Sex and the nursing home.

The current article discusses the case of Henry Rahons. A nearly 80 year old man who was accused by the local district attorney of having unlawful sexual contact with Donna, his second wife of some seven years who had developed Alzheimer's disease in her later years. Under Iowa law, he was accused of having sexually abused her because she had "a mental defect or incapacity which precludes giving consent" to sex acts. A jury acquitted Henry of the charge of sexually abusing his wife. The evidence was equivocal that a sex act occurred on May 23, 2014, the date specified in the indictment. This article addresses the ability to assessed competence to consent to sex in similar situations. The current rules and attitudes about senior sex in nursing homes needs to be reevaluated. (PsycINFO Database Record

Anomalous Near-Surface Low-Salinity Pulses off the Central Oregon Coast.

From mid-May to August 2011, extreme runoff in the Columbia River ranged from 14,000 to over 17,000 m(3)/s, more than two standard deviations above the mean for this period. The extreme runoff was the direct result of both melting of anomalously high snowpack and rainfall associated with the 2010-2011 La Niña. The effects of this increased freshwater discharge were observed off Newport, Oregon, 180 km south of the Columbia River mouth. Salinity values as low as 22, nine standard deviations below the climatological value for this period, were registered at the mid-shelf. Using a network of ocean observing sensors and platforms, it was possible to capture the onshore advection of the Columbia River plume from the mid-shelf, 20 km offshore, to the coast and eventually into Yaquina Bay (Newport) during a sustained wind reversal event. Increased freshwater delivery can influence coastal ocean ecosystems and delivery of offshore, river-influenced water may influence estuarine biogeochemistry.

Children come first? A brief history of children's mental health services.

This article provides a brief history on the evolution of child mental health services. From 1961 when modern day mental health programming began with the Joint Commission on Mental Health and Illness to key developments in children's mental health services and prevention in modern day.

Coming From Behind: A Historical Perspective on Black Education and Attainment.

In our current reliance on "hard data," achievement test scores are used incorrectly and without warrant as the ultimate mark of educational progress. While it is true that a gap continues to exist, educational history shows that, overall, both Black and White students have participated steadily in increasing numbers in the educational system, whether the measure is the number of students attending school, the increasing length of the school years, literacy rates, or in the actual level of educational attainment over a period of more than 100 years. The data examined in historical perspective show that the American education system, through thick and thin, has served its students well. Those data also show that change comes slowly, in increments of just a few percent a decade. Expectations of rapid change are totally unreasonable when viewed against the historical data. In addition, the historical data show that the Black population has made progress more rapidly over time than the White population. As a result of more rapid progress, although there is still a gap between White and Black, the gap has narrowed considerably. We suggest the gap reflects history and culture. The small increments per decade argue that cultures change slowly and persist over time. We will discuss the history of Black education to suggest some reasons for the gap. The history will help us assess today's achievement gap and help us to understand how far our public education system has brought us.

Follow the money: There's no business like the ed. business...

The debate about charter schools and public schools has been conducted on an ideological level. However, the ideological argument obscures the ongoing transfer of public funds to private use, the creation of business and investment opportunities, and the effects of the private enterprise model on education. In the current two-part article, the authors discuss charter schools and finances. Part 1 concerns charter schools and management organizations. Part 2 focuses on charter schools as business investments. Throughout, the authors link the information to effects on education.

Charters and foundations: are we losing control of our public schools?

From their inception, United States public schools have been subject to reform efforts. The most recent, and perhaps the most potent, is the current effort to establish charter schools as replacements for traditional public schools. They are supposed to be the analog of private schools, providing choices to parents, financed by public funds, but operating largely free of state and local regulations. The schools are organized under charters specified by state laws and authorized by public agencies. This essay traces the development and growth of charter schools and note changes in their original mission to improve public education. It concludes with the role that very wealthy foundations play in promoting charter schools. In effect, they control public education policy without real accountability to the public.

Research in the real world: Social context and its effects.

Although scientists are supposedly concerned only with the pursuit of scientific truth, it was recognized early on that they have personal and professional agendas and are subject to human fallibilities. Openness allowing the scientific community to oversee each member's work depends a great deal upon publication of scientific work. Research reports are cultural artifacts shaped by social forces. In most instances of theoretically oriented work, the roles making up the social context, the researchers, funding agencies, journal editors, publishers, critics, and consumers of research all tend to be scientists sharing common interests and assumptions. There are many actors in addition to scientists in the social context of evaluative research. The actors-sometimes called stakeholders-include people whose lives may change, politicians, government agencies, private foundations, businesspersons, taxpayers, the mass media, and advocates. These actors have varied interests in the research enterprise, are embedded in varied reference groups, and bring different assumptions and values to the task. Their interactions shape the research product at every step. In this genre of research, the contexts are diverse. To illustrate the generality of the influence of social context, the authors draw on three diverse examples spanning a century: the Love Canal industrial disaster of the late 1970s, the ultimately failed attempt in the early 1900s to transplant the Gary, Indiana, progressive school system to New York City (NYC); and some recent studies of charter school students' academic performance.

Prayer as coping: a psychological analysis.

Engaging in prayer and holding positive attitudes toward religion are empirically associated with personal wellbeing, health, and the relief of distress. This paper starts with those findings and builds on the Jamesian concept of prayer as "inward communication or conversation with a power recognized as divine." Within this framework, the paper employs selected, well recognized psychological constructs to offer a theoretical explanation of how and why prayer contributes to the relief of distress, and to the health and psychological wellbeing of the person who engages in prayer.

Factors associated with nurses' intention to report child abuse: a national survey of Taiwanese nurses.

OBJECTIVE: The objectives were to determine the experiences of Taiwanese nurses with a new child abuse reporting law and to assess attitudinal correlates of nurses' intention to report. METHOD: A stratified quota sampling technique was used to select registered nurses working in pediatric, psychiatric and emergency care units in Taiwan. A total of 1400 (return rate 88%) questionnaires from 1617 nurses were used. The questionnaire includes demographic information, attitudes toward and knowledge of child abuse and reporting laws, and eight vignettes of child abuse. RESULTS: Most nurses (86%) said they had never reported a child abuse case; 21% said they had failed to report a suspected case of child abuse. Most (80%) had never had any child abuse education. About 75% felt their nursing education and in-service training was inadequate or absent. Most had an inadequate knowledge of the reporting law (mean score: 60% correct). Nurses only answered 17-43% of the law-related questions correctly. The majority accepted the professional responsibility to report. There were some differences among pediatric, psychiatric and emergency care nurses. In general, these Taiwanese nurses had negative attitudes toward corporal punishment and toward parents who abuse their children. The study also identified a variety of attitudes related to intention to report relevant to the Theory of Planned Behavior. CONCLUSIONS: Nurses accept responsibility for reporting but they believe their professional preparation for reporting is inadequate. There is a strong need for in-service and pre-service education about child abuse among nurses in Taiwan.