Children’s Health in a Legal Framework

The interdisciplinary periodical Future of Children has dedicated an issue to children’s health policy. This contribution to the issue maps the legal landscape influencing policy choices. The authors demonstrate that in the U.S. legal system, parents have robust rights, grounded in the Constitution, to make decisions concerning their children’s health and medical treatment. Following from its commitment to parental rights, the system typically assumes the interests of parents and children are aligned, even when that assumption seems questionable. Thus, for example, parents who would limit their children’s access to health care on the basis of the parents’ religious belief have considerable latitude to do so, unless the child’s life is imminently threatened. There are some exceptions to this legal regime. Adolescents have the right to obtain some health services independently; in these contexts, social welfare needs such as pregnancy prevention trump parental rights. Minors also have access to abortion (although this right is more restricted than for adults). Moreover, the state has the power to intervene when parents place their children’s health at risk through abuse or neglect. A hallmark feature of the legal regime based on parental rights is that the state has no affirmative obligation to help parents care for their children’s health needs. This libertarian framing of the family-state relationship has profound implications for the development of public policy. To the extent the state provides support for families and children, it is doing so as a matter of policy choice (as with Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program) and not enforceable legal obligation. The importance of family autonomy thus results in a weak conception of shared responsibility for children. The framework also means that the state often takes a reactive approach to child wellbeing, intervening primarily when families have broken down or parents have seriously defaulted on their duties. Appreciation of the legal framework underscores the need to develop political support for any initiative to improve health services for children. Often, as this article shows, the state intervenes to promote children’s health only in response to compelling social welfare needs such as crime or disease prevention, or to crises in which parents abuse their children or fail to provide adequate care

Effects of Simple Postural Instructions on Running Form Modification in Recreational Runners – Preliminary Findings

Background and purpose: Running is one of the most popular exercises but it is also an activity with a high incidence of injury. Running form modification involving a forward lean of the trunk and forefoot strike pattern has been shown to be effective in attenuating the impact forces of the lower extremity. However, it is currently unknown how these changes can be most effectively instructed and learned by the runners. Previous studies have shown that practicing a motor task with an external focus can facilitate learning and retention when compared to the more common internal focus instructions. The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of external and internal attentional focus cues on trunk posture and peak vertical ground reaction force (GRF) during the stance phase of running. Subjects and Methods: Ten recreational runners were selected for this study and randomly assigned tone of two groups receiving external or internal instructions designed to modify their running form. Trunk posture and GRF were obtained using a 3D motion capture system and a force plate instrumented treadmill while running at 2.5 m/s and a self-selected speed. Subjects were tested over a 5-week time period consisting of 4 sessions over a 4-week training program, followed by a final session 1 week after the training program to analyze retention of running form modification. Results: Overall there was a significant increase in trunk angle observed over time, following instruction, for both groups at speed 2.5 m/s. Running at speeds 2.5 m/s and a self-selected speed showed no statistically significant difference in increased trunk angle or GRF when comparing an internal versus external attentional focus. Conclusion: Simple postural instructions were shown to be effective for inducing greater trunk lean during running. This study found no difference in trunk angle or GRF when comparing internal and external attentional focus groups. Future studies would benefit from using clear and proper instructions that incorporate internal and external attentional focus cues with feedback to reinforce motor learning

Creating a Linked Data-Friendly Metadata Application Profile for Archival Description

We provide an overview of efforts to apply and extend Schema.org for archives and archival description. The authors see the application of Schema.org and extensions as a low barrier means to publish easily consumable linked data about archival resources, institutions that hold them, and contextual entities such as people and organizations responsible for their creation.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures; full poster available from http://dcevents.dublincore.org/IntConf/dc-2017/paper/view/50

Merging Traditions: Academic Dress and Nursing

This paper will argue for an innovation in the field of academic dress, for nursing graduates. Various areas will be examined: the origin of the epitoge and its development in recent times; women and academia; changes to nursing education in the UK; parallels in custom between academia and the nursing profession; the significance of the custom of wearing caps (or not); and finally a proposal for a modern epitoge. Nursing has only very recently joined the echelons of higher education. Consequently academic dress was approved for, and allocated to, nursing graduates either pre-registration, or post-registration advanced level. The results were by no means standard between institutions. Ultimately, this paper proposes combining the tradition of academic dress with the tradition of the qualified nurse—the design of a shortened epitoge to wear in addition to any academic hood awarded, thus allowing the traditional nurse training badge to be affixed to the epitoge and worn as part of academic dress. It is logical to start this discourse with a journey into medieval times in order to re-acquaint ourselves with the academic epitoge

The secret nature of seeds: science & seed improvement c.1520-1700

The seed is an extraordinary time capsule that can travel across socially constructed and humanly defined borders and boundaries. While certain characteristics of the seed have been captured in botanical, agricultural, economic and garden history, what the seed also carries is a social history. The human relationship with the seed is complex, with the seed itself invested with different social and cultural meaning over time, place and periods in history. For the purposes of this research, a history of the seed is constructed in the early modern period in England, using as its narrative, the development of scientific knowledge. To understand how knowledge was accumulated and transmitted, the research argues that the ‘social’ everyday lives of men and women were formative in the creation of a scientific ‘culture’, that permeated this period in history. The thesis argues that the outcome of the scientific endeavours described in the treatises written by horticulturalists and husbandmen, led ultimately, to the social construction by the Puritan improvers, of a ‘model’ seed and the advent of the nurseryman