Of Frogs & Rhetoric: The Atrazine Wars

In a scientific dispute over the effects of atrazine on amphibians, chemical industry–funded and publically funded scientists present stunningly contrasting constructions of atrazine's environmental concentrations, persistence, and potential to harm. Considerable scientific uncertainties and variable ranges allow authors to construct preferred versions of the story of atrazine. These incommensurate rhetorical constructions, more the result of competing economic and environmental interests than of any paradigmatic misalignments, have prolonged the dispute not only over atrazine's effects but also over whether its sales should be banned.     

‘Fractured communities’: uncertainty,stress, and (a lack of) communal coping in Palestinian refugee camps

This study examined how communal coping reveals itself in Palestinian refugee camps and the conditions that promote or prevent its occurrence. Individual and dyadic interviews were conducted with 40 mothers and one of their adolescent children living in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. The results revealed that communal coping existed within the mother–adolescent dyad to a certain extent, but was rare within the larger context of the refugee camps. While families and neighbors did not typically verbalize their hardships and actively cope with them as a group, there was often an implicit recognition that they were all experiencing the same uncertainty and stress. Acting upon their uncertainty as a collective, however, was greatly hampered by mistrust within and outside the camps, due to widespread violence, privacy violations, vying for scarce resources, and disloyalty. Parents and adolescents also engaged in protective buffering whereby they attempted to reduce the stress of the family by keeping stress and fears to themselves rather than communicating about them. Even though protective buffering helped the refugees cope with chronic uncertainty and maintain a sense of normalcy, it prevented them from acting upon the problem as a group. Finally, parents emphasized that the child’s education provided hope for the future. Practical implications are discussed.     

Scientific communication – on the brink of the next evolution?

Key points

• Publishing is fixated on the format of the scholarly article, and this is stifling innovation.
• Content should be presented in a way that adapts dynamically to the reader's needs.
• A lot of interdisciplinary research is needed to transform reading, writing, and publishing processes.

     

Introduction to Usus,a Community Website on Library Usage,and a Discussion about COUNTER 4

Established in 2014, Usus (Latin for usage), supported by Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources (COUNTER), but editorially independent, is a community-run website designed to provide a space for librarians, consortia, publishers, aggregators, repository managers, and scholars to discuss all aspects of usage, including particular ways that use is measured. In this session, Usus Supervisory Board members provided an introduction to Usus, outlined the purpose of the community-run site, and discussed how librarians may utilize the site to submit ongoing and complex usage issues. In addition, the presenters engaged attendees in discussing specific e-resource usage issues they have encountered as well as report changes and additions in the recently released COUNTER Code of Practice 4.     

Bilateral practice improves dominant leg performance in long jump

Benefits of bilateral practice both for the non-dominant and for the dominant body side have been shown in several studies. Thereby, most of the studies included movement tasks of the upper extremity or investigated sports games in which the ability of acting bilaterally is an essential basis for success and, thus, a bilateral practice is reasonable anyway. Individual unilaterally performed sports including movement tasks of the lower extremity are rarely investigated. Therefore, the aim of our study was to test if contralateral transfer due to bilateral practice can be found in an unilaterally performed sport including the lower extremity. We trained and tested 61 adolescent athletes in long jump to compare the jumping performance of the dominant leg after a 12-week practice period between two groups: a bilateral practice group that practiced specific long jump exercises with both the dominant and non-dominant leg and an unilateral practice group that practiced specific long jump exercises only with the dominant leg. Results showed a superior effect of bilateral practice compared to unilateral practice regarding the jumping performance of the dominant leg. The performance increase at post-test and retention-test for the dominant limb was significantly higher for the bilateral practice group (pre-to-post: 5.2%, pre-to-retention: 7.4%) compared to the unilateral practice group (pre-to-post: 3.4%, pre-to-retention: 4.5%). Thus, bilateral practice should be established in the early practice programmes of track and field athletes to improve the performance of the dominant take-off leg.     

Access to human,animal, and environmental journals is still limited for the One Health community

Objective

“One Health” is an interdisciplinary approach to evaluating and managing the health and well-being of humans, animals, and the environments they share that relies on knowledge from the domains of human health, animal health, and the environmental sciences. The authors'' objective was to evaluate the extent of open access (OA) to journal articles in a sample of literature from these domains. We hypothesized that OA to articles in human health or environmental journals was greater than access to animal health literature.

Methods

A One Health seminar series provided fifteen topics. One librarian translated each topic into a search strategy and searched four databases for articles from 2011 to 2012. Two independent investigators assigned each article to human health, the environment, animal health, all, other, or combined categories. Article and journal-level OA were determined. Each journal was also assigned a subject category and its indexing evaluated.

Results

Searches retrieved 2,651 unique articles from 1,138 journals; 1,919 (72%) articles came from 406 journals that contributed more than 1 article. Seventy-seven (7%) journals dealt with all 3 One Health domains; the remaining journals represented human health 487 (43%), environment 172 (15%), animal health 141 (12%), and other/combined categories 261 (23%). The proportion of OA journals in animal health (40%) differed significantly from journals categorized as human (28%), environment (28%), and more than 1 category (29%). The proportion of OA for articles by subject categories ranged from 25%–34%; only the difference between human (34%) and environment (25%) was significant.

Conclusions

OA to human health literature is more comparable to animal health than hypothesized. Environmental journals had less OA than anticipated.Keywords (Medical Subject Headings) Publishing, Periodicals as Topic, Access to Information, Veterinary Medicine, Environment, Environmental Health, Medicine“One Health” is an integrated, transdisciplinary approach to solve complex problems at the diverse interfaces shared by humans, animals, and the environment [1]. The One Health approach to evaluating and managing the health and well-being of humans, animals, and the environments that they share relies on knowledge from the domains of human health, animal health, and the environmental sciences. Although there is a growing body of literature about the development of the One Health concept as documented by Pepper, Carrigan, Shurtz, and Foster [2], this literature is not the same as the combination of literature from the three domains that is applied in service of One Health. Every discipline related to One Health has its unique mindset and language, with corresponding lists of acronyms that are frequently an impediment to effective communication across the participating professions. Relevant papers guiding a One Health approach may never specifically use “One Health” as a term or concept.To promote better communication and collaboration among health professionals and environmental scientists, a public monthly One Health Intellectual Exchange Group (IEG) hosted by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center was launched in 2009. In 2011, faculty from the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine, University of North Carolina''s Gillings School for Global Public Health, Duke Global Health Institute, and Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University expanded the IEG series into a weekly seminar course with eight One Health focus areas [3]. The eight focus area modules were the following: an introduction to One Health; environmental health and ecology; the human and animal bond; zoonoses and emerging infectious diseases; food and water safety; disease surveillance, informatics, and disaster preparedness; benefits of comparative medicine; and policy and education (Appendix A, online only). Each seminar speaker recommended papers to read prior to the session to provide a foundation for the topic because student backgrounds and majors were quite diverse. Represented student majors included master''s of public health, master''s of animal science, doctor of veterinary medicine, graduate-level environmental sciences, and undergraduate-level biochemistry, engineering, and biology.Open access (OA) to relevant literature is very important to scholars and practitioners working on interdisciplinary problems. The One Health Proof of Concept Workgroup found that few studies assess outcomes in human, animal, and environmental spheres simultaneously [4], making it important to be able to access articles from each of the three domains to get a more complete picture.The objective of this study was to evaluate the extent of OA to journal articles in a sample of literature relevant to One Health from the human, animal, and environmental domains. Working in a college of veterinary medicine and supporting faculty, staff, and students addressing interdisciplinary problems under the One Health umbrella [5], the authors were familiar with the extent of OA in human biomedical and public health literature and the literature of veterinary medicine but were less familiar with environmental journals. In light of general availability of environmental information and OA to publications such as Environmental Health Perspectives, we thought it likely that environmental literature would be relatively open compared to the other subject areas. Therefore, we hypothesized OA to articles from human health or environmental journals was greater than access to animal health literature. We chose to look at article-level subject categorization and access, as well as journal-level categorization and access, because they might differ. Article-level access relates more to authors'' decisions about OA for a content domain, while journal-level access and subject categorization are driven by publishers and associations. Understanding the distinction and having data would inform our efforts to promote increased OA to this literature.     

Education,Welfare Reform and Psychological Well-Being: A Critical Psychology Perspective

There are established links between education and well-being, and between poverty and education. This article draws on interviews with parents of school-aged children impacted by a policy in the UK commonly referred to as the ‘bedroom tax’. A critical psychology perspective to education is put forward, acknowledging the complex interrelationships between psychological well-being, sociopolitical factors and education.