Comparison of elicitation methods for moral and affective beliefs in the theory of planned behaviour

Although the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) has been applied successfully in the area of food choice, it has been criticized for its pure utilitarian approach to the factors determining behaviour. Despite the increase in predictive power of the model with added components such as affective attitude and moral and ethical concerns, in most studies the elicitation process still only addresses people's utilitarian beliefs about the behaviour with little attention paid to other aspects. This study compares the traditional method of elicitation of advantages and disadvantages with two other methods (word association and open-ended) in the elicitations of beliefs, attitudes and moral concerns in relation to the consumption of organic foods. Results show the traditional method to be best for eliciting cognitive beliefs, open-ended emotion task for eliciting emotional beliefs and open-ended beliefs task best for moral concerns. The advantages and disadvantages of each method are discussed.

Reintegrative and Disintegrative Shaming:Legal and Ethical Issues

Abstract
This chapter considers a range of legal and ethical issues raised by the use of reintegrative and disintegrative shaming techniques (Braithwaite, 1989) with sex offenders. ‘Disintegrative shaming’ labels and stigmatises offenders, ostracises them from the local community and may result in violence directed towards offenders (McAlinden, 2005, 2007). ‘Reintegrative shaming’, on the other hand, focuses on rehabilitating the offender within a supportive community environment and assisting the offender in their efforts to change. The former is evident in the range of recent legislative responses designed to protect the community from sex offenders such as notification as well as the popular demand for measures which ‘name and shame’ known sex offenders. The latter is more clearly related to restorative measures such as circles of support and accountability. This chapter argues that although traditionally at opposite ends of the intervention spectrum, each type of mechanism gives rise to potentially difficult legal and ethical considerations.

Prevalence and risk of Down syndrome in monozygotic and dizygotic multiple pregnancies in Europe: implications for prenatal screening

OBJECTIVE: To determine risk of Down syndrome (DS) in multiple relative to singleton pregnancies, and compare prenatal diagnosis rates and pregnancy outcome.

DESIGN: Population-based prevalence study based on EUROCAT congenital anomaly registries.

SETTING: Eight European countries.

POPULATION: 14.8 million births 1990-2009; 2.89% multiple births.

METHODS: DS cases included livebirths, fetal deaths from 20 weeks, and terminations of pregnancy for fetal anomaly (TOPFA). Zygosity is inferred from like/unlike sex for birth denominators, and from concordance for DS cases.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Relative risk (RR) of DS per fetus/baby from multiple versus singleton pregnancies and per pregnancy in monozygotic/dizygotic versus singleton pregnancies. Proportion of prenatally diagnosed and pregnancy outcome.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Poisson and logistic regression stratified for maternal age, country and time.

RESULTS: Overall, the adjusted (adj) RR of DS for fetus/babies from multiple versus singleton pregnancies was 0.58 (95% CI 0.53-0.62), similar for all maternal ages except for mothers over 44, for whom it was considerably lower. In 8.7% of twin pairs affected by DS, both co-twins were diagnosed with the condition. The adjRR of DS for monozygotic versus singleton pregnancies was 0.34 (95% CI 0.25-0.44) and for dizygotic versus singleton pregnancies 1.34 (95% CI 1.23-1.46). DS fetuses from multiple births were less likely to be prenatally diagnosed than singletons (adjOR 0.62 [95% CI 0.50-0.78]) and following diagnosis less likely to be TOPFA (adjOR 0.40 [95% CI 0.27-0.59]).

CONCLUSIONS: The risk of DS per fetus/baby is lower in multiple than singleton pregnancies. These estimates can be used for genetic counselling and prenatal screening.

Stereochemical and mechanistic aspects of dioxygenase-catalysed benzylic hydroxylation of indene and chromane substrates

Toluene dioxygenase (TDO)-catalysed benzylic hydroxylation of indene substrates (8, 16 and 17), using whole cell cultures of Pseudomonas putida UV4, was found to yield inden-1-ol (14 and 22) and indan-1-one bioproducts (15 and 23). The formation of these bioproducts is consistent with the involvement of carbon-centred radical intermediates. TDO-catalysed oxidation of indenes 8 and 16 also gave cis-diols 13 and 18 respectively. TDO and naphthalene dioxygenase (NDO), used as both whole-cell preparations and as purified enzymes, were found to catalyse the benzylic hydroxylation of chromane 30, deuteriated (+/-)-chromane 30(D) and enantiomers (4S)-30(D) and (4R)-30(D) to yield (4R)- and (4S)-chroman-4-ols 31/31(D) respectively. The mechanism of benzylic hydroxylation of chromane 30/30(D) involves the stereoselective abstraction of a pro-R (with TDO) or a pro-S (with NDO) hydrogen atom at C-4 and a marked preference for retention of configuration.

Comment on “Mathematical and physical aspects of Kappa velocity distribution” [ Phys. Plasmas 14, 110702 (2007) ]

A recent paper [L.-N. Hau and W.-Z. Fu, Phys. Plasmas 14, 110702 (2007)] deals with certain mathematical and physical properties of the kappa distribution. We comment on the authors' use of a form of distribution function that is different from the "standard" form of the kappa distribution, and hence their results, inter alia for an expansion of the distribution function and for the associated number density in an electrostatic potential, do not fully reflect the dependence on kappa that would be associated with the conventional kappa distribution. We note that their definition of the kappa distribution function is also different from a modified distribution based on the notion of nonextensive entropy.