Knowledge about hepatitis B and predictors of hepatitis B vaccination among Vietnamese American college students.

Asian American college students are at high risk for hepatitis B virus (HBV). PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: Vietnamese American students completed a questionnaire assessing HBV knowledge and attitudes. The authors performed statistical analyses to examine the relationship between HBV knowledge and participant characteristics. They also performed logistic regression to identify predictors of vaccination. Participants' mean age was 22.2 years, and almost 50% were born in the United States. RESULTS: Only 29.9% knew that Asian Americans are at high risk for HBV. Participants who had undergone screening or vaccination or had a family member with HBV or liver disease had significantly higher levels of HBV knowledge. Less acculturated students were less likely to have received vaccination. Those with higher levels of knowledge were more likely to have received the vaccine. CONCLUSIONS: HBV educational programs targeting young Asian American individuals are needed, with emphasis on reaching less acculturated individuals. Institutions of higher education are important locales to coordinate HBV efforts for young Asian Americans.     

Pooling designs for clone library screening in?the?inhibitor complex model

In this paper we introduce inhibitors into the complex model and we give a lower bound and an upper bound of tests in a nonadaptive pooling design for some inhibitor complex model. We propose a very efficient pooling design for the general inhibitor complex model and extend it to the error-tolerant case.     

The Meaning of a Livable Community for Older Adults in the United States and Korea

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the meaning of livability from the perspectives of policymakers and practitioners engaged in creating livable communities for older adults. In a comparison of two regions, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, United States, and Yangcheon-gu, Seoul, Korea, 4 themes emerged—affordability, safety, accessibility, and active engagement. In both regions, the research participants recognized that the core of creating a livable community was a consumer-driven approach and collaborations with various community partners. Although the themes were similar, the interpretation and emphasis were different in the two regions.     

Rising earnings inequality and the role of education revisited

Numerous studies have found a strong positive association between the level of education and economic returns (i.e., earnings). This relationship, however, has received less examination in the context of institutional or temporal variability. Drawing on the experience of South Korea in the decade after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, this study examines the role of education in rising earnings inequality under a radically changing institutional environment. Based on data from the Korean Labor Income Panel Study and Theil index decomposition, this study finds that despite the robust association between education and earnings inequality in post-crisis South Korea, a substantial amount of the rise in overall inequality is primarily attributable to rapid increase in within-education-group inequality rather than between-group inequality. This demands renewed attention to the role of education in earnings inequality to fully account for the changing dynamics of inequality in the twenty first century.     

Semivarying coefficient least-squares support vector regression for analyzing high-dimensional gene-environmental data

In the context of genetics and genomic medicine, gene-environment (G×E) interactions have a great impact on the risk of human diseases. Some existing methods for identifying G×E interactions are considered to be limited, since they analyze one or a few number of G factors at a time, assume linear effects of E factors, and use inefficient selection methods. In this paper, we propose a new method to identify significant main effects and G×E interactions. This is based on a semivarying coefficient least-squares support vector regression (LS-SVR) technique, which is devised by utilizing flexible semiparametric LS-SVR approach for censored survival data. This semivarying coefficient model is used to deal with the nonlinear effects of E factors. We also derive a generalized cross validation (GCV) function for determining the optimal values of hyperparameters of the proposed method. This GCV function is also used to identify significant main effects and G×E interactions. The proposed method is evaluated through numerical studies.     

欧阳修著作初传韩国的时间及其刊行、流布的状况

欧阳修是著名的“唐宋人大家”之一,他的文章字字珠现,代代流传,至今传诵不衰。欧阳修的文章不仅在中国有着巨大的影响,并且很早就传入了韩国,在韩国的汉文学史上有着十分重要的地位。本文即旨在分析、论说欧阳修著作韩国的时间及其刊行、流布的具体状况,进而评说欧阳修文章对于韩国文人所产生的诸多影响及其对韩国汉文学发展的贡献所在。     

The rise of network thinking in anthropology

The encyclopedic inventory of the first half of the twentieth century, “Anthropology Today”, published in 1953, gave little inkling that within a few decades developing trends in social theory, in field experience, in electronic data processing, and in mathematics would combine to bring to prominence a distinctive theoretical approach using a quite formal network model for social systems. Now, sophisticated mathematics and computer programming permit sophisticated network models — networks seen as sets of links, networks seen as generated structures, and networks seen as flow processes. Although network thinking has shown a dramatic rise from the “Anthropology Today” of 1953 to the current anthropology of 1978, it is predicted to soar in the next quarter century, much of the weighty burden of network analysis having been lifted from us by ever more rapid electronic data processing.     

Coping with Low Pay: Cognitive Dissonance and Persistent Disparate Earnings Profiles

The paper focuses on an employee’s perception of his or her own labour market outcome. It proposes that the basic earnings function, by adopting an approach that ignores perception effects, is likely to result in biased results that will fail to understand the complexities of the wage distribution. The paper uses an orthodox job search framework to illustrate the nature of this problem and then adapts the model to take onboard the theory of cognitive dissonance. The search model indicates how workers may adopt a coping strategy in order to reduce the disutility associated with the wage underpayment that develops. Then, by modelling cognitive dissonance, the paper highlights the weaknesses of using purely human capital proxies to understand labour market outcome. The analysis goes some way to explaining why individuals with equivalent human capital investment can have disparate earnings profiles.