The European Union in the flows of international students: attractiveness and inconsistency

This paper aims to describe the overall pattern of flows of international students and to determine the factors that can explain the variation of countries' attractiveness. In a second step, it assesses the position of the European Union as a whole in these flows at the global level. Is the EU strong enough in the global competition to attract the best brains? Besides, it shows how attractiveness factors can vary according to the profile of a sample of European Union member countries. In the third section of the paper, we raise some reflexions on the relations of the EU with its neighbourhood with respect to the flows of international students. In fact, the EU may not be able to maintain its status as a major power if it does not better regulate its relations with neighbour countries, especially in the domain of higher education and students' mobility.     

The Effect of Recessions on Gambling Expenditures

This article examines the influence of the business cycle on expenditures of three major types of legalized gambling activities: Casino gambling, lottery, and pari-mutuel wagering. Empirical results are obtained using monthly aggregated US per capita consumption time series for the period 1959.01–2010.08. Among the three gambling activities only lottery consumption appears to be recession-proof. This series is characterized by a vast and solid growth that exceeds the growth in income and the growth in other gambling sectors. Casino gambling expenditures show a positive growth during expansions and no growth during recessions. Hence, the loss in income during recessions affects casino gambling. However, income shocks which are not directly related to the business cycle do not influence casino gambling expenditures. Pari-mutuel wagering displays an overall negative trend and its average growth rate is smaller than the growth in income, especially during recessions. The findings of this article provide important implications for the gambling industry and for local governments.     

Physical variation in low-load work - physiological effects during exposure & recovery

Trends in industry are leaning towards jobs that are more stereotyped at lower workloads. Physical variation is a potential ergonomic intervention. However, little is known of physiological response to different kinds of variation. To investigate this issue, three kinds of isometric contraction patterns with the same mean amplitude, cycle time, and duty cycle were compared. Fatigue responses were measured by multiple biomechanical and physiological approaches. In exercise, sustained and intermittent contractions with zero force had a greater number of statistically significant differences in fatigue responses. Intermittent contractions with amplitude ? and 1? of mean force had effects intermediate but close to the sustained contraction. In recovery, sustained contractions led to decreased twitch forces 24 hours post-exercise whereas both intermittent contractions recovered within 60 minutes. This suggests that time varying forces, even without complete muscular rest, may be a useful intervention to reduce local and perceived fatigue in workers performing low-load tasks.     

Prevention of MSD within OHSMS/IMS: a systematic review of risk assessment strategies

The purpose of this systematic review was to identify and summarize the research evidence on prevention of Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSD) within Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OHSMS) and Integrated Management Systems (IMS). Databases in business, management, engineering and health and safety were systematically searched and relevant publications were synthesized. The number of papers that could address the research questions was small. However, the review revealed that many of the techniques to address MSD hazards require substantial background knowledge and training. This may limit employees' involvement in the technical aspects of the risk assessment process. Also these techniques did not usually fit into techniques used by companies to address other risk factors within their management systems. This could result in MSD prevention becoming a separate issue that cannot be managed with company-wide tools. In addition, this review also suggested that there is a research gap concerning the MSD prevention within companies' management systems.     

Environmental Influences on Well-Being: A Dyadic Latent Panel Analysis of Spousal Similarity

This article uses dyadic latent panel analysis (DLPA) to examine environmental influences on well-being. DLPA requires longitudinal dyadic data. It decomposes the observed variance of both members of a dyad into a trait, state, and an error component. Furthermore, state variance is decomposed into initial and new state variance. Total observed similarity between members of a dyad is decomposed into trait similarity, initial state similarity, new state similarity, and error similarity. Dyadic similarity in new state variance reveals that both members of a dyad change in the same direction, which is a strong indication of environmental effects. DLPA is used to examine environmental influences on life satisfaction and domain satisfaction based on 22 annual assessments of married couples in the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (N’s = 607–740). The results show high similarity in new state variance for life satisfaction and objectively identical domains (household income, housing), and less similarity for objectively less similar domains (recreation, health). This finding provides strong evidence for environmental influences on well-being. In addition, the results show high trait similarity. The implications of the latter finding for interpretation of behavioral genetics studies of well-being are discussed.     

Social Enterprise Among University-Based Centers in US Schools of Social Work

Globally, social enterprise is used increasingly by nonprofit organizations to create new funding streams in the face of dwindling public funds. In light of evidence that institutions of higher education are making similar adaptations, this study explores the extent to which academic centers in US schools of social work are using social enterprise strategies to fund mission efforts. Interviews with the directors of 16 social work research centers in 14 states reveal incentives and barriers that exist at multiple levels and considerably impact the potential viability of social enterprise in the social work academic setting. Implications for institutions of higher education and social work scholars are discussed.     

Trust,Social Capital,and the Coordination of Relationships Between the Members of Cooperatives: A Comparison Between Member-Focused Cooperatives and Third-Party-Focused Cooperatives

In recent years, nonprofit scholars have increasingly studied the phenomenon of social enterprises which has become a generic term describing a wider reorientation among third sector organizations. The emergence of social enterprises has also led to a dynamic of hybridization and broadening in the cooperative sector, similar to an earlier dynamic of “economization”, but this time on the other end of the organizational spectrum. This paper aims at developing a fine-grained conceptual understanding of how this organizational dynamic is shaped in terms of member coordination, thus contributing to a more comprehensive theoretical understanding of different organizational forms of cooperatives. Specifically, to highlight the difference to traditional member-focused cooperatives, the paper introduces the term third-party-focused cooperatives for those social enterprises which emphasize economic goals as well as control and ownership by a particular community (typically place-based). The key result of the paper is that with the shift from member- to community-focus in cooperatives, the main coordination mechanism becomes one of norm-based trust on the basis of generalized reciprocity. In contrast to traditional maxim-based trust member coordination on the basis of relation-specific reciprocity, this enables third-party-focused cooperatives to mobilize bridging and linking social capital, facilitating collective action aimed towards the community interest. The findings suggest that this identity shift requires a mutual re-positioning between the cooperative and the nonprofit sector, in terms of umbrellas as well as regulatory and legislative bodies.     

Residualization is not the answer: Rethinking how to address multicollinearity

Here I show that a commonly used procedure to address problems stemming from collinearity and multicollinearity among independent variables in regression analysis, “residualization”, leads to biased coefficient and standard error estimates and does not address the fundamental problem of collinearity, which is a lack of information. I demonstrate this using visual representations of collinearity, hypothetical experimental designs, and analyses of both artificial and real world data. I conclude by noting the importance of examining methodological practices to ensure that their validity can be established based on rational criteria.     

A UNIVERSITY EXAMINATION-SCHEDULING MODEL TO MINIMIZE MULTIPLE-EXAMINATION DAYS FOR STUDENTS

Scheduling university examinations is often done with the objective of spreading a student's required examinations over an examination week. That is the equivalent of the problem of minimizing the number of examinations a student must take on any one day. An approach to scheduling exams which relates the problem to the classical assignment problem is discussed. The model developed is a symmetry-constrained assignment model, and the solution method requires use of a branch-and-bound algorithm. Results from application of the algorithm to six semesters of actual data are presented.     

Concepts,Theory, and Techniques PRINCIPLES OF MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION*

This paper attempts to isolate and analyze the principal ideas of multiobjective optimization. We do this without casting aspersions on single-objective optimization or championing any one multiobjective technique. We examine each fundamental idea for strengths and weaknesses and subject two—efficiency and utility—to extended consideration. Some general recommendations are made in light of this analysis. Besides the simple advice to retain single-objective optimization as a possible approach, we suggest that three broad classes of multiobjective techniques are very promising in terms of reliably, and believably, achieving a most preferred solution. These are: (1) partial generation of the efficient set, a rubric we use to unify a wide spectrum of both interactive and analytic methods; (2) explicit utility maximization, a much-overlooked approach combining multiattribute decision theory and mathematical programming; and (3) interactive implicit utility maximization, the popular class of methods introduced by Geoffrion, Dyer, and Feinberg [24] and extended significantly by others.