Global positioning system and associated technologies in animal behaviour and ecological research.

Biologists can equip animals with global positioning system (GPS) technology to obtain accurate (less than or equal to 30 m) locations that can be combined with sensor data to study animal behaviour and ecology. We provide the background of GPS techniques that have been used to gather data for wildlife studies. We review how GPS has been integrated into functional systems with data storage, data transfer, power supplies, packaging and sensor technologies to collect temperature, activity, proximity and mortality data from terrestrial species and birds.

How can we boost IQs of "dull children"?: A late adoption study.

From 5,003 files of adopted children, 65 deprived children, defined as abused and/or neglected during infancy, were strictly selected with particular reference to two criteria: (i) They were adopted between 4 and 6 years of age, and (ii) they had an IQ <86 (mean = 77, SD = 6.3) before adoption. The average IQs of adopted children in lower and higher socioeconomic status (SES) families were 85 (SD = 17) and 98 (SD = 14.

Children and war.

Neither scientific analysis nor warmhearted concern are adequate to provide a practical understanding of how wars affect children. Without rejecting either approach, however, the author shows how a balanced idea of the problem can be formed. Drawing on his knowledge as a neuropsychiatrist and his experience as a child in wartime, he reviews the causes and effects of the sufferings involved, and makes some suggestions for a practical response.

[The life of parents with handicapped children].

Based on personal experience and the results of a survey among 78 families, the author analyses the psychological, social and economical consequences of severe mental retardation for the parents of the sick child. The most important consequences are psychological and socio-economic: guilt feelings, social isolation and risk of parental separation. The disclosure of the child's handicap yields to various reactions: psychological shock at first, then denial of the handicap, depression, followed in some parents with acceptance and fear for the future of their child after their own death.

[Violence and negligence to children and adolescents in institutions].

Institutional abuse comprises a structural aspect directly bound to the institutional area itself as well as direct abuses of all kinds which are committed by members of the staff. Such direct abuses can be felt by those who enact them or by observers as being legal in their context or as illicit and therefore concealed. Information about violence in institutions is rarely found in scientific literature.

[Mental retardation and multiple handicaps (author's transl)].

Handicaps in childhood often go by 2 or 3, more often than usually said. Multiple handicaps create difficult problems as to their diagnosis and care. On the basis of an epidemiological survey conducted in the Paris area, the authors underline the frequency of behavioral problems as supplementary handicap, and the role and importance of the mental deficiency in multiple handicaps in childhood, the most frequency associations according to the level of mental deficiency, the social factors significantly associated with the mental handicap, in terms of inequality of risks and inequality of access to health care and rehabilitation.

Intellectual status of working-class children adopted early into upper-middle-class families.

Failure rates observed (13 +/- 6 percent for school failures, 17 +/- 5 percent for scores below 95 on a collective IQ test) were far below those expected from the social class of birth (55 percent, 51 percent) or observed in a control group (56 +/- 8 percent, 49 +/- 9 percent) but close to those expected from the social class of adoption (15 percent, 15 percent).