A Case Report of Cake Frosting as a Source of Copper Toxicity in a Pediatric Patient

Introduction: Copper is an uncommon source of metal toxicity in children that requires a high index of suspicion for diagnosis. Case Report: We describe the unique presentation of a 12-month-old girl who developed acute onset of vomiting and diarrhea after ingestion of a copper-contaminated birthday cake. Conclusion: This case highlights the presentation, evaluation, and management of the rare pediatric patient who presents with copper poisoning. This case also illuminates the public health implications of potential metal poisoning when using non-edible decorative products in homemade and commercially prepared baked goods.

Editorial and Introduction

Welcome to the summer issue of Legal Information Management (LIM) which celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL). Back in 1999, on Friday 16th April 1999 to be precise, a BIALL Council meeting took place that was held at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London. The minutes of that meeting record that, Before the meeting opened, Mary Blake [then President of BIALL] informed those present that the date was a special one in BIALL history, as it was 30 years to the day that BIALL was established. She had marked the occasion by bringing a birthday cake and Michael Maher [then Chair of the Association] provided bottles of Champagne for a toast after lunch.

Ritualized Objects: How We Perceive and Respond to Causally Opaque and Goal Demoted Action

Rituals are able to transform ordinary objects into extraordinary objects. And while rituals typically do not cause physical changes, they may imbue objects with a particular specialness – a simple gold band may become a wedding ring, while an ordinary dessert may become a birthday cake. To treat such objects as if they were ordinary then becomes inappropriate. How does this transformation take place in the minds of observers, and how do we recognize it when we see it? Here, we suggest that two under-examined elements of ritual need deeper consideration within the context of ritual cognition. We propose a fully integrated operational definition in which these two critical ritual elements – causal opacity and goal demotion – are included. In a pre-registered experiment one-hundred and one adults, in a 2 × 2 mixed-within participants design observed actions performed upon profane objects. These actions were either ordinary (causally transparent and goal apparent) or ritualized (causally opaque and goal demoted), and were described as a blessing, a curse, or were not described at all. Contrary to established findings and pre-registered predictions, we found that ritualized actions alone are not enough to influence perceptions of, and attributions towards, objects, and that positive goal information (blessings) are more behaviorally persuasive than negative information. However, we found that participants recalled ritualized action in greater detail and with more specificity than ordinary actions. In effect, we demonstrate that causal opacity and goal information interact to allow us to recognize a ritual as a ritual.

“Slavery with a smile” - the media controversy about children’s literature on the topic of slavery and the rhetoric of the publishing industry

Discussions about the appropriateness of American children’s books on ethnic and racial issues have recently become headlines in American daily newspapers. Journalists and opinion writers are questioning the themes and the perspectives of the authors. While some believe there must be limitations on what is published for young readers, others claim any kind of censorship is a violation of the freedom of speech. The paper will provide examples of media debates concerning recently published books for children. Among others it will discuss the controversy about Ramin Ganeshram’s picture book A Birthday Cake for George Washington published in 2016 and no longer distributed because of its “sanitized” vision of slavery.