Species composition,abundance and diet of a squamate assemblage from the Carnaval stream headwaters (Buenos Aires,Argentina)

Urban Ecosystems - The present work summarizes 10 years of field observations of an exurban squamate assemblage occupying a 1200 ha patch in the suburbs of La Plata City (Los...     

Attachment‐facilitating interactions in non‐kin foster families

This study aims to analyse the interaction between children in foster care and their main caregivers during a microcoded co‐construction task, focusing on the verbal and non‐verbal behaviours that the adults use to promote a secure attachment in the child. It also examines how children and caregivers' socio‐demographic variables relate to the interaction. The sample is made up of 28 Spanish children between 4 and 9 years old in long‐term non‐kin foster care and their foster families. The building task was administered to 28 dyads, composed of the child and the main caregiver in each family. Our results showed that the caregivers' use of attachment‐facilitating behaviours was frequent during the interaction. Moreover, children tended to display a positive attitude when adults used these attachment‐facilitating behaviours. We also found some differences in the interaction according to the caregivers and children's age, the child's gender and the caregivers' satisfaction with the child's development. These results offer us a better understanding of the functioning of the adult–child relationships in foster families, which helps us make more efficient interventions to improve the caregivers' sensitivity towards the children's needs and difficulties.     

The development of gaze following in monolingual and bilingual infants: A multi-laboratory study

Determining the meanings of words requires language learners to attend to what other people say. However, it behooves a young language learner to simultaneously encode relevant non-verbal cues, for example, by following the direction of their eye gaze. Sensitivity to cues such as eye gaze might be particularly important for bilingual infants, as they encounter less consistency between words and objects than monolingual infants, and do not always have access to the same word-learning heuristics (e.g., mutual exclusivity). In a preregistered study, we tested the hypothesis that bilingual experience would lead to a more pronounced ability to follow another's gaze. We used a gaze-following paradigm developed by Senju and Csibra (Current Biology, 18, 2008, 668) to test a total of 93 6- to 9-month-old and 229 12- to 15-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants, in 11 laboratories located in 8 countries. Monolingual and bilingual infants showed similar gaze-following abilities, and both groups showed age-related improvements in speed, accuracy, frequency, and duration of fixations to congruent objects. Unexpectedly, bilinguals tended to make more frequent fixations to on-screen objects, whether or not they were cued by the actor. These results suggest that gaze sensitivity is a fundamental aspect of development that is robust to variation in language exposure.     

Physical Activity (PA) Among Middle-Aged Women: Initial and Current Influences and Patterns of Participation

This study investigated the initial and current influences for doing physical activity (PA), current levels of PA participation, and future plans for it. Participants were 200 women aged 45 to 64 years old. Factor loadings of influences were explored using Principal Components Analysis. Pearson bivariate correlations, t-test, and ANOVA were used to show the differences among the influences, sociodemographic characteristics, and present/future PA participation. Personal fulfillment was the main initial influence, while health benefits/self-care, and outdoor/family activities were the most important current influences. The results highlight the factors that best explain present PA participation and also plans for activity in the future.     

Likelihood ratio comparisons among spacings related to both one or two samples

In this paper, we investigate some stochastic comparisons in terms of likelihood ratio ordering between spacings from independent random variables exponentially distributed with different scale parameters. We partially solve some open problems in [Wen S, Lu Q, Hu T. Likelihood ratio orderings of spacings of heterogeneous exponential random variables. J Multivariate Anal. 2007;98:743–756] for a one-sample problem and in [Hu T, Lu Q, Wen S. Stochastic comparisons and dependence of spacings from two samples of exponential random variables. Commun Stat – Theory Methods 2006;35:979–988] for a two-sample problem. Specifically, we prove that the second spacing is always smaller than the third spacing in terms of the likelihood ratio order and we provide the ordering among all spacings in the case n=4. In the two-sample case, we establish comparisons between the second spacings related to each sample under certain conditions.     

The Characteristics of Takeover Targets: The Spanish Experience 1991–1997

In this paper we analyse the characteristicspresented by Spanish firms that have been thesubject of takeover bids that allow them to bedifferentiated from other firms. To that end,we use a sample made-up of 69 non-financialfirms that were the subject of takeover bids inSpain during the period 1991–1997, togetherwith a further 69, selected randomly on anindustrial and time basis, that were not. Theresults show that the firms that were subjectto a takeover bid were not, in general,characterised by having lower profitability ora worse market valuation than other firmsoperating in the same sector. This resultmakes it difficult to argue that takeovers inSpain have in their majority been driven bydisciplinary or speculative motives. Bycontrast, certain variables that exert aninfluence over the cost of the transaction,such as the size and the ownership structure ofthe firm, do appear to play a relevant role inthe selection of the target on the part of thebidding firm.     

The social support in kinship foster care: a way to enhance resilience

This paper analyses how social support enhances family resilience in kinship foster families by involving the families in an educational group programme. Sixty‐two kinship foster families from Spain participated in the research. The data were collected before the programme (interviews) and after the programme (interviews and focus groups), and these were analysed by content analysis with the programme Atlas.ti. The results show that the factors that contribute most to the development of family resilience are as follows: (i) feeling able to look for solutions when facing problems; (ii) an increase of their network of formal support; (iii) being able to offer support to other foster families; and (iv) feeling that the support they give to parents' foster children is socially recognized.     

Fair student placement

We revisit the concept of fairness in the Student Placement framework. We declare an allocation as \(\upalpha \)-equitable if no agent can propose an alternative allocation that nobody else might argue to be inequitable. It turns out that \(\upalpha \)-equity is compatible with efficiency. Our analysis fills a gap in the literature by giving normative support to the allocations improving, in terms of efficiency, the Student Optimal Stable allocation.