Absence Of Risk Research Articles

Repérage des élèves en difficulté en milieu scolaire. Évaluation comparative des pratiques professionnelles de deux systèmes d'accueil et d'orientation

A study was carried out in the Poitou-Charentes region to assess and compare the professional practices in secondary schools offering two different systems of response and guidance. The evaluation method was based upon an analysis of the rates of concurrence between the evaluation of the students' answers to an epidemiological self-administered questionnaire filled out before a clinical interview, and the conclusions of the psychiatric nurses after this interview. Comparisons between the specific system and the standard general system of National Education highlighted an increased capacity of professionals in the more specific system to distinguish a high risk of suicidal tendencies from a low risk or absence of risk, while the standard system was more effective in screening and detecting overall levels of well-being across the entire student population. Moreover, the guidance support and counseling proposed in the specialised system seemed to better meet the pupils' needs more accurately than in the standard system.

Clarissa; or, Rake Versus Usurer

ABSTRACT This paper applies “interest,” as a dominant eighteenth-century model of human nature, to Richardson's Clarissa; it proceeds to explore the construction of a new ethics of sexual relationship in the novel by focusing on the homology between usury and libertinism as two kinds of speculation judged immoral due to absence of risk. Clarissa's economic language reveals her to be an astute exegete of her culture's politics and enables her to redress the sexual imbalance of risk; Lovelace, by contrast, troubles the assumptions of the “interest” paradigm by subscribing to an aristocratic economy of expenditure that is at odds with the economic prudence of the bourgeoisie.

Survey of methodologies for developing media screening values for ecological risk assessment

This review evaluates the methodologies of 13 screening value (SV) compilations that have been commonly used in ecological risk assessment (ERA), including compilations from state and U.S. federal agencies, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Canada, The Netherlands, and Australia. The majority of surfacewater SVs were primarily derived for the protection of aquatic organisms using 2 approaches: (1) a statistical assessment of toxicity values by species groupings, such as "ambient water quality criteria," or (2) extrapolation of a lowest observed adverse effect level determined from limited toxicity data using an uncertainty factor. Sediment SVs were primarily derived for the protection of benthic invertebrates using 2 approaches: (1) statistical interpretations of databases on the incidence of biological effects and chemical concentrations in sediment, or (2) values derived from equilibrium partitioning based on a surfacewater SV. Soil SVs were derived using a diversity of approaches and were usually based on the lowest value determined from soil toxicity to terrestrial plants or invertebrates and, less frequently, from modeled, incidental soil ingestion or chemical accumulation in terrestrial organisms. The various SV compilations and methodologies had varying levels of conservatism and were not consistent in the pathways and receptors considered in the SV derivation. Many SVs were derived from other compilations and were based on outdated values, or they relied on only older toxicity data. Risk assessors involved in ERA should carefully evaluate the technical basis of SVs and consider the uncertainty in any value used to determine the presence or absence of risk and the need for further assessment.

Convergence of Sibling Risk Among Children of Parents with Serious Mental Disorders

We examined child psychiatric diagnoses, behavioral problems, overall symptom impairment, global psychological functioning, intellectual ability, and adaptive behavior in 83 sibling pairs whose mothers were diagnosed with a serious mental disorder. Sibling pairs were assessed for the extent to which they converged on the presence or absence of risk on each adverse outcome and then examined under conditions of high vs. low/moderate family stress. Consistent with the study hypotheses, we found that on each outcome assessed there was evidence for sibling convergence of risk. In addition, family stress was found to significantly moderate sibling risk convergence. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding sibling convergence of risk in these families and for clinical and preventive intervention.

The Precautionary Principle, Epidemiology and the Ethics of Delay

Ethics tells us: do good and do no harm and invokes the norms of justice, equity and respect for autonomy in protecting and promoting health and well-being. The Precautionary Principle, a contemporary re-definition of Bradford Hill's case for action, gives us a common sense rule for doing good by preventing harm to public health from delay: when in doubt about the presence of a hazard, there should be no doubt about its prevention or removal. It shifts the burden of proof from showing presence of risk to showing absence of risk, aims to do good by preventing harm, and subsumes the upstream strategies of the DPSEEA (Driving Forces Pressure Stress Exposure Effect Action) model and downstream strategies from molecular epidemiology for detection and prevention of risk. The Precautionary Principle has emerged because of the ethical import of delays in detection of risks to human health and the environment. Ethical principles, the Precautionary Principle, the DPSEEA model and molecular epidemiology all imply re-emphasizing epidemiology's classic rôle for early detection and prevention. Delays in recognizing risks from past exposures and acting on the findings (e.g., cigarette smoking and lung cancer, asbestos, organochlorines and endocrine disruption, radiofrequency, raised travel speeds) were examples of failures that were not only scientific, but ethical, since they resulted in preventable harm to exposed populations. These may delay results from, among other things, external and internal determinants of epidemiologic investigations of hazard and risk, including misuse of tests of statistical significance. Furthermore, applying the Precautionary Principle to ensure justice, equity, and respect for autonomy raises questions concerning the short-term costs of implementation to achieve long-term goals and the principles that guide compensation.

Survey of Methodologies for Developing Media Screening Values for Ecological Risk Assessment

This review evaluates the methodologies of 13 screening value (SV) compilations that have been commonly used in ecological risk assessment (ERA), including compilations from state and U.S. federal agencies, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Canada, The Netherlands, and Australia. The majority of surfacewater SVs were primarily derived for the protection of aquatic organisms using 2 approaches: (1) a statistical assessment of toxicity values by species groupings, such as “ambient water quality criteria,” or (2) extrapolation of a lowest observed adverse effect level determined from limited toxicity data using an uncertainty factor. Sediment SVs were primarily derived for the protection of benthic invertebrates using 2 approaches: (1) statistical interpretations of databases on the incidence of biological effects and chemical concentrations in sediment, or (2) values derived from equilibrium partitioning based on a surfacewater SV. Soil SVs were derived using a diversity of approaches and were usually based on the lowest value determined from soil toxicity to terrestrial plants or invertebrates and, less frequently, from modeled, incidental soil ingestion or chemical accumulation in terrestrial organisms. The various SV compilations and methodologies had varying levels of conservatism and were not consistent in the pathways and receptors considered in the SV derivation. Many SVs were derived from other compilations and were based on outdated values, or they relied on only older toxicity data. Risk assessors involved in ERA should carefully evaluate the technical basis of SVs and consider the uncertainty in any value used to determine the presence or absence of risk and the need for further assessment.

Factores protectores y de riesgo en salud mental en niños y adolescentes de la ciudad de Calama

Objective: to determine the psychological reality of the child and adolescent population in the Municipal schools in the city of Calama. Methods and patients: Representive samples of students from 4th grade junior high to 4th grade high attending Municipal schools in Calama. A total of 1,069 students, 543 males and 526 females were studied. A questionnaire of protective and risk factors in mental health for adolescents between 11 and 18 years, a psychopathological questionnaire for adolescents, of infant depression (CDI) and of ideation and suicide attempts were used. Results: predominant risk factors were; decreased social skills and sense of belonging to a group, low self concept/esteem and irregular family situation. The more frequent protective factors were: expectations of the future, absence of social risk conducts, absence of alcohol and drug risks, absence of risks of sexual conduct and absence of maltreatment. In the psychopathological questionnaire 191 (36.6%) of females were positive compared with 121 (22.2%) in males. In this group the predominant risk factors are lack of belonging to a group and low self esteem/concept. Suicidal ideation lay between 6.4% and 14,6% depending on how the question was phrased, 18% had committed 1 or more suicide attempts. The 247 individuals with a declared suicide ideation had positive CDI scores. Conclusions: In the early life of the child, within the family and later in school, interventional methods can be used to stimulate protective and reduce risk factors.

Is there a benefit in promoting the concept of radiation risk?

Is there a benefit in promoting the concept of radiation risk?

Risk Sharing and Demand Deposit. An Empirical Note about Regional Interest Rates in Italy

Even if the recent deregulation and disintermediation of financial markets have strongly reduced interest rates, some differences among Italian regional interest rates partially persist because of geographic and sector diversification. This could be one of the main reasons of the absence of risk sharing through Italian deposit and credit markets. We test three different types of risk sharing: the first one is a hypothesis of complete risk sharing that is easily refused; the second one is a hypothesis of partial temporary risk sharing that is accepted for most of the North regions; the last one, is a hypothesis of partial risk sharing over time and is accepted with different degrees of robustness for most of the remaining Italian regions.

Resource-mediated impact of spider predation risk on performance in the grasshopper Ageneotettix deorum (Orthoptera: Acrididae).

In response to increased exposure to predators when searching for food, many prey increase the frequency of antipredator behaviors, potentially reducing foraging rate and food intake. Such direct, nonlethal interactions between predators and prey resulting in reduced food intake can indirectly influence lifecycle development through effects on growth, developmental rate, and survival. We investigated the general hypothesis that individual performance of a herbivorous insect can be negatively affected when exposed to nonlethal predation risk, and that the response can be mediated by food quality. This hypothesis was tested using the common rangeland grasshopper Ageneotettix deorum with and without exposure to common wolf spider predators (Lycosidae, Schizocosa spp.) on both untreated natural and fertilized vegetation. All spiders were rendered temporarily incapable of direct feeding by restricting function of the chelicerae with beeswax. Detectable responses by grasshoppers to spiders indicate indirect consequences for lifecycle development. Grasshopper performance was measured as hind femur growth, duration of nymphal lifecycle stages, and survivorship in a caged field experiment conducted over 2 years. Grasshoppers developed faster and grew 3-5% larger when allowed to forage on fertilized vegetation in the absence of risk from a spider predator. Failure-time analysis illustrated enhanced survival probability in response to elevated food quality and the negative effects of grasshopper susceptibility to nonlethal predation risk. Performance on food of relatively low, ambient quality with no predation risk equaled that of grasshoppers caged with high quality vegetation in the presence of a modified spider. Increased resource quality can clearly moderate the negative life history responses caused by the behavioral modification of grasshoppers when exposed to spider predation risk, a compensatory response.

¿Pueden evitarse los sucesos adversos relacionados con la atención hospitalaria?

The concept of care risk includes any undesirable situation, or any factor contributing to its occurrence, related to the health care received and which might have negative consequences. It includes conditions like adverse effects of medicines, negligence and litigation. A safe clinical practice requires that three objectives be obtained: to identify which diagnostic and therapeutic clinical procedures are the safest and most efficient; to assure that they are applied to those who need them; and to carry them out correctly and without mistakes. In this sense, what are needed, on the one hand, are systems of notification and epidemiological studies, and, on the other, actions at different levels of the health system. The maximum safety of the patient is obtained by a suitable knowledge of the risks, elimination of those that are unnecessary, and prevention and protection in those that must inevitably be assumed. This is because safety is not the same thing as absence of risk.

Trust in risky messages: the role of prior attitudes.

Risk perception researchers have observed a "negativity bias" for hazard-related information. Messages indicating the presence of risk seem to be trusted more than messages indicating the absence of risk, and risk perceptions seem more affected by negative than positive information. Two experiments were conducted to examine alternative explanations of this finding within the area of food additives. Study 1 (N = 235) extended earlier work by (a) unconfounding message valence (positive or negative) from message extremity (definite or null finding) and (b) exploring the role of prior attitudes. Results suggested that negative/risky messages were indeed trusted more even when extremity was taken into account. However, prior attitudes significantly moderated the effect of message valence on trust. Positive messages were distrusted only by those with negative prior attitudes. Study 2 (N = 252), further explored the role of prior attitudes and extended the work by examining reactions to risky messages about a positively viewed additive--a vitamin. The results again found a moderating effect of prior attitudes on message valence. Participants had greater confidence in messages that were more congruent with their prior attitudes, irrespective of valence. Furthermore, positive messages had a greater impact on risk perception than negative messages. These findings suggest that greater trust in negative messages about hazards may be a product of a "confirmatory" rather than a "negativity" bias.

Opinions Regarding Who Should Consent to Research on Behalf of an Older Adult Suffering from Dementia

In many jurisdictions, consent to research on a decisionally incompetent adult can be provided only by the legal guardian. Yet, few cognitively impaired older adults are legally represented. This article reports on a postal survey eliciting the opinions of concerned individuals regarding who should decide whether an incompetent older adult will participate in research. Four groups of people were targeted by the survey: older adults, informal caregivers of cognitively impaired patients, researchers in ageing, and members of institutional review boards. Opinions were similar across the four groups and varied with the degree of risk involved in the study. In the absence of risk, most respondents did not think that the surrogate decision-maker must be legally appointed. As the amount of risk increased, the proportion of respondents who believed consent could be provided by a significant other without legal authority decreased, while that against soliciting cognitively impaired patients tended to increase.

Growth and Risk: Methodology and Micro Evidence

There has been a revival of interest in the effect of risk on economic growth. We quantify both ex ante and ex post effects of risk using a stochastic version of the Ramsey model. We develop a simulation-based econometric methodology which allows us to estimate the model in the structural form suggested by theory. The methodology is applied to micro data from a remarkable long-running panel data set for rural households in Zimbabwe. We find that risk substantially reduces growth: in the ergodic distribution the mean (across households) capital stock is 46% lower than in the absence of risk. This is, we believe, the first micro-based estimate of the effect of shocks on growth. About two-thirds of the impact of risk is due to the ex ante effect (i.e. the behavioral response to risk) which is usually not taken into account in policy design. Our results suggest that the effectiveness of policy interventions which reduce exposure to shocks or help households in risk man! agement may be seriously underestimated.

Measuring, monitoring, and reducing medical harm from a systems perspective: a medical director's personal reflections.

The author describes five critical elements for reducing and, ultimately, preventing harm to patients-from a systems perspective. In the element called leadership and culture, leaders must advocate patient safety as a primary goal and foster an institutional culture where change that promote patient safety can occur. In internal surveillance, systems are established to actively monitor for deviations in quality and guide efforts to engineer risk of harm out of the institution's practices; they can also demonstrate absence of risk or harm. Although incident reporting can be controversial and is sometimes avoided because its use in "blame attacks," etc., it can be valuable if built on a continuous improvement approach and a system approach to error prevention. External surveillance involves the identification and response to "sentinel events," such as wrong-sided surgery, and serves to remind all those involved in care just how risky and unforgiving medical practice can be. Finally, those involved in promoting safety must believe that hazard and risk are not inevitable and can be managed. The author illustrates this approach by describing his hospital's successful efforts to prevent the rise of aspergillus infections during a major hospital construction project. The author closes by describing selected challenges and opportunities to reduce harm from a systems perspective, such as using teams, involving patients and the public, using lessons learned from other industries with strong safety cultures, and using advances in information systems for a variety of safety-oriented tasks.

Alimentos transgénicos. Del valor de la naturaleza al valor del mercado

Not available.

Dealing with missing data in observational health care outcome analyses

Observational outcome analyses appear frequently in the health research literature. For such analyses, clinical registries are preferred to administrative databases. Missing data are a common problem in any clinical registry, and pose a threat to the validity of observational outcomes analyses. Faced with missing data in a new clinical registry, we compared three possible responses: exclude cases with missing data; assume that the missing data indicated absence of risk; or merge the clinical database with an existing administrative database. The predictive model derived using the merged data showed a higher C statistic ( C = 0.770), better model goodness-of-fit as measured in a decile-of-risk analysis, the largest gradient of risk across deciles (46.3), and the largest decrease in deviance (−2 log likelihood = 406.2). The superior performance of the enhanced data model supports the use of this “enhancement” methodology and bears consideration when researchers are faced with nonrandom missing data.

Gallstone disease in Peruvian coastal natives and highland migrants

BACKGROUNDIn a previous study, we found that gallstones were a common occurrence in the high altitude villages of the Peruvian Andes.AIMSTo determine if high altitude (⩾ 1500 m) is a...

Editorial: Absence of Certainty Is Not Synonymous with Absence of Risk

Editorial: Absence of Certainty Is Not Synonymous with Absence of Risk

Farm‐to‐market transaction costs and specialisation in small‐scale agriculture: Explorations with a non‐separable household model

Using an integrated household model with endogenous transaction costs, this article illustrates how, even in the absence of risk, the tension between gains from specialisation and corresponding increases in transaction costs may lead to enterprise diversification on small farms. A numerical example illustrates that this tension may contribute to the prevalence of inter‐cropped cash‐crops on small farms, in apparent disregard for foregone yield and income from greater specialisation involving pure‐stands. By implication, measures that augment households’ abilities to override trading costs may be critical complements to efforts seeking to raise productivity and incomes in small‐scale agriculture via increased specialisation.