A whale of a new species

Although four new species of whale have been identified since 1937, the absence of new ones for the past 28 years might be taken to mean that they had finally all been dis- covered. Not so - a new species of beaked whale, Mesoplodonperuvianus, is described by J. C. Reyes and colleagues in the latest issue of Marine Mammal Science.

Book Review of Discovering North American Rock Art Edited by Lawrence L. Loendorf, Christopher Chippindale, and David S. Whitley

If readers of Great Plains Research are seeking a window on rock art research in North America, this book provides a few clear panes, a few that are hazy, and a few muddy ones. Like many edited volumes, the weaker contributions and lack of a consistent style limit the book's usefulness. Some authors target a general readership; others clearly are addressing colleagues. The book has two stated themes: the history of rock art research in North America and recent approaches to rock art analysis. Articles by Julie Francis and (jointly) David Whitley and Jean Clottes explore why rock art research has long been marginalized in North America. Unfortunately, both of these otherwise observant essays slip into advocacy of shamanism as a unifying or primary explanation for rock art, an interpretive model by no means universally accepted by today's rock art specialists.

Using Math Vocabulary Building to Increase Problem Solving Abilities in a 5th Grade Classroom

In this action research study of my 5th grade mathematics class, I investigated how students’ understanding of math vocabulary impacts their understanding of the curriculum. I discovered math vocabulary plays an important role in a student’s ability to understand daily lessons, complete homework, discuss ideas in groups, take tests and be successful on achievement tests. A student’s ability to understand the words around him (or her) in math class seem very related to his or her ability to solve word problems. Word problems are what our national assessments are all about. I also discovered that direct instruction and support of math vocabulary increased test scores and confidence in students as test takers. As a result of this research, I plan to continue to find ways to emphasize the vocabulary used in our current math curriculum. This process will start at the beginning of the year. I will continue to look for strategies that promote math vocabulary retention in my students. And finally, I will share my findings with my colleagues, so my research can be used as part of our School Improvement Goals.

APC Hearings

Members of the Academic Planning Committee, and others here today, it is my responsibility to speak with you about the budget cuts we are recommending in the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources. This is a difficult task, because I must speak for cuts that I would prefer not to make, cuts I know are opposed by constituents and colleagues whom I hold in high regard, cuts imposed upon us because of the current status of the Nebraska economy.

Omtvedt Innovation Award Winners

It is such a pleasure to have this opportunity this afternoon to present four Omtvedt Innovation Awards to Institute colleagues whose outstanding work is a source of tremendous pride and inspiration for us all.

Information and Communication Technologies for Educational Development: The Case of Cybercafés at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria

This study examines the use of Cybercafés/Internet resources and the evaluation of their usefulness. About eight Cybercafés located in the university community were used in this study. Questionnaires, interviews with the Cybercafé owners, staff and users as well as personal observations made during inspection of these cafés were used in this study. The data were analysed according to the background of the Internet users. The richness and high speed, accuracy, and authority were used by users to judge the quality of the Internet. Information such as the establishment of the café's facilities, membership and the future of the Cybercafés were also looked into. Finally, one can clearly see that the dominating impact of digital technology has crossed the Rubicon of controversy. The result of the survey shows that forty percent of the users learnt to use the internet by self instruction, thirty five percent learnt from colleagues or friends. Those in the sciences use the internet the most, the channel mostly used in obtaining information is the search engines. A large number of students, faculties and researchers make use of the internet in obtaining information. Many of those of those users make use of the Cybercafés in the university community.

Planning “Discrete” Movements Using a Continuous System: Insights from a Dynamic Field Theory of Movement Preparation

The timed-initiation paradigm developed by Ghez and colleagues (1997) has revealed two modes of motor planning: continuous and discrete. Continuous responding occurs when targets are separated by less than 60° of spatial angle, and discrete responding occurs when targets are separated by greater than 60°. Although these two modes are thought to reflect the operation of separable strategic planning systems, a new theory of movement preparation, the Dynamic Field Theory, suggests that two modes emerge flexibly from the same system. Experiment 1 replicated continuous and discrete performance using a task modified to allow for a critical test of the single system view. In Experiment 2, participants were allowed to correct their movements following movement initiation (the standard task does not allow corrections). Results showed continuous planning performance at large and small target separations. These results are consistent with the proposal that the two modes reflect the time-dependent “preshaping” of a single planning system.

CLOSING REMARKS - FOURTH VERTEBRATE PEST CONFERENCE

On behalf of the California Vertebrate Pest Committee, which sponsors these conferences, I wish to thank all of the speakers for their contribution to the program and the session chairmen who kept the meeting moving so smoothly. We would like to extend a special thanks to the speakers and participants who have come from other countries to share with us some of their knowledge concerning vertebrate pest problems and their solutions. Hopefully, the acquaintances made here and the exchange of information with our colleagues from distant places will be the beginning of long-lasting friendships and will foster better communications between those with mutual interests.

Parental Ethnotheories of Child Development: Looking Beyond Independence and Individualism in American Belief Systems

Over the past several decades, the topic of child development in a cultural context has received a great deal of theoretical and empirical investigation. Investigators from the fields of indigenous and cultural psychology have argued that childhood is socially and historically constructed, rather than a universal process with a standard sequence of developmental stages or descriptions. As a result, many psychologists have become doubtful that any stage theory of cognitive or socialemotional development can be found to be valid for all times and places. In placing more theoretical emphasis on contextual processes, they define culture as a complex system of common symbolic action patterns (or scripts) built up through everyday human social interaction by means of which individuals create common meanings and in terms of which they organize experience. Researchers understand culture to be organized and coherent, but not homogenous or static, and realize that the complex dynamic system of culture constantly undergoes transformation as participants (adults and children) negotiate and re-negotiate meanings through social interaction. These negotiations and transactions give rise to unceasing heterogeneity and variability in how different individuals and groups of individuals interpret values and meanings. However, while many psychologists—both inside and outside the fields of indigenous and cultural psychology–are now willing to give up the idea of a universal path of child development and a universal story of parenting, they have not necessarily foreclosed on the possibility of discovering and describing some universal processes that underlie socialization and development-in-context. The roots of such universalities would lie in the biological aspects of child development, in the evolutionary processes of adaptation, and in the unique symbolic and problem-solving capacities of the human organism as a culture-bearing species. For instance, according to functionalist psychological anthropologists, shared (cultural) processes surround the developing child and promote in the long view the survival of families and groups if they are to demonstrate continuity in the face of ecological change and resource competition, (e.g. Edwards & Whiting, 2004; Gallimore, Goldenberg, & Weisner, 1993; LeVine, Dixon, LeVine, Richman, Leiderman, Keefer, & Brazelton, 1994; LeVine, Miller, & West, 1988; Weisner, 1996, 2002; Whiting & Edwards, 1988; Whiting & Whiting, 1980). As LeVine and colleagues (1994) state: A population tends to share an environment, symbol systems for encoding it, and organizations and codes of conduct for adapting to it (emphasis added). It is through the enactment of these population-specific codes of conduct in locally organized practices that human adaptation occurs. Human adaptation, in other words, is largely attributable to the operation of specific social organizations (e.g. families, communities, empires) following culturally prescribed scripts (normative models) in subsistence, reproduction, and other domains [communication and social regulation]. (p. 12) It follows, then, that in seeking to understand child development in a cultural context, psychologists need to support collaborative and interdisciplinary developmental science that crosses international borders. Such research can advance cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, and indigenous psychology, understood as three sub-disciplines composed of scientists who frequently communicate and debate with one another and mutually inform one another’s research programs. For example, to turn to parental belief systems, the particular topic of this chapter, it is clear that collaborative international studies are needed to support the goal of crosscultural psychologists for findings that go beyond simply describing cultural differences in parental beliefs. Comparative researchers need to shed light on whether parental beliefs are (or are not) systematically related to differences in child outcomes; and they need meta-analyses and reviews to explore between- and within-culture variations in parental beliefs, with a focus on issues of social change (Saraswathi, 2000). Likewise, collaborative research programs can foster the goals of indigenous psychology and cultural psychology and lay out valid descriptions of individual development in their particular cultural contexts and the processes, principles, and critical concepts needed for defining, analyzing, and predicting outcomes of child development-in-context. The project described in this chapter is based on an approach that integrates elements of comparative methodology to serve the aim of describing particular scenarios of child development in unique contexts. The research team of cultural insiders and outsiders allows for a look at American belief systems based on a dialogue of multiple perspectives.

OPENING REMARKS - THIRD VERTEBRATE PEST CONFERENCE

To open this Third Vertebrate Pest Conference is a real privilege. It is a pleasure to welcome all of you in attendance, and I know there are others who would like to be meeting with us, but, for one reason or another cannot be. However, we can serve them by taking back the results of discussion and by making available the printed transactions of what is said here. It has been the interest and demand for the proceedings of the two previous conferen- ces which, along with personal contacts many of you have with the sponsoring committee, have gauged the need for continuing these meetings. The National Pest Control Association officers who printed the 1962 proceedings still are supplying copies of that conference. Two reprintings of the 1964 conference have been necessary and repeat orders from several universities indicate that those proceedings have become textbooks for special classes. When Dr. Howard mentioned in opening the first Conference in 1962 that publication of those papers would make a valuable handbook of animal control, he was prophetic, indeed. We are pleased that this has happened, but not surprised, since to many of us in this specialized field, the conferences have provided a unique opportunity to meet colleagues with similar interests, to exchange information on control techniques and to be informed by research workers of problem solving investigations as well as to hear of promising basic research. The development of research is a two-way street and we think these conferences also identify areas of inadequate knowledge, thereby stimulating needed research. We have represented here a number of types of specialists—animal ecologists, public health and transmissible disease experts, control methods specialists, public agency administration and enforcement staffs, agricultural extension people, manufacturing and sale industry representatives, commercial pest control operators, and others—and in addition to improving communications among these professional groups an equally important purpose of these conferences is to improve understanding between them and the general public. Within the term general public are many individuals and also organizations dedicated to appreciation and protection of certain animal forms or animal life in general. Proper concepts of vertebrate pest control do not conflict with such views. It is worth repeating for the record the definition of "vertebrate pest" which has been stated at our previous conferences. "A vertebrate pest is any native or introduced, wild or feral, non-human spe- cies of vertebrate animal that is currently troublesome locally or over a wide area to one or more persons either by being a general nuisance, a health hazard or by destroying food or natural resources. In other words, vertebrate pest status is not an inherent quality or fixed classification but is a circumstantial relationship to man's interests." I believe progress has been made in reducing the misunderstanding and emotion with which vertebrate pest control was formerly treated whenever a necessity for control was stated. If this is true, I likewise believe it is deserved, because control methods and programs have progressed. Control no longer refers only to population reductions by lethal means. We have learned something of alternate control approaches and the necessity for studying the total environment; where reduction of pest animal numbers is the required solution to a problem situation we have a wider choice of more selective, safe and efficient materials. Although increased attention has been given to control methods, research when we take a close look at the severity of animal damage to so many facets of our economy, particularly to agricultural production and public health, we realize it still is pitifully small and slow. The tremendous acceleration of the world's food and health requirements seems to demand expediting vertebrate pest control to effectively neutralize the enormous impact of animal damage to vital resources. The efforts we are making here at problem delineation, idea communication and exchange of methodology could well serve as both nucleus and rough model for a broader application elsewhere. I know we all hope this Third Conference will advance these general objectives, and I think there is no doubt of its value in increasing our own scope of information.

Academentia: Physiological Stress, Toxic Work Sites and the Neutralization of Blackness by the Whiteness Standards of Professionalization

Using auto-ethnographic methods, supplementing by current race theories, along with interviews from other scholars, I regard academentia as a form of professionalism most readily communicable to academics of color seeking advance. It can also infect those whose embrace of blackness (widely defined across cultures) is the least tolerant of the racial designs of white cultural practices. Where in the interest of students and colleagues, such academics challenge the whiteness criteria defining academic success, most of their peers adhere to the racial standards of professionalism.

Obstacles to Inter-Racial Understanding: Some Clinical Implications for Mental Health Practitioners in Predominantly White Institutions

in the context of predominantly white institutions. In this paper concepts such as projection, projective identification, splitting, scapegoating, superiority and denial will be employed to illustrate why racial prejudice is a deeply-rooted collective psychological disorder that affects even educated mental health practitioners. Clinicians have an ethical responsibility to demonstrate cultural sensitivity and empathy when working with minority clients, colleagues, staff and students, to examine and root out their own prejudices, and to encourage others to do the same.