Biotechnology Process Patents: Is Special Legislation Needed?

The authors review administrative and court decisions prompting proposed changes to the patent law. After reviewing pros and cons, they argue that, on balance, pending bills can easily cause more problems than they solve

Family of Origin History, Psychological Distress, Quality of Childhood Memory, and Content of First and Recovered Childhood Memories

Objective: Individual differences in quality of childhood memory and recovered memories from childhood remain poorly understood. Therefore, this study tested several hypotheses which may help account for the large amount of variation that individuals report in the general quality of their childhood memory and the valence of the memories that many individuals report recovering from their childhoods. It was hypothesized that family of origin dysfunction would be associated with poorer childhood memory, that current depressed mood would be associated with impaired childhood recall and the recall of negative memories, and that the content of recovered childhood memories would be disproportionately negative because they include a significant number of memories which had been repressed or dissociated. Method: Questionnaires were administered to 553 college students, 27% of whom reported a history of child abuse. Results: The participants reported substantial variation in the general quality of their childhood memories and also a wide variety of different types of experiences for both their first childhood memories and the recovered memories that most of them had from their childhoods. Weak associations were found between family of origin dysfunction and poorer general quality of childhood memory, but the study as a whole resulted in few significant findings. Conclusions: Only weak support was found for some of the factors that have been hypothesized to distort autobiographical memory. The substantial individual variation in childhood memory that has been reported by college student samples remains poorly understood

A Review of Instruments for Assessing Family History

The influence of family history on one\u27s development has long been a focus of psychological theory, research, and practice. In recent years, however, conceptualizations of family influences on development have evolved considerably, and there has also been increased concern about the reliability of individuals\u27 memory for their childhoods in general. Current knowledge regarding these and other issues are applied to reviewing the instruments that have been developed to assess aspects of family history. The complexity of this type of assessment is emphasized, and a variety of problems with the reliability and validity of the currently available instruments are discussed. Suggestions for future research are also offered

Beyond Theoretical Orientations: The Emergence of a Unified Scientific Framework in Professional Psychology

Psychology has been remarkably successful as both a basic and applied science despite serious and persistent conflict between its many theoretical camps and schools of thought. By far the most influential approaches to conceptualizing clinical practice in psychology have been the traditional theoretical orientations, even though they are widely viewed as inadequate and incomplete. This article reviews the underlying reasons for these conflicts and then discusses the emergence of a unified scientific framework that moves the profession beyond these problems. Outmoded conceptual frameworks are not appropriate for a science-based profession, and professional psychology needs to consider making a systematic transition to a comprehensive scientific approach to understanding human development, functioning, and behavior change

Ethics With an Attitude: Comments on New Directions for Keck Philanthropy

Terrell asserts that the W. M. Keck Foundation should turn its attention to a different set of challenges and opportunities involving legal ethics and the future of the legal profession. The education emphasis for the foundation should shift to the busy practitioner

A Minimal Poset Resolution of Stable Ideals

We use the theory of poset resolutions to construct the minimal free resolution of an arbitrary stable monomial ideal in the polynomial ring whose coefficients are from a field. This resolution is recovered by utilizing a poset of Eliahou-Kervaire admissible symbols associated to a stable ideal. The structure of the poset under consideration is quite rich and in related analysis, we exhibit a regular CW complex which supports a minimal cellular resolution of a stable monomial ideal.Comment: 25 pages, 2 figure