The Romance of Surrogacy1

This article seeks to demonstrate and analyze the cultural and emotional work surrogate mothers collectively engage in on the largest surrogacy support website, http://www.surromomsonline.com . Surrogate mothers’ online stories and discussions frame contract surrogacy as a “labor of love.” Women often describe their surrogacy as a “journey” of shared love; they hope for a lasting relationship with the couple they carry for. This article explores how the language of love, learned and internalized through online communication with other surrogates, creates both a cultural conceptualization of surrogacy and a ground for action. Love and altruistic giving are consistent with close interpersonal rather than market relationships; surrogates hope for a long‐term friendship with their couple. Surrogacy journeys, however, not infrequently end in disappointment; surrogates feel betrayed when couples cut ties. As a result of collective learning, surrogates’ discussions increasingly articulate the position that love, even when unreciprocated, can lead to repeated giving; love is noble and ennobling. Surrogates find appreciation and support in their online surrogacy community where they agree that giving life is a moral good. This stance has contributed to a renewed enthusiasm to bear children for others.     

Bayesian ratemaking under Dirichlet process mixtures

Experience ratemaking plays a crucial role in general insurance in determining future premiums of individuals in a portfolio by assessing observed claims from the whole portfolio. This paper investigates this problem in which claims can be modeled by certain parametric family of distributions. The Dirichlet process mixtures are employed to model the distributions of the parameters so as to make two advantages: to produce exact Bayesian experience premiums for a class of premium principles generated from generic error functions and, at the same time, provide robust and flexible ways to avoid possible bias caused by traditionally used priors such as non informative priors or conjugate priors. In this paper, the Bayesian experience ratemaking under Dirichlet process mixture models are investigated and due to the lack of analytical forms of the conditional expectations of the quantities concerned, the Gibbs sampling schemes are designed for the purpose of approximations.     

Discourse,affect and affliction

While much recent theorizing into affect has challenged the primacy of discourse in understanding social life, this paper is premised on the intertwining of affective experience with discursive meaning. Furthermore, appreciating the entwining of affect and discourse facilitates broader understanding into the illness experience, medical decision‐making and experiences of healing. Today, the biomedical discourse carries particular affective weight that can saturate experiences of affliction. Cultural understandings of disease similarly shape affect that may emerge in affliction. Social meaning, more specifically stereotypes pertaining to identities, interweave with emotion also in the context of medical practice. The doctor‐patient relationship is an affect‐laden encounter where the entwining of affect with social assumptions carries important, yet poorly understood, repercussions for treatment decisions and for the furthering of health inequalities. Both the elusiveness and the power of affect that unfolds in relation to discursive meaning rest on the way in which affect dwells in and resounds through the body.     

基于在线评论数据的产品需求趋势挖掘

随着经济水平的提高和物质生活的丰富，消费者的需求变化也越来越快。能否迎合市场需求的变化是企业产品成功的关键。随着社交媒体的发展，消费者为了分享购物体验发表了许多在线评论信息，其中蕴含着消费者的需求变化。本文在产品特征提取和属性情感分析的基础上，构建了垃圾评论识别模型。然后，利用时间序列分析模型预测下阶段的产品属性关注度和情感计算。最后结合历史数据的变化趋势，分析产品属性的重要性和市场满意情况。利用汽车论坛上的汽车评论数据对本文提出的研究模型进行了验证。研究结果可以为企业制定营销策略以及产品改进与创新提供决策支持。     

风险投资对中国新三板挂牌企业绩效的影响

风险投资是推动“大众创业、万众创新”的新型金融工具和重要资本力量，对产业结构调整和经济转型具有重要作用。风险投资通过提供企业战略咨询、关键商业网络资源、人力资源管理以及监控活动等多方面支持影响被投资企业绩效。选取2010—2018年新三板844家获得风险投资和9 415家未获得风险投资的企业，通过风险投资机构的年龄、历史IPO数量以及累计退出金额衡量投资经验，检验风险投资机构的投资经验对新三板挂牌企业绩效的影响，并利用工具变量通过二阶段最小二乘法（2SLS）解决了模型的内生性问题。实证结果表明，风险投资对企业财务绩效和成长能力均呈现显著正向影响，且风险投资机构成立年份越久，在投资经验方面越丰富，对企业绩效正向影响越显著，同时，风险投资退出业绩越好，行业内对其能力的评价越高，越有利于为企业提供附加资源支持，从而提升企业业绩。     

抗战时期陕甘宁边区学前教育建设的经验与启示

抗战时期，陕甘宁边区在中国共产党的领导下进行了独具特色的学前教育建设活动，形成了独特的建设经验，主要包括提供保障措施、建立精简高效的组织架构、注重保教队伍的建设、关爱幼儿的身体健康、开展科学的教育教学工作。重现边区学前教育活动，探寻其成功经验，继承与发扬红色教育精神，对新时期幼儿的培养与培育有积极的现实指导意义。     

Permanently online and permanently connected: Taiwanese university students’ attachment style,mobile phone usage,and well-being

Taiwan has been the top country worldwide in terms of its adoption and use of mobile phones. This study explores the permanently online (PO) and permanently connected (PC) phenomenon in mobile phone use among Taiwanese university students. It seeks to determine whether attachment styles are a distinctive factor that influences PO and PC (POPC) behavior and leads to various levels of well-being. The results of this study provide initial evidence that Taiwanese users highly depend on their mobile phones for PC and PO activities but perceive that being permanently connected causes interpersonal stress. Although the findings showed that all styles were positively associated with PO, only the secure and anxious styles predicted PC. Regarding mobile phone activities, the avoidant attachment style was not associated with any activities, the secure attachment style was positively associated with online and voice communication as well as information-seeking activities, and the anxious attachment style was associated only with voice communication. Furthermore, attachment styles lead to various levels of interpersonal stress through PO and PC behavior. The anxious style interacts with PO on interpersonal stress. This study provides evidence that attachment style is a significant antecedent of POPC and its consequences in mobile phone usage.     

Emerging adult identity following adolescent experiences with psychotropic medications: A retrospective study

This study examines the perceptions of mental illness identity among a group of emerging adults based on their retrospective experiences with diagnoses and psychotropic medication use during their earlier formative adolescent years. A short questionnaire was administered via online social media platforms to volunteers between the ages of 19 and 30 and who self-identified as having taken psychotropic medication between the ages of 12 and 18 (N = 46). Correlation analysis revealed that several variables were associated with a stronger illness identity, including participant’s happiness with their medication experiences, the belief that medication made them more like their “true” selves, and the belief that their diagnosis was accurate. Content analysis of participant narratives suggested themes related to discontinuation and barriers to adherence. These results contribute to the growing knowledge base around lived experiences of psychiatric medication use and suggest further study on how to advance more informed and compassionate mental health care.     

‘Miss mum’: mind and affective experience of Korean learners identified with autism spectrum and cognitive difficulties

Responding to the call for culturally informed research on autism spectrum (AS) to allow for the provision of appropriate services, this paper qualitatively explores the affective experience of five Korean learners identified with AS and cognitive difficulties by listening to their voices. The learners, supported by the use of visual aids and a choice of their preferred mode of communication, expressed the complexity of their inner experience that encompassed abilities as well as difficulties. The findings highlight the commonalities of experience between Korean and non-Korean individuals with AS, along with some aspects specific to the Korean cultural context.     

中国城镇化:历史道路、制度根源与国际经验

中国城镇化发展的每一个历史阶段,都对应了中国经济社会发展中需要解决的核心问题。当前中国城镇化发展面临的瓶颈,其形成有深刻的社会历史制度根源。要从全球及中国发展大战略的角度,历史性地考察中国城镇化道路的历史演变及其逻辑,探寻中国城镇化发展瓶颈的社会历史制度根源,并借鉴国际经验,推动新型城镇化的健康发展。为此,需要在战略认知方面,突破城镇化发展传统思维的束缚,形成创新性的新型城镇化发展战略的理念;在制度建构方面,形成推动和保障城镇化发展的有针对性的战略框架;在动员多元主体力量与资源方面,要实行多元主体间的协调合作,打造城镇化发展的组织化支持系统。