Sibling interaction of children with autism: development over 12 months

While deficits in social interaction are central to autism, the sibling relationship has been found to provide a key medium for the development of such skills. Naturalistic observations of sibling pairs including children with autism and controls with Down syndrome were made across two time periods, twelve months apart. Consistent with the evidence on typically developing children, the amount and rate of initiations of both prosocial and agonistic interaction increased, but further analysis suggested that these interactions were stage-managed by the typically developing children. Results show social interaction and imitation in children with autism and the special role that sibling interactions can play. Longitudinal research on the acquisition of social skills in children with developmental disabilities is needed.

‘We are managing our own lives...’: life transitions and care in sibling-headed households affected by AIDS in Tanzania and Uganda

This paper explores the ways that young people express their agency and negotiate complex lifecourse transitions according to gender, age and inter- and intra-generational norms in sibling-headed households affected by AIDS in East Africa. Based on findings from a qualitative and participatory pilot study in Tanzania and Uganda, I examine young people's socio-spatial and temporal experiences of heading the household and caring for their siblings following their parent's/relative's death. Key dimensions of young people's caring pathways and life transitions are discussed: transitions into sibling care; the ways young people manage changing roles within the family; and the ways that young people are positioned and seek to position themselves within the community. The research reveals the relational and embodied nature of young people's life transitions over time and space. By living together independently, young people constantly reproduce and reconfigure gendered, inter- and intra-generational norms of ‘the family’, transgressing the boundaries of ‘childhood’, ‘youth’ and ‘adulthood’. Although young people take on ‘adult’ responsibilities and demonstrate their competencies in ‘managing their own lives’, this does not necessarily translate into more equal power relations with adults in the community. The research reveals the marginal ‘in-between’ place that young people occupy between local and global discourses of ‘childhood’ and ‘youth’ that construct them as ‘deviant’. Although young people adopt a range of strategies to resist marginalisation and harassment, I argue that constraints of poverty, unequal gender and generational power relations and the emotional impacts of sibling care, stigmatisation and exclusion can undermine their ability to exert agency and control over their sexual relationships, schooling, livelihood strategies and future lifecourse transitions.

Sibling caringscapes: time–space practices of caring within youth-headed households in Tanzania and Uganda

This paper investigates the time–space practices of young people caring for their siblings in youthheaded households affected by AIDS in Tanzania and Uganda. Based on qualitative exploratory research with young people heading households, their siblings, NGO workers and community members, the article develops the notion of sibling ‘caringscapes’ to analyse young people’s everyday practices and caring pathways through time and space. Participatory time-use data reveals that older siblings of both genders regularly undertake substantial caring tasks at the very high end of the caregiving continuum. Drawing on rhythmanalysis, the paper explores how young people negotiate emotional geographies and temporalities of caring. The competing rhythms of bodies, schooling, work and seasonal agricultural production can result in ‘arrhythmia’ and time scarcity, which has detrimental effects on young people’s health, education,future employment prospects and mobility. Young people’s lifecourse transitions are shaped to a large extent by their caring responsibilities, resulting in some young people remaining in a liminal position for considerable periods, unable to make ‘successful’ transitions to adulthood. Despite structural constraints,however, young people are able to exercise some autonomy over their caring pathways and lifecourse transitions. The research sheds light on the ways that individuals embody the practices, routines and rhythms of everyday life and exercise agency within highly restricted broader landscapes of care.

Selecting object pairs for action: is the active object always first?

Perception is linked to action via two routes: a direct route based on affordance information in the environment and an indirect route based on semantic knowledge about objects. The present study explored the factors modulating the recruitment of the two routes, in particular which factors affecting the selection of paired objects. In Experiment 1, we presented real objects among semantically related or unrelated distracters. Participants had to select two objects that can interact. The presence of distracters affected selection times, but not the semantic relations of the objects with the distracters. Furthermore, participants first selected the active object (e.g. teaspoon) with their right hand, followed by the passive object (e.g. mug), often with their left hand. In Experiment 2, we presented pictures of the same objects with no hand grip, congruent or incongruent hand grip. Participants had to decide whether the two objects can interact. Action decisions were faster when the presentation of the active object preceded the presentation of the passive object, and when the grip was congruent. Interestingly, participants were slower when the objects were semantically but not functionally related; this effect increased with congruently gripped objects. Our data showed that action decisions in the presence of strong affordance cues (real objects, pictures of congruently gripped objects) relied on sensory-motor representation, supporting the direct route from perception-to-action that bypasses semantic knowledge. However, in the case of weak affordance cues (pictures), semantic information interfered with action decisions, indicating that semantic knowledge impacts action decisions. The data support the dual-route account from perception-to-action.

Emotional interactions and an ethic of care: caring relations in families affected by HIV and AIDS

In the context of global processes of economic restructuring, the HIV and AIDS epidemic and socio-cultural constructions of care, many women and young people in low-income households have been drawn into caring roles within the family. Drawing on the literature on an ethics of care, emotional geographies and embodiment, this paper examines the emotional dynamics of the caring process in families affected by HIV and AIDS. Based on the perspectives of both ‘caregivers’ and ‘care-receivers’ from research undertaken in Namibia, Tanzania and the UK, we examine the everyday practices of care that women and young people are engaged in and explore how emotions are performed and managed in caring relationships. Our research suggests caregivers play a crucial role in providing emotional support and reassurance to people with HIV, which in turn often affects caregivers' emotional and physical wellbeing. Within environments where emotional expression is restricted and HIV is heavily stigmatised, caregivers and care-receivers seek to regulate their emotions in order to protect family members from the emotional impacts of a chronic, life-limiting illness. However, whilst caregiving and receiving may lead to close emotional connections and a high level of responsiveness, the intensity of intimate caring relationships, isolation and lack of access to adequate resources can cause tensions and contradictory feelings that may be difficult to manage. These conflicts can severely constrain carers' ability to provide the ‘good care’ that integrates the key ethical phases in Tronto's (1993) ideal of the caring process.

Potassium budgets in grassland systems as affected by nitrogen and drainage

The main inputs, outputs and transfers of potassium (K) in soils and swards under typical south west England conditions were determined during 1999/00 and 2000/01 to establish soil and field gate K budgets under different fertilizer nitrogen (N) (0 and 280 kg ha(-1) yr(-1)) and drainage (undrained and drained) treatments. Plots receiving fertilizer N also received farmyard manure (FYM). Potassium soil budgets ranged, on average for the two years, from -5 (+N, drained) to +9 (no N and undrained) kg K ha(-1) yr(-1) and field gate budgets from +23 (+N, drained) to +89 (+N, undrained). The main inputs and outputs to the soil K budgets were fertilizer application (65%) and plant uptake (93%). Animals had a minor effect on K export but a major impact on K recycling. Nitrogen fertilizer application and drainage increased K uptake by the grass and, with it, the efficiency of K used. It also depleted easily available soil K, which could be associated with smaller K losses by leaching.

Decomposition and phosphorus release from organic residues as affected by residue quality and added inorganic phosphorus

The combined use of organic residue and inorganic fertiliser-phosphorus (P) is appropriate in meeting both the short and long-term P requirement of crops. To assess the influence of added inorganic fertiliser-P on the processes of decomposition and P release from the residue and the relationships with quality, prunings of Gliricidia sepium, Leucaena leucocephela, Senna siamea, Acacia mangium and Paraserienthus falcataria were incubated without and with added inorganic fertiliser-P for 56 days. Soil was added only as inoculum. Decomposition rate and amounts of acid extractable-P (P release) were in the same order: G. sepium > S. siamea > L. leucocepheta > P falcataria > A. mangium. Unlike the other residues, A. mangium released no P despite the loss of half its mass during the 8 weeks of incubation. The residue P content correlated with P release. However, decomposition rate did not correlate with residue P content but with the lignin, polyphenol and cellulose content, and ratios to P. These ratios were negatively correlated with P release suggesting that lignin and polyphenol contents influence P release more when the residue-P content is low. Results suggest that rate of decomposition influences the release of P. The critical residue P content for P release was estimated to be 0.12% < P < 0.19%. Added P had no effect on decomposition and P release from the residues.

Zinc tolerance in wheat cultivars as affected by varying levels of phosphorus

The effect of zinc-phosphorus (Zn-P) interaction on Zn efficiency of six wheat cultivars was studied. The higher dry matter yields were observed when Zn was applied at 5 mu g g(-1) soil than with no Zn application. Phosphorus applications also increased dry matter yield up to the application of 25 mu g P g(-1) soil. The dry matter yield was significantly lower at the P rate of 250 mu g g(-1) soil. At the Zn-deficient level, the Zn-efficient cultivars had higher Zn concentrations in the shoots. Zinc concentrations in all cultivars increased when the P level in the soil was increased from 0 to 25 mu g P g(-1) soil except for the cv. Durati, in which Zn concentrations decreased with increases in P levels. However, when ZnxP interactions were investigated, it was observed that at a Zn-deficient level, Zn concentrations in the plant shoot decreased with each higher level of P, and more severe Zn deficiency was observed at P level of 250 mu g g(-1) soil.

The experiences and priorities of young people who care for their siblings in Tanzania and Uganda

This report presents key findings from a small-scale pilot research project that explored the experiences and priorities of young people caring for their siblings in sibling-headed households affected by AIDS in Tanzania and Uganda. Qualitative and participatory research was conducted with 33 young people living in sibling-headed households and 39 NGO staff and community members in rural and urban areas of Tanzania and Uganda. The report analyses the ways that young people manage transitions to caring for their younger siblings following their parents’ death and the impacts of caring on their family relations, education, emotional wellbeing and health, social lives and their transitions to adulthood. The study highlights gendered- and age-related differences in the nature and extent of young people’s care work and discusses young people’s needs and priorities for action, based on the views of young people, NGO staff and community members. Meeting the basic needs of young people living in sibling-headed households, listening to young people’s views, fostering peer support and relationships of trust with supportive adults, raising awareness and advocacy emerge as key priorities to safeguard the rights of children and young people living in sibling-headed households and challenge the stigma and marginalisation they sometimes face.

Estimating the hidden number of scrapie affected holdings in great Britain using a simple, truncated count model allowing for heterogeneity.

None of the current surveillance streams monitoring the presence of scrapie in Great Britain provide a comprehensive and unbiased estimate of the prevalence of the disease at the holding level. Previous work to estimate the under-ascertainment adjusted prevalence of scrapie in Great Britain applied multiple-list capture–recapture methods. The enforcement of new control measures on scrapie-affected holdings in 2004 has stopped the overlapping between surveillance sources and, hence, the application of multiple-list capture–recapture models. Alternative methods, still under the capture–recapture methodology, relying on repeated entries in one single list have been suggested in these situations. In this article, we apply one-list capture–recapture approaches to data held on the Scrapie Notifications Database to estimate the undetected population of scrapie-affected holdings with clinical disease in Great Britain for the years 2002, 2003, and 2004. For doing so, we develop a new diagnostic tool for indication of heterogeneity as well as a new understanding of the Zelterman and Chao’s lower bound estimators to account for potential unobserved heterogeneity. We demonstrate that the Zelterman estimator can be viewed as a maximum likelihood estimator for a special, locally truncated Poisson likelihood equivalent to a binomial likelihood. This understanding allows the extension of the Zelterman approach by means of logistic regression to include observed heterogeneity in the form of covariates—in case studied here, the holding size and country of origin. Our results confirm the presence of substantial unobserved heterogeneity supporting the application of our two estimators. The total scrapie-affected holding population in Great Britain is around 300 holdings per year. None of the covariates appear to inform the model significantly.

Landscape context and habitat type as drivers of bee diversity in European annual crops

To better understand the dynamics of bee populations in crops, we assessed the effect of landscape context and habitat type on bee communities in annual entomophilous crops in Europe. We quantified bee communities in five pairs of crop-country: buckwheat in Poland, cantaloupe in France, field beans in the UK, spring oilseed rape in Sweden, and strawberries in Germany. For each country, 7-10 study fields were sampled over a gradient of increasing proportion of semi-natural habitats in the surrounding landscape. The CORINE land cover classification was used to characterize the landscape over a 3 km radius around each study field and we used multivariate and regression analyses to quantify the impact of landscape features on bee abundance and diversity at the sub-generic taxonomic level. Neither overall wild bee abundance nor diversity, taken as the number of sub-genera. was significantly affected by the proportion of semi-natural habitat. Therefore, we used the most precise level of the CORINE classification to examine the possible links between specific landscape features and wild bee communities. Bee community composition fell into three distinct groups across Europe: group I included Poland, Germany, and Sweden, group 2 the UK, and group 3 France. Among all three groups, wild bee abundance and sub-generic diversity were affected by 17 landscape elements including some semi-natural habitats (e.g., transitional wood land-shrub), some urban habitats (e.g., sport and leisure facilities) and some crop habitats (e.g., non-irrigated arable land). Some bee taxa were positively affected by urban habitats only, others by semi-natural habitats only, and others by a combination of semi-natural, urban and crop habitats. Bee sub-genera favoured by urban and crop habitats were more resistant to landscape change than those favoured only by semi-natural habitats. In agroecosystems, the agricultural intensification defined as the loss of semi-natural habitats does not necessarily cause a decline in evenness at the local level, but can change community composition towards a bee fauna dominated by common taxa. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

How a sequential design would have affected the GAIN international study of Gavestinel in stroke

While planning the GAIN International Study of gavestinel in acute stroke, a sequential triangular test was proposed but not implemented. Before the trial commenced it was agreed to evaluate the sequential design retrospectively to evaluate the differences in the resulting analyses, trial durations and sample sizes in order to assess the potential of sequential procedures for future stroke trials. This paper presents four sequential reconstructions of the GAIN study made under various scenarios. For the data as observed, the sequential design would have reduced the trial sample size by 234 patients and shortened its duration by 3 or 4 months. Had the study not achieved a recruitment rate that far exceeded expectation, the advantages of the sequential design would have been much greater. Sequential designs appear to be an attractive option for trials in stroke. Copyright 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel