Social Quality and Precarity: Approaching New Patterns of Societal (Dis)Integration

The main issue of this article is to discuss the question of ‘precarity’ in the context of the theory of social quality (see Beck et al, 2001), with which to pave the way for developing further the theoretical foundation of precarity. Societal practice is the main challenge this concept tries to address. However, the danger is to introduce a new term, yet maintaining a discussion on traditional problems as poverty, marginalisation and exclusion. Our thesis is that these problems, far from being sufficiently tackled, are currently going along with and being adjunct to another challenge, namely precarity. Although the ‘old problems’ are not problems of individuals and expression of their ‘personal failure’, precarity – seen in the context of the theory of social quality – means a new stage of socialisation of the problems by further individualisation of the victims. In principle, we can say that this understanding of precarity is an expression of a further erosion of society, characterising especially periods of transformation of economic systems.Social Quality; Precarity; Social Exclusion; Social Disintegration; Social Policy

Use made of wild legume relatives in breeding

Presently vast genetic resources are available for improvement of the main crops used by humans and animals. The ex-situ collections safeguard those resources collected in the past, although not all collections are safe even today as far as personnel and facilities are concerned. Use of in-situ collections is feasible but meeting with obstacles. Free accessibility is not as straightforward as has been in the past. Apart from the cultivated accessions of crops, wild relatives have always attracted breeders, for these contribute many useful traits. Their genetic background, particularly of species in the secondary or tertiary genepool, makes transfer difficult requiring new techniques to effectuate gene transfers. There have been many attempts and evaluation and conservation of wild relatives is usually a task taken up by most genebanks. Genetic modification, the modern way of transferring wanted genes, has barely begun for the legume food crops. This paper presents some examples of successful use made of wild relatives of chickpea, pigeonpea, fababean and lentil for breeding during the past decenni

Review of \u3cem\u3eSocial Work Diagnosis in Contemporary Practice.\u3c/em\u3e Francis J. Turner (Ed.). Reviewed by William M. Maesen.

Book review of Francis J. Turner (Ed.), Social Work Diagnosis in Contemporary Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. $65.00 hardcover

A new way of editing a flora

Modern electronic tools have become common tools of most scientists. Flora writers and other botanists producing large manuscripts with a certain fixed structure may go even further and use the so-called Mail Merge option in a word processor such as Microsoft Word™. This tool allows structuring a document strictly, especially for the contributions of invited authors, to pre-format the final layout, and to simplify correspondence with contributors. Contributors fill in a structured Microsoft Excel™ spreadsheet with fixed headings, without any requirements for layout or formatting. The file is then used as data source for a merge document in the word processor. For completion of an entire Flora, such as the Flore Analytique du Bénin (Akoègninou et al., 2006), this iteration was done with 45 authors, producing over 180 different manuscripts, viz. one for each family. Final editing includes a check on correct language, insertion of separately produced keys, figures, references, etc

Comparative trial with highly purified natural ACTH, synthetic ACTH 1—24 peptide and synthetic ACTH 1—39 peptide

Peer Reviewe

Seed viability of pigeon pea stored in two environments.

Pigeonpea cv. ICP-1, -26, -2624, -6443 and -6997 were stored at 15-20 deg C and RH and compared with ambient room conditions at ICRISAT. After 4 yr in cool storage the viability of all cv. except ICP-6997 remained >92%. At room temp. ICP-6997 lost viability completely, ICP-2624 maintained 53% viability and ICP-26, -1 and -6443 germinated 44, 24 and 4%, resp. Plastic bottles were the best containers at ambient room temp. and in cool storage no difference was detected between them and paper and cloth bags. (Abstract retrieved from CAB Abstracts by CABI’s permission

Het rendement van personeelsselectie

Dit proefschrift rapporteert, na een inleiding in het utiliteitsmodel van Brogden-Cronbach-Gleser, over drie empirische studies naar validiteit en utiliteit van concrete tests. Hoofdstuk 1, de inleiding, is theoretisch van aard; het beschrijft het BCG-utiliteitsmodel en de wijze waarop het model nuttig ingeschakeld kan worden bij het kiezen van een goed renderende selectiestrategie. Hoofdstuk 2 beschrijft een onderzoek naar de gelijktijdige validiteit bij 74 drukkers van de voormalige Staatsdrukkerij van een psychomotorische test, de Draaierstest. Hoofdstuk 3 rapporteert over een onderzoek bij 162 aspirant-agenten bij de Gemeentepolitie Amsterdam met de intelligentietest en persoonlijkheidsvragenlijst van de Rijks Psychologische Dienst. Hoofdstuk 4 is een verslag van een onderzoek bij de Belastingdienst met een minicursus/ arbeidsproef voor tekst- en dataverwerking. ... Zie: Samenvatting.