The modern management of erectile dysfunction: choices available for treatment

Rat parathyroid hormone (PTH) 1-34 (4?μg/kg/day) was applied for 2.5 months to 9 month-old rats immediately after ovariectomy or orchidectomy or to 15 month-old rats with low bone mass which had been castrated 6 months before in order to know the effects on serum biochemistry parameters, lumbar and femoral bone mineral density, histology, cancellous and cortical bone histomorphometry, mineralisation content profile in cortical bone by backscattered-electron microscopy, and femoral torsion biomechanical testing. In ovariectomised rats, preventive PTH treatment avoided cancellous bone loss in tibial metaphysis and partially in lumbar vertebra, while in cortical bone, PTH increased endosteal resorption and periosteal formation. In intervention study, PTH did not restore cancellous bone but a strong endosteal and periosteal new bone formation was detected. In orchidectomised rats, PTH, in preventive study, avoided cancellous bone loss in metaphysis and lumbar vertebra, and a mild new bone formation in cortical bone was found. In intervention study, PTH maintained baseline cancellous bone mass, but in cortical bone a strong endosteal and periosteal new bone formation was detected. The PTH-induced new bone formation was confirmed by histology and by mineral content profiles. After castration, biomechanical properties were affected in females but not in male rats and PTH reverted this effect.     

The spatial distribution of smoking violations on a no-smoking campus: Implications for prevention

ABSTRACT

Objective: The present study extends research on campus smoking bans by examining where smokers are violating the policy at a large university in the southeastern region of the United States. Participants: The data collection was conducted by one graduate student from the university in August of 2014. Methods: A global positioning system device was used to collect the geo-coordinates of littered cigarette butts as a proxy measure for smoking violations. Results: A hot spot analysis found a number of spatial concentrations on campus, largely around classroom and administrative buildings along with parking lots and garages. Conclusions: The implications of such findings can direct enforcement to target these areas in order to reduce offenses and fulfill the initial goals of policy-makers and university administrators who support smoke-free campuses.     

向实行"效率与公平并重"的分配原则过渡--关于收入分配问题的一些思考

我国自改革开放以来,打破平均主义,实行按劳分配和按生产要素分配相结合,让一部分居民、一部分地区先富起来,带动和帮助后富居民、地区的政策.收入分配发生了巨大的变化,一方面,居民收入普遍提高,生活有了很大改善,另一方面,收入差距逐渐扩大,贫富差距逐渐拉开.     

Failing better: The stochastic art of evaluating community-led environmental action programs

This article provides insights into the evaluation of a government-funded action for climate change program. The UK-based program aimed to reduce CO2 emissions and encourage behavioral change through community-led environmental projects. It, thus, employed six community development facilitators, with expertise in environmental issues. These facilitators supported and learnt from 18 community groups over an 18-month period. The paper explores the narratives of the six professional facilitators. These facilitators discuss their experiences of supporting community groups. They also explain their contribution to the wider evaluation of the community-led projects. This paper reflects on the facilitator experience of the program’s outcome-led evaluation process. In turn, it also explores how the groups they supported experienced the process. The facilitator’s narratives reveal that often community-group objectives did not align with predefined outcomes established through theory of change or logic model methodologies, which had been devised in attempt to align to program funder aims. Assisting community action emerges in this inquiry as a stochastic art that requires funder and facilitator willingness to experiment and openness to the possibilities of learning from failure. Drawing on in-depth accounts, the article illustrates that a reflexive, interpretive evaluation approach can enhance learning opportunities and provides funders with more trustworthy representations of community-led initiatives. Yet, it also addresses why such an approach remains marginal within policy circles.     

Research note: The consequences of different methods for handling missing network data in stochastic actor based models

Although stochastic actor-based models (e.g., as implemented in the SIENA software program) are growing in popularity as a technique for estimating longitudinal network data, a relatively understudied issue is the consequence of missing network data for longitudinal analysis. We explore this issue in our research note by utilizing data from four schools in an existing dataset (the AddHealth dataset) over three time points, assessing the substantive consequences of using four different strategies for addressing missing network data. The results indicate that whereas some measures in such models are estimated relatively robustly regardless of the strategy chosen for addressing missing network data, some of the substantive conclusions will differ based on the missing data strategy chosen. These results have important implications for this burgeoning applied research area, implying that researchers should more carefully consider how they address missing data when estimating such models.     

The influence of earnings on income distribution in the United States

This article discusses whether the so called “skill-biased technological change” hypothesis is able to explain the individual earnings inequality in the U.S. during the period 1968–2000. Using the statistic information supplied by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the article analyzes the earnings evolution, explaining the reasons why earnings inequality has increased, and the relation of this increase with the household income distribution. The main conclusions are the following: (a) changes on labor productivity are not the main cause of the increase in earnings’ inequality, and (b) this earnings’ inequality is not the only reason for the increase of the households’ income inequality.     

A note on the structure of stochastic social choice functions

This note sharpens the result of Nandeibam (J Econ Theory 68:212–233, 1996). We show that a stochastic social choice function which satisfies regularity, independence of irrelevant alternatives and weak ex-post Pareto optimality is essentially a weak random dictatorship.     

The use of the coefficient of variation in detecting sincerity of effort: a meta-analysis

The coefficient of variation (CV) is used to determine sincerity of effort of strength measurements. However, there is a controversy in the literature concerning its validity and effectiveness. We used a meta-analytic approach and calculated the effect size between maximal and submaximal efforts for the CV of grip, elbow flexion and knee extension. We summarized findings concerning stability, sensitivity and specificity of the CV. We found large effect sizes (d > or = 0.8) for all comparisons indicating that submaximal efforts were more variable than maximal efforts. We also found large error rates and low stability of the CV. The error rates and stability values of the CV are unacceptable from both a clinical and a medico-legal standpoint. Therefore, the use of the CV for assessing sincerity of effort needs to be questioned.     

The impact of AIDS on income and human capital

This paper studies the impact of HIV/AIDS on per capita income and education. It explores two channels on how HIV/AIDS affects income that have not been sufficiently stressed by previous literature: the reduction of the incentives to stay in school due to shorter expected longevity and the reduction in productivity of experienced workers. In the model, individuals live for three periods, may get infected in the second period, and with some probability die of AIDS before reaching the third period of their lives. Parents care for the welfare of the future generations so that they will maximize lifetime utility of their dynasty. The simulations predict that the most affected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in the future will be, on average, 30% poorer than they would be without AIDS. Schooling will decline in some cases by 40%. These figures are dramatically reduced with widespread medical treatment, as it increases the survival probability and productivity of infected individuals.     

Inference for the measurement of poverty in the presence of a stochastic weighting variable

Empirical applications of poverty measurement often have to deal with a stochastic weighting variable such as household size. Within the framework of a bivariate distribution function defined over income and weight, I derive the limiting distributions of the decomposable poverty measures and of the ordinates of stochastic dominance curves. The poverty line is allowed to depend on the income distribution. It is shown how the results can be used to test hypotheses concerning changes in poverty. The inference procedures are briefly illustrated using Belgian data. An erratum to this article can be found at     

The regional distribution of skill premia in urban China: Implications for growth and inequality

Based on urban household survey data, the authors find that skill premia increased significantly across all regions of China between 1995 and 2002, but only in coastal regions between 2002 and 2007. By then, these regions also displayed much wider wage inequality and thus contributed more to overall urban wage inequality than non‐coastal regions. While privatization was the main driver of skill premia in 1995–2002, China's (regionally uneven) integration into the global economy became the dominant influence in 2002–07. Reducing skill premia and inequality, the authors argue, calls for reform of the Hukou registration system which impedes skilled labour mobility and possibly also growth.     

The distribution of a federal entitlement: The case of adoption assistance

Adoption assistance entitlements support children whose birth parents cannot care for them. The entitlements are meant to offset the extra cost to adoptive families of raising children whose early adverse experiences leave them with special needs. Unlike other Social Security Act programs, adoption assistance is not federally administered but is administered by states or localities. State-to-state variation in administration of this federal entitlement leads to unequal treatment of similar children. Moreover, although adoption assistance is an entitlement for children, payments made by many states are systematically correlated with the characteristics of adoptive families.     

The impact of tax benefits on female labor supply and income distribution in Spain

Review of Economics of the Household - Tax benefits targeted to low-wage workers have become very common transfer programs that seek to meet both efficiency and equity targets. An expanding...     

The stress process and the social distribution of depression

Mental health generally and depression in particular have been repeatedly shown to vary in relation to gender, socioeconomic status, marital status, and age. These status differences may be linked to mental health because they tend to define important differences in stress exposure and in the availability of coping resources. This paper examines the capacity of the stress-process model to account for the social distribution of depression. We employ mediation analyses using data from a 1990-1991 survey of Toronto community residents. In general, we found hypothesized risk factors to vary across these statuses with depressive symptoms and disorder and the distribution of protective factors to vary inversely. Results indicate that the model as expressed in our analyses accounts for a substantial minority of observed depression differences across individuals and for a considerable portion of reliably observed variation across social statuses. Our findings with respect to major depressive disorder parallel those for depressive symptomatology. Most compelling is the nearly total explanation of the socioeconomic status association with depressive symptoms and the substantial contribution toward explaining the socioeconomic status-disorder relationship when stress process mediators are accounted for.