Making Rural and Remote Communities More Age-Friendly: Experts’ Perspectives on Issues,Challenges, and Priorities

With the growing interest worldwide in making communities more age-friendly, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the factors that help or hinder communities in attaining this goal. In this article, we focus on rural and remote communities and present perspectives of 42 experts in the areas of aging, rural and remote issues, and policy who participated in a consensus conference on age-friendly rural and remote communities. Discussions highlighted that strengths in rural and remote communities, such as easy access to local leaders and existing partnerships, can help to further age-friendly goals; however, addressing major challenges, such as lack of infrastructure and limited availability of social and health services, requires regional or national government buy-in and funding opportunities. Age-friendly work in rural and remote communities is, therefore, ideally embedded in larger age-friendly initiatives and supported by regional or national policies, programs, and funding sources.     

Empowerment through work: the cases of disabled individuals and low-skilled women workers on the US–Mexican border

This article discusses workers at two organizations: one employing disabled individuals and another employing low-skilled Mexican-American women. Workers at both organizations show positive effects from employment, including having increased self-efficacy and self-esteem, valuing work as a source of income and personal growth, as well as developing a sense of community. These perceptions contrast sharply with statements presented about how they viewed themselves and their abilities before working in these organizations. Through comparisons between these two sets of experiences, we show how individuals draw meaning, dignity, self-esteem, and empowerment from work.     

On the volume-ranking of opportunity sets in economic environments

We provide a characterization of the volume-ranking of opportunity sets as defined on the set of all polyconvex sets, i.e. finite unions of convex, compact, Euclidean sets. In fact, such a domain is large enough to encompass most of the opportunity sets typically encountered in economic environments, including non-linear or even non-convex budget sets, and opportunity sets arising from production sets. Our result relies on a valuation-based volume-characterization theorem due to Klain and Rota (Introduction to Geometric Probability, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997) and helps to highlight some quite unusual conditions under which the volume-ranking can be justified as a freedom-ranking of opportunity sets. Therefore, it may also help to understand why the latter has been so conspicuously ignored in welfare analysis. Thanks are due to Larry Kranich, Massimo Marinacci, Uri Rothblum, Ernesto Screpanti, John Weymark, Yongsheng Xu, Claudio Zoli and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions.     

Support of the upper limbs of office workers during a daily work journey

Generally, the studies assess the upper limbs postures during the work with Visual Display Terminal - VDT through the measurement of the angles formed by the segments or through the relation with the pre-defined anatomical postures (e.g., flexion, extension, abduction). However, few studies were found in the literature which had focused in the measurement of the upper limbs support during a real situation of work with VDT and in the definition of analysis categories for this kind of behavior. The main objective of this study was to measure, in a real situation and using a systematic observation method through video analysis, the main kinds of support for the upper limbs. The analysis was done considering 480 work hours of 30 office workers. Data were collected using a methodology proposed by Rebelo, Filgueiras & Soares [1] and related with the work organization and workspace conditions, the participants had: a) minimum of eight hours daily of work; b) similar activities, characterized as office work; c) same furniture and equipment; and, d) computers with the same hardware, software and peripherals. Results were analyzed 46554 dynamic events, considering only the fourteen Interaction Categories - ICs, for upper limps support. In this way, percentage was computed, considering the total number of occurrence, for the Right arm is: arm support (0.06%); forearm support (31,8%); elbow support (31,92%); hand support (7,41%); multiple supports (12,32%) and without support 16,41%- For the Left arm the results is: forearm support (0,11%); arm support (53,69%); elbow support (8,70%); hand support (7,97%); multiple supports (8,43%) e without support (21,11%). This systemic and ecological approach was obtained through a method which enables experimental Biomechanics and Physiology methods to develop more efficient functional requirements and recommendations for the work with VDTs.     

Strategy and Structure in the Italian Fashion Industry: A Case of Internationalisation

Many SMEs in the Italian fashion industry do not find a fit between strategy and structure able to open them to growth and new opportunities in emerging international markets. Through an in depth analysis of a successful business case, a contribution is made to the study of strategy–structure fit in the Italian fashion industry, with particular reference to the international growth phase. The case confirms the causal link between strategy and structure. However, the development route in the fashion sector does not follow the historical model analysed by Chandler: Uppsala’s model of incremental and cognitive internationalisation appears to be the more appropriate reference for Italian “industrial networks”, characterised by creative dynamics that are constantly evolving, and strong needs for structural flexibility and strategic change.     

Is a Brownian Motion Skew?

We study the asymptotic behaviour of the maximum likelihood estimator corresponding to the observation of a trajectory of a skew Brownian motion, through a uniform time discretization. We characterize the speed of convergence and the limiting distribution when the step size goes to zero, which in this case are non‐classical, under the null hypothesis of the skew Brownian motion being an usual Brownian motion. This allows to design a test on the skewness parameter. We show that numerical simulations can be easily performed to estimate the skewness parameter and provide an application in Biology.     

On the integrated maximum likelihood estimators for a closed population capture–recapture model with unequal capture probabilities

Nuisance parameter elimination is a central problem in capture–recapture modelling. In this paper, we consider a closed population capture–recapture model which assumes the capture probabilities varies only with the sampling occasions. In this model, the capture probabilities are regarded as nuisance parameters and the unknown number of individuals is the parameter of interest. In order to eliminate the nuisance parameters, the likelihood function is integrated with respect to a weight function (uniform and Jeffrey's) of the nuisance parameters resulting in an integrated likelihood function depending only on the population size. For these integrated likelihood functions, analytical expressions for the maximum likelihood estimates are obtained and it is proved that they are always finite and unique. Variance estimates of the proposed estimators are obtained via a parametric bootstrap resampling procedure. The proposed methods are illustrated on a real data set and their frequentist properties are assessed by means of a simulation study.     

REPLY

In the reply to his critics and interlocutors, Laclau clarifies his position regarding a series of concepts such as representation, fraternity (or democratic solidarity), identification, signification, affect, extimacy, spectacle and social sedimentation as they arise in or pertain to his theory of ‘populism and populist reason’. In the process of those clarifications, Laclau also explains how his views differ from other relevant thinkers such as Hannah Pitkin (on ‘representation’), Jurgen Habermas (on ‘new social movements’), Guy Debord (on ‘spectacle’) and Jacques Lacan (on ‘extimacy’).