Predictability of social connections over time

A developed theory of social networks would potentially provide predictive and explanatory models for social processes at the most general level. The paper contributes to such a theory by elaborating one basic proposition: that social connections attract each other as a regular function of network parameters such as ‘structural strength’ (number of common links) and ‘distance’ (length of minimal path of linkage). The proposition is tested on longitudinal data from three locality-based networks.     

Vyāghranomics in space and time: Estimating habitat threats for Bengal,Indochinese, Malayan and Sumatran tigers

The wild tiger population in tropical Asia has dropped from about 100,000 to 3500 in the last century, and the need to conserve tiger habitats poses a challenge for the Global Tiger Recovery Program. This paper develops and uses a high-resolution monthly forest clearing database for 74 tiger habitat areas in ten countries to investigate habitat threats for Bengal, Indochinese, Malayan and Sumatran tigers. The econometric model links forest habitat loss and forest clearing to profitability calculations that are affected by market expectations, environmental conditions and evolving patterns of settlement, among others. It uses new spatial panel estimation methods that allow for temporal and spatial autocorrelation. The econometric results emphasize the role of short-run market variables, including the exchange rate, real interest rate and prices of agricultural products in forest clearing, with considerable variation in the estimated timing for response and impact elasticities across countries. The results highlight a critical message for the conservation policy community: Changes in world agricultural-product markets and national financial policies have significant, measurable effects on tropical forest clearing, with variable time lags and degrees of responsiveness across countries. Measuring these effects and pinpointing areas at risk can provide valuable guidance for policymakers, conservation managers, and donor institutions.     

Cardiometabolic risks associated with work-to-family conflict: findings from the Work Family Health Network

ABSTRACT

Objective: Work and family stressors may be associated with elevated cardiovascular risk factors.

Methods: To assess the effects of work-to-family conflict (WTFC) on biomarkers of cardiometabolic risk, we examined 1524 extended care employees over 18 months and estimated multilevel linear models that accounted for the nested nature of the data.

Results: WTFC was positively associated with BMI [β?=?0.53, CI?=?(0.08, 0.98), p?=?.02 at baseline and β?=?0.59, CI?=?(0.12, 1.04), p?=?.01 across the 18-month study period] and negatively with HDL cholesterol [β?=??0.32, CI?=?(?0.57, ?0.08), p?=?.01 across the 18-month study period]. The rate of change in BMI from baseline to 18 months increased with higher levels of WTFC as well (β?=?0.08, CI?=?(0.03, 0.15), p?=?.0007). However, WTFC was not associated with other variables reflecting cardiometabolic risk, such as including blood pressure, cholesterol, glycosylated hemoglobin and cigarette smoking status.

Conclusion: Findings suggest that BMI, which is linked to potentially malleable health behaviors, is more closely related to inter-role conflict than biological markers reflecting longer-term physiologic processes. These effects are exacerbated over time and may be particularly detrimental to already overweight and obese individuals.     

Wedding the dragon: The powerful feminine as seen in Jewish women’s dreams

Abstract

This article addresses the theological and liturgical problem of incorporating mythic traditions of the divine feminine into contemporary practice, given the typically essentialist nature of these traditions. The article considers the dream practice of a Jewish women’s learning community, the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute, and applies this practice to several “dragon dreams” in which dragons appear as powerful, erotic, sacred figures that “queer” the divine feminine by offering a norm-upending vision of what the feminine is and does. These dragon dreams provide a powerful alternative to traditional Jewish images of the female dragon in which the dragon represents the demonic feminine. I suggest that dreams can offer a “queering” of mythic images of the sacred feminine because they contain images that have mythic depth but also upend norms and expectations. The article then explores how these dragon images have made their way into the liturgy and theology of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute.     

Exploration of the impact of organisational context on a workplace safety and health intervention

ABSTRACT

The Safety and Health Improvement Program (SHIP) was designed to increase workers’ safety and health using supervisor/leadership training. SHIP was implemented and evaluated in a cluster randomized controlled trial with 20 supervisors and 292 construction crew members representing a high-risk industry. The intervention had three components: (1) computer-based training to teach supervisors ways to better support worker safety and work-life challenges; (2) supervisor behavioural self-monitoring to facilitate transfer of training to practice; and (3) team-based discussions with supervisors and work crew members to identify challenges and opportunities for improvement with 30, 60, and 90 day follow-up check-in meetings. Main effects for the intervention on perceptions of family supportive supervisor behaviors, team effectiveness, and work-life effectiveness were not found, suggesting that the pre-intervention context could help explain the lack of intervention effects. We found that the intervention was more beneficial for work crew members who had poorer pre-intervention perceptions of their supervisor (lower leader-member exchange) and lower perceived team cohesion, suggesting the important impact of the organisational context on intervention effects. We argue that perhaps these work crews were more ready for change and improvements in functioning than were the crews that were already functioning well.     

Radical “Boyhood” Futures for the Twenty-First Century,or, Pinocchio (Finally) Gets His Phallus

This article considers radical “boyhood” futures for the twenty-first century and the ways transmasculine subjects are creating exuberant, phallic subjectivities through working the gap between body and psyche. In Female Masculinity, Jack Halberstam asked, “What happens when boy rebellion is located not in the testosterone-induced pout of the hooligan but in the sneer of the tomboy?” Recent transgender movements compel a revision of this question, for what if boy rebellion is located precisely in this “testosterone-induced pout” but in the body of a child or adult assigned female at birth? Availability and advances in medical technologies allow boyhood to occur at any stage of life, in effect queering the life cycle, while new cultural production and community support systems offer unprecedented opportunities for change. Some of these developments suggest how Pinocchio and other childhood stories become important touchstones used by transmasculine subjects to construct their own boyhoods. The 2016 documentary Real Boy tells the story of a young musician who transitions from female to male despite his family’s rejection. “Camp Lost Boys” offers transmasculine folks the experience of summer camp, a place to reflect on what it means to be masculine. Responding to the problem of White transnormativity, the 2012 documentary The Aggressives by Daniel Peddle brings to a larger audience the struggles that trans* subjects of color assigned female at birth experience endure due to economic precarity, violence, and the prison industrial complex (PIC). “Brown Boi Project” helps trans* folks to ask what it can mean to be a man or a boy in communities of color. Testifying to their power, nonnormative boyhoods augment existing anxiety and resentment among White, cisgendered men, helping to perpetuate the self-created “state of emergency” over POCs (people of color), women, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) persons “infiltrating” (in their minds), the heteronormative, cisgendered “mainstream.” The violent reactions of White supremacist men’s groups suggest how the transmasculine tampers with the sanctity of boyhood, disturbing what Homi K. Bhabha calls the “manifest destiny” of masculinity.     

Using housing growth to estimate habitat change: detecting Ovenbird response in a rapidly growing New England State

Numerous measures of human influence on the environment exist, but one that is of particular importance is houses as they can impact the environment from species through the landscape level. Furthermore, because the addition of houses represents an important component of landscape change, housing information could be used to assess ecological responses (e.g., decline in wildlife habitat) to that change. Recently developed housing density data represents a potential source of information to assess landscape and habitat change over long periods of time and at broad spatial extents, which is critically needed for conservation and management. Considering the potential value of housing data, our goal was to demonstrate how changes in the number of houses leads to changes in the amount of habitat across the landscape, and in-turn, how these habitat changes are likely to influence the distribution and abundance for a species of conservation concern, the Ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapillus). Using a relationship between Ovenbird abundance and housing density, we predict suitable habitat in the forests of Massachusetts (USA) from 1970 to 2030. Over this 60-year period, the number of houses was projected to increase from 1.84 to 3.32 million. This magnitude of housing growth translates into a 57 % decline in Ovenbird habitat (6,002 km² to 2,616 km²), a minimum decline of ~850,000 (48 %) Ovenbirds, and an increase in the number of subpopulations across the landscape. Overall, housing data provide important information to robustly measure landscape and habitat change, and hence predict population change of a species. We suggest that time series of housing data linked to ecological responses (e.g., Ovenbird abundance) offers a novel and underutilized approach to estimating long-term and spatially broad predictions of ecosystem response to landscape change, which in turn can inform conservation and management.     

Explorations into the meaning of social network interview data

This paper is concerned with issues arising in the use of interview-derived social network data. First, are respondents' relationships correctly reported? Data from dyads in which respondents and those they named were both interviewed indicate high agreement on the characteristics of the relationships. Second, which relationships are named and which are not? Data from interviews, supplemented with a long list of individuals, some of whom were spontaneously named and some of whom were also known but not named, indicate that respondents select in terms of frequency, recency, and how well they know the person, but, unexpectedly, not duration. Comparison of men's and women's selections suggests that women more strongly limit their naming to those they know very well.