Rethinking Trust, Crime Policy and Social Theory,

This article analyses the relationship of ‘trust’ to crime, power and criminal justice policy. The theoretical model employed to analyse this relationship draws from Owen’s (2009a), conceptually driven argument that is based on an ontologically-flexible critique of agency-structure, micro-macro and time-space. This relationship stands at the interface of competing pressures working to produce the increasing complexity of crime and criminal justice policy (Powell 2005). We then move the attention to the conceptual problems of ‘trust’ which is linked with uncertainty and complexity whilst law and order and crime policies rest on the specialist knowledge claimed by a range of professional “experts” and technologists that inhabit powerful spaces through which crime policy and practice is governed and articulated

Student Preferences for College and Career Information

This study examined the preferences of high school seniors (N = 2901) for receiving college and career information, an area not well-studied previously. Key findings are: Parents and peers are rated to be very helpful sources of college and career information; school counselors are a helpful source of information for first-generation and low-income students; and the internet is a helpful source of information, but email and one-on-one are more preferred sources of information. The findings of this study are useful for K-12 education, college access, and higher education professionals to consider when developing policies and programs to provide college and career information to students

Theorising Masculinities and Crime: A Genetic-Social Approach

This paper examines competing notions of ‘masculinities’ in relation to crime, and the global nature of gendered inequalities. It is the contention here that social constructionist theories of male sexualities contain certain theoretical deficits. It is suggested that a post-Postmodern analysis of ‘masculinities’ might incorporate some of the insights from Owen’s Genetic-Social meta-theoretical framework. Owen’s ‘sensitising’ framework has been ‘applied’ to the sociological study of human biotechnology, ageing, ‘trust’ and professional power and crime in recent times. Owen’s notion of the biological variable, in particular, might be incorporated into an analysis of ‘masculinities’ in relation to violence and crime. Additionally, it is recommended that these notions are combined with Layder’s concept of Psychobiography in order to theorise ‘masculinities’ and crime in the post-Genome age

Changes in drug utilisation and asthma management practices among purchasers of anti-asthma drugs from community pharmacies in the Illawarra between 1991 and 1995

In 1991 the lllawarra Pharmacists Association in conjunction with the lllawarra Public Health Unit and the University of Wollongong Department of Mathematics undertook the Pharmacy Exit Survey. This was a cross-sectional survey administered to purchasers of anti-asthma medications throughout community pharmacies in the lllawarra. This survey was repeated in 1995 allowing evaluation of improvements in adult asthma between 1991 and 1995 possibly due to local and national initiatives

A Spatiotemporal Assessment of Fish Assemblage Response to Land-Use Change and the Evaluation of eDNA Metabarcoding for Describing Diverse Fish Communities

Fish assemblages are often assessed as a biological proxy for environmental health. While humans value healthy environments for the ecosystem services and recreational opportunities they provide, it is increasingly evident that such resources can be paradoxically degraded by anthropogenic activities. In this investigation, we studied the relationship between different intensities of anthropogenic land-use change and habitat-driven fish assemblage response across multiple spatiotemporal scales. Secondarily, we explored the efficacy of eDNA metabarcoding against conventional electrofishing techniques for the purpose of describing complete fish communities. This study was conducted in the Tuckahoe Creek basin near Richmond, Virginia. This James River tributary serves as an optimal case-study due to a myriad of land-use changes that have continued to occur throughout the basin, in conjunction with a diverse fish assemblage that has been studied across a unique fisheries dataset that originated in 1869. Our findings indicate that fish assemblage dynamics are driven by localized, low-intensity development, and are therefore longitudinally discontinuous throughout the Tuckahoe Creek basin. Further, we observed that eDNA metabarcoding outperformed electrofishing in determining fish biodiversity throughout the system

Neuroexistentialism, Eudaimonics, and Positive Illusions

There is a distinctive form of existential anxiety, neuroexistential anxiety, which derives from the way in which contemporary neuroscience provides copious amounts of evidence to underscore the Darwinian message—we are animals, nothing more. One response to this 21st century existentialism is to promote Eudaimonics, a version of ethical naturalism that is committed to promoting fruitful interaction between ethical inquiry and science, most notably psychology and neuroscience. We argue that philosophical reflection on human nature and social life reveals that while working to be and remain biologically fit, humans also seek meaning in a way that conforms to a pattern recognized by Plato. We argue that human beings should seek “the good,” “the true,” and “the beautiful”; moreover, the proper measure of human flourishing is the degree to which humans achieve these three, in a maximally harmonious way. One potential problem with this view, however, is that it might privilege the role of truth, such that if there is a conflict among these three, what is good or beautiful should yield to what is true. But this seems to conflict with evidence from neuroscience and psychology (e.g. the study of positive illusions) which suggests that people with a tendency to form and harbor certain false beliefs tend to more easily achieve eudaimonia than do those for whom truth takes precedence in all domains. We argue that this conflict is only apparent: the false beliefs in question are not literally beliefs; instead, they are an amalgam of belief and desire, an amalgam that we dub, tertullian beliefs (or, t-beliefs). Among other things, what is distinctive about t-beliefs is that they are able to change the world, in certain specific ways, such that, strictly speaking, it would be erroneous to say of them that they aim away from the truth. Paradoxically, it is because they seem to aim away from the truth, that they are sometimes able to succeed in changing the world so that it matches what we desire, or, what we t-believe