Drug and Alcohol Abuse Prevention: Defining the Need in Organizations

This paper outlines initial interventions to prevent drug and alcohol abuse in organizations.Grounded in sociological theory, the first intervention is to define the natureof the problem through data gathering and analysis, particularly self-reports of drugand alcohol use by the organization\u27s members. The self-report data, when comparedwith national data, provide a base of information from which direct interventions canbe designed. Student, faculty, administration, and staff survey results from a universityand their applications are reported as a case study. Interventions which centeron peer prevention are briefly discussed. Self-report survey data of drug and alcoholabuse define the problem and the types of interventions that are likely to be successful

Reducing Adolescent Drug Abuse: Sociological Strategies for Community Practice

Strategies for community-based sociological practice are discussed. The role of the sociologist in helping communities to recognize a social problem is analyzed in the context of social construction of reality theory. Once a community accepts that it has a problem with adolescent drug abuse, control and peer association theories can guide sociologists who wish to join with community leaders to combat drug abuse. By strengthening bonds among community organizations, parents, and other groups, the community tolerance for drug abuse is reduced and support for peer prevention is built

Comparative Feeding Ecology of Two Chimpanzee Communities in Kibale National Park (Uganda)

Several recent studies have documented considerable intraspecific and intrapopulation ecological variation in primates. However, we generally lack an understanding of how such variability may be linked to concomitant demographic variation among groups and/or populations of the same species, particularly in regards to large-bodied and wide-ranging species with high ecological flexibility, such as chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). We compared the feeding ecology of chimpanzees inhabiting two sites in Kibale National Park, Uganda that differ three-fold in chimpanzee density and support notably different plant communities. Chimpanzees at Ngogo, a site with the largest known chimpanzee community and unusually high chimpanzee density, spent a significantly lower percentage of time resting (and pregnant and lactating females spent more time feeding), incorporated higher percentages of ripe fruit in their diet, had lower dietary diversity values, and had shorter and less variable average patch residency times than did their counterparts at the nearby Kanyawara site, which supports a relatively low density of chimpanzees. Additionally, feeding party size was significantly and positively related to feeding patch size at Ngogo, but not at Kanyawara. Together these findings aid in explaining the noted disparity in chimpanzee community size and density between Ngogo and Kanyawara by suggesting that the diet of Ngogo chimpanzees is of higher overall quality than that of Kanyawara chimpanzees. They also highlight the potentially profound influence of even small-scale habitat heterogeneity on the ecology of primates. Researchers must take such influences into account when attempting to draw conclusions about species- or population-level characteristics.Human Evolutionary Biolog

Fitting the Professional to the Job: Idealism and Realism

This article examines a number of factors related to job satisfaction among financial aid professionals. How well the job matches the individual\u27s expectations of employment, regardless of intrinsic or extrinsic job orientation, accounts for the greater proportion of explained job satisfaction. The implications of these findings for management of financial aid offices are discussed. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Southwestern Sociological Association

Information Flow and Staff Contact: A Quick Evaluation of Financial Aid

The authors examine the relationship between financial aid staff and students and attempt to analyze how the experience at one institution might provide some insight. The problem is viewed from the client perspective based upon day to day contact with various services provided to students by the financial aid office

Water-use dynamics of an invasive reed, Arundo donax, from leaf to stand

Abstract We investigated water use of an invasive riparian reed species, Arundo donax (L.), along moisture gradients to determine how extensively this plant might affect water resources. On an approximately 250 m stretch of the Lower Rio Grande in South Texas, we measured the gas exchange of water vapor at the leaf scale and structural characteristics, such as leaf area and shoot density, at the stand scale. To assess the effect of water availability, we used transects perpendicular to the edge of the river along a potential moisture gradient. Stands of A. donax used approximately 8.8±0.9 mm of water per day during the peak of the 2008 growing season; this rate of water use is at the high end of the spectrum for plants. Transpiration and leaf area index varied with water availability, which suggests this plant is sensitive to drought and declining water tables. This provides a baseline for future studies comparing water use between A. donax and other plant species, especially native species considered in riparian restoration efforts

‘I am pleased to shop somewhere that is fighting the supermarkets a little bit’. A cultural political economy of alternative food networks

This paper conducts a cultural political economy (CPE) analysis of consumers’ semiotic and material construals of alternative food networks (AFN). It starts by outlining, in the context of debate over AFN, why CPE is a useful analytical tool. The collection of talk data from 40 respondents, and food consumption data from 20 respondents, is outlined and explained. Talk data reveal that interviewees construe conventional and alternative food networks differently based on values relating to food quality judgements, provenance and trust, and alternativeness. Consumption data demonstrate respondents’ material engagement with conventional and, to a lesser extent, alternative food networks. The paper concludes that CPE is a productive framework for analysing AFN qua a subaltern economic imaginary, and that it can help to set them on ‘firmer’ ground, both ontologically and normatively

Declarative referential gesturing in a wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)

Humans are argued to be unique in their ability and motivation to share attention with others about external entities—sharing attention for sharing’s sake. Indeed, in humans, using referential gestures declaratively to direct the attention of others toward external objects and events emerges in the first year of life. In contrast, wild great apes seldom use referential gestures, and when they do, it seems to be exclusively for imperative purposes. This apparent species difference has fueled the argument that the motivation and ability to share attention with others is a human-specific trait with important downstream consequences for the evolution of our complex cognition [M. Tomasello, Becoming Human (2019)]. Here, we report evidence of a wild ape showing a conspecific an item of interest. We provide video evidence of an adult female chimpanzee, Fiona, showing a leaf to her mother, Sutherland, in the context of leaf grooming in Kibale Forest, Uganda. We use a dataset of 84 similar leaf-grooming events to explore alternative explanations for the behavior, including food sharing and initiating dyadic grooming or playing. Our observations suggest that in highly specific social conditions, wild chimpanzees, like humans, may use referential showing gestures to direct others’ attention to objects simply for the sake of sharing. The difference between humans and our closest living relatives in this regard may be quantitative rather than qualitative, with ramifications for our understanding of the evolution of human social cognition