Involuntary Removal Research Articles

Association of Client and Provider Race with Approaches Pursued by Social Workers for Reducing Firearm Access.

Social workers assess and intervene to prevent harm among clients at risk of harm to self (HTS) and harm to others (HTO) with a firearm. This study sought to assess the impact of client race on social workers' approaches to reduce firearm access when they weighed voluntary (e.g., store out-of-home) and involuntary (e.g., extreme risk protection order) removal methods. We considered the role of social workers' self-identified race as a moderator of this relationship, comparing white (single race) and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) social workers. A survey was distributed to Washington state social workers (n = 9073) who were presented with two case vignettes, each randomized to view the client's race as Black or white. Logistic regression was used to assess the association between the client's race and the pursuit of voluntary or involuntary methods, stratified by social workers' race. Among the participants (n = 1306), 26% pursued at least one involuntary care plan option for the HTS client, and 59% for the HTO client. The Black client at risk of HTS had lower odds of an involuntary care plan option compared to the white client (OR = 0.69, 95% CI 0.54-0.88), while the Black client at risk of HTO had higher odds of an involuntary care plan options (OR = 1.13, 95% CI 1.07-1.66). These associations were not statistically significantly different between white (single race selected) and BIPOC social workers. This study contributes to the growing understanding of potential racial disparities in social workers' decision-making regarding firearm access reduction strategies.

Review: Enemies among Us: The Relocation, Internment, and Repatriation of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans during the Second World War, by John E. Schmitz

As we watch in horror the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we are again faced with the question of how much responsibility individual citizens should bear for the atrocities their political leaders inflict upon other nations. We also are forced to think what should be done with the expatriates supportive of their aggressive homeland, and how the people connected to the adversarial nations through ethnic ties should be treated when they may or may not be sympathetic to their ancestral nations.John E. Schmitz’s Enemies among Us illuminates the complications posed by these questions by presenting how the U.S. government treated enemy aliens and U.S. citizens with ethnic ties with the enemies during World War II. Schmitz uses historical sources as well as personal episodes, including those of his grandparents who were incarcerated in POW camps as naturalized German Americans, to show that warring nations tend to prioritize national security concerns at the expense of individual human rights.The forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans (which Schmitz calls “relocation and evacuation”) is a prime example of the governmental abuse of its war powers. To this tragic episode of human rights violation, Schmitz adds the “internment” of German, Italian, and Japanese aliens and a smaller number of German and Italian Americans, and he tells a larger story of involuntary—and mostly wrongful—confinement of individuals whose loyalty was rendered suspicious. Schmitz’s research on the executive records, the FBI records, and the War, State, and Justice Departments’ archives reveals the comprehensive scheme of the Roosevelt Administration aiming at protecting the nation from fifth-column activities not only within the United States but in the Western Hemisphere. The earlier chapters elucidate how J. Edgar Hoover took advantage of FDR’s fear of the fifth column to transform the FBI into a formidable secret police agency. The book also offers much information on the U.S. government’s intervention into Latin American policies regarding the arrests and deportation of alleged Axis sympathizers and alien enemies.By connecting the “internment” schemes on the East and the West Coasts, this book illuminates the “internment” of Japanese nationals (Issei) in detention centers—an understudied aspect of the wartime Japanese American experiences—as a part of the larger anti-espionage federal policy. The hostage exchange scheme explains the abduction and shipment of Japanese Latin Americans along with German Axis sympathizers to the United States. Schmitz describes how the federal enemy alien policies were confusing and often shifted clumsily. In the case of the hostage exchange policy, the government had to abandon the scheme because it turned out to be more dangerous to deport subversive internees to the enemy nations than to keep them in the United States. The book illustrates the overall injustice that befell those who were labeled potentially adversarial, and the primary sources show how the U.S. enemy alien policies were poorly managed.The major problem of this book lies in its handling of the story of 110,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated in the War Relocations Centers. The book would have worked better if it had focused on the treatment of Japanese, German, and Italian enemy aliens. Schmitz carefully distinguishes the terms “internment” (detention of enemy aliens) and “relocation/evacuation” (involuntary removal of American citizens), but often his arguments become muddled throughout the book. On the latter issue, scholars in Asian American studies—such as Eiichiro Azuma (2005, 2019), Brian Masaru Hayashi (2004), Masumi Izumi (2019), and Erik K. Yamamoto, Lorraine J. Bannai, and Margaret Chon (2020)—have produced many works that explain the complex and significant roles Japanese Americans played in West Coast agriculture and in the debates related to national security and civil liberties. The book’s bibliography and many of the simplistic and faulty descriptions of the state of Japanese America before and during World War II reveal that the author was ill-prepared to explain how issues of national security, loyalty, and race intersected with one another when Japanese Americans were locked up in the inland concentration camps.

Stephen Foster and the Slavery Question

Stephen Foster and the Slavery Question

The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West by Jennifer Graber

Reviewed by: The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West by Jennifer Graber Thomas D. Hamm The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West. By Jennifer Graber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. xxii + 288 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, and index. The past two decades have seen a shift in the study of Native American history. Influenced by work done in other disciplines, and by the activism of Native American scholars, historians have increasingly turned to non-documentary sources, especially oral traditions. This is controversial, as an exchange in the April 2020 American Historical Review shows. But when done well, it produces excellent history. Jennifer Graber’s The Gods of Indian Country is a prime example. Graber’s focus is the Kiowa people, who in 1800 lived and hunted over what are now the states of Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the Kiowas faced relentless pressure from white settlers, state and territorial governments, and the government in Washington to dispossess them of most of their lands and confine them to reservations. Graber sees spiritual practice as key to Kiowa resistance. Central was the Sun Dance, which the Kiowa had learned from the Crow and other Plains Indians. It acknowledged the centrality of the sun in Kiowa life and was a way of giving thanks for abundant buffalo, which were not only the center of the Kiowa diet but also of the Sun Dance’s rituals. In 1869, the Kiowas first encountered Quakers. The new administration of Pres. Ulysses S. Grant embarked on a “peace policy” of attempting to “civilize” and assimilate Native Americans by turning administration of Indian agencies over to religious denominations. American churches answered this call enthusiastically. As Graber notes, since the early nineteenth century, many American Protestants had been what she calls “friends of the Indians,” critics of involuntary removal and dispossession and fraudulent treaties. They were fervent believers that Native Americans, if educated and Christianized, women introduced to habits of domesticity and men changed from hunters into farmers, could become assimilated into American society. Quakers had been involved in such projects since the 1790s, and both Hicksite and Gurneyite Friends accepted agencies. Gurneyites took responsibility for the Kiowa, Arapaho, and Cheyenne through the Associated Executive Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs (AECFIA). Friends Thomas C. Battey, James Haworth, and Lawrie Tatum, agents to the Kiowas, are central to Graber’s account of the 1870s. [End Page 89] Many Friends will find the portrayal of these Quaker Indian agents disturbing. While critical of white encroachment on Native lands, these Friends largely accepted government policies. They urged the Kiowas to remain on reservation lands, to give up the hunt and become farmers, and to send their children to school, including boarding schools that have gained such an evil reputation over the past generation. They viewed traditional Kiowa spirituality as ignorant paganism. Ultimately Friends supported the severalty policy that broke up tribal landholdings. While sympathetic to the Kiowas, Graber is candid. They were a warlike people for whom violent raids against other tribes and whites were a way of life. Kiowa prophets, claiming the ability to bring back the buffalo after 1870 or to turn aside enemy bullets with special spells or shields clearly failed. Graber notes divisions among American Friends. Since the Hicksite agency in Nebraska lies outside her focus on the Kiowa, she dismisses the theological disputes among Quakers as not crucial to her story. But many of the Gurneyite Friends involved in AECFIA were in the midst of a dramatic transformation of their own in the 1870s, laying the foundations of the pastoral system. That theology would lead them, unlike the Hicksites, toward a missionary impulse of their own that included Native Americans and has continued to the present day. This is a minor criticism. The Gods of Indian Country is engaging, widely researched, elegantly written, and convincing. Thomas D. Hamm Earlham College Copyright © 2021 Friends Historical Association

Echoic survivals: Re-documenting pre-1975 Vietnamese music as historical sound/tracks of re-membering

Following the contested fall of Sài Gòn in 1975, several South Vietnamese veterans found their existence and contributions during the Việt Nam War erased. Even after 45 years of diasporic displacement, or what I refer to as the involuntary and forceful exilic removal and geographical scattering of a group due to political turnover and turmoil, the histories, stories, and legacies of South Việt Nam and the Republic of Việt Nam have largely been forgotten in the present and political landscapes of both postwar Việt Nam and the United States. Based on what I describe as a diasporic re-reading of the lyrics and re-listening of selective pre-1975 Vietnamese music, this article explores the enduring corpus of musical sounds in nhạc vàng, or pre-1975 yellow music, specifically songs that focus on war and người lính (“soldiers”). By examining its historical and spatial trajectories, I argue that Vietnamese music can be heard and described as historical sources, much of which has been overlooked in the West, that document the many erased and discounted experiences, stories, and peril of South Vietnamese veterans. As I argue, diasporic sounds echoed in Vietnamese music are crucial to understanding the history and continued peril of South Vietnamese veterans in the current geopolitical landscape. The following analysis shows that Vietnamese music contextually becomes a diasporic source for re-membering the disremembered, the forgotten, and the silenced. Vietnamese music shifts from modern music to diasporic sounds of war remembrance and loss that underscore their continued postwar plight. In this essay, I also interviewed a South Vietnamese veteran. For him, music becomes a mode of survival, representing the unfading nostalgia and memories of the Việt Nam War.

Denationalisation and discrimination

ABSTRACT In this piece, I consider the relationship between denationalisation and discrimination. Denationalisation, the involuntary removal of citizenship or nationality by the state, has a dark history, reflected in the Nazi use of the power. Yet before 1945, many liberal democratic states also practiced citizenship-stripping, in ways informed by considerations of gender, race, national origin, and mode of citizenship acquisition. As denationalisation is currently making a revival across a range of liberal democratic states as a way of responding to ‘home grown’ terrorists, a question emerges: Do recent denationalisation provisions manage to break free of this discriminatory past? Here, I use a discussion of denationalisation’s history and examination of the U.K. as the basis for a critical assessment of the power’s contemporary incarnations. I find that contemporary denationalisation power is still a powerful tracer of groups within the polity who, despite holding formal citizenship, are viewed as foreign.

Assessing a Retention Policy for Air Traffic Controllers

Training a developmental (air traffic controller in training) to certification is a lengthy and expensive process. To limit losses due to poor performance in training, the FAA has implemented a policy to reassign some developmentals to less complex air traffic control (ATC) facilities following voluntary or involuntary removal from training at more complex facilities. The National Employee Service Team (NEST) is implementing the policy. We reviewed the NEST processes and assessed effectiveness based on the extent to which the NEST recommendations are accepted and the likelihood that developmentals reassigned in accordance with NEST recommendations succeed in training at the new facility. We found that NEST recommendations to retain or terminate developmentals and type and level facility for reassignment are accepted by the FAA at a high level. Furthermore, the success rate of developmentals at a new facility is greater than 90%.

Liminal Men: Incarceration and Relationship Dissolution

Incarceration, now a rite of passage for many economically disadvantaged minority men entailing an involuntary removal from families, places these marginal men in a liminal state where they are simultaneously members of families and isolated from families. Despite a burgeoning literature documenting the collateral consequences of incarceration for family life, as well as evidence that the deleterious consequences of incarceration for maternal and child well-being stem from resultant relationship dissolution, much less is known about the direct link between incarceration and relationship dissolution. I consider this association with data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal survey uniquely positioned to understand the consequences of incarceration for family life. Results show that paternal incarceration is associated with relatively immediate relationship dissolution among parents, the association is concentrated among parents living together prior to incarceration, and is explained by both incarceration duration and changes in relationship quality. And, for couples that survive this initial period, incarceration is inconsequential for relationship dissolution. Taken together, these findings link the literature on the collateral consequences of mass incarceration with the literature on demographic changes in family life, and, given the well-known deleterious consequences of parental relationship dissolution for children, have important implications for intergenerational inequality. El encarcelamiento, ahora un rito de iniciación para muchos hombres pertenecientes a minorías desfavorecidas económicamente, implica una separación involuntaria de sus familias, lo que les coloca en un estado en transición donde al mismo tiempo que siguen siendo miembros de sus familias, son aislados de ellas. A pesar de la creciente literatura que documenta las consecuencias colaterales del encarcelamiento para la vida familiar, así como la evidencia de que el encarcelamiento es perjudicial para el bienestar materno-infantil como consecuencia de la ruptura de la relación, se sabe mucho menos acerca de la relación directa entre el encarcelamiento y la ruptura de la relación de pareja. En este artículo se analiza esta asociación con datos del estudio de “Familias Frágiles y Bienestar Infantil”, un estudio longitudinal que facilita una visión única para comprender las consecuencias del encarcelamiento en la vida familiar. Los resultados muestran que el encarcelamiento paterno se asocia con la ruptura relativamente inmediata de la relación entre los padres, esta asociación se concentra entre los padres que vivieron juntos antes de su encarcelamiento, y se explica tanto por la duración del encarcelamiento como por los cambios en la calidad de la relación. Y, para las parejas que sobreviven a este período inicial, el encarcelamiento es intrascendente para la ruptura. En conjunto, los resultados permiten relacionar la literatura sobre las consecuencias colaterales de la encarcelación con los estudios previos sobre los cambios demográficos en la vida familiar, y, dadas las consecuencias perjudiciales que tienen las separaciones de los padres en los hijos, la encarcelación tiene implicaciones importantes para la desigualdad intergeneracional.

Evaluating slum (favela) resettlements: The case of the Serra do Mar Project, São Paulo, Brazil

Slum clearance and resettlement schemes have increasingly become a feature of everyday life in Brazil and the rest of the world. The right to decent housing can involve relocating slum families to places that not only fulfill the precepts of adequate housing but also enhance the self-respect and quality of life of these families. Resettlement can however also heighten their vulnerabilities. This article is the result of a study which sought to evaluate how the resettled residents of a housing complex had adapted to their new surroundings following their involuntary displacement from the slums “favelas” to a development with characteristics different from those commonly found in Brazilian social housing. The research method employed in our study used tools to collect the viewpoints of the different actors in the process, and to assess user satisfaction. The uncertainty measure was used to analyze the quantitative data. The results showed that (i) involuntary removal is not a determining factor in user satisfaction, and (ii) residents' satisfaction levels are more influenced by a number of positive factors, especially the location of the housing development and its associated services, facilities and opportunities that enhance their quality of life, than by any drawbacks arising from their forced removal from the “favelas”. However, issues such as condominium management, buildings maintenance and higher costs may risk undermining the benefits of the project.

Survival time of calves with positive BVD virus results born during the voluntary phase of the Irish eradication programme

A retrospective case–control study was undertaken to investigate the temporal pattern of, and factors associated with, the survival of BVD virus-positive calves, identified between January and July 2012 during the voluntary phase of the Irish national eradication programme. Potential statuses for case and control calves consisted of: alive in birth herd; slaughtered; sold; dead (due to culling or death from natural causes and termed ‘involuntary removal’).An initial comparison of cases and controls found significant differences between the outcomes for cases and controls and also between cases in relation to herd type (beef, dairy, dual purpose), sex, age and test status (BVDPOS – no confirmatory test; BVDPI – positive on confirmatory test). Key differences included a higher level of case animals still alive in, or slaughtered from, beef herds, a greater proportion of BVDPI animals being retained relative to those with a BVDPOS status and a significantly lower slaughter weight (89kg) for case animals relative to controls.Separate multivariable models were constructed for dairy and beef cases. In the final dairy model breed (Jersey or non-Jersey), county and BVD status were retained, with the last two found to be time-varying covariates with significant changes in hazard ratios (HR) over time. In the beef model, herd size, county and BVD status were retained, with the HR for the last two factors again varying significantly over time. With the exception of the addition of the number of BVD positive calves in the herd to the dairy model, the same factors were identified when models were restricted to the first 90 days following the birth of case animals.A greater knowledge and understanding of all of these factors will allow refinement of programme communications and incentives to encourage prompt removal of PI calves from all sectors of the Irish breeding herd during the compulsory phase of the national eradication programme.

Care assessments concerning involuntary removal of children from intellectually disabled parents

This study set out to analyse how parenting and the needs of the children are assessed by social authorities and courts in families where one or both parents have an intellectual disability (ID). The texts of child welfare investigations and court judgments in 16 cases of care orders concerning parents (30) with IDs and their children (29) in two counties in Sweden were analysed by a hermeneutic case study. The study shows that even though many of the children are described as already harmed by neglect, clear assessments of care needs are not presented and it is uncertain which of the children's needs a placement in a family home is assumed to satisfy. The conclusion of the article is that, even though no direct discrimination can be established, the particular individual and structural difficulties of the families' life circumstances are not taken into consideration. This can be seen as a discriminatory practice.

Congressmen in Exile: The Politics and Consequences of Involuntary Committee Removal

We show how preferred committee assignments act as an electoral subsidy for members of Congress—empowering representatives’ legislative careers. When holding preferred assignments, legislators are free to focus on legislative activity in Washington, DC. But when the subsidy is removed, legislators are forced to direct attention to the district. To test our theory of legislative subsidy, we exploit committee exile—the involuntary removal of committee members after a party loses a sizable number of seats. Legislators are selected for exile using members’ rank on the committee, causing exiled and remaining legislators to appear strikingly similar. Using exile, we show that it has only limited electoral consequences, but this is partly due to compensatory efforts. Exiled legislators shift attention away from Washington and towards the district: they raise and spend more money for reelection, author less legislation, are absent for more days of voting, and vote with their party less often.

The Perceptions of Terminated Ministers Scale—Revised

The Perceptions of Terminated Ministers Scale—Revised (PTM-R), a 15-item measure of perceptions of termination appropriate to members of clergy, was developed for use among researchers studying how clergypersons perceive the effects of forced termination events. To examine the reliability and validity of the measure, three samples of clergy were assessed using the PTM and PTM-R. The three samples used Barfoot et al.’s (2005) working definition of forced pastoral exits. Their definition does not distinguish between being fired or forced to resign. Each participant was asked to specify whether they were fired or forced to resign. Recently, Tanner et al. (2012) offered a new definition of forced termination: “Forced termination is the result of a process of involuntary removal of paid and non-paid clergy-persons that results from a period of traumatic and demeaning psychological and emotional abuse” (p. 14). Data analysis among all three samples supports the reliability and validity of the scale and commends it for further use among clergy who have experienced forced termination.

Pushed monocanalicular intubation. Pitfalls, deleterious side effects, and complications

To present our experience with pushed monocanalicular nasolacrimal intubation in the management of 90 consecutive cases of nasolacrimal outflow obstruction. This paper reports a non-randomized study of 90 consecutive cases treated with a pushed Monoka intubation system (Masterka™). A metal guide is placed inside a silicone tube rather than being attached at the distal end of the tube, as done with traditional pulled intubations. Three probe lengths are available: 30, 35, and 40 mm. The silicone stent was pushed into a punctum, canaliculus, and nasolacrimal duct by means of the guide. After passing through the valve of Hasner and reaching the nasal floor, the guide was then delicately withdrawn while remaining oriented along the axis of the lacrimal sac and duct. Throughout this phase, the anchoring plug was held in contact with the punctum. Three study groups were set up chronologically: group 1: endo-DCR procedures done with Masterka insertions under endoscopic observation. Group 2: Masterka insertions done with endoscopic guidance. Group 3: blind Masterka insertions without endoscopic guidance. The patients in groups 2 and 3 were selected on the information obtained by lacrimal probing. Only cases with mucosal nasolacrimal stenoses were included. All patients had surgery under general anesthesia with mechanically assisted ventilation (groups 1 and 2) or spontaneous ventilation (group 3). The anchoring plug was inserted into the punctum and vertical canaliculus, either by pulling on the probe (group 1) or using an inserting instrument. A total of 90 pushed Monoka intubations were done. Endoscopic examination (groups 1 and 2) demonstrated visually that the pushed intubation method was effective. In none of the 28 cases did the silicone bunch up when the guide was withdrawn. DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: This was dependent upon proper selection for pushed Monoka intubation; the length of the probe and confirmation that there no false passage was created. The pushed intubation technique was only slightly more difficult than a simple lacrimal probing. The average operating time, excluding the anesthetic procedures, was respectively 5 min (group 2) and 4 min (group 3). COMPLICATIONS DURING SURGERY: There were no anesthetic or general problems observed in the three groups. Epistaxis was also not noted. Fifteen percent (13/90). The 13 complications noted were: two cases of canaliculitis, one intracanalicular migration, eight probes that disappeared, one keratitis, and one case of involuntary removal by the patient. DELETERIOUS SIDE EFFECTS: Tearing with the probe was in place was noted in 21.1% of the cases (19/90). This tearing disappeared as soon as the probe was removed in 50% of these cases (10/19). Overall, the success rate (absence of epiphora, absence of mucous discharge) was 90% (81/90) with an average follow-up period of 19 weeks (Range, 1 day to 60 weeks). Two cases were lost to follow-up at day 1 and day 7. Group 1: 90.9% (20/22 cases; average age: 65 years, with an average follow-up period of 24 weeks). Group 2: 100% (6/6 cases; average age: 3.1 years, with an average follow-up period of 14 weeks). Group 3: 88.3% (53/60 cases excluding the two cases that were lost to follow-up; mean age: 2.3 years, with an average follow-up period of 16 weeks). From a technical perspective, pushed nasolacrimal intubation is much simpler than the traditional pulled types of nasolacrimal intubation. The anesthetic procedure required is the same as that for a late probing procedure, but the functional results are better. The Masterka is an alternative to simple late probing in the treatment of mucosal nasolacrimal stenoses in patients of over 12 months of age.

Forced to Leave: Forced Termination Experiences of Assemblies of God Clergy and Its Connection to Stress and Well-Being Outcomes

Although forced termination has been a subject of interest to clergy for some time, social scientists have generally studied job loss as if it was the same phenomenon regardless of occupation. Ministry work by itself has always been difficult and stressful, and termination from this occupation has been reported to be the result of a demeaning and systematic process of involuntary removal of paid and non-paid clergy-persons that includes psychological, socio-emotional, and spiritual abuse. This pilot project sampled 227 active ministers from the Assemblies of God denomination via an online survey and asked about their experiences with forced termination, as well as measures of their personal and family well-being. In general, ministers who had been forced from a ministry position had less family well-being and more health problems than those who had not been forced out.

Nurse education: factors associated with attrition

This paper is a report of a study to identify the factors having an impact on student completion rates in a preregistration programme. Nursing student attrition is an international issue causing concern in many parts of the developed world including Australia, the United States and Europe. In the United Kingdom, nursing student attrition has become a major issue, despite having one of the lowest general university dropout rates in the developed world. A retrospective cohort study was conducted in 2007 using routinely-collected demographic and completion data on four cohorts of nursing students (1259 in total) studying at a large English university. Students who were older on entry were more likely to complete the programme than younger students, and those who had only the minimum educational qualifications on entry were less likely to complete than those with higher-level qualifications. There was some evidence of increased risk of resigning from the course in students taking the child branch, and increased risk of discontinuation (involuntary removal) from the course in both male and black/minority ethnic students. There was also some evidence that the healthcare organization responsible for a student's placement could influence completion rates. To improve attrition rates on preregistration nursing programmes, higher education institutions should actively target recruitment at mature candidates; increase the level of qualification required to gain entry; examine course structures for flexibility and provide multi-level student support.

Bismarck

Many have tried their hand at the versatile Otto von Bismarck's life and political career since his involuntary removal from power in 1890, surrounded by bitter acrimony and greeted by most of the political establishment in Berlin (and elsewhere) with a sigh of relief. In recent years Lothar Gall, Ernst Engelberg and Otto Pflanze, in their respective biographies, set high standards of scholarship and competent historical appraisal of one of the great figures of the nineteenth century. German unification a century after Bismarck's dismissal fanned new interest in the founder of the German Reich. Historians and journalists pointed more or less convincingly to putative parallels and differences of contemporary politics with the events of more than 120 years ago. Edgar Feuchtwanger's solid biography, concentrating on the crucial developments and highlights of Bismarck's glittering career and prominent role in the history of nineteenth-century Europe, is written in the liberal tradition of...

An economic spreadsheet model to determine optimal breeding and replacement decisions for dairy cattle.

The aim of this paper is to describe a user-friendly spreadsheet culling model that was constructed to support economical, optimal breeding and replacement decisions on dairy farms. The model was based on the marginal net revenue technique. Inputs for the model can be entered for specific farm conditions, and the output is easily accessible. In the model, the retention pay-off (RPO) value of individual dairy cows was calculated. The RPO value of a cow is equal to the total additional profits that a producer can expect from trying to keep the cow until her optimal age, taking into account the changes of involuntary removal compared with her immediate replacement. To calculate the RPO values, the future production, revenues, and costs of dairy cows at different levels of milk production with different numbers of days open (DO) were determined. Furthermore, the ranges of carcass value, calf revenues, and the range of involuntary disposal rates of cows within and across lactations were taken into account. To illustrate the model, parameters in the model were chosen to represent a typical Holstein dairy herd in Pennsylvania. The results of this model are very comparable with earlier, more complex models that are more difficult to use on the farm. In addition to using the RPO values to evaluate the decision to breed or replace a cow, the costs per additional DO were estimated. Early conception was most profitable with the costs per additional DO varying from $0 to more than $3/d. The model can be used as a decision-supporting tool for producers, extension personnel, veterinarians, and consultants. In addition, researchers, economists, and government organizations can use the model to determine the costs of culling dairy cows in a disease control program. The model and manual are available at http://cahpwww.vet.upenn.edu/software/econcow.html.

A Stochastic Model Simulating the Feeding-Health-Production Complex in a Dairy Herd

A dynamic, stochastic, and mechanistic Monte Carlo model, simulating a dairy herd with focus on the feeding-health-production complex is presented. By specifying biological parameters at cow level and a management strategy at herd level, the model can simulate the technical and economic consequences of scenarios at herd level. The representation of the feeding-health-production complex is aimed to be sufficiently detailed, to include relationships likely to cause significant herd effects, and to be sufficiently simple to enable a feasible parameterization of the model and interpretation of the results from the model. Consequently, diseases are defined as four disease types: two metabolic disease types, an udder disease type, and a reproductive disease type. Risk factors for the diseases were defined as parity, yield capacity, disease recurrence, disease interrelationships, lactation stage, and season. Direct effects of the diseases were defined according to milk yield, feed intake, feed utilization, conception, culling, involuntary removal, and death.Scenarios differing in base risks of milk fever and ketosis, heat detection rate, and culling strategy were simulated for describing the model behavior. Annual milk yield per cow was decreased by increased risk of ketosis and by increased risk of milk fever, even though no direct effect of milk fever on milk yield was modeled at the cow level. The indirect effect from milk fever is a consequence of increased replacement rate (relatively lower milk yield from younger cows). By ignoring the history of milk fever in insemination and replacement decisions, a significantly reduced net income per cow was found in some herds. We concluded that important benefits from using such a herd model are the capability of accounting for herd management factors and the advantage of avoiding to double count the indirect effects from disease, such as increased risk of other diseases, poorer reproduction results, and increased risk of culling and death.

Sequelae of abortion and relinquishment of child custody among women with major psychiatric disorders.

A growing number of women with major psychiatric disorders frequently consider the choice of abortion or relinquishment of the custody of children. Psychological reactions to abortion and relinquishment of custody were assessed and contrasted among 119 hospitalized women of M age 40 yr. and psychiatric patients. An original questionnaire was developed to assess emotional symptoms, psychiatric signs, attitudes, and satisfaction with the decision regarding the loss of a fetus or child. As hypothesized, reported sequelae of relinquishments of custody were rated as significantly more severe than sequelae of abortion. Dissatisfaction with choice, negative attitudes, religious affiliation, and involuntary removal of a child from custody were predictive of distress following abortion or relinquishment. The findings show that increased efforts are needed to help women with psychiatric difficulties cope with reproductive planning and losses.