Special Vulnerability Of Children Research Articles

Designing teaching materials with disaster maps and evaluating its effectiveness for primary students

Abstract One of the most important parts of disaster management and disaster risk reduction strategies is the special vulnerability of children and the need to increase disaster awareness among them. It is very effective to design and develop awareness-raising tools suitable for children’s learning needs in this process. The main purpose of this study is to contribute to raising awareness of disasters among children in Turkey. With the study, risk maps for forest fire, landslide, flood, earthquake, and avalanche in Turkey were designed, and materials were developed by equipping them with disaster-themed texts. A questionnaire was applied to 165 students in the 10–11 age group with these interesting and entertaining materials. The results indicate that the study increased students’ ability to learn about disasters with maps by an average of 39%.

Mode of use by mobile phone and change of time of simple audio-motor reaction for users of mobile communication. Age related features of ipsilateral and contralateral effects

By analysing the time of a simple auditory-motor reaction with mono-presentation of an audio signal, the effect of the electromagnetic radiation of a mobile phone on the human auditory system is evaluated. Regularities in the frequency of occurrence of ipsi and contralateral effects in mobile users of different age groups are obtained. This study has no analogues in either Russian or foreign publications and is currently exclusive. The purpose was to study age-related features of the severity of ipsi and contralateral effects, depending on the mode of use of the mobile phone. To record the ipsi- and contralateral effects, we used the differences in the average values of a simple auditory-motor reaction between the left and right ears with mono-presentation of the sound signal of 573 respondents of different age groups. The obtained values were compared with the control group data for each age group (491 respondents). If the difference was greater than in the control group, the ipsilateral or contralateral effect was recorded. The severity of the effect was evaluated taking into account the lateral preferences of each participant in the experiments (to which ear the mobile phone is most often held) and the mode of use of the mobile phone. Statistical processing of the results was carried out using the non-parametric Mann-Whitney test and the method of descriptive statistics: prevalence indicator (Pr) (relative frequency of manifestation of a particular attribute in the sample). The comparison of the severity of ipsi and contralateral effects for different age groups allowed us to establish the following patterns. It was found that, in general, the manifestation of the contralateral effect decreases with age, and the ipsilateral effect increases. However, this change is not linear. It is shown that the features of the manifestation of the contralateral and ipsilateral effect for each age group depend both on the time of daily use of a mobile phone and on the total duration of use of a mobile phone. We believe that when studying multidimensional input data, an individual approach is necessary. The presented results confirm the negative effect of the radiation of mobile phones on the auditory system, primarily of our younger generation. Given the special vulnerability of children to physical environmental factors and the depth of penetration of EMR MT into the brain of a child, we believe that from a radiobiological point of view, there is already a need to develop a special SanPiN (sanitary rules and norms) for all available modern low-intensity sources of electromagnetic radiation, including Wi-Fi.

The special vulnerability of children.

The environment in which children grow, play and learn has a profound effect on their health and well-being. Exposures to a polluted indoor environment do not result in the same outcomes for children as for adults because children may be exposed differently, children metabolize some chemicals differently than adults; and children have "windows of vulnerability" while they are growing and developing when their target organs may be more susceptible than the target organs of adults.

Paradoxes of Children’s Vulnerability

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the manner in which the special vulnerabilities of children ground duties to protect them from threats to their well-being. I distinguish three kinds of risk: pointless risks, required risks and unnecessary risks. I argue that a seemingly plausible view that holds that adults should strive to protect children from both pointless risks and unnecessary risks is mistaken. Instead respect for children as juvenile but not fully mature agents permits exposing children to some unnecessary risks. Moreover, the limited prerogatives that parents have to shape the values of their children also permits exposing children to some unnecessary risks.

Children's Rights and a Capabilities Approach: The Question of Special Priority

The latter part of the twentieth century saw the near-universal recognition of the idea of children’s rights as human rights. At the same time, the conceptual basis for such rights remains largely under-theorized. Part of the aim of this article is to draw on the insights of the “capabilities approach” developed by Martha Nussbaum in philosophy, and Amartya Sen in economics, in order to provide a fuller theoretical justification of this kind. In addition, this article investigates the degree to which it will be justifiable, under such an approach, for international human rights law or national constitutions, to give special priority to children’s rights. It begins this task by first considering, and rejecting, potential justifications for such special priority based on the need to ensure the future self-reliance of children as adults and ideas about the special “innocence” of children; and, then, by developing two affirmative justifications for such special priority, based on the special vulnerability of children, and the special cost-effectiveness of protecting children’s rights. This article also explores the degree to which these principles may provide a starting point for thinking about more general trade-offs between different rights claims, or claimants, under a capabilities approach.

Environmental Health

It is recognized that humans are participants in complex ecosystems and that their potential for health is proportional to the health function of those ecosystems ("ecosystem health"). From the medical viewpoint this close connection between environment and health is outlined acknowledging that man-made environmental degradation may lead to human illness. This is the very object of the "environmental medicine" which should also take into account psycho-philosophical aspects related to the affective perception of our environment and its degradation. Data are reviewed on the special vulnerability of children as an example of groups within the population who are particularly sensitive to toxic hazards in the environment. The vulnerability of infants and children reflects the unique patterns of exposure to environmental hazards, coupled with the inherent fragility of their developmental processes. Given this example, the concept is explored that certain groups within our population, most notably children, are deserving of special protection in risk assessment, law, and regulation. As physicians, we should use prudence when counselling our patients, especially pregnant mothers, about avoidance of exposures to chemicals of unknown and untested toxic potential.