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The urgency of climate change mitigation calls for a profound shift in personal behavior. This paper investigates psycho-social correlates of extra mitigation behavior in response to climate change, while also testing for potential (unobserved) heterogeneity in European citizens' decision-making. A person's extra mitigation behavior in response to climate change is conceptualized—and differentiated from common mitigation behavior—as some people's broader and greater levels of behavioral engagement (compared to others) across specific self-reported mitigation actions and behavioral domains. Regression analyses highlight the importance of environmental psychographics (i.e., attitudes, motivations, and knowledge about climate change) and socio-demographics (especially country-level variables) in understanding extra mitigation behavior. By looking at the data through the lens of segmentation, significant heterogeneity is uncovered in the associations of attitudes and knowledge about climate change—but not in motivational or socio-demographic links—with extra mitigation behavior in response to climate change, across two groups of environmentally active respondents. The study has implications for promoting more ambitious behavioral responses to climate change, both at the individual level and across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A vast body of global research shows that cultural factors affect the use of skilled maternity care services in diverse contexts. While interventions have sought to address this issue, the literature on these efforts has not been synthesised. This paper presents a systematic mapping of interventions that have been implemented to address cultural factors that affect women's use of skilled maternity care. It identifies and develops a map of the literature; describes the range of interventions, types of literature and study designs; and identifies knowledge gaps. Methods and Findings: Searches conducted systematically in ten electronic databases and two websites for literature published between 01/01/1990 and 28/02/2013 were combined with expert-recommended references. Potentially eligible literature included journal articles and grey literature published in English, French or Spanish. Items were screened against inclusion and exclusion criteria, yielding 96 items in the final map. Data extracted from the full text documents are presented in tables and a narrative synthesis. The results show that a diverse range of interventions has been implemented in 35 countries to address cultural factors that affect the use of skilled maternity care. Items are classified as follows: (1) service delivery models; (2) service provider interventions; (3) health education interventions; (4) participatory approaches; and (5) mental health interventions. Conclusions: The map provides a rich source of information on interventions attempted in diverse settings that might have relevance elsewhere. A range of literature was identified, from narrative descriptions of interventions to studies using randomised controlled trials to evaluate impact. Only 23 items describe studies that aim to measure intervention impact through the use of experimental or observational-analytic designs. Based on the findings, we identify avenues for further research in order to better document and measure the impact of interventions to address cultural factors that affect use of skilled maternity care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Fertility desires require new understanding in a context of expanding access to antiretroviral therapy for people living with HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper studies the fertility desires and their rationales, of slum-dwelling Kenyan men and women living with HIV/AIDS who know their serostatus, but have different antiretroviral therapy treatment statuses. It addresses two research questions: How do people living with HIV/AIDS consider their future fertility? What factors contribute to an explanation of fertility desires among people living with HIV/AIDS. Methods: A mixed methods study (survey [n = 513] and in-depth interviews [n = 41]) with adults living with HIV/AIDS living in Nairobi slums was conducted in 2010. Regression analyses assess independent relationships between fertility desires and socio-demographic factors. Analyses of in-depth interviews are used to interpret the statistical analyses of fertility desires. Results: Our analyses show that fertility desires are complex and ambivalent, reflecting tensions between familial and societal pressures to have children versus pressures for HIV (re-)infection prevention. More than a third (34%) of men and women living with HIV expressed future fertility desires; however, this is significantly lower than in the general population. Factors independently associated with desiring a child among people living with HIV/AIDS were age, sex, number of surviving children, social support and household wealth of the respondent. Discussion: Increasing access to ART is changing the context of future childbearing for people living with HIV/AIDS. Prevailing values mean that, for many people living with HIV/AIDS, having children is seen as necessary for a “normal” and healthy adult life. However, the social rewards of childbearing conflict with moral imperatives of HIV prevention, presenting dilemmas about the “proper” reproductive behaviour of people living with HIV/AIDS. The health policy and service delivery implications of these findings are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a new methodology which, while allowing for anonymous interaction, it also makes possible to compare decisions of cooperating or defecting when playing games within a group, according to whether or not players personally trust each other. The design thus goes beyond standard approaches to the role of trust in fostering cooperation, which is restricted to general trust. It also allows considering the role of the topology of the social network involved may play in the level of cooperation found. The results of this work support the idea that personal trust promotes cooperation beyond the level of general trust. We also found that this effect carries over to the whole group, making it more cohesive, but that higher levels of cohesion rely on a particular topology. As a conclusion, we hypothesize that personal trust is a psychological mechanism evolved to make human social life possible in the small groups our ancestors lived in, and that this mechanism persists and plays a role in sustaining cooperation and social cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pervasiveness of mobile devices, which is increasing daily, is generating a vast amount of geo-located data allowing us to gain further insights into human behaviors. In particular, this new technology enables users to communicate through mobile social media applications, such as Twitter, anytime and anywhere. Thus, geo-located tweets offer the possibility to carry out in-depth studies on human mobility. In this paper, we study the use of Twitter in transportation by identifying tweets posted from roads and rails in Europe between September 2012 and November 2013. We compute the percentage of highway and railway segments covered by tweets in 39 countries. The coverages are very different from country to country and their variability can be partially explained by differences in Twitter penetration rates. Still, some of these differences might be related to cultural factors regarding mobility habits and interacting socially online. Analyzing particular road sectors, our results show a positive correlation between the number of tweets on the road and the Average Annual Daily Traffic on highways in France and in the UK. Transport modality can be studied with these data as well, for which we discover very heterogeneous usage patterns across the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper was to see whether all-cause and cause-specific mortality rates vary between Asian ethnic subgroups, and whether overseas born Asian subgroup mortality rate ratios varied by nativity and duration of residence. We used hierarchical Bayesian methods to allow for sparse data in the analysis of linked census-mortality data for 25–75 year old New Zealanders. We found directly standardised posterior all-cause and cardiovascular mortality rates were highest for the Indian ethnic group, significantly so when compared with those of Chinese ethnicity. In contrast, cancer mortality rates were lowest for ethnic Indians. Asian overseas born subgroups have about 70% of the mortality rate of their New Zealand born Asian counterparts, a result that showed little variation by Asian subgroup or cause of death. Within the overseas born population, all-cause mortality rates for migrants living 0–9 years in New Zealand were about 60% of the mortality rate of those living more than 25 years in New Zealand regardless of ethnicity. The corresponding figure for cardiovascular mortality rates was 50%. However, while Chinese cancer mortality rates increased with duration of residence, Indian and Other Asian cancer mortality rates did not. Future research on the mechanisms of worsening of health with increased time spent in the host country is required to improve the understanding of the process, and would assist the policy-makers and health planners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested the effectiveness of an intensive, on average 17-session, adaptive and computerized working-memory training program for improving performance on untrained, paper and pencil working memory tasks, standardized school achievement tasks, and teacher ratings of classroom behavior. Third-grade children received either a computerized working memory training for about 30 minutes per session (n = 156) or participated in regular classroom activities (n = 126). Results indicated strong gains in the training task. Further, pretest and posttest transfer measures of working memory and school achievement, as well as teacher ratings, showed substantial correlations with training task performance, suggesting that the training task captured abilities that were relevant for the transfer tasks. However, effect sizes of training-specific transfer gains were very small and not consistent across tasks. These results raise questions about the benefits of intensive working-memory training programs within a regular school context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Improved understanding and quantification of social contact patterns that govern the transmission dynamics of respiratory viral infections has utility in the design of preventative and control measures such as vaccination and social distancing. The objective of this study was to quantify an age-specific matrix of contact rates for a predominantly rural low-income population that would support transmission dynamic modeling of respiratory viruses. Methods and Findings: From the population register of the Kilifi Health and Demographic Surveillance System, coastal Kenya, 150 individuals per age group (<1, 1–5, 6–15, 16–19, 20–49, 50 and above, in years) were selected by stratified random sampling and requested to complete a day long paper diary of physical contacts (e.g. touch or embrace). The sample was stratified by residence (rural-to-semiurban), month (August 2011 to January 2012, spanning seasonal changes in socio-cultural activities), and day of week. Usable diary responses were obtained from 568 individuals (∼50% of expected). The mean number of contacts per person per day was 17.7 (95% CI 16.7–18.7). Infants reported the lowest contact rates (mean 13.9, 95% CI 12.1–15.7), while primary school students (6–15 years) reported the highest (mean 20.1, 95% CI 18.0–22.2). Rates of contact were higher within groups of similar age (assortative), particularly within the primary school students and adults (20–49 years). Adults and older participants (>50 years) exhibited the highest inter-generational contacts. Rural contact rates were higher than semiurban (18.8 vs 15.6, p = 0.002), with rural primary school students having twice as many assortative contacts as their semiurban peers. Conclusions and Significance: This is the first age-specific contact matrix to be defined for tropical Sub-Saharan Africa and has utility in age-structured models to assess the potential impact of interventions for directly transmitted respiratory infections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On September 2013 an attack on the Westgate mall in Kenya led to a four day siege, resulting in 67 fatalities and 175 wounded. During the crisis, Twitter became a crucial channel of communication between the government, emergency responders and the public, facilitating the emergency management of the event. The objectives of this paper are to present the main activities, use patterns and lessons learned from the use of the social media in the crisis. Using TwitterMate, a system developed to collect, store and analyze tweets, the main hashtags generated by the crowd and specific Twitter accounts of individuals, emergency responders and NGOs, were followed throughout the four day siege. A total of 67,849 tweets were collected and analyzed. Four main categories of hashtags were identified: geographical locations, terror attack, social support and organizations. The abundance of Twitter accounts providing official information made it difficult to synchronize and follow the flow of information. Many organizations posted simultaneously, by their manager and by the organization itself. Creating situational awareness was facilitated by information tweeted by the public. Threat assessment was updated through the information posted on social media. Security breaches led to the relay of sensitive data. At times, misinformation was only corrected after two days. Social media offer an accessible, widely available means for a bi-directional flow of information between the public and the authorities. In the crisis, all emergency responders used and leveraged social media networks for communicating both with the public and among themselves. A standard operating procedure should be developed to enable multiple responders to monitor, synchronize and integrate their social media feeds during emergencies. This will lead to better utilization and optimization of social media resources during crises, providing clear guidelines for communications and a hierarchy for dispersing information to the public and among responding organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistical properties of the static networks have been extensively studied. However, online social networks are evolving dynamically, understanding the evolving characteristics of the core is one of major concerns in online social networks. In this paper, we empirically investigate the evolving characteristics of the Facebook core. Firstly, we separate the Facebook-link(FL) and Facebook-wall(FW) datasets into 28 snapshots in terms of timestamps. By employing the k-core decomposition method to identify the core of each snapshot, we find that the core sizes of the FL and FW networks approximately contain about 672 and 373 nodes regardless of the exponential growth of the network sizes. Secondly, we analyze evolving topological properties of the core, including the k-core value, assortative coefficient, clustering coefficient and the average shortest path length. Empirical results show that nodes in the core are getting more interconnected in the evolving process. Thirdly, we investigate the life span of nodes belonging to the core. More than 50% nodes stay in the core for more than one year, and 19% nodes always stay in the core from the first snapshot. Finally, we analyze the connections between the core and the whole network, and find that nodes belonging to the core prefer to connect nodes with high k-core values, rather than the high degrees ones. This work could provide new insights into the online social network analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Social capital has been studied due to its contextual influence on health. However, no specific assessment tool has been developed and validated for the measurement of social capital among 12-year-old adolescent students. The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a quick, simple assessment tool to measure social capital among adolescent students. Methods: A questionnaire was developed based on a review of relevant literature. For such, searches were made of the Scientific Electronic Library Online, Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences, The Cochrane Library, ISI Web of Knowledge, International Database for Medical Literature and PubMed Central bibliographical databases from September 2011 to January 2014 for papers addressing assessment tools for the evaluation of social capital. Focus groups were also formed by adolescent students as well as health, educational and social professionals. The final assessment tool was administered to a convenience sample from two public schools (79 students) and one private school (22 students), comprising a final sample of 101 students. Reliability and internal consistency were evaluated using the Kappa coefficient and Cronbach's alpha coefficient, respectively. Content validity was determined by expert consensus as well as exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Results: The final version of the questionnaire was made up of 12 items. The total scale demonstrated very good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha: 0.71). Reproducibility was also very good, as the Kappa coefficient was higher than 0.72 for the majority of items (range: 0.63 to 0.97). Factor analysis grouped the 12 items into four subscales: School Social Cohesion, School Friendships, Neighborhood Social Cohesion and Trust (school and neighborhood). Conclusions: The present findings indicate the validity and reliability of the Social Capital Questionnaire for Adolescent Students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tradition of keeping written records of gift received during household ceremonies in many countries offers researchers an underutilized means of data collection for social network analysis. This paper first summarizes unique features of the gift record data that circumvent five prevailing sampling and measurement issues in the literature, and we discuss their advantages over existing studies at both the individual level and the dyadic link level using previous data sources. We then document our research project in rural China that implements a multiple wave census-type household survey and a long-term gift record collection. The pattern of gift-giving in major household social events and its recent escalation is analyzed. There are significantly positive correlations between gift network centrality and various forms of informal insurance. Finally, economic inequality and competitive marriage market are among the main demographic and socioeconomic determinants of the observed gift network structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does reciprocal links affect the function of real social network? Does reciprocal link and non-reciprocal link play the same role? Previous researches haven't displayed a clear picture to us until now according to the best of our knowledge. Motivated by this, in this paper, we empirically study the influence of reciprocal links in two representative real datasets, Sina Weibo and Douban. Our results demonstrate that the reciprocal links play a more important role than non-reciprocal ones in information diffusion process. In particular, not only coverage but also the speed of the information diffusion can be significantly enhanced by considering the reciprocal effect. We give some possible explanations from the perspectives of network connectivity and efficiency. This work may shed some light on the in-depth understanding and application of the reciprocal effect in directed online social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the understanding of and motivation behind individual trading behavior is an important puzzle in finance, little is known about the connection between an investor's portfolio structure and her trading behavior in practice. In this paper, we investigate the relation between what stocks investors hold, and what stocks they buy, and show that investors with similar portfolio structures to a great extent trade in a similar way. With data from the central register of shareholdings in Sweden, we model the market in a similarity network, by considering investors as nodes, connected with links representing portfolio similarity. From the network, we find investor groups that not only identify different investment strategies, but also represent individual investors trading in a similar way. These findings suggest that the stock portfolios of investors hold meaningful information, which could be used to earn a better understanding of stock market dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complex networks describe a wide range of systems in nature and society. To understand complex networks, it is crucial to investigate their community structure. In this paper, we develop an online community detection algorithm with linear time complexity for large complex networks. Our algorithm processes a network edge by edge in the order that the network is fed to the algorithm. If a new edge is added, it just updates the existing community structure in constant time, and does not need to re-compute the whole network. Therefore, it can efficiently process large networks in real time. Our algorithm optimizes expected modularity instead of modularity at each step to avoid poor performance. The experiments are carried out using 11 public data sets, and are measured by two criteria, modularity and NMI (Normalized Mutual Information). The results show that our algorithm's running time is less than the commonly used Louvain algorithm while it gives competitive performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online consumer behavior in general and online customer engagement with brands in particular, has become a major focus of research activity fuelled by the exponential increase of interactive functions of the internet and social media platforms and applications. Current research in this area is mostly hypothesis-driven and much debate about the concept of Customer Engagement and its related constructs remains existent in the literature. In this paper, we aim to propose a novel methodology for reverse engineering a consumer behavior model for online customer engagement, based on a computational and data-driven perspective. This methodology could be generalized and prove useful for future research in the fields of consumer behaviors using questionnaire data or studies investigating other types of human behaviors. The method we propose contains five main stages; symbolic regression analysis, graph building, community detection, evaluation of results and finally, investigation of directed cycles and common feedback loops. The ‘communities’ of questionnaire items that emerge from our community detection method form possible ‘functional constructs’ inferred from data rather than assumed from literature and theory. Our results show consistent partitioning of questionnaire items into such ‘functional constructs’ suggesting the method proposed here could be adopted as a new data-driven way of human behavior modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influence maximization in social networks has been widely studied motivated by applications like spread of ideas or innovations in a network and viral marketing of products. Current studies focus almost exclusively on unsigned social networks containing only positive relationships (e.g. friend or trust) between users. Influence maximization in signed social networks containing both positive relationships and negative relationships (e.g. foe or distrust) between users is still a challenging problem that has not been studied. Thus, in this paper, we propose the polarity-related influence maximization (PRIM) problem which aims to find the seed node set with maximum positive influence or maximum negative influence in signed social networks. To address the PRIM problem, we first extend the standard Independent Cascade (IC) model to the signed social networks and propose a Polarity-related Independent Cascade (named IC-P) diffusion model. We prove that the influence function of the PRIM problem under the IC-P model is monotonic and submodular Thus, a greedy algorithm can be used to achieve an approximation ratio of 1-1/e for solving the PRIM problem in signed social networks. Experimental results on two signed social network datasets, Epinions and Slashdot, validate that our approximation algorithm for solving the PRIM problem outperforms state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical research is playing an increasingly important role in marine sciences. Historical data are also used in policy making and marine resource management, and have helped to address the issue of shifting baselines for numerous species and ecosystems. Although many important research questions still remain unanswered, tremendous developments in conceptual and methodological approaches are expected to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the global history of human interactions with life in the seas. Based on our experiences and knowledge from the “History of Marine Animal Populations” project, this paper identifies the emerging research topics for future historical marine research. It elaborates on concepts and tools which are expected to play a major role in answering these questions, and identifies geographical regions which deserve future attention from marine environmental historians and historical ecologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite the significant proportion of young people residing in slum communities, little attention has been paid to the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) challenges they face during their transition to adulthood within this harsh environment. Little is known about the extent to which living in extreme environments, like slums, impact SRH outcomes, especially during this key developmental period. This paper aims to fill this research gap by examining the levels of and factors associated with unintended pregnancies among young women aged 15–22 in two informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya. Methods: We use data from two waves of a 3-year prospective survey that collected information from adolescents living in the two slums in 2007–2010. In total, 849 young women aged 15–22 were considered for analysis. We employed Cox and logistic regression models to investigate factors associated with timing of pregnancy experience and unintended pregnancy among adolescents who were sexually active by Wave 1 or Wave 2. Findings: About two thirds of sexually experienced young women (69%) have ever been pregnant by Wave 2. For 41% of adolescents, the pregnancies were unintended, with 26% being mistimed and 15% unwanted. Multivariate analysis shows a significant association between a set of factors including age at first sex, schooling status, living arrangements and timing of pregnancy experience. In addition, marital status, schooling status, age at first sex and living arrangements are the only factors that are significantly associated with unintended pregnancy among the young women. Conclusions: Overall, this study underscores the importance of looking at reproductive outcomes of early sexual initiation, the serious health risks early fertility entail, especially among out-of school girls, and sexual activity in general among young women living in slum settlements. This provides greater impetus for addressing reproductive behaviors among young women living in resource-poor settings such as slums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the structure and evolution of customer-supplier networks in Japan using a unique dataset that contains information on customer and supplier linkages for more than 500,000 incorporated non-financial firms for the five years from 2008 to 2012. We find, first, that the number of customer links is unequal across firms; the customer link distribution has a power-law tail with an exponent of unity (i.e., it follows Zipf's law). We interpret this as implying that competition among firms to acquire new customers yields winners with a large number of customers, as well as losers with fewer customers. We also show that the shortest path length for any pair of firms is, on average, 4.3 links. Second, we find that link switching is relatively rare. Our estimates indicate that the survival rate per year for customer links is 92 percent and for supplier links 93 percent. Third and finally, we find that firm growth rates tend to be more highly correlated the closer two firms are to each other in a customer-supplier network (i.e., the smaller is the shortest path length for the two firms). This suggests that a non-negligible portion of fluctuations in firm growth stems from the propagation of microeconomic shocks – shocks affecting only a particular firm – through customer-supplier chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kernel spectral clustering corresponds to a weighted kernel principal component analysis problem in a constrained optimization framework. The primal formulation leads to an eigen-decomposition of a centered Laplacian matrix at the dual level. The dual formulation allows to build a model on a representative subgraph of the large scale network in the training phase and the model parameters are estimated in the validation stage. The KSC model has a powerful out-of-sample extension property which allows cluster affiliation for the unseen nodes of the big data network. In this paper we exploit the structure of the projections in the eigenspace during the validation stage to automatically determine a set of increasing distance thresholds. We use these distance thresholds in the test phase to obtain multiple levels of hierarchy for the large scale network. The hierarchical structure in the network is determined in a bottom-up fashion. We empirically showcase that real-world networks have multilevel hierarchical organization which cannot be detected efficiently by several state-of-the-art large scale hierarchical community detection techniques like the Louvain, OSLOM and Infomap methods. We show that a major advantage of our proposed approach is the ability to locate good quality clusters at both the finer and coarser levels of hierarchy using internal cluster quality metrics on 7 real-life networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effects of the co-authorship and bibliographic coupling networks on the citations received by scientific articles. It expands prior research that limited its focus on the position of co-authors and incorporates the effects of the use of knowledge sources within articles: references. By creating a network on the basis of shared references, we propose a way to understand whether an article bridges among extant strands of literature and infer the size of its research community and its embeddedness. Thus, we map onto the article – our unit of analysis – the metrics of authors' position in the co-authorship network and of the use of knowledge on which the scientific article is grounded. Specifically, we adopt centrality measures – degree, betweenneess, and closeness centrality – in the co-authorship network and degree, betweenness centrality and clustering coefficient in the bibliographic coupling and show their influence on the citations received in first two years after the year of publication. Findings show that authors' degree positively impacts citations. Also closeness centrality has a positive effect manifested only when the giant component is relevant. Author's betweenness centrality has instead a negative effect that persists until the giant component - largest component of the network in which all nodes can be linked by a path - is relevant. Moreover, articles that draw on fragmented strands of literature tend to be cited more, whereas the size of the scientific research community and the embeddedness of the article in a cohesive cluster of literature have no effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Screen media usage, sleep time and socio-demographic features are related to adolescents' academic performance, but interrelations are little explored. This paper describes these interrelations and behavioral profiles clustered in low and high academic performance. A nationally representative sample of 3,095 Spanish adolescents, aged 12 to 18, was surveyed on 15 variables linked to the purpose of the study. A Self-Organizing Maps analysis established non-linear interrelationships among these variables and identified behavior patterns in subsequent cluster analyses. Topological interrelationships established from the 15 emerging maps indicated that boys used more passive videogames and computers for playing than girls, who tended to use mobile phones to communicate with others. Adolescents with the highest academic performance were the youngest. They slept more and spent less time using sedentary screen media when compared to those with the lowest performance, and they also showed topological relationships with higher socioeconomic status adolescents. Cluster 1 grouped boys who spent more than 5.5 hours daily using sedentary screen media. Their academic performance was low and they slept an average of 8 hours daily. Cluster 2 gathered girls with an excellent academic performance, who slept nearly 9 hours per day, and devoted less time daily to sedentary screen media. Academic performance was directly related to sleep time and socioeconomic status, but inversely related to overall sedentary screen media usage. Profiles from the two clusters were strongly differentiated by gender, age, sedentary screen media usage, sleep time and academic achievement. Girls with the highest academic results had a medium socioeconomic status in Cluster 2. Findings may contribute to establishing recommendations about the timing and duration of screen media usage in adolescents and appropriate sleep time needed to successfully meet the demands of school academics and to improve interventions targeting to affect behavioral change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we describe the construction of an online GIS database system, hosted by WorldFish, which stores bio-physical, ecological and socio-economic data for the ‘Coral Triangle Area’ in South-east Asia and the Pacific. The database has been built in partnership with all six (Timor-Leste, Malaysia, Indonesia, The Philippines, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea) of the Coral Triangle countries, and represents a valuable source of information for natural resource managers at the regional scale. Its utility is demonstrated using biophysical data, data summarising marine habitats, and data describing the extent of marine protected areas in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowing the information dissemination mechanisms of different media and having an efficient information dissemination plan for disaster pre-warning plays a very important role in reducing losses and ensuring the safety of human beings. In this paper we established models of information dissemination for six typical information media, including short message service (SMS), microblogs, news portals, cell phones, television, and oral communication. Then, the information dissemination capability of each medium concerning individuals of different ages, genders, and residential areas was simulated, and the dissemination characteristics were studied. Finally, radar graphs were used to illustrate comprehensive assessments of the six media; these graphs show directly the information dissemination characteristics of all media. The models and the results are essential for improving the efficiency of information dissemination for the purpose of disaster pre-warning and for formulating emergency plans which help to reduce the possibility of injuries, deaths and other losses in a disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationships between international human migration and merchandise trade, using a complex-network approach. We firstly compare the topological structure of worldwide networks of human migration and bilateral trade over the period 1960–2000. Next, we ask whether the position of any pair of countries in the migration network affects their bilateral trade flows. We show that: (i) both weighted and binary versions of the networks of international migration and trade are strongly correlated; (ii) such correlations can be mostly explained by country economic/demographic size and geographical distance; and (iii) pairs of countries that are more central in the international-migration network trade more. Our findings suggest that bilateral trade between any two countries is not only affected by the presence of migrants from either countries but also by their relative embeddedness in the complex web of corridors making up the network of international human migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In a given population the age pattern of mortality is an important determinant of total number of deaths, age structure, and through effects on age structure, the number of births and thereby growth. Good mortality models exist for most populations except those experiencing generalized HIV epidemics and some developing country populations. The large number of deaths concentrated at very young and adult ages in HIV-affected populations produce a unique ‘humped’ age pattern of mortality that is not reproduced by any existing mortality models. Both burden of disease reporting and population projection methods require age-specific mortality rates to estimate numbers of deaths and produce plausible age structures. For countries with generalized HIV epidemics these estimates should take into account the future trajectory of HIV prevalence and its effects on age-specific mortality. In this paper we present a parsimonious model of age-specific mortality for countries with generalized HIV/AIDS epidemics. Methods and Findings: The model represents a vector of age-specific mortality rates as the weighted sum of three independent age-varying components. We derive the age-varying components from a Singular Value Decomposition of the matrix of age-specific mortality rate schedules. The weights are modeled as a function of HIV prevalence and one of three possible sets of inputs: life expectancy at birth, a measure of child mortality, or child mortality with a measure of adult mortality. We calibrate the model with 320 five-year life tables for each sex from the World Population Prospects 2010 revision that come from the 40 countries of the world that have and are experiencing a generalized HIV epidemic. Cross validation shows that the model is able to outperform several existing model life table systems. Conclusions: We present a flexible, parsimonious model of age-specific mortality for countries with generalized HIV epidemics. Combined with the outputs of existing epidemiological and demographic models, this model makes it possible to project future age-specific mortality profiles and number of deaths for countries with generalized HIV epidemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People in different subgroups age at different rates. Surveys containing biomarkers can be used to assess these subgroup differences. We illustrate this using hand-grip strength to produce an easily interpretable, physical-based measure that allows us to compare characteristic-based ages across educational subgroups in the United States. Hand-grip strength has been shown to be a good predictor of future mortality and morbidity, and therefore a useful indicator of population aging. Data from the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) were used. Two education subgroups were distinguished, those with less than a high school diploma and those with more education. Regressions on hand-grip strength were run for each sex and race using age and education, their interactions and other covariates as independent variables. Ages of identical mean hand-grip strength across education groups were compared for people in the age range 60 to 80. The hand-grip strength of 65 year old white males with less education was the equivalent to that of 69.6 (68.2, 70.9) year old white men with more education, indicating that the more educated men had aged more slowly. This is a constant characteristic age, as defined in the Sanderson and Scherbov article “The characteristics approach to the measurement of population aging” published 2013 in Population and Development Review. Sixty-five year old white females with less education had the same average hand-grip strength as 69.4 (68.2, 70.7) year old white women with more education. African-American women at ages 60 and 65 with more education also aged more slowly than their less educated counterparts. African American men with more education aged at about the same rate as those with less education. This paper expands the toolkit of those interested in population aging by showing how survey data can be used to measure the differential extent of aging across subpopulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In many communities, older men (i.e., over 25 years of age) have not come forward for Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) services. Reasons for low demand among this group of men are not well understood, and may vary across geographic and cultural contexts. This paper examines the facilitators and barriers to VMMC demand in Turkana County, Kenya, with a focus on older men. This is one of the regions targeted by the VMMC program in Kenya because the Turkana ethnic group does not traditionally circumcise, and the rates of HIV and STD transmission are high. Methods and Findings: Twenty focus group discussions and 69 in-depth interviews were conducted with circumcised and uncircumcised men and their partners to elicit their attitudes and perceptions toward male circumcision. The interviews were conducted in urban, peri-urban, and rural communities across Turkana. Our results show that barriers to circumcision include stigma associated with VMMC, the perception of low risk for HIV for older men and their “protection by marriage,” cultural norms, and a lack of health infrastructure. Facilitators include stigma against not being circumcised (since circumcision is associated with modernity), protection against disease including HIV, and cleanliness. It was also noted that older men should adopt the practice to serve as role models to younger men. Conclusions: Both men and women were generally supportive of VMMC, but overcoming barriers with appropriate communication messages and high quality services will be challenging. The justification of circumcision being a biomedical procedure for protection against HIV will be the most important message for any communication strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we determine the noise properties needed for unconditional security for the ideal Kirchhoff-Law-Johnson-Noise (KLJN) secure key distribution system using simple statistical analysis. It has already been shown using physical laws that resistors and Johnson-like noise sources provide unconditional security. However real implementations use artificial noise generators, therefore it is a question if other kind of noise sources and resistor values could be used as well. We answer this question and in the same time we provide a theoretical basis to analyze real systems as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, contagion-based (disease, information, etc.) spreading on social networks has been extensively studied. In this paper, other than traditional full interaction, we propose a partial interaction based spreading model, considering that the informed individuals would transmit information to only a certain fraction of their neighbors due to the transmission ability in real-world social networks. Simulation results on three representative networks (BA, ER, WS) indicate that the spreading efficiency is highly correlated with the network heterogeneity. In addition, a special phenomenon, namely Information Blind Areas where the network is separated by several information-unreachable clusters, will emerge from the spreading process. Furthermore, we also find that the size distribution of such information blind areas obeys power-law-like distribution, which has very similar exponent with that of site percolation. Detailed analyses show that the critical value is decreasing along with the network heterogeneity for the spreading process, which is complete the contrary to that of random selection. Moreover, the critical value in the latter process is also larger than that of the former for the same network. Those findings might shed some lights in in-depth understanding the effect of network properties on information spreading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Studies aimed at understanding the association between induced abortion and HIV are scarce and differ on the direction of the association. This paper aims to show the prevalence of induced abortion in a sample of pregnancies of women living and not living with HIV/Aids, determining variables associated with pregnancy termination and linked to the life course of women and to the specific context of the pregnancy. Methods: Data came from a cross-sectional study, using interviewer-administered questionnaire, developed with women that attended public health services in Porto Alegre, Brazil. A generalized estimating equation model with logit link measured the association between determinants and abortion. Findings: The final sample was composed of 684 women living with HIV/Aids (2,039 pregnancies) and 639 women not living with HIV/Aids (1,539 pregnancies). The prevalence of induced abortion among pregnancies in women living with HIV/Aids was 6.5%, while in women not living with HIV/Aids was 2.9%. Among women living with HIV/Aids, the following were associated with induced abortion in the multivariable analysis: being older, having a higher education level, having had more sexual partners (i.e., variables linked to the life course of women), having had children prior to the index pregnancy and living with a sexual partner during pregnancy (i.e., variables linked to the context of each pregnancy). On the other hand, among women not living with HIV/Aids, only having a higher education level and having had more sexual partners (i.e., determinants linked to the life course of women) were associated with voluntary pregnancy termination in multivariable analysis. Conclusion: Although determinants are similar between women living and not living with HIV/Aids, prevalence of induced abortion is higher among pregnancies in women living with HIV/Aids, pointing to their greater social vulnerability and to the need for public policy to address prevention and treatment of HIV associated with reproductive issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that perceivers can accurately extract information about perceptually ambiguous group memberships from facial information alone. For example, people demonstrate above-chance accuracy in categorizing political ideology from faces. Further, they ascribe particular personality traits to faces according to political party (e.g., Republicans are dominant and mature, Democrats are likeable and trustworthy). Here, we report three studies that replicated and extended these effects. In Study 1a, we provide evidence that, in addition to showing accuracy in categorization, politically-conservative participants expressed a bias toward categorizing targets as outgroup members. In Study 1b, we replicate this relationship with a larger sample and a stimulus set consisting of faces of professional politicians. In Study 2, we find that trait ascriptions based on target political affiliation are moderated by perceiver political ideology. Specifically, although Democrats are stereotyped as more likeable and trustworthy, conservative participants rated faces that were categorized as Republicans in Study 1a as more likeable and trustworthy than faces categorized as Democrats. Thus, this paper joins a growing literature showing that it is critical to consider perceiver identity in examining perceptions of identities and traits from faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies mostly investigate player's cooperative behavior as affected by game time-scale or individual diversity. In this paper, by involving both time-scale and diversity simultaneously, we explore the effect of stochastic heterogeneous interaction. In our model, the occurrence of game interaction between each pair of linked player obeys a random probability, which is further described by certain distributions. Simulations on a 4-neighbor square lattice show that the cooperation level is remarkably promoted when stochastic heterogeneous interaction is considered. The results are then explained by investigating the mean payoffs, the mean boundary payoffs and the transition probabilities between cooperators and defectors. We also show some typical snapshots and evolution time series of the system. Finally, the 8-neighbor square lattice and BA scale-free network results indicate that the stochastic heterogeneous interaction can be robust against different network topologies. Our work may sharpen the understanding of the joint effect of game time-scale and individual diversity on spatial games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents results from a corpus-based study investigating lexical variation in BSL. An earlier study investigating variation in BSL numeral signs found that younger signers were using a decreasing variety of regionally distinct variants, suggesting that levelling may be taking place. Here, we report findings from a larger investigation looking at regional lexical variants for colours, countries, numbers and UK placenames elicited as part of the BSL Corpus Project. Age, school location and language background were significant predictors of lexical variation, with younger signers using a more levelled variety. This change appears to be happening faster in particular sub-groups of the deaf community (e.g., signers from hearing families). Also, we find that for the names of some UK cities, signers from outside the region use a different sign than those who live in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) based on extracellular recordings with microelectrodes provide means of observing the activities of neurons that orchestrate fundamental brain function, and are therefore powerful tools for exploring the function of the brain. Due to physical restrictions and risks for post-surgical complications, wired BMIs are not suitable for long-term studies in freely behaving animals. Wireless BMIs ideally solve these problems, but they call for low-complexity techniques for data compression that ensure maximum utilization of the wireless link and energy resources, as well as minimum heat dissipation in the surrounding tissues. In this paper, we analyze the performances of various system architectures that involve spike detection, spike alignment and spike compression. Performance is analyzed in terms of spike reconstruction and spike sorting performance after wireless transmission of the compressed spike waveforms. Compression is performed with transform coding, using five different compression bases, one of which we pay special attention to. That basis is a fixed basis derived, by singular value decomposition, from a large assembly of experimentally obtained spike waveforms, and therefore represents a generic basis specially suitable for compressing spike waveforms. Our results show that a compression factor of 99.8%, compared to transmitting the raw acquired data, can be achieved using the fixed generic compression basis without compromising performance in spike reconstruction and spike sorting. Besides illustrating the relative performances of various system architectures and compression bases, our findings show that compression of spikes with a fixed generic compression basis derived from spike data provides better performance than compression with downsampling or the Haar basis, given that no optimization procedures are implemented for compression coefficients, and the performance is similar to that obtained when the optimal SVD based basis is used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been proposed that the history and evolution of scientific ideas may reflect certain aspects of the underlying socio-cognitive frameworks in which science itself is developing. Systematic analyses of the development of scientific knowledge may help us to construct models of the collective dynamics of science. Aiming at scientific rigor, these models should be built upon solid empirical evidence, analyzed with formal tools leading to ever-improving results that support the related conclusions. Along these lines we studied the dynamics and structure of the development of research in genomics as represented by the entire collection of genomics-related scientific papers contained in the PubMed database. The analyzed corpus consisted in more than 49,000 articles published in the years 1987 (first appeareance of the term Genomics) to 2011, categorized by means of the Medical Subheadings (MeSH) content-descriptors. Complex networks were built where two MeSH terms were connected if they are descriptors of the same article(s). The analysis of such networks revealed a complex structure and dynamics that to certain extent resembled small-world networks. The evolution of such networks in time reflected interesting phenomena in the historical development of genomic research, including what seems to be a phase-transition in a period marked by the completion of the first draft of the Human Genome Project. We also found that different disciplinary areas have different dynamic evolution patterns in their MeSH connectivity networks. In the case of areas related to science, changes in topology were somewhat fast while retaining a certain core-stucture, whereas in the humanities, the evolution was pretty slow and the structure resulted highly redundant and in the case of technology related issues, the evolution was very fast and the structure remained tree-like with almost no overlapping terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Living systems are associated with Social networks — networks made up of nodes, some of which may be more important in various aspects as compared to others. While different quantitative measures labeled as “centralities” have previously been used in the network analysis community to find out influential nodes in a network, it is debatable how valid the centrality measures actually are. In other words, the research question that remains unanswered is: how exactly do these measures perform in the real world? So, as an example, if a centrality of a particular node identifies it to be important, is the node actually important? Purpose: The goal of this paper is not just to perform a traditional social network analysis but rather to evaluate different centrality measures by conducting an empirical study analyzing exactly how do network centralities correlate with data from published multidisciplinary network data sets. Method: We take standard published network data sets while using a random network to establish a baseline. These data sets included the Zachary's Karate Club network, dolphin social network and a neural network of nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Each of the data sets was analyzed in terms of different centrality measures and compared with existing knowledge from associated published articles to review the role of each centrality measure in the determination of influential nodes. Results: Our empirical analysis demonstrates that in the chosen network data sets, nodes which had a high Closeness Centrality also had a high Eccentricity Centrality. Likewise high Degree Centrality also correlated closely with a high Eigenvector Centrality. Whereas Betweenness Centrality varied according to network topology and did not demonstrate any noticeable pattern. In terms of identification of key nodes, we discovered that as compared with other centrality measures, Eigenvector and Eccentricity Centralities were better able to identify important nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present algorithms to find near-optimal sets of epidemic spreaders in complex networks. We extend the notion of local-centrality, a centrality measure previously shown to correspond with a node's ability to spread an epidemic, to sets of nodes by introducing combinatorial local centrality. Though we prove that finding a set of nodes that maximizes this new measure is NP-hard, good approximations are available. We show that a strictly greedy approach obtains the best approximation ratio unless P = NP and then formulate a modified version of this approach that leverages qualities of the network to achieve a faster runtime while maintaining this theoretical guarantee. We perform an experimental evaluation on samples from several different network structures which demonstrate that our algorithm maximizes combinatorial local centrality and consistently chooses the most effective set of nodes to spread infection under the SIR model, relative to selecting the top nodes using many common centrality measures. We also demonstrate that the optimized algorithm we develop scales effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: From 1970–2012, the average age at first delivery increased from 23.2–28.5 in Norway. Postponement of first pregnancy increases risks of medical complications both during and after pregnancy. Sickness absence during pregnancy has over the last two decades increased considerably more than in non-pregnant women. The aim of this paper is twofold: Firstly to investigate if postponement of pregnancy is related to increased sickness absence and thus contributing to the increased gender difference in sickness absence; and secondly, to estimate how much of the increased gender difference in sickness absence that can be accounted for by increased sickness absence amongst pregnant women. Methods: We employed registry-data to analyse sickness absence among all Norwegian employees with income equivalent to full-time work in the period 1993–2007. Results: After control for age, education, and income, pregnant women's sickness absence (age 20–44) increased on average 0.94 percentage points each year, compared to 0.29 in non-pregnant women and 0.14 in men. In pregnant women aged 20–24, sickness absence during pregnancy increased by 0.96 percent points per calendar year, compared to 0.60 in age-group 30–34. Sickness absence during pregnancy accounted for 25% of the increased gender gap in sickness absence, accounting for changes in education, income and age. Conclusions: Postponement of first pregnancy does not explain the increase in pregnant women's sickness absence during the period 1993–2007 as both the highest level and increase in sickness absence is seen in the younger women. Reasons are poorly understood, but still important as it accounts for 25% of the increased gender gap in sickness absence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several recent studies have described a strong correlation between nutritional or economic data and the number of Nobel awards obtained across a large range of countries. This sheds new light on the intriguing question of the key predictors of Nobel awards chances. However, all these studies have been focused on a single predictor and were only based on simple correlation and/or linear model analysis. The main aim of the present study was thus to clarify this debate by simultaneously exploring the influence of food consumption (cacao, milk, and wine), economic variables (gross domestic product) and scientific activity (number of publications and research expenditure) on Nobel awards. An innovative statistical analysis, hierarchical partitioning, has been used because it enables us to reduce collinearity problems by determining and comparing the independent contribution of each factor. Our results clearly indicate that a country's number of Nobel awards can be mainly predicted by its scientific achievements such as number of publications and research expenditure. Conversely, dietary habits and the global economy variable are only minor predictors; this finding contradicts the conclusions of previous studies. Dedicating a large proportion of the GDP to research and to the publication of a high number of scientific papers would thus create fertile ground for obtaining Nobel awards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There is rapidly-emerging evidence on the harmful health effects of sedentary behaviors. The aim of this paper was to quantify time in sedentary behaviors and document socio-demographic variations in different life domains among adults. Methods: A population-based survey was carried out in 2012 through face-to-face interviews with Brazilian adults aged 20+ years (N = 2,927). Information about time spent sedentary in a typical weekday was collected for five different domains (workplace, commuting, school/university, watching TV, and computer use at home). Descriptive and bivariate analyses examined variations in overall and domain-specific sedentary time by gender, age, educational attainment and socioeconomic position. Results: On average, participants reported spending 5.8 (SD 4.5) hours per day sitting. The median value was 4.5 (interquartile range: 2.5–8) hours. Men, younger adults, those with higher schooling and from the wealthiest socioeconomic groups had higher overall sedentary scores. TV time was higher in women, older adults and among those with low schooling and socioeconomic position. Sedentary time in transport was higher in men, younger adults, and participants with high schooling and high socioeconomic position. Computer use at home was more frequent among young adults and those from high socioeconomic groups. Sitting at work was higher in those with higher schooling and from the wealthiest socioeconomic groups. Sedentary behavior at school was related inversely to age and directly to schooling. Conclusion: Patterns of sedentary behavior are different by life domains. Initiatives to reduce prolonged sitting among Brazilian adults will be required on multiple levels for different life domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The relation between levels of contraceptive use and the incidence of induced abortion remains a topic of heated debate. Many of the contradictions are likely due to the fact that abortion is the end point of a process that starts with sexual activity, contraceptive use (or non-use), followed by unwanted pregnancy, a decision to terminate, and access to abortion. Trends in abortion rates reflect changes in each step of this process, and opposing trends may cancel each other out. This paper aims to investigate the roles played by the dissemination of contraception and the evolving norms of motherhood on changes in abortion rates. Methods: Drawing data from six national probability surveys that explored contraception and pregnancy wantedness in France from 1978 through 2010, we used multivariate linear regression to explore the associations between trends in contraceptive rates and trends in (i) abortion rates, (ii) unwanted pregnancy rates, (iii) and unwanted birth rates, and to determine which of these 3 associations was strongest. Findings: The association between contraceptive rates and abortion rates over time was weaker than that between contraception rates and unwanted pregnancy rates (p = 0.003). Similarly, the association between contraceptive rates and unwanted birth rates over time was weaker than that between contraceptive rates and unwanted pregnancy rates (p = 0.000). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, based on the gravity principle of classical physics, we propose a tunable gravity-based model, which considers tag usage pattern to weigh both the mass and distance of network nodes. We then apply this model in solving the problems of information filtering and network evolving. Experimental results on two real-world data sets, Del.icio.us and MovieLens, show that it can not only enhance the algorithmic performance, but can also better characterize the properties of real networks. This work may shed some light on the in-depth understanding of the effect of gravity model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Doctors, lawyers and criminal justice agencies need methods to assess vulnerability to violent radicalization. In synergy, public health interventions aim to prevent the emergence of risk behaviours as well as prevent and treat new illness events. This paper describes a new method of assessing vulnerability to violent radicalization, and then investigates the role of previously reported causes, including poor self-reported health, anxiety and depression, adverse life events, poverty, and migration and socio-political factors. The aim is to identify foci for preventive intervention. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of a representative population sample of men and women aged 18–45, of Muslim heritage and recruited by quota sampling by age, gender, working status, in two English cities. The main outcomes include self-reported health, symptoms of anxiety and depression (common mental disorders), and vulnerability to violent radicalization assessed by sympathies for violent protest and terrorist acts. Results: 2.4% of people showed some sympathy for violent protest and terrorist acts. Sympathy was more likely to be articulated by the under 20s, those in full time education rather than employment, those born in the UK, those speaking English at home, and high earners (>£75,000 a year). People with poor self-reported health were less likely to show sympathies for violent protest and terrorism. Anxiety and depressive symptoms, adverse life events and socio-political attitudes showed no associations. Conclusions: Sympathies for violent protest and terrorism were uncommon among men and women, aged 18–45, of Muslim heritage living in two English cities. Youth, wealth, and being in education rather than employment were risk factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The institutionalization of community mobilization is not well understood in literature. This paper aims to understand the role of the community-to-community learning strategy in the institutionalization of community mobilization among sex workers communities across eight districts of Andhra Pradesh, India. Materials and Methods: Data collected during baseline (March, 2010) and endline (June, 2012) under an HIV prevention project (SAKSHAM project) was used to investigate the strength (as score) of community mobilization based on two learning strategies: non-government organization (NGO)-to-community-based organization (CBO) strategy, and community-to-CBO strategy. The strength of community mobilization was assessed based on different parameters. The change in scores were computed as a percentage of the improvement to the total potential improvement from baseline to endline on specific indicators and overall. Results: Most of the CBOs considered in the pre-post assessment had been registered during 2004–2008. At baseline, the community ownership and preparedness index scores for the eight CBOs under the community-to-CBO strategy ranged between 21.5 and 27.7 while the scores for the three CBOs under the NGO-to-CBO strategy ranged between 16.3 and 21.5. By endline, the strength of community mobilization among CBOs under the community-to-CBO strategy increased 18 points (equivalent to 23% potential improvement) whereas the strength of community mobilization among CBOs under the NGO-to-CBO strategy increased only 10 points (equivalent to 13% potential improvement). The average percentage difference in improvement between the strategies was 10% (p = 0.102). Further analyses indicate that a greater improvement in community-to-CBO learning strategy was noted around managerial capacities and engagement with stakeholders than other parameters. Conclusion: The community –to- CBO learning strategy presents promising results for HIV prevention with regard to institutionalization of community mobilization among sex workers communities. Findings support the scaling-up of community mobilization initiatives within HIV prevention interventions using well trained community members in India and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Large scale surveys are the main source of data pertaining to all the social and demographic indicators, hence its quality is also of great concern. In this paper, we discuss the indicators used to examine the quality of data. We focus on age misreporting, incompleteness and inconsistency of information; and skipping of questions on reproductive and sexual health related issues. In order to observe the practical consequences of errors in a survey; the District Level Household and Facility Survey (DLHS-3) is used as an example dataset. Methods: Whipple's and Myer's indices are used to identify age misreporting. Age displacements are identified by estimating downward and upward transfers for women from bordering age groups of the eligible age range. Skipping pattern is examined by recording the responses to the questions which precede the sections on birth history, immunization, and reproductive and sexual health. Results: The study observed errors in age reporting, in all the states, but the extent of misreporting differs by state and individual characteristics. Illiteracy, rural residence and poor economic condition are the major factors that lead to age misreporting. Female were excluded from the eligible age group, to reduce the duration of interview. The study further observed that respondents tend to skip questions on HIV/RTI and other questions which follow a set of questions. Conclusion: The study concludes that age misreporting, inconsistency and incomplete response are three sources of error that need to be considered carefully before drawing conclusions from any survey. DLHS-3 also suffers from age misreporting, particularly for female in the reproductive ages. In view of the coverage of the survey, it may not be possible to control age misreporting completely, but some extra effort to probe a better answer may help in improving the quality of data in the survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Understanding the social determinants of child health is a prominent area of research. This paper examines the measurement of socioeconomic position in a sample of families of children with cancer. Socioeconomic position is difficult to measure in pediatric health research due to sensitivity of asking about finances when research is conducted in health care delivery settings, financial volatility associated with periods of pediatric illness, and difficulty recruiting fathers to research. Methods: Caregivers of children with cancer (n = 76) completed a questionnaire that included the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status (SSS). SSS was measured using two 10-rung ladders with differing referent groups: the US and respondents’ communities. Respondents placed themselves on each ladder by placing an X on the rung that represented their social position in relation to the two referent groups. Individuals’ SSS ratings and discrepancies in SSS ratings within couples were examined, and associations with objective social status measures were evaluated using Pearson correlations or t-tests. Results: Parents’ placement on the US and community ladders was positively associated with their income, education, wealth, household savings, and household savings minus debt. On average, respondents placed themselves higher on the US ladder compared to the community ladder. There was an average intra-couple discrepancy of 1.25 rungs in partner’s placements on the US ladder and a 1.56 rung difference for the community ladder. This intra-couple discrepancy was not associated with gender. Discussion: Results offer insight into the use of subjective social status measures to capture a more holistic assessment of socioeconomic position and the measurement of socioeconomic position in two-parent families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The risk of incidents involving mass decontamination in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear release has increased in recent years, due to technological advances, and the willingness of terrorists to use unconventional weapons. Planning for such incidents has focused on the technical issues involved, rather than on psychosocial concerns. This paper presents a novel experimental study, examining the effect of three different responder communication strategies on public experiences and behaviour during a mass decontamination field experiment. Specifically, the research examined the impact of social identity processes on the relationship between effective responder communication, and relevant outcome variables (e.g. public compliance, public anxiety, and co-operative public behaviour). All participants (n = 111) were asked to visualise that they had been involved in an incident involving mass decontamination, before undergoing the decontamination process, and receiving one of three different communication strategies: 1) ‘Theory-based communication’: Health-focused explanations about decontamination, and sufficient practical information; 2) ‘Standard practice communication’: No health-focused explanations about decontamination, sufficient practical information; 3) ‘Brief communication’: No health-focused explanations about decontamination, insufficient practical information. Four types of data were collected: timings of the decontamination process; observational data; and quantitative and qualitative self-report data. The communication strategy which resulted in the most efficient progression of participants through the decontamination process, as well as the fewest observations of non-compliance and confusion, was that which included both health-focused explanations about decontamination and sufficient practical information. Further, this strategy resulted in increased perceptions of responder legitimacy and increased identification with responders, which in turn resulted in higher levels of expected compliance during a real incident, and increased willingness to help other members of the public. This study shows that an understanding of the social identity approach facilitates the development of effective responder communication strategies for incidents involving mass decontamination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of the statistical properties of the network on the knowledge diffusion has been extensively studied. However, the structure evolution and the knowledge generation processes are always integrated simultaneously. By introducing the Cobb-Douglas production function and treating the knowledge growth as a cooperative production of knowledge, in this paper, we present two knowledge-generation dynamic evolving models based on different evolving mechanisms. The first model, named “HDPH model,” adopts the hyperedge growth and the hyperdegree preferential attachment mechanisms. The second model, named “KSPH model,” adopts the hyperedge growth and the knowledge stock preferential attachment mechanisms. We investigate the effect of the parameters on the total knowledge stock of the two models. The hyperdegree distribution of the HDPH model can be theoretically analyzed by the mean-field theory. The analytic result indicates that the hyperdegree distribution of the HDPH model obeys the power-law distribution and the exponent is . Furthermore, we present the distributions of the knowledge stock for different parameters . The findings indicate that our proposed models could be helpful for deeply understanding the scientific research cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]