Seating for the chairbound disabled person — A survey of seating equipment in the United Kingdom

The chairbound, handicapped person often requires a cushion to distribute the supportive forces over the largest area possible in order to reduce the risk of the development of a pressure sore. The paraplegic, or someone with a pelvic obliquity, may require a specially contoured cushion to redistribute seating pressures. Additionally, postural support can be provided by a relatively simple harness or by lateral support pads, either fitted as extras to standard wheelchairs or included as part of some wheelchair designs. The severely handicapped person may require padded inserts in his wheelchair or an intimately moulded seat which helps to control some spasms as well as to provide a functional, comfortable posture. Each of the commonly used methods of solving the seating problems of the chairbound person is discussed and different production processes used for the manufacture of personalized seats are presented.     

Tools for living—A personal view of new status for aids for the disabled in society

Tools for Living is a concept which regards a technical aid for a disabled individual as being no different in principle from a tool which allows a normal individual to carry out a task for which his intrinsic biological equipment is inadequate.Acceptance of this concept would change the status, mechanism for provision and attitude towards technical aids, in a direction which would lower the barriers against personal acceptance, particularly in the elderly. It is forecast that the production of ‘tools’ specifically devised to compensate for the performance decrements in the elderly could become an important new branch of industry.     

Hermaphroditism,gonochorism, and asexual reproduction in Cassiopea sp.—an immigrant in the islands of Hawai'i

Summary

Two populations of the conspicuous, semi-sessile medusae of the rhizostome genus Cassiopea, both morphologically similar to Cassiopea andromeda from the Red Sea and Indopacific, were recently studied on Oahu (Hawai'i), one from a sheltered saltwater pond (the Hilton Lagoon) next to Ala Wai Harbor, Honolulu, and the second from the canals of a fish farm near Kahuku on NE Oahu. Gonad differentiation, checked in 1998, and again in 1999 and 2000, was unexpectedly different in medusae from these two locations. Contrary to all earlier reports and personal observations of strict gonochorism in C. andromeda, the majority of the Hilton Lagoon medusae collected in 1998 were hermaphroditic with female and male parts intermingling in the gonads. This is an exceptional case in scyphozoans. However, this hermaphroditic condition, which was observed again in 1999, was not stable over time. All six medusae taken from the same lagoon in 2000 were distinctly gonochoristic; four were males, and two were females brooding egg masses on the oral disk. Planula larvae hatching in the laboratory were successfully reared to the scyphopolyp stage. By contrast, medusae sampled from the population were all males in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Polyps were found abundantly on dark, deteriorating leaves of the Red Mangrove, occasionally on other plant remnants, and on discarded plastic materials in the canals. The polyps propagated asexually both by strobilation of ephyrae and by production of motile, larva-like buds that settled to form additional polyps. We speculate on a clonal origin of this male population. Asexually formed propagules were induced to form polyps by exposure to either the peptide Z-GPGGPA or biogenic substrata as has been shown before in other Cassiopea species. The serine/threonine protein phosphatase inhibitor cantharidin stimulated bud development too, but interfered strongly with pattern formation, polarity, and the sequence and timing of morphogenetic events. It did not induce typical bud-to-polyp metamorphosis.     

Innatism in the Anthropology of A. L. Kroeber: A Critique of ‘the Boasian Paradigm’

Basing his analysis on Kroeber's ‘The superorganic’ (1917 Kroeber, A. L. 1917. The superorganic.. American Anthropologist, 19: 163–213. [Crossref] [Google Scholar]) and ‘Eighteen professions’ (1915 Kroeber, A. L. 1915. Eighteen professions.. American Anthropologist, 17: 283–88. [Crossref] [Google Scholar]), Derek Freeman has put forward the notion of a ‘Boasian paradigm’, whereby Kroeber is alleged to have perpetuated the biology/culture split suggested by Boas. I argue, instead, that there is a strong innatist element in Kroeber's writings throughout his long career; and that the articles noted above need to be placed in the social and intellectual contexts of their time, particularly the encroachment of the eugenics movement on social theory and its application to immigration restriction.