College and university compliance with a required meningococcal vaccination law

OBJECTIVE: Maryland became the first state to pass a vaccination law requiring college and university students living on campus to obtain a meningococcal vaccination or to sign a waiver refusing vaccination because college students are at increased risk for disease. The authors sought to identify how Maryland colleges addressed the law and determine whether schools were in full compliance. PARTICIPANTS: The authors surveyed 32 college/university administrators via a self-administered questionnaire. METHODS: The authors calculated vaccination and waiver rates and assessed compliance with the law overall and with specific law components. RESULTS: Among 28 participating schools, annual vaccination rates and waiver rates among students during 2000-2004 ranged from 66%-76% and 12%-17%, respectively. Two (7%) schools were compliant with all components of the law. CONCLUSIONS: Mandatory vaccination laws do not ensure compliance at the college and university level. Mandatory reporting, increased education, and collaboration between colleges and universities and public health agencies are needed.     

Maintenance of skilled performance with age: a descriptive examination of professional golfers

Demographic studies indicate a remarkable aging trend in North America. An accurate profile of the decline in physical and cognitive capabilities over time is essential to our understanding of the aging process. This study examined the maintenance of skilled performance across the careers of 96 professional golfers. Data were collected on scoring average, driving distance, driving accuracy, greens in regulation, putts per round, and number of competitive rounds played using online data archives. Analyses indicate that performance in this activity can be maintained to a greater extent than in activities relying on biologically constrained abilities. Although the generalizability of these results to "normal" aging populations is not known, they suggest that acquired skills can be maintained to a large extent in the face of advancing age.     

Bridging the divide in urban sustainability: from human exemptionalism to the new ecological paradigm

This paper reviews the main bodies of contemporary urban sustainability theory. From this analysis, two underpinning paradigms of urban sustainability are identified: (1) The ‘Human Exemptionalism Paradigm’ (HEP), which emphasizes the ability of humans to overcome environmental problems—see Urban Sociology, Urban Ecology, Urban Geography, Urban Psychology and Political Economy; and (2) The ‘New Ecological Paradigm’ (NEP), which emphasizes the criticality of ecological limits to human progress—see Urban Metabolism, Energy/Emergy Analysis and Ecological Footprinting. Each of these approaches is critically reviewed, highlighting their main assumptions, theoretical and practical foci. It is argued in the paper that if the related issues of urban sustainability and development are to be progressed, there needs to be: (1) a greater maturation of the NEP approaches, which are ‘relative newcomers’ to the area of urban theory; and (2) greater integration and dialogue between the HEP and NEP approaches to urban sustainability than has hitherto been the case.

The Experience-Earnings Profile: Productivity-Augmenting or Purely Contractual? Evidence from the UK

We test the human capital interpretation of the experience-earnings profile. Does the upward sloping portion of the experience-earnings profile reflect on-the-job training which in turn causes the experience-productivity profile to slope upwards, or do purely contractual factors determine the nature of life-cycle earnings. Herein, we provide additional evidence on the relationship between productivity and earnings by examining earnings differentials in the UK academic labor market for economists. Using a test first suggested by Mincer, we find that the empirical results are consistent with human capital theory. We find that, although the positive relationship between earnings and experience persists when individual productivity measures are included in the salary equations for lecturers and senior lecturers, the positive relationship becomes statistically insignificant when the same productivity measures are included in the salary equations for professors. For lecturers and senior lecturers, the experience-salary profile properly reflects the structure of the national pay scale rather than variations in individual research productivity. At the professor level, where individual salaries are not determined by a pay scale, the data support the human capital explanation of the positive experience-earnings profile.

A family systems-based model of organizational intervention

Employee assistance professionals are expected to be proficient at intervening in organizations and creating meaningful behavioral change in interpersonal functioning. Because of their training in family systems theories and concepts, marriage and family therapists (MFTs) are well suited to serve organizations as "systems consultants." Unfortunately, the authors were unable to identify any family systems-based models for organizational intervention that have been empirically tested and supported. In this article, the authors present a family systems-based model of intervention that they developed while working in an employee assistance program (EAP). They also present research that was used to refine the model and to provide initial support for its effectiveness.     

Job loss and family adjustments in work and schooling during the Mexican peso crisis

We use individual data from a panel of families during the depth of the peso crisis in Mexico to investigate whether the transition of the male household head from employment into unemployment affects the labor force participation of his spouse and children. We find that significant added-worker effects are in operation especially for adult females (wives), but no evidence that the labor force participation, the school attendance, and the likelihood of advancing to the next school grade of teenage males are influenced by the event of unemployment of the household head. The head's unemployment is significantly associated with a higher probability that teenage females do not attend school. However, lower attendance does not appear to impede their advancement to the next grade.

Unemployment Stigma and Multiple Labour Market Equilibria: A Social-Psychological Interpretation of Hysteresis

ABSTRACT: This paper supplements a simple one period non-shirking efficiency wage model with behavioural assumptions drawn from the social-psychological literature. A model of social interaction is developed in which the status associated with various labour market options yields implications for the shape of the non-shirking constraint and, thereby, for the number and type of labour market equilibria. The significance of such a finding for the existence of unemployment hysteresis is explored.     

The Individually Responsible and Rational Decision Approach to Economic Lot Sizes for One Vendor and Many Purchasers: A Comment*

Joglekar and Tharthare [6] presented an alternate approach for minimizing total inventory carrying and ordering costs of a vendor and the purchaser(s). This approach permits the vendor and the purchaser(s) to rationally select their operating policies. Joglekar and Tharthare claimed that their approach is more economical than the joint lot-size approach. In this note we identify some conceptual issues in their approach and demonstrate the superiority of the joint lot-size approach with the help of an example.     

Telling the other what one knows? Strategic lying in a modified acquiring-a-company experiment with two-sided private information

Theory and Decision - Lying for a strategic advantage is to be expected in commercial interactions. But would this be more or less obvious when lying could come from either party and question...