Human habitats: prospects for infrastructure supporting astronomy from the Moon.

There is strong interest in lunar exploration from governmental space agencies, private companies and the public. NASA is about to send humans to the lunar surface again within the next few years, and ESA has proposed the concept of the Moon Village, with the goal of a sustainable human presence and activity on the lunar surface. Although construction of the infrastructure for this permanent human settlement is envisaged for the end of this decade by many, there is no definite mission plan yet. While this may be unsatisfactory for the impatient, this fact actually carries great potential: this is the optimal time to develop a forward-looking science input and influence mission planning. Based on data from recent missions (SMART-1, Kaguya, Chang'E, Chandrayaan-1 and LRO) as well as simulation campaigns (e.g. ILEWG EuroMoonMars), we provide initial input on how astronomy could be incorporated into a future Moon Village, and how the presence of humans (and robots) on the Moon could help deploy and maintain astronomical hardware. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Astronomy from the Moon: the next decades'.

Partner support as a mediator of intervention outcome.

Following up on previous work demonstrating that an intervention with at-risk mothers made a positive impact on the quality of mothers' partner support, responsiveness to the needs of the child, the child's expectation of being cared for, and child's response to a brief separation, the present paper examines whether quality of the mother's partner support mediated the impact of the intervention on these outcomes.

Toward generic principles of treating parents and children: integrating psychotherapy with the school-aged child and early family intervention.

Generic principles governing the outcome and process of the treatment of children and their families can be generated from both research on the psychotherapy of school-aged children and early family intervention. Evidence indicates that the amenability of the child or parent to treatment and the comprehensiveness, duration, and intensity of the helping process are significant parameters. Definition of significant early family intervention roles allows linkage to various therapeutic roles with school-aged children and forces the recognition that most treatment situations involve more roles than are officially recognized. This articulation of the profile of intervention roles among poverty level, first-time parents at risk for neglecting their infant drew on several bodies of theory: psychoanalytic, cognitive, behavioral, social cognitive, and positive reinforcement principles, and advocacy and direct assistance as used in clinical social casework.

Attitudes toward mental illness prevention in routine pediatric practice.

Attitudes toward preventive mental health activities with high-risk children in clinical practice were surveyed in 316 pediatricians. Although generally positive attitudes were expressed regarding appropriateness and efficacy of such activities, uncertainty was expressed regarding the ethical issues and knowledge on which such activities rest. Pediatricians perceived serious barriers to preventive activities related to financial, educational, and time factors. Pediatricians whose personal health beliefs favored an internal locus of control were more positively inclined toward preventive activities. Studies relating reported attitudes and beliefs to actual practice patterns are necessary. Pediatricians also require additional training in mental health-related preventive activities.

Prebirth prediction of the quality of the mother-infant interaction: the first year of life.

PIP: A predictive method involving the assessment of prebirth functioning and the anticipated quality of parenting is described and developed in order to facilitate identifications of family at risk for future parenting. The association between these predictions and selected outcome criteria was studied in a representative sample of 46 US families, who were followed from mid-pregnancy to infant age of 2 years. Both the quantitative and qualitative results support the hypotheses that those families where mother and father were both characterized during the prebirth assessments as above average on adaptation-competence, capacity for relationships, and their positive view of their marriage, and who were expected to provide an optimal parent care environment, did in fact enhance a mother-infant relationship charcterized by positive mutuality and responsiveness. The most efficient predictor of positive mother-infant mutuality was the father's positive experience of the marriage. The mother's verbal I.Q. correlates significantly with maternal adaptation-competence, which in turn correlates with positive mother-infant mutuality. It is assumed that the prebirth assessments and predictions, even though global in nature, effectively reflect a profile of family system and individual characteristics that are likely to enhance the development of positive mother-infant mutuality. The authors stress "enhance" because the characteristics of the infant, such as his or her irritability, are also going to influence the quality of the emerging transaction.^ieng

The role of pre-birth parent characteristics in early family development.

In designing early intervention studies, it is important to consider how the nature of pre-birth parent personality and marital characteristics influence family and child development. Descriptions of the development of three families show the specific impact of these pre-birth characteristics on the quality of the parent-infant transaction of infant soothability-responsiveness to need. Further focus is provided by linking the parent's responsiveness to the infant's need to the emergence and resolution of ambivalent feelings about caring for the infant. The variations in the resolution of ambivalent feelings and the parental personality and marital context of that resolution are explored. Three such configurations are illustrated: a competent mother whose ambivalence appeared in the context of difficulty with intimacy; a mother who struggled with intensely loving and hostile feelings generally; and the description of the emergence of maternal ambivalence in the context of difficulty in achieving psychological separation from her child. Finally, quantitative indices are used to compare these three instances of difficulty in resolving ambivalence with two families whose resolution of the ambivalence was optimal.

Aiding 'at risk' children through psychoanalytic social work with parents.

A psychoanalytic social work approach to family intervention is described, and data on its impact on parents and their children are presented. Program parents, especially those in an open-ended approach, were rated as more positive both as persons and as parents; their children scored higher on IQ and other developmental and adaptational measures.