Financial Reporting Lags in the Non-profit Sector: An Empirical Analysis

We examine financial reporting lags among a large sample of Belgian non-profit organizations (NPOs). Doing so, we add to the literature on financial reporting and accountability in the non-profit sector. Next to drivers of the financial reporting lag that have been identified in prior studies based on private firms (e.g., delaying the disclosure of bad news), we find that the way of funding the NPO (i.e., reliance upon donations and/or grants) and its specific area of activity are significantly related to the financial reporting lag. Our results also suggest that important changes in accounting regulation significantly delay the financial reporting process. Importantly, we note that 17.2 % of the sample organizations do not file their financial statements within the legal time span.     

Impact of physical activity and sedentary behaviour on fall risks in older people: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies

The objective of this work was to summarise and evaluate the evidence showing that physical activity is a protector factor as regards falls in older people. Relevant studies were identified through a systematic search in the MEDLINE and Cochrane Library, under the keywords of accidental fall/numerical data and risk factors, and with the bibliographies of retrieved papers. The combined odds ratio (OR) [95% confidence interval] for physical activity was 0.75 [0.64, 0.88] with moderate heterogeneity (I ²?=?33%). For fall injury, it was 0.59 [0.47, 0.74] and, for falls in general, it rose to 0.94 [0.76, 1.17] with nil heterogeneity. The combined OR for sedentary factors was 1.14 [1.10, 1.82] with moderate heterogeneity (I ²?=?36%). Regular physical activity in daily life yields significant reduction in falls in older people, especially falls with injuries.     

Learning Life Skills Through Challenging and Negative Experiences

Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal - Youth who are socially vulnerable are disproportionately confronted with culminating risk factors that impact their everyday lives. Within positive youth...     

Vacant land conversion to community gardens: influences on generalist arthropod predators and biocontrol services in urban greenspaces

Due to economic decline and the recent rise in home foreclosure, many U.S. cities are faced with managing large acreages of vacant land. Interest in local food production on this land has the potential to dramatically reshape the composition of greenspace found within urban landscapes. This study examined how the conversion of vacant land to urban gardens and farms influenced arthropod generalist predator populations and their ability to support biocontrol services. We found that the abundance of Coccinellidae and Syrphidae, and the activity density of Carabidae, Formicidae, and Lycosidae were equivalent among vacant lot and urban garden sites. Dolichopodidae abundance and the activity density of Linyphiidae and Opiliones were reduced in urban gardens whereas Anthocoridae abundance and the activity density of Staphylinidae were greater within urban gardens relative to vacant lots. The biocontrol service supplied by generalist predators was measured using sentinel eggs (Helicoverpa zea (Noctuiidae)) and pupae (Sarcophaga bullata (Sarcophagidae) and Musca domestica (Muscidae)). We found no difference in the biocontrol of H. zea eggs or M. domestica pupae among the focal greenspaces. We found no difference in the removal of S. bullata pupae by predators in June 2010, whereas in August 2010 a greater proportion of pupae were removed in urban garden sites relative to vacant lots. Based on these findings, we discuss the potential of the urban landscape to support generalist predators and sustainable urban gardening and farming.     

Introvision in der Arbeitsvermittlung für Fallmanager und Arbeitslose

In the context of a pilot study the effects of the educational-psychological intervention Introvision were tested with older long-term unemployed people. The project was accomplished in the time by 1.4.2010 to 31.12.2010 in co-operation between ARGE Paderborn and the research group Introvision. In the context of the project 16 employees of ARGE Paderborn participated in an advanced training to Introvision, 31 customers of ARGE Paderborn began a coaching to get introduction in Introvision and 20 have also finished. Nine customers decided to participate five individual coachings. The results show, that the offers have a high individual use for the participants. To the central changes belong improved handling of stress, decrease of social isolation, improved (self-) perception as well as a higher self-confidence and a more open co-operation between customers and employees of ARGE Paderborn. Besides four participation began a job on the first labour market and two could be connected to a honorary activity.     

The effects of state-dependent human behavior on the design of a serial line

Most research on line design assumes that human operators perform independently from the status of the line. Recent empirical evidence is contradictory. Humans are likely to change their working speed if they might otherwise cause idle time (Schultz et al., Manage Sci 44(12):1595–1607, 1998). This peculiarity of worker behavior is observed in a variety of settings but little is still known about optimal line design that accounts for this more realistic modeling of worker behavior. Therefore, we analyze work allocation in a serial line with limited buffer capacity and adaptive human behavior. An extensive simulation study reveals that optimal work allocation in state-dependent models is different from classical state-independent models. A bowl-shaped work allocation might be suboptimal and design guidelines are more complicated. Depending on the extent of human reactions, a bowl-shaped, balanced, or reversed-bowl work allocation can be preferable.     

Public Support for Sickle-Cell Disease Funding: Does Race Matter?

Despite the fact that sickle-cell disease (SCD) is perhaps the most “racialized” medical condition in the USA, very little is known about how “race” impacts public support for health policies related to the condition. We embedded an experiment within the 2011 Cooperative Congressional Election Study in order to assess perceptions about SCD among 1250 participants from diverse backgrounds and evaluate the extent to which these perceptions were associated with support for government spending on SCD-related benefits. We manipulated the racial phenotype of SCD advocates who requested additional government funding and asked participants to indicate how much the government should provide. Overall, participants expressed moderately positive attitudes about SCD, and there were no differences in funding support based on the race of the advocate. However, white participants supported less funding compared to nonwhite participants, even after adjusting for a number of demographic and attitudinal covariates. These findings suggest that a complex relationship between racial identification and implicit racism may shape public perceptions about SCD that negatively influences perceivers’ support for SCD-related policy.     

Reciprocal Family,Friendship and Church Support Networks of African Americans: Findings from the National Survey of American Life

This study examined reciprocal support networks involving extended family, friends and church members among African Americans. Our analysis examined specific patterns of reciprocal support (i.e., received only, gave only, both gave and received, neither gave or received), as well as network characteristics (i.e., contact and subjective closeness) as correlates of reciprocal support. The analysis is based on the African American subsample of the National Survey of American Life. Overall, our findings indicate that African Americans are very involved in reciprocal support networks with their extended family, friends and church members. Respondents were most extensively involved in reciprocal supports with extended family members, followed closely by friends and church networks. Network characteristics (i.e., contact and subjective closeness) were significantly and consistently associated with involvement with reciprocal support exchanges for all three networks. These and other findings are discussed in detail. This study complements previous work on the complementary roles of family, friend and congregational support networks, as well as studies of racial differences in informal support networks.     

Benefits of Hybrid Lateral Transshipments in Multi‐Item Inventory Systems under Periodic Replenishment

Lateral transshipments are a method of responding to shortages of stock in a network of inventory‐holding locations. Conventional reactive approaches only seek to meet immediate shortages. The study proposes hybrid transshipments which exploit economies of scale by moving additional stock between locations to prevent future shortages in addition to meeting immediate ones. The setting considered is motivated by retailers who operate networks of outlets supplying car parts via a system of periodic replenishment. It is novel in allowing non‐stationary stochastic demand and general patterns of dependence between multiple item types. The generality of our work makes it widely applicable. We develop an easy‐to‐compute quasi‐myopic heuristic for determining how hybrid transshipments should be made. We obtain simple characterizations of the heuristic and demonstrate its strong cost performance in both small and large networks in an extensive numerical study.     

On the robustness of the generalized fused lasso to prior specifications

Using networks as prior knowledge to guide model selection is a way to reach structured sparsity. In particular, the fused lasso that was originally designed to penalize differences of coefficients corresponding to successive features has been generalized to handle features whose effects are structured according to a given network. As any prior information, the network provided in the penalty may contain misleading edges that connect coefficients whose difference is not zero, and the extent to which the performance of the method depend on the suitability of the graph has never been clearly assessed. In this work we investigate the theoretical and empirical properties of the adaptive generalized fused lasso in the context of generalized linear models. In the fixed \(p\) setting, we show that, asymptotically, adding misleading edges in the graph does not prevent the adaptive generalized fused lasso from enjoying asymptotic oracle properties, while forgetting suitable edges can be more problematic. These theoretical results are complemented by an extensive simulation study that assesses the robustness of the adaptive generalized fused lasso against misspecification of the network as well as its applicability when theoretical coefficients are not exactly equal. Our contribution is also to evaluate the applicability of the generalized fused lasso for the joint modeling of multiple sparse regression functions. Illustrations are provided on two real data examples.