Dopamine Genes and Pathological Gambling in Discordant Sib-Pairs

Pathological gambling (PG) is an impulse control disorder that has been considered as a behavioral addiction. Recent studies have suggested the involvement of the dopaminergic system in addictions and impulse control disorders and associations of dopamine receptor genes (DRD1, DRD2, and DRD4) and PG have been reported. In the present study, 140 sib-pairs discordant for the diagnosis of PG (70 males and 70 females on each group) were recruited through the Gambling Outpatient Unit at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of Sao Paulo and were assessed by trained psychiatrists. A family-based association design was chosen to prevent population stratification. All subjects were genotyped for dopamine receptor genes (DRD1 -800 T/C, DRD2 TaqIA RFLP, DRD3 Ser9Gly, DRD4 48bp exon III VNTR, DRD5 (CA) repeat) and the dopamine transporter gene (SCL6A3 40 bp VNTR). Our results suggest the association of PG with DRD1 -800 T/C allele T (P = .03).     

CEO burnout,managerial discretion,and firm performance: The role of CEO locus of control,structural power,and organizational factors

Despite the possibility of burnout resulting from dynamics in firms' upper echelons, little if any work has focused on chief executive officer's (CEO's) burnout and firm performance. Drawing on managerial discretion theory, this article analyzes the influence of CEO burnout on firm performance and the moderating roles of the individual (CEO locus of control), structural power (CEO duality and CEO tenure), and organizational characteristics (size, age, and resource availability) related to managerial discretion. Using a sample of 156 CEOs in Swedish firms, we find a negative association between CEOs who report higher burnout and firm performance. Our results confirm that CEO duality and resource availability ameliorate and firm size exacerbates the negative association between CEO burnout and firm performance. Contrary to our expectations, CEO locus of control, CEO tenure, and firm age do not influence this relationship. We discuss the implications of our research for upper echelons theory and strategic leadership theory.     

A ‘nondecimated’ lifting transform

Classical nondecimated wavelet transforms are attractive for many applications. When the data comes from complex or irregular designs, the use of second generation wavelets in nonparametric regression has proved superior to that of classical wavelets. However, the construction of a nondecimated second generation wavelet transform is not obvious. In this paper we propose a new ‘nondecimated’ lifting transform, based on the lifting algorithm which removes one coefficient at a time, and explore its behavior. Our approach also allows for embedding adaptivity in the transform, i.e. wavelet functions can be constructed such that their smoothness adjusts to the local properties of the signal. We address the problem of nonparametric regression and propose an (averaged) estimator obtained by using our nondecimated lifting technique teamed with empirical Bayes shrinkage. Simulations show that our proposed method has higher performance than competing techniques able to work on irregular data. Our construction also opens avenues for generating a ‘best’ representation, which we shall explore.     

Declining inter-industry wage dispersion in the US

Industrial effects have long been significant factors in wage inequality. Previous research indicates that wage differentials across industries were increasing through the mid 1980s. Using more recent data, however, we find that the level of inter-industry wage dispersion declined by 36% from 1986 to 2002 despite the continued trend towards increasing inequality in the labor force. This decline in inter-industry wage dispersion is evident across gender and educational groups. Using multilevel growth curve models, our multivariate results indicate that the decline is only weakly related to industrial changes in education, occupation or even productivity despite the fact that the latter variable had been a critical factor in the prior period. Indicators of globalization and downsizing also do not appear to explain this decline. For the more recent period, the most important factors associated with the narrowing of inter-industry wage dispersion are reduced unionization rates and the higher proportion of casual workers. We interpret these results as suggesting that firms may now be less economically obliged to pass on a portion of their rents to broad groups of workers and may instead be engaged in more idiosyncratic processes of negotiation with individual workers based on micro-level sources of bargaining power.     

Acculturation and Enculturation Trajectories Among Mexican‐American Adolescent Offenders

This study examines changes over time in ethnic affirmation/belonging and ethnic identity achievement, Spanish language use, English language use, Mexican/Mexican‐American affiliation/identification and Anglo affiliation/identification in a sample of Mexican‐American adolescents participating in a longitudinal study of juvenile offenders. The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure and the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans‐II were completed by the Mexican‐American adolescents 7 times over a 3‐year period. The findings from longitudinal growth modeling analyses and growth mixture modeling analyses indicate that there is heterogeneity in the initial scores and changes over time on these variables that are related to markers for the cultural qualities of the home environment (i.e., generational status and mother's most frequent language use). In contrast to expectations, marginalized or assimilated acculturation trajectories/types were not overrepresented in this sample of adolescent offenders. Implications for our understanding of the nature of acculturation and enculturation processes and the way these processes are studied are discussed.     

Effects of Africentric Socialization on Psychosocial Outcomes in Black Girls: The Critical Role of Gender

African American social work scholars recommend rigorous research and evaluation of Africentric interventions as one approach to building culturally appropriate, evidence-based treatments for the Black community. Following this approach, this pilot study evaluates the Imani Rites of Passage program, a 15-week Africentric curriculum with 10 Black adolescent females (mean age = 12.40), comparing their pre- and post-intervention data to that of a no-intervention group of 13 Black males (mean age = 12.08). The program evaluation is based on the degree of correspondence between theory and the measurement model spelled out by the cognitive-cultural view of African-American identity. The findings for Black females were consistent with the cognitive-cultural model in some ways but not in others, and they were more complex than the predictions. Future Africentric interventions guided by the cognitive-cultural model must consider gender differences in the outcomes. Implications for social work research and practice are discussed.     

Psychodynamic Couple Therapy: A Practical Synthesis

This essay reviews the most significant contributions of psychodynamic thought to the field of couple therapy. It distills the work of numerous clinicians and researchers who, though writing from diverse perspectives, share fundamental assumptions and concerns. Rather than emphasizing differences between schools of thought, this paper mines their best contributions in a discussion of five central therapeutic targets: underlying issues, divergent subjective experiences, transferences, projective identification, and acceptance. Two detailed cases illustrate the benefits and techniques for targeting these five therapeutic domains. Video Abstract is found in the online version of the article .     

Long-Term Earnings Differentials Between African American and White Men by Educational Level

This paper investigates long-term earnings differentials between African American and white men using data that match respondents in the Survey of Income and Program Participation to 30 years of their longitudinal earnings as recorded by the Social Security Administration. Given changing labor market conditions over three decades, we focus on how racial differentials vary by educational level because the latter has important and persistent effects on labor market outcomes over the course of an entire work career. The results show that the long-term earnings of African American men are more disadvantaged at lower levels of educational attainment. Controlling for demographic characteristics, work disability, and various indicators of educational achievement does not explain the lower long-term earnings of less-educated black men in comparison to less-educated white men. The interaction arises because black men without a high school degree have a larger number of years of zero earnings during their work careers. Other results show that this racial interaction by educational level is not apparent in cross-sectional data which do not provide information on the accumulation of zero earnings over the course of 30 years. We interpret these findings as indicating that compared to either less-educated white men or highly educated black men, the long-term earnings of less-educated African American men are likely to be more negatively affected by the consequences of residential and economic segregation, unemployment, being out of the labor force, activities in the informal economy, incarceration, and poorer health.     

Bringing Productivity Back In: Rising Inequality and Economic Rents in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector, 1971 to 2001

Using data on earnings and productivity for U.S. manufacturing industries from 1971 to 2001, we investigate economic rents and rising income inequalities. The results suggest that rents are most significant for managers, professionals, middle‐aged workers, and older workers. Conversely, negative rents are evident for women, Hispanics, single men, and blue‐collar workers. The underpayment of Hispanics appears to have increased while African Americans have gone from being underpaid to being overpaid. Workers with a college degree have become overpaid (i.e., “credentialism”) while “gift‐exchange” efficiency wages have declined. The marginal productivity of labor input has increased but is increasingly underpaid.     

Racial and Ethnic Differentials in Idleness,Highest-Risk Idleness,and Dropping Out of High School

This research investigates three different indicators of at-risk socio-demographic conditions including dropping out of high school, being idle, and being in highest-risk idleness among non-immigrant persons aged 19–24. Using data from the 2000 US Census, our results detail the differentials in these characteristics for 30 different racial/ethnic groups that are further broken down by gender. The findings indicate a wide range in the prevalence of these at-risk socio-demographic conditions. Groups that tend to be the most at-risk in terms of these indicators include African Americans, Cambodians, Laotians, Native Americans, other Hispanic whites, and white Mexicans. With the exception of the other Pacific Islander and Thai, young women have lower high school dropout rates than do young men. However, young women are substantially more likely than young men to be idle which we define as not being in school, the labor force, or the military. After defining highest-risk idleness as never-married persons without children who are idle, however, the rates are slightly lower for young women than for young men.