This report provides the text of and materials related to the Missing Children's Assistance Act of 1983 (S.2014), a bill reauthorizing and amending: (1) the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 to provide for assistance in locating missing children; and (2) the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act. Sections of the bill focus on…

Catastrophe theory may provide a possible model for describing and explaining the boom town phenomena at a generalized level; catastrophe models deal with phenomena in which changes in continuous independent variables lead to sudden, or abrupt, discontinuous changes in a dependent variable. Rural energy boom towns are the result of sudden, abrupt…

This article is a review and discussion of Walter Rodney's recent book on African history entitled "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa." (HMD)

The growing concern in recent years about apparent increases in adolescent pregnancies has given rise to a proliferate but fragmented literature. Reviewing this literature from several disciplinary perspectives, the author concludes that it is unable to support diagnosis or intervention because it lacks an adequate theoretical and empirical base.…

Describes the newly formed British Council for Science and Society, the purpose of which is to identify specific developments in science and technology whose social consequences lie just over the horizon. (BR)

This paper suggests that sociologists should become actively involved with the study of the future as a means for revitalizing the profession of sociology. One aspect of the future that may be most exciting and challenging is the development of human society and culture in extraterrestrial human communities. A unique combination of technological…

Literature's intellectual and spiritual independence and great public appeal afford it great potential as a moving force in today's increasingly secular, unphilosophical, and nonliterary world, which nonetheless longs for harmony, unity of purpose, and spiritual oneness. Although political oppression and literary commercialism threaten literature…

This paper is devoted to a selected review of literature on drug abuse and dependence among children and adolescents. It is divided into seven sections, each giving information on studies, both nationally and internationally, on a particular drug. These are: nicotine, alcohol, organic solvents (sniffing of substances such as plastic cement, laquer…

This document is a study of existing child abuse reporting legislation. It reflects law changes over the last five years, records the status of the law in each of the states and territories, notes novel approaches, discusses problem areas, and challenges some existing concepts. The monograph provides guidelines for communities seeking to modify…

The University has a 3 part responsibility: academic excellence, research, and community service. This last responsibility tends to get short shrift in most institutions of higher learning, because an institution's excellence is generally not measured by its responsiveness to social needs. Yet, the time has come when higher education must face its…

Studies have shown that members of the working class are often overworked, underpaid, overtaxed, and unhappy. They tend to be distrustful of new ideas and methods and to rely on their extended families to meet their needs for human contact. One way in which the working class person may have a chance to widen the character of his interactions with…

Could it be that children learn more about the world of work by being workers, than by having a lesson on the subject? Evaluates the attraction of street work and provides photographs of children at work. (Editor/RK)

Examines Kadushin's earlier empirical efforts to determine the leading social critics and organizations of social criticism in America and investigates his theory through content analysis of leading journals of social criticism. (MH)

The number of errors found in coverage of social issues was greater than that for general coverage and comparable to that for science coverage. (KS)