mediates the relationship between duration of childhood in poverty and educational outcomes. The implications of these findings on school success and intergenerational poverty are addressed, as well as suggestions for future research

The ethical infrastructure of legal practice in larger law firms: values, policy and behaviour

The article examines the impact of the cultures and organisational structures of large law firms on individual lawyers' ethics. The paper suggests that large law firms in Australia should consciously design and implement 'ethical infrastructures' to both counteract pressures for misbehaviour and positively promote ethical behaviour and discussion. The paper goes on to explain what implementing ethical infrastructures in law firms could and should mean by reference to what Australian law firms are already doing and US innovations in this area. Finally, the paper warns that the 'ethical infrastructure' of a firm should not be seen merely as the formal ethics policies explicitly enunciated by management. Formal and legalistic ethical infrastructures that fail to support or encourage the development of individual lawyers' awareness oftheir own ethical values and ethical judgment in practice will be useless

Superb Fairy-Wren (Malurus cyaneus) Sons and Daughters Acquire Song Elements of Mothers and Social Fathers

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.Birdsong is regarded as a classic example of a sexually-selected trait and has been primarily studied in systems with male song. Complex solo female song is emerging from the shadows of overlooked phenomena. In males, rearing conditions affect male song complexity, and males with complex songs are often more successful at mate attraction and territorial defense. Little is known about the ontogeny or function of complex female song. Here we examine song elements in fledgling superb fairy-wrens (Malurus cyaneus) in relation to the song elements of adult tutors. Male and female superb fairy-wrens produce solo song year-round to defend a territory. We ask if sons and daughters acquire song elements from sex-specific vocal tutors. We found that sons and daughters produced the song elements of their mothers and social fathers, and that sons and daughters had comparable song element repertoires at age 7–10 weeks. We conclude that sons and daughters increase their song element repertoire when vocally imitating elements from several vocal tutors, and that both sexes acquire elements from male and female vocal tutors in this system

Rural Farming Community Climate Change Acceptance: Impact of Science and Goverment Credibility

Independent research of Western Australian rural people’s attitudes to climate change and influences on their attitudes offered a preliminary assessment of the WA rural sector’s understanding of climate change and insights into potential barriers to communication. Of the farmers surveyed (N=255) only a third (33%) reported to the researchers they agreed climate change was occurring and just 19% believed climate change was human induced. Over half (52%) were uncertain whether human-induced climate change was occurring and only 31% thought climate change represented a major threat to the future of their farm businesses. Results also showed that only 33% of all respondents (N =411) found climate change information easy to understand. In addition, results indicated that generally respondents had concerns with the credibility of science and low levels of trust in government, which contributed to their attitudes to climate change.These results suggested the barriers to climate change communication resided with the very structures that sought to communicate with rural people and were embedded in the comprehensibility, relevancy and saliency of climate change information. The results indicated that science and government may need to consider utilising alternative strategies to distribute climate change knowledge within the rural sector. The results suggest that a better approach to distributing climate change information would be to frame the information within the local socio-cultural, economic and biophysical environment of the people it was intended to influence

Global shifts in mammalian population trends reveal key predictors of virus spillover risk.

Emerging infectious diseases in humans are frequently caused by pathogens originating from animal hosts, and zoonotic disease outbreaks present a major challenge to global health. To investigate drivers of virus spillover, we evaluated the number of viruses mammalian species have shared with humans. We discovered that the number of zoonotic viruses detected in mammalian species scales positively with global species abundance, suggesting that virus transmission risk has been highest from animal species that have increased in abundance and even expanded their range by adapting to human-dominated landscapes. Domesticated species, primates and bats were identified as having more zoonotic viruses than other species. Among threatened wildlife species, those with population reductions owing to exploitation and loss of habitat shared more viruses with humans. Exploitation of wildlife through hunting and trade facilitates close contact between wildlife and humans, and our findings provide further evidence that exploitation, as well as anthropogenic activities that have caused losses in wildlife habitat quality, have increased opportunities for animal-human interactions and facilitated zoonotic disease transmission. Our study provides new evidence for assessing spillover risk from mammalian species and highlights convergent processes whereby the causes of wildlife population declines have facilitated the transmission of animal viruses to humans