Quantifying the synergistic effects of impervious surface and drought on radial tree growth

Urban Ecosystems - The global trend of increasing urbanization is generating isolated patches of vegetation that could be strongly influenced by the surrounding landscape. Simultaneously, many of...     

Large-scale commonness is the best predictor of bird species presence in European cities

Urban Ecosystems - Urban bird communities are homogenized across large spatial scales, suggesting that the urban environment acts as an environmental filter. We hypothesize that large scale...     

Improving citizens’ online engagement via community managers: an explanatory study

The role of community manager is gaining importance as the proper usage of social media becomes a key factor for achieving more active involvement of citizens in social and political issues. Focused on Spanish local governments and in line with the literature of Excellence Theory, this paper aims to analyze whether some characteristics of the community manager function are determinant in their fostering of citizens’ online engagement via social media. In particular ‘independence’, ‘having access to the dominant coalition’, ‘gender diversity’, ‘continuous training’ and ‘culture of the organization’ are the characteristics considered in this paper. As to the main findings, this study confirms that community managers have not as yet achieved their goal of embedding the use of social media by citizens as a means of establishing more direct contact with their local governments. Moreover, in line with Excellence Theory, community managers of local governments should be aware of the importance of having direct access to key managers of the organization in order to better achieve the objectives of the organization and, more specifically, to increase citizens’ engagement. Furthermore, continuous training in issues related to social media truly helps develop the skills and potential of community managers. Likewise, an excellent communication department should rely on good professionals no matter their gender, and, in this sense, the gender of community managers is not a significant factor in their performance. However, the results of this study also reveal that in the case of public sector community managers, an authoritarian culture seems to be a determining factor for obtaining better results in enhancing citizens’ engagement.     

Fourier–type tests involving martingale difference processes

We develop testing procedures which detect if the observed time series is a martingale difference sequence. Furthermore, tests are developed that detect change–points in the conditional expectation of the series given its past. The test statistics are formulated following the approach of Fourier–type conditional expectations first proposed by Bierens (1982 Bierens, H. J. (1982). Consistent model speci?cation tests. J. Econometr. 20:105–134.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and have the advantage of computational simplicity. The limit behavior of the test statistics is investigated under the null hypothesis as well as under alternatives. Since the asymptotic null distribution contains unknown parameters, a bootstrap procedure is proposed in order to actually perform the test. The performance of the bootstrap version of the test is compared in finite samples with other methods for the same problem. A real–data application is also included.     

<Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">MAD-STEC</Emphasis>: a method for multiple automatic detection of space-time emerging clusters

Crime or disease surveillance commonly rely in space-time clustering methods to identify emerging patterns. The goal is to detect spatial-temporal clusters as soon as possible after its occurrence and to control the rate of false alarms. With this in mind, a spatio-temporal multiple cluster detection method was developed as an extension of a previous proposal based on a spatial version of the Shiryaev–Roberts statistic. Besides the capability of multiple cluster detection, the method have less input parameter than the previous proposal making its use more intuitive to practitioners. To evaluate the new methodology a simulation study is performed in several scenarios and enlighten many advantages of the proposed method. Finally, we present a case study to a crime data-set in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.     

Pension reforms in EU11 countries: An evaluation of post‐socialist pension policies

This article evaluates the pension policy pathways of the 11 former state socialist nations that have joined the European Union since 2004. Focusing primarily on the post‐2004 period, the analysis discusses the most important measurable outcomes of these countries’ pension reforms, in terms of poverty alleviation, pension adequacy and fiscal sustainability. Going beyond the quantifiable concepts, we also investigate the quality of the 11 countries’ pension systems in terms of equity as well as efficiency, emphasizing the less conspicuous design errors present in these systems. Although these errors have received little attention to date, they may harm pension schemes along several dimensions, including their fiscal sustainability.     

Promoting healthy transition to college through mindfulness training with first-year college students: Pilot randomized controlled trial

Objective: Given the importance of developmental transitions on young adults' lives and the high rates of mental health issues among U.S. college students, first-year college students can be particularly vulnerable to stress and adversity. This pilot study evaluated the effectiveness and feasibility of mindfulness training aiming to promote first-year college students' health and wellbeing. Participants: 109 freshmen were recruited from residential halls (50% Caucasian, 66% female). Data collection was completed in November 2014. Methods: A randomized control trial was conducted utilizing the Learning to BREATHE (L2B) program, a universal mindfulness program adapted to match the developmental tasks of college transition. Results: Participation in the pilot intervention was associated with significant increase in students' life satisfaction, and significant decrease in depression and anxiety. Marginally significant decrease was found for sleep issues and alcohol consequences. Conclusions: Mindfulness-based programs may be an effective strategy to enhance a healthy transition into college.     

Efficiency Analysis of the European Food Banks: Some Managerial Results

Hundreds of thousands of people in Europe are daily receiving food, thanks to local food banks, run basically by volunteers who collect donations and distribute them to organizations. In this paper, data from a sample of food banks working in 13 European countries are analysed using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), trying to learn about their profiles and find some clues about the efficiency of their operations, comparing them according to variables such as the number of volunteers and permanent staff, the tonnage of food delivered and the number of people served. Significant inefficiencies were found in the sector as a result of high performance of some food banks, thus setting a high level standard of operational efficiency. Some additional results regarding food bank sizes and performance are presented.     

Individual Pension Plans in Spain: How Expected Change in Future Income and Liquidity Constraints Shape the Behavior of Households

Understanding the motives that underlie Spaniards’ retirement saving decisions is important because many, if not most, future retirees will need to rely on personal savings to maintain a decent standard of living. The governor of the Bank of Spain has stated recently that the current public pension system will not guarantee an adequate pension to the citizens, advising to save now for retirement. In this debate on public pensions, and the complementary role that private pensions might play in Spain, this article has shed light on the decision of Spanish households to engage in individual pension plans and it has identified which factors determine the total amount saved in such retirement plans. Using micro data from the Bank of Spain (Survey of Household Finances 2011), the analysis has revealed that the expectations of lower future income, along with preferences for the financial risk and education, exert an important influence on the likelihood of enrolling in a private pension plan. University education minimizes the myopic behavior of households in the sense of making them more forward-looking and cautious in the face of their future well-being. Additionally using Heckman’s methodology to correct for the problem of selection bias, our results have revealed that liquidity constraints affect negatively the total amount of money saved for retirement.