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This paper aims to comprehensively examine the effects of societal and individual characteristics on work-related attitudes, specifically work commitment and work orientations, using a single dataset and comparable models. It also seeks to relate these attitudes to classic theories and understand how societal factors shape work-related attitudes. The analysis is based on data collected by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) in its work orientations survey. Data is analyzed using factor analyses, correspondence analyses, and multilevel regressions. The paper provides an overview of work-related attitudes at the country level and a detailed analysis of societal and individual variables that shape these attitudes. The results indicate that individual attitudes reflect large societal trends and developments, which are discussed with reference to current studies and classic theories. This paper contributes to understanding work-related attitudes by offering a comprehensive analysis of the effects of societal and individual characteristics, using a single dataset and comparable models. It also relates these attitudes to classic theories and discusses how societal factors shape work-related attitudes. The findings also have policy implications, particularly in the recruitment and retention of highly qualified and motivated workers in different countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classical analyses of differences among the sciences has measured social but not cognitive structure. This paper suggests a method for describing differences among fields in the processes of knowledge growth. The method examines closely what is said about a particular scientific paper when it is cited in later works, and traces changes over time, if they occur. A comparative analysis of cases drawn from neuropharmacology and the sociology of science is used to illustrate the approach. The two papers analyzed shown strong differences in the level of generality at which the contents of the original papers are cited. Lack of change over time in how the sociology of science paper is cited is attributed to the lack of attention to its main empirical knowledge claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnoses and medication use has increased over time around the world, but significant regional differences remain. This paper aims to determine and explain disparities in ADHD prevalence and medication use among school-aged children in two distinct school systems, in Flanders (Belgium) and Québec (Canada). We present detailed descriptive and comparative analyses of data from 35 schools, 114 teachers, and 1046 parents (children) that were collected as part of a comparative international project. The data concern teacher and parent suspicions, teachers' ratings of ADHD-related behaviors in children, teachers' views of medication use, and teachers' beliefs about ADHD. The results show that, compared with Flanders, Québec had significantly more children diagnosed with ADHD and more frequent suspicions of ADHD in children by teachers and parents. We refer to the conceptual, institutional, and interactional levels of medicalization to interpret our findings and conclude that social and cultural readings of children's behaviors differ greatly between regions. Medicalization of children's behaviors is more common in Québec than in Flanders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of urbanization, urban land has been expropriated and developed on a large scale. Moreover, people's awareness of the protection of historical buildings is relatively weak, so some historical buildings have been demolished or rebuilt. Historical buildings have played an important role in the spread of national culture, so how to use some methods to protect historical buildings from being destroyed has become an urgent problem to be solved. The protection of historical buildings includes a series of complicated and rigorous procedures, such as on-site drawing and mapping, survey and design, and scheme discussion and construction. The surveying and mapping of traditional historical buildings require people to do it by themselves, so it is inevitably time-consuming and labor-intensive. This paper first discussed and analyzed the significance of historical building protection, and then used digital technology to make up for the shortcomings of traditional manual surveying and mapping and historical building protection methods. Modern technologies such as three-dimensional laser scanning technology and virtual reality technology are used to restore the style and appearance of historical buildings. Among them, in terms of the color of historical buildings, the restoration degree of buildings based on digital protection technology has reached 56.1%; at the same time, the efficiency of information collection and processing, and virtual model construction has also been improved. Thus, the ultimate goal of historical building protection is achieved, and it provides a reference for the digital protection of historical buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and when does affirmative action emerge in different national contexts? This paper is the first to analyze the emergence of affirmative action in higher education across national contexts. We find that three distinct clusters of affirmative action policies developed historically: (1) early nation-building projects, (2) mechanisms to attenuate social inequality in response to identity-based social movements, and (3) twenty-first century 'indirect' affirmative action policies. These clusters differ not only in the goals of their affirmative action policies, but also in how those policies are implemented, and the circumstances under which they emerge, as we show. The findings suggest that once provisions for underrepresented groups becomes part of the repertoire of actions universities or countries can take to solve a variety of national and university problems, affirmative action develops as a means to further a variety of organizational and national goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global initiatives have raised awareness of the need for cross-departmental and cross-sectoral activities to support urban health, sustainability, and equity, with respective indicators routinely used as a way to catalyze and monitor action toward pre-defined goals. Despite the existence of at least 145 urban health indicator (UHI) tools globally, there has been very little research on the use of indicators by policy- and decision-makers; more attention has been devoted to their development and validation. This paper describes the second part of a two-part systematic review of the characteristics (part A) and use (part B, this part) of UHI tools by municipal built environment policy- and decision-makers. Part B is a narrative synthesis of studies on the use of UHI tools. This PRISMA-P compliant review follows a mixed methods sequential explanatory design. The search was conducted using seven bibliographic databases, grey literature searches, and key journal hand searches. Ten studies describing the use of ten UHI tools in seven countries were included in the narrative synthesis, resulting in development of a theory of change (ToC). We found that both expert-led and participatory indicator projects can be underpinned by research evidence and residents' knowledge. Our findings contradict the dominant view of indicator use in policy-making as a linear process, highlighting a number of technical, organizational, political, knowledge, and contextual factors that affect their use. Participatory UHI tools with community involvement were generally more effective at supporting "health in all policies" and "whole-of-society" approaches to governing healthy cities than expert-led processes. UHI tool producers proposed a range of techniques to address urban health complexity characteristics. Finally, in combining data from both parts of the review, we found that potentially important UHI tool features, such as neighbourhood-scale data, were influential in the use of indicators by built environment policy- and decision-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distinguishing certain and uncertain information is of crucial importance both in the scientific field in the strict sense and in the popular scientific domain. In this paper, by adopting an epistemic stance perspective on certainty and uncertainty, and a mixed procedure of analysis, which combines a bottom-up and a top-down approach, we perform a comparative study (both qualitative and quantitative) of the uncertainty linguistic markers (verbs, non-verbs, modal verbs, conditional clauses, uncertain questions, epistemic future) and their scope in three different corpora: a historical corpus of 80 biomedical articles from the British Medical Journal (BMJ) 1840–2007; a corpus of 12 biomedical articles from BMJ 2013, and a contemporary corpus of 12 scientific popular articles from Discover 2013. The variables under observation are time, structure (IMRaD vs no-IMRaD) and genre (scientific vs popular articles). We apply the Generalized Linear Models analysis in order to test whether there are statistically significant differences (1) in the amount of uncertainty among the different corpora, and (2) in the categories of uncertainty markers used by writers. The results of our analysis reveal that (1) in all corpora, the percentages of uncertainty are always much lower than that of certainty; (2) uncertainty progressively diminishes over time in biomedical articles (in conjunction with their structural changes–IMRaD–and to the increase of the BMJ Impact Factor); and (3) uncertainty is slightly higher in scientific popular articles (Discover 2013) as compared to the contemporary corpus of scientific articles (BMJ 2013). Nevertheless, in all corpora, modal verbs are the most used uncertainty markers. These results suggest that not only do scientific writers prefer to communicate their uncertainty with markers of possibility rather than those of subjectivity but also that science journalists prefer using a third-person subject followed by modal verbs rather than a first-person subject followed by mental verbs such as think or believe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an emerging field within higher education, academic development remains fragmented, both as a field of theory and practice. In the vibrant, on-going debate about the theoretical foundations and directions of academic development as a nascent field, some relatively wide-ranging claims which have been made seem to be lacking in supporting empirical evidence. With regards to this limitation, this paper contends that more systematic empirical explorations of the knowledge-base of academic development are vital to gain a better understanding of the field. Informed by Bernstein’s social realist frameworks on the structure of academic knowledge, the paper presents an analysis of knowledge recontextualisation processes in two English and two Flemish academic development units, based on semi-structured interviews with 30 academic developers. From the analysis, contrasting patterns of knowledge recontextualisation emerged between the four sites and between the national contexts in particular, pointing towards an increasing epistemological fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-rated health (SRH) accounts comprehensively for many health domains. The aim of this paper was to investigate time trends and associations between age-comparative self-rated health and some known determinants in a general population aged 24–34 years. Population-based cross-sectional surveys were performed in 1990, 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014 in Northern Sweden. Out of 3500 invited persons, 1811 responded. Comparative SRH was measured on a three-grade ordinal scale by the question: “How would you assess your general health condition compared to persons of your own age?” with the alternatives “better/worse/similar”. Over the period 1990 to 2014, the percentage of women rating comparative SRH as “worse” increased steadily, from 8.5% in 1990 reaching 20% in 2014 (p for trend 0.007). Among men, this pattern was almost the opposite, with increasing proportions rating “better” (p for trend <0.000). Time trends for physical activity in leisure time; length of education; Body Mass Index; anxiety; depressive emotions and satisfaction with economy showed a similar pattern for men and women. Factors that might contribute to the development of time trends for comparative SRH are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study discussed in this paper had two principal objectives. The first was to evaluate the distance model of official vocational education and training offered by means of a virtual learning platform. The second was to establish that both on-site classroom and online distance modes of vocational education and training can be seen as complementary in terms of responding to the majority of modern educational needs. We performed a comparative study using data and results gathered over the course of eleven academic years for 1,133 of our students enrolled in an official vocational education and training program, leading to the awarding of a certificate as an Administrative Management Expert. The classes were offered by the Alfonso de Avellaneda Vocational Education and Training School, located in the city of Alcalá de Henares near Madrid, Spain. We offered classes both in traditional classroom mode and through online distance learning. This paper begins with a descriptive analysis of the variables we studied; inferential statistical techniques are subsequently applied in order to study the relationships that help form the basis for the conclusions reached. This study’s results provide evidence that a broad offering of vocational education and training opportunities will facilitate access to such learning for students who require it, regardless of their age, employment status, or personal circumstances, with the online distance mode playing a fundamental role while also yielding results equivalent to those observed for classroom instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One important aspect of the feature selective validation (FSV) method is that it classifies comparison data into a number of natural-language categories. This allows comparison data generated by FSV to be compared with equivalent “visual” comparisons obtained using the visual rating scale. Previous research has shown a close relationship between visual assessment and FSV generated data using the resulting confidence histograms. In all cases, the category membership functions are “crisp”: that is data on the FSV-value axis falls distinctly into one category. The companion paper to this Investigating Confidence histograms and Classification in FSV: Part I. Fuzzy FSV investigated whether allowing probabilistic membership of categories could improve the comparison between FSV and visual assessment. That paper showed that such an approach produced limited improvement and, as a consequence, showed that FSV confidence histograms are robust to flexibility in category boundaries. This paper investigates the effect of redefining some, but not all, category boundaries based around the mode category. This “float” approach does show some improvement in the comparison between FSV and visual assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly between natural and social sciences, is perceived as crucial to solving the significant challenges facing humanity. However, despite the need for such collaboration being expressed more frequently and intensely, it remains unclear to what degree such collaboration actually takes place, what trends and developments there are and which actors are involved. Previous studies, often based on bibliometric analysis of large bodies of literature, partly observed an increase in interdisciplinary collaboration in general, but in particular, the collaboration among distant fields was less explored. Other more qualitative studies found that interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly between natural and social scientists was not well developed, and obstacles abounded. To shed some light on the actual status and developments of this collaboration, we performed an analysis based on a sample of articles on groundwater research. We first identified journals and articles therein that potentially combined natural and social science aspects of groundwater research. Next, we analysed the disciplinary composition of their authors’ teams, cited references, titles and keywords, making use of our detailed personal expertise in groundwater research and its interdisciplinary aspects. We combined several indicators developed from this analysis into a final classification of the degree of multidisciplinarity of each article. Covering the period between 1990 and 2014, we found that the overall percentage of multidisciplinary articles was in the low single-digit range, with only slight increases over the past decades. The interdisciplinarity of individuals plays a major role compared to interdisciplinarity involving two or more researchers. If collaboration with natural sciences takes place, social science is represented most often by economists. As a side result, we found that journals publishing multidisciplinary research had lower impact factors on average, and multidisciplinary papers were cited much less than mono-disciplinary ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the differential incorporation of acupuncture and homeopathy into the medical establishment in Portugal. While the former has been incorporated into the medical establishment, the latter is still banned by the Medical Council, yet remains in practice by medical doctors in the country. Drawing on the insider viewpoints of medical doctors committed to these two therapies, the findings of this paper suggest that the rhetoric of insufficient scientific evidence of homeopathy still prevails within the medical establishment. However, two other factors were emphasised: the medical prejudice or 'resistance to innovation' of the Portuguese Medical Council and the idiosyncrasies of acupuncture and homeopathy, which have made them amendable to biomedicine (or not). This paper argues that the differential responses of the Portuguese medical establishment to acupuncture and homeopathy are due to reasons beyond that given of the medical rhetoric of insufficient scientific evidence for homeopathy, and which extend to issues of professional status and power. This paper suggests that the emerging commercial interest of the pharmaceutical industry in homeopathy's pharmacopeia worldwide could enhance homeopathy's status in the country and could therefore pressurise the medical orthodoxy to redress its position towards this therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an examination of the process used by ordinary courts in Chile when making legal capacity determinations. It provides an up-to-date account of various aspects of law and procedure related to legal capacity in this jurisdiction. Also, by drawing on semi-structured interviews with judges, this paper examines judicial understandings of legal capacity decision-making focusing on problems related to the medicalisation of mental disability and the participation of persons with disabilities in legal capacity procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ragin’s Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is often used with small to medium samples where the researcher has good case knowledge. Employing it to analyse large survey datasets, without in-depth case knowledge, raises new challenges. We present ways of addressing these challenges. We first report a single QCA result from a configurational analysis of the British National Child Development Study dataset (highest educational qualification as a set theoretic function of social class, sex and ability). We then address the robustness of our analysis by employing Duşa and Thiem’s R QCA package to explore the consequences of (i) changing fuzzy set theoretic calibrations of ability, (ii) simulating errors in measuring ability and (iii) changing thresholds for assessing the quasi-sufficiency of causal configurations for educational achievement. We also consider how the analysis behaves under simulated re-sampling, using bootstrapping. The paper offers suggested methods to others wishing to use QCA with large n data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In general terms, decreasing impatience means decreasing discount rates. This property has been usually referred to as hyperbolic discounting, although there are other discount functions which also exhibit decreasing discount rates. This paper focuses on the measurement of the impatience associated with a discount function with the aim of establishing a methodology to compare this characteristic for two different discount functions. In this way, first we define the patience associated with a discount function in an interval as its corresponding discount factor and consequently we deduce that the impatience at a given moment is the corresponding instantaneous discount rate. Second we compare the degree of impatience of discount functions belonging to the same or different families, by considering the cases in which the functions do or do not intersect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the fragmentary nature of research findings and conceptual models, the Durkheimian legacy remains undervalued in contemporary spatial theory. The paper addresses this neglect by proposing a unified Durkheimian model of place which can be applied to case history and comparative analyses. It draws together the fragmented insights of Durkheimian theory to characterize four elementary forms of place: sacred, profane, liminal and mundane. These place/space identities are maintained and transformed through rituals and narratives which depend upon contingent human actions for their sustenance. The paper concludes with an extended case study which deploys the model to explain the changing meanings of the site of the Bastille (Paris, France) over the past two centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose new memetic algorithms (MAs) for the multiobjective flexible job shop scheduling problem (MO-FJSP) with the objectives to minimize the makespan, total workload, and critical workload. The problem is addressed in a Pareto manner, which aims to search for a set of Pareto optimal solutions. First, by using well-designed chromosome encoding/decoding scheme and genetic operators, the nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) is adapted for the MO-FJSP. Then, our MAs are developed by incorporating a novel local search algorithm into the adapted NSGA-II, where some good individuals are chosen from the offspring population for local search using a selection mechanism. Furthermore, in the proposed local search, a hierarchical strategy is adopted to handle the three objectives, which mainly considers the minimization of makespan, while the concern of the other two objectives is reflected in the order of trying all the possible actions that could generate the acceptable neighbor. In the experimental studies, the influence of two alternative acceptance rules on the performance of the proposed MAs is first examined. Afterwards, the effectiveness of key components in our MAs is verified, including genetic search, local search, and the hierarchical strategy in local search. Finally, extensive comparisons are carried out with the state-of-the-art methods specially presented for the MO-FJSP on well-known benchmark instances. The results show that the proposed MAs perform much better than all the other algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studies that focus on the effects of both the division of household chores and of financial contributions on the mental health of couples are scarce. This paper expands on previous research by paying attention to the variation of this relationship among three types of households: Male breadwinner, one-and-a-half-earner and dual-earner. Using paired data from the 10th wave of the Panel Study of Belgian Households, collected in 2001, we perform separate linear regressions for men (N = 1054) and women (N = 1054). The results suggest that in one-and-a-half-earner households, women's employment has a negative effect on their partner's depression level and that in dual-earner households, the effect of women's employment is only negative if men are not the major breadwinner. Crossover effects of depression between partners seem to mediate part of the aforementioned associations. [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]

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]

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]

Abstract: Dealing with complex electronic documentation is an integral part of much contemporary professional work. In this paper, we address the design of electronic records for social care professionals in the UK. Recent reforms in UK child welfare have followed a top-down, managerial approach emphasizing conformance to standard processes. The vicissitudes of a major national IT project, the Integrated Children's System, show the limitations of this approach, in particular the detrimental effect it has had on professional autonomy. Following in the foot-steps of Ken Eason, we argue that socio-technical design, by focussing on innovative applications of technology to support users (rather than the interests of the bureaucracy) offers a more promising alternative. A user-centred design exercise is presented to illustrate this approach in action. A novel interface was developed for handling the heterogeneous bundle of documents which make up the social care record, helping social workers make better sense of case-files. The prototype draws on the metaphor of the dining-room table as a way of overcoming the limitations of the computer display. We conclude that socio-technical thinking engenders a shift in mind-set, opening up a radically different design space compared to current design orthodoxy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Validation is arguably the bottleneck in the diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) community. This paper evaluates and compares 20 algorithms for recovering the local intra-voxel fiber structure from diffusion MRI data and is based on the results of the “HARDI reconstruction challenge” organized in the context of the “ISBI 2012” conference. Evaluated methods encompass a mixture of classical techniques well known in the literature such as diffusion tensor, Q-Ball and diffusion spectrum imaging, algorithms inspired by the recent theory of compressed sensing and also brand new approaches proposed for the first time at this contest. To quantitatively compare the methods under controlled conditions, two datasets with known ground-truth were synthetically generated and two main criteria were used to evaluate the quality of the reconstructions in every voxel: correct assessment of the number of fiber populations and angular accuracy in their orientation. This comparative study investigates the behavior of every algorithm with varying experimental conditions and highlights strengths and weaknesses of each approach. This information can be useful not only for enhancing current algorithms and develop the next generation of reconstruction methods, but also to assist physicians in the choice of the most adequate technique for their studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decades, public health has increasingly addressed what has been called the children's obesity 'epidemic', most notably through large-scale initiatives promoting physical activity. Through a discourse analysis the current paper critically examines such efforts in Canadian and Australian public health. Public health websites in Canada and Australia were examined for information concerning children's health, physical activity and obesity and explored for how these issues were represented in the discourse. Bacchi's (2009) 'What's the problem represented to be?' approach to discourse analysis guided our interrogation of the taken-for-granted assumptions underlying Canadian and Australian public health discourse, the ideological and political influences involved in its construction, and the knowledge base upon which it rests. The article calls for critical reflection on how children's physical and leisure activities are being advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many different evaluation problems that involve several groups (societies, firms or institutions) whose members can be classified into ordered categories, pursuant to their characteristics or their achievements. This paper addresses these types of problems and provides an evaluation criterion based on the distribution of the agents across categories. The starting point is that of dominance relations in pair-wise comparisons. We say that group i dominates group j when the expected category of a member of i is higher than the expected category of a member of j. We introduce the notion of relative advantage of a group to extend this principle to multi-group comparisons and show that there is a unique evaluation function that ranks all groups consistently in terms of this criterion. This function associates to each evaluation problem the (unique) dominant eigenvector of a matrix whose entries describe the dominance relations between groups in pair-wise comparisons. The working of the model is illustrated by means of three different applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have reported that interactions of mothers with preterm infants show differential characteristics compared to that of mothers with full-term infants. Interaction of preterm dyads is often reported as less harmonious. However, observations and explanations concerning the underlying mechanisms are inconsistent. In this work 30 preterm and 42 full-term mother-infant dyads were observed at one year of age. Free play interactions were videotaped and coded using a micro-analytic coding system. The video records were coded at one second resolution and studied by a novel approach using network analysis tools. The advantage of our approach is that it reveals the patterns of behavioral transitions in the interactions. We found that the most frequent behavioral transitions are the same in the two groups. However, we have identified several high and lower frequency transitions which occur significantly more often in the preterm or full-term group. Our analysis also suggests that the variability of behavioral transitions is significantly higher in the preterm group. This higher variability is mostly resulted from the diversity of transitions involving non-harmonious behaviors. We have identified a maladaptive pattern in the maternal behavior in the preterm group, involving intrusiveness and disengagement. Application of the approach reported in this paper to longitudinal data could elucidate whether these maladaptive maternal behavioral changes place the infant at risk for later emotional, cognitive and behavioral disturbance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper examines the social determinants of the rule of law by comparing Jamaica and Barbados, two countries with many similarities, but with divergent outcomes concerning the rule of law. The research takes a comparative historical approach, specifically investigating the origins of the divergence of the rule of law between Jamaica and Barbados by focusing on the late colonial period (1937–1966). Using new data collected from archival research, state legitimacy is identified as the key factor that helps explain the divergent trajectories of the rule of law in Jamaica and Barbados post-independence. Going beyond state-based explanations of the rule of law, the analysis suggests that the rule of law not only depends on characteristics of the state, but also on characteristics of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with development of a sequential test for comparison of the mean times between failures (MTBF) of two items: a new one (subscript n) and another serving as a reference (subscript ref). In the test, the hypothesis is checked that MTBFn is not less than a given multiple of MTBFref. Prior of the test, information is available on a known quantity r of the time between failures (TBF) for the reference item, which is not involved in the test, and only the new item is tested. It is a common occurrence in industrial practice that a new, modernized item has to be checked versus a reference counterpart currently in use. We assume that the TBF of both items is distributed exponentially. The sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) is widely used for checking that an MTBFn is not less than a specified (target) value. The innovation here is that in the proposed sequential test the target is the MTBFref which is available not as an exact value but only as an estimate whose uncertainty depend on r. Accordingly, a search algorithm was developed for the decision boundaries in the proposed test, as well as for calculating the operating characteristic (OC), and the statistical parameters of the test duration and number of failures to stopping the test. Approximative relationships were obtained for the above, depending on the target OC. These straightforward relationships drastically simplify the planning process. Moreover, they will enable the reliability engineer to appreciate the need to take the above uncertainty into account, and the expediency of resorting to the test at an early stage of its planning. Its superior efficacy is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial intellectual movement has been growing in the social sciences around the adoption of mechanism- and process-based explanations as complements to variable-based explanations, or even as substitutes for them. But once we have recognized the validity and dignity of studying mechanisms and processes, what is the next step? Recently, both political scientists’ and sociologists’ discussions have begun to turn away from correlation to mechanism-based approaches to causation. But there is still a widespread assumption that mechanisms are unobservable. We maintain that ways can be developed to observe the presence or absence of mechanisms either directly or indirectly. In this paper, by way of example, we put forward four methods—two direct and two indirect—for measuring mechanisms of contention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper's aim is to reflect on the contribution of Sociology to our knowledge of tourism, just when the tourism industry is demanding professionals with a wider knowledge and understanding of tourism, and European universities are redefining their programmes. Half of the Spanish universities offering a degree in Tourism Studies include Sociology of Tourism in its programme. A comparative analysis of the syllabi shows how their content covers the main issue areas in this field. More emphasis has been placed on typologies of tourists and the impact of tourism, while the tourists' social behaviour and the tourist system as a social structure are largely ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on an Anglo-French comparative study whose objective has been to link the normally separated fields of study, social mobility and the family. After presenting some crucial findings, the author rises the question that why family approach to the study of social mobility has been so slow taken by sociologists. A political reason linked to some stereotypes and a predominant “male” vision of society underlies this. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Comprehensive land use plans and their corresponding regulations play a role in determining the nature of the built environment and community design, which are factors that influence population health and health disparities. To determine the level in which a plan addresses healthy living and active design, there is a need for a systematic, reliable and valid method of analyzing and scoring health-related content in plans and regulations. This paper describes the development and validation of a scoring tool designed to measure the strength and comprehensiveness of health-related content found in land use plans and the corresponding regulations. The measures are scored based on the presence of a specific item and the specificity and action-orientation of language. To establish reliability and validity, 42 land use plans and regulations from across the United States were scored January-April 2016. Results of the psychometric analysis indicate the scorecard is a reliable scoring tool for land use plans and regulations related to healthy living and active design. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) scores showed strong inter-rater reliability for total strength and comprehensiveness. ICC scores for total implementation scores showed acceptable consistency among scorers. Cronbach's alpha values for all focus areas were acceptable. Strong content validity was measured through a committee vetting process. The development of this tool has far-reaching implications, bringing standardization of measurement to the field of land use plan assessment, and paving the way for systematic inclusion of health-related design principles, policies, and requirements in land use plans and their corresponding regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: Parenting and pregnancy in the context of drug use is a contentious topic, high on the policy agenda. Providing effective support to parents who are opioid dependent, through early intervention, access to drug treatment and parenting skills training, is a priority. However, little is known about opioid dependent parents’ experiences and understanding of parenting support during the antenatal and postnatal periods. This paper focuses on the position and impact of opioid substitution therapy (OST) in the accounts of parents who were expecting, or who had recently had, a baby in the UK. Methods: Semi-structured qualitative interviews were held with a purposive sample of 19 opioid dependent service users (14 female, 5 male). Longitudinal data was collected across the antenatal and postnatal (up to 1 year) periods, with participants interviewed up to three times. Forty-five interviews were analysed thematically, using a constant comparison method, underpinned by a sociologically informed narrative approach. Results: Participants’ accounts of drug treatment were clearly oriented towards demonstrating that they were doing ‘the best thing’ for their baby. For some, OST was framed as a route to what was seen as a ‘normal’ family life; for others, OST was a barrier to such normality. Challenges related to: the physiological effects of opioid dependence; structural constraints associated with treatment regimes; and the impact of negative societal views about drug-using parents. Conclusion: Parents’ accounts of OST can be seen as a response to socio-cultural ideals of a ‘good’, drug-free parent. Reflecting the liminal position parents engaged in OST found themselves in, their narratives entailed reconciling their status as a ‘drug-using parent’ with a view of an ‘ideal parent’ who was abstinent. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]