Assessing State Regulations of Outpatient Substance-Abuse Treatment Programs in the United States Along a Quality Continuum

Highlights findings on the variation among the treatment requirements and the quality and performance measurement indicators included in state policies governing substance abuse treatment services

Generalized Anxiety Symptoms and Interpersonal Self-Perceptions During Stressors: A Prospective Examination of Psychological and Biological Stress

Individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) symptoms endorse negative emotionality, psychosocial dysfunction, and biological dysregulation. Interpersonal dominance and affiliation have also been linked to GAD symptoms. Little research has examined individuals with GAD symptoms in terms of naturalistic stressors and chronic use of interpersonal behaviors. GAD symptoms, as well as lower dominance and affiliation, have been linked to hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) dysregulation. However, no studies have examined the unique and interacting contributions of GAD symptoms and interpersonal processes to chronic cortisol levels and distress. College students completed baseline measures of GAD symptoms, measures of interpersonal self-perceptions and distress for five weeks, then a lab visit to collect hair cortisol samples. I hypothesized that higher GAD symptoms and lower dominance and affiliation, would predict higher cortisol and psychological distress during interpersonal stressors. I expected that effects of dominance and affiliation on psychological and biological outcomes would be blunted for individuals higher in GAD symptoms. Results showed that GAD symptoms predicted higher distress and cortisol. Effects of interpersonal variables varied depending on whether they reflected aggregate mean levels or person-centered levels. Person-centered affiliation predicted lower distress, and blunted effects of GAD symptoms on distress. Mean level dominance predicted higher levels of both distress and cortisol. A marginally significant three-way interaction suggested the possibility that GAD symptoms combined with high dominance and low affiliation might predict the highest cortisol levels. Understanding the ways chronic use of interpersonal behaviors influence the relationship between GAD and negative outcomes may inform interventions for those with GAD symptoms

Hydrological summary for the United Kingdom: August 2013

The monthly summary of hydrological conditions in the United Kingdom is compiled as part of the National Hydrological Monitoring Programme (a joint CEH and BGS enterprise). The report features contemporary data for rainfall, river flow, reservoir and groundwater levels in the form of maps and graphs. A commentary is provided on the status of the nation’s water resources and any notable hydrological events during the month. The National River Flow and National Groundwater Level Archives help provide an historical context for these contemporary assessments. Financial support for the production of the Hydrological Summaries is provided by Defra, the Environment Agency, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the Rivers Agency in Northern Ireland and the Office of Water Services

Doing laboratory ethnography: reflections on method in scientific workplaces

Laboratory ethnography extended the social scientist’s gaze into the day-to-day accomplishment of scientific practice. Here we reflect upon our own ethnographies of biomedical scientific workspaces to provoke methodological discussion on the doing of laboratory ethnography. What we provide is less a ‘how to’ guide and more a commentary on what to look for and what to look at. We draw upon our empirical research with stem cell laboratories and animal houses, teams producing robotic surgical tools, musicians sonifying data science, a psychiatric genetics laboratory, and scientists developing laboratory grown meat. We use these cases to example a set of potential ethnographic themes worthy of pursuit: science epistemics and the extended laboratory, the interaction order of scientific work, sensory realms and the rending of science as sensible, conferences as performative sites, and the spaces, places and temporalities of scientific work

Pathways and prospects in cancer research: Securing futures and negotiating boundaries

This paper draws on literature from the sociology of expectations to explore accounts of experts in cancer research and clinical practice. The cancer specialists’ accounts presented in this article are taken from interviews undertaken as part of a project that aimed to develop a research agenda for the next ten to thirty years that will achieve early detection and prevention in the four main cancers: (i) bowel and colorectal, (ii) prostate, (iii) lung and (iv) breast. Drawing on secondary analysis of the interviews, this article provides a sociological exploration of both the experts’ versions of the future and the interactions between the interviewer and research participant to show expectation in the making: the competing stories of what is and what ought to be the focus of cancer research now and in the (near) future. The building of a cancer research agenda is shown to be a contested future, represented by a dominant and resistant view of the cancer problem, in which cancer specialists must engage in performative strategies and boundary work to frame the present problem: what cancer is and how it can be detected and, subsequently, to claim credibility for a future pathway

The 2020 Provincial Election in New Brunswick: The First Canadian COVID-19 Election

AbstractNew Brunswick’s 2020 election was Canada’s first election during the COVID-19 pandemic. It produced a slim majority government for the Progressive Conservatives under Premier Blaine Higgs after all-party talks to create a quasi-coalition arrangement failed. The major parties continued to decline in voter support, and two newer parties, the Green Party and the People’s Alliance, still have a presence in the Legislative Assembly. The Liberal Party failed to win seats in Anglophone New Brunswick, reducing their support to just the francophone areas of the province. Higgs is left to govern a province polarized along linguistic lines with French-speaking New Brunswickers distrustful and unsupportive of the premier.RésuméL’élection provinciale au Nouveau-Brunswick en 2020 a été la première élection provinciale au Canada pendant la pandémie du COVID-19. Elle a mené à l'élection d'un gouvernement avec une faible majorité pour le Parti progressiste-conservateur sous le premier ministre Blaine Higgs après l'échec des pourparlers entre tous les partis pour la création d'un arrangement de quasi-coalition. Les partis traditionnels continuent de voir leur soutien s'effriter au sein de l’électorat, et deux nouveaux partis, le Parti vert et l’Alliance des gens, ont toujours des représentantes à l’Assemblée législative. Le Parti libéral n'a pas réussi à remporter des sièges dans les régions anglophones de la province, réduisant son soutien aux seules régions francophones de la province. Les considérations linguistiques jouent un rôle de premier plan dans la polarisation politique dans la province. Higgs doit ainsi gouverner en tenant compte des citoyennes francophones qui sont méfiantes et peu favorables au premier ministre.Key words: New Brunswick, Election, Election campaigns, polls, Majority government, BilingualismMots-clés : Nouveau-Brunswick, Élections, Campagnes électorales, Sondages, Gouvernement majorité, Bilinguism

The 2018 Provincial Election in New Brunswick

New Brunswick’s 2018 election produced a minority legislature, the first in a century. The major parties continue to decline in voter support, and two new parties now have a presence in the Assembly. The election brings New Brunswick’s electoral politics increasingly into the modern Canadian mainstream; one new caucus is the Greens. In other respects, the election made the old new again. The populist People’s Alliance gained three seats partly on the basis of criticism of bilingualism policy. The Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives, in an informal alliance to govern, are all but confined to the anglophone parts of the province, while the defeated Liberals have all their strength in the Acadian north-east. The campaign mattered, as did constitutional conventions.  The Liberals squandered a large lead in the polls, and the parties struggled to sort out the conventions of government formation

Experiments in Diversifying Flickr Result Sets

The 2013 MediaEval Retrieving Diverse Social Images Task looked to tackling the problem of search result diversification of Flickr results sets formed from queries about geographic places and landmarks. In this paper we describe our approach of using a min-max similarity diversifier coupled with pre-filters and a reranker. We also demonstrate a number of novel features for measuring similarity to use in the diversification step