Do resources of network members help in help seeking? Social capital and health information search

Does social capital as resources of network members affect health information search? Analyzing data from the 2004 General Social Survey in the United States, this study measures two social capital indicators (average education of network members and proportion of network members with a high school degree or higher) using the name generator. Most results are consistent using those two indicators. Both indicators are positively associated with frequency of health information seeking and seekers’ frequency of use of two sources (friends or relatives and the Internet). Also average education of network members is positively associated with seekers’ diversity of used sources and frequency of consultation with medical professionals. But neither indicator is associated with seekers’ frequency of use of other four sources (health-related magazines or newsletters, general magazines, daily newspapers, and radio or television programs). The findings demonstrate the theoretical utility of social capital in the social dynamics of medical help-seeking.     

Mental health status of the Hmong Americans in 2011: three decades revisited

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the Hmong in America and encompasses their mental health status for the past 35 years. Since their mass arrival to the United States in 1975, limited research has been compiled to track the specific mental health issues that affect this collective community alone. Major chronological research findings were compiled for this article and specific findings concerning the Hmong and their mental health issues were compared to findings for other Southeast Asian groups. In conclusion, the findings of this article indicate that the Hmong still have higher rates of being diagnosed with depression, the lowest help-seeking behaviors in utilizing Western medicine, and the lowest arithmetic average of "happiness" scaled on an assessment tool. The purpose of this article is to better steer future research projects that entail tracking and differentiating the specific mental health domains of the Hmong.     

From advocacy to service provision: state transformation and the disability rights movement in Taiwan

This research uses the development of the disability rights movement in Taiwan as a case study to analyze the impact of state transformation, in particular marketization of social welfare policy, on the disability rights movement. First, the institutionalization of the disability rights movement enabled it to expand its organizational structure and become involved in shaping policy. Secondly, when disability rights organizations started to undertake state-funded projects, their focus shifted from advocacy to service provision. Thirdly, competition for limited state-funding gave the organizations led by urban-middle class advocates a significant advantage over small, community-based NPOs and gathered significantly greater resources. Finally, this paper suggests that, in a context in which the state did not provide basic social services for its citizens with disabilities, the institutionalization of SMOs turned advocacy groups into service providers. Although the number of disability civic organizations increased, the voices of advocacy groups were weakened.     

HPV vaccine acceptance among a sample of Southern men who have sex with men: A comparison of younger and older men

Objectives: Do short, online educational messages about the human papillomavirus (HPV) influence younger and older men who have sex with men (MSM) differently? Second, what are the HPV knowledge levels and risk perceptions of Southern MSM living outside of major metropolitan areas? Methods: This study draws on participants who completed an anonymous online survey asking about their knowledge, risk assessment, and vaccine acceptance regarding HPV. Results: Knowledge about HPV was low among the MSM in this study. After reading a one-page information intervention, vaccine acceptability increased by a statistically significant amount among both a Younger and Older cohort but risk perception only increased among the younger respondents. Single men regardless of age cohort reported sharper increases in perceived risk after the intervention, but relationship status did not produce significant differences in vaccine acceptability. Conclusion: Online, brief interventions may be effective means of increasing motivation to vaccinate among Southern MSM.     

Multiple-class classification: Ordinal and categorical labels

We study multiple-class classification problems. Both ordinal and categorical labeled cases are discussed. The common approaches for multiple-class classification are built on binary classifiers, in which one-versus-one and one-versus-rest are typical approaches. When the number of classes is large, then these binary-classifier-based methods may suffer from either computational costs or the highly imbalanced sample sizes in their training stage. In order to alleviate the computational burden and the imbalanced training data issue in multiple-class classification problems, we propose a method that has competitive performance and retains the ease of model interpretation, which is essential for a prognostic/predictive model.     

创新、升级与培育——2013上海文化消费报告

在全国文化消费方兴未艾的背景下,上海文化消费尤为繁盛。在载体方面,创新与多元化趋势增强。由政府主导的基础型公共文化服务体系进一步完善,消费产品更加多样化,但仍存在公共文化机构数量不足、消费理念薄弱等问题。电影节、书展、动漫节、艺术节、艺博会五大节庆类公共文化平台在消费产品多元化、亲民化、国际化方面的趋势更加明显。新媒体作为市场主导的自主型文化消费载体,发展迅猛。网购、APP、微博经济、网络文学消费稳步增长。在客体方面,假日旅游和出境游消费火爆,私人影院等体验式消费备受青睐,演艺、奢侈品消费呈爆发式增长。在主体方面,上海已形成高、中、低3类消费主体并存的文化消费格局,阶层化倾向日趋明显。     

A robust automatic clustering algorithm for probability density functions with application to categorizing color images

This study develops a robust automatic algorithm for clustering probability density functions based on the previous research. Unlike other existing methods that often pre-determine the number of clusters, this method can self-organize data groups based on the original data structure. The proposed clustering method is also robust in regards to noise. Three examples of synthetic data and a real-world COREL dataset are utilized to illustrate the accurateness and effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

竞争中的参考价格效应及承诺

消费者的社会感知会影响其对产品和品牌的评价。当消费者进行购买选择时，经常会受到参考价格效应的影响。而广告和价格不仅是企业经常要考虑的重要决策，还会对参考价格产生重要影响。为此，一个值得研究的的问题是：在考虑参考价格效应的情况下，企业该怎样确定其动态广告和价格策略？
为了研究该问题，本文构建了一个广告和价格的动态模型，来研究一个双寡头市场环境下两个寡头企业的价格和广告决策，并以此分析参考价格效应的作用。具体而言，我们假定企业可以采用广告承诺和价格承诺中的一种，其中前者承诺其在一段时间内的广告投入量恒定不变，而后者确保价格不变。两种策略不仅会影响消费者的购买决策，也会影响竞争对手的选择。在上述假定下，我们探讨了两个寡头企业在都采用广告承诺、都采用价格承诺及一个企业采用广告承诺而另一个企业采用价格承诺等三种不同情形下的最优广告和价格决策，并以此分析了三种情形下参考价格效应对最优的广告投入及定价策略的影响。最后，通过数值分析，探讨了不同情形下企业的最优策略选择。