Mobile use,personal values,and connectedness with civic life

This study aims to examine whether and how mobile communication enables citizens to translate their value orientations into their connectedness to the civic life. Specifically, we probe the indirect process in which different types of personal values predict key dimensions of engagement with civic affairs through patterns of mobile phone use. We show that individualism is indirectly associated with engagement with civic affairs through informational mobile use, whereas the link between collectivism and community involvement is positively intervened by relational mobile use. Additionally, socio-tropic empathy yields indirect relationships with civic engagement through informational mobile use. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

A Simple Toxicokinetic Model Exhibiting Complex Dynamics and Nonlinear Exposure Response

Uncertainty in model predictions of exposure response at low exposures is a problem for risk assessment. A particular interest is the internal concentration of an agent in biological systems as a function of external exposure concentrations. Physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models permit estimation of internal exposure concentrations in target tissues but most assume that model parameters are either fixed or instantaneously dose-dependent. Taking into account response times for biological regulatory mechanisms introduces new dynamic behaviors that have implications for low-dose exposure response in chronic exposure. A simple one-compartment simulation model is described in which internal concentrations summed over time exhibit significant nonlinearity and nonmonotonicity in relation to external concentrations due to delayed up- or downregulation of a metabolic pathway. These behaviors could be the mechanistic basis for homeostasis and for some apparent hormetic effects.     

Toward General Principles for Resilience Engineering

Maintaining the performance of infrastructure-dependent systems in the face of surprises and unknowable risks is a grand challenge. Addressing this issue requires a better understanding of enabling conditions or principles that promote system resilience in a universal way. In this study, a set of such principles is interpreted as a group of interrelated conditions or organizational qualities that, taken together, engender system resilience. The field of resilience engineering identifies basic system or organizational qualities (e.g., abilities for learning) that are associated with enhanced general resilience and has packaged them into a set of principles that should be fostered. However, supporting conditions that give rise to such first-order system qualities remain elusive in the field. An integrative understanding of how such conditions co-occur and fit together to bring about resilience, therefore, has been less clear. This article contributes to addressing this gap by identifying a potentially more comprehensive set of principles for building general resilience in infrastructure-dependent systems. In approaching this aim, we organize scattered notions from across the literature. To reflect the partly self-organizing nature of infrastructure-dependent systems, we compare and synthesize two lines of research on resilience: resilience engineering and social-ecological system resilience. Although some of the principles discussed within the two fields overlap, there are some nuanced differences. By comparing and synthesizing the knowledge developed in them, we recommend an updated set of resilience-enhancing principles for infrastructure-dependent systems. In addition to proposing an expanded list of principles, we illustrate how these principles can co-occur and their interdependencies.     

Friends or Enemies?: Generational Politics in the Korean American Community in Los Angeles

This paper examines generational politics in the Korean American community in Los Angeles. After outlining how the Immigration Act of 1965 led to the acceleration of generational transition in the contemporary immigrant experience, the paper focuses its attention on the entry of the post-immigrant generation into Korean American community politics. Relying on interviews and case studies, the entry of the post-immigrant generation is examined both as a source of new political resources for community mobilization as well as a new source of intra-community conflict. As greater numbers of the post-immigrant generation reach adulthood and become active in political affairs, the issue of generational politics will play an increasingly important role for shaping not only the political developments in immigrant communities but also the broader politics of the American society.     

Intergenerational Coresidence and Nearness in Korea and Japan: Unbalanced Aspects of Family Changes

Abstract  This study aims to explain similarity and difference in geographic proximity between elderly parents and their children in Korea and Japan. Using data sets from two nationally representative surveys conducted in Korea and Japan, this study examines the extent to which needs and kinship of elderly parents and regional constraints influence intergenerational coresidence and nearness.
Results highlight a complex feature of intergenerational relationship in Korea and Japan. Advanced economic and health conditions of Korean elderly parents increase the likelihood of living with children. For Japanese elderly parents, however, coresidence with children is significantly likely to occur in response to their disadvantaged economic status. These results suggest that the elderly Korean are more likely than the elderly Japanese to lack not only economic and health resources but also opportunities in obtaining family support in a time of need.
Characteristics of children, however, show a similar trend between the two societies. Both societies maintain a strong son preference for extended family living arrangement. Eldest children in both societies are more likely than their siblings to live with or near elderly parents. However, children of younger cohorts in both societies are significantly more likely than those of older cohorts to maintain a disperse geographic network indicating a significant change in family attitude among different cohorts.
Finally, this study finds a more disperse family network among rural elderly parents than urban elderly parents in both societies reflecting the fact that massive rural-to-urban migration of young population has contributed to geographic segregation of kinship in these societies.     

The workhouse populations of Lancashire in 1881

This article investigates the characteristics of the workhouse populations in Lancashire in 1881. The analysis is based on the snapshot view provided by the 1881 census and, despite the limitations of such an approach, this large-scale survey reveals significant variations in the experience of poverty and local relief policies in a largely industrial region that had been at the forefront of the anti-poor law movement. The workhouse populations are shown to be diverse, and contrast markedly with pauper populations previously studied. Lancashire's Poor Law Unions are divided into three types: conurbation, urban industrial and rural. These three groups appear to represent three different patterns of workhouse residency. The workhouse populations in rural Lancashire are broadly similar to those discussed elsewhere, being dominated by elderly males. However, urban industrial workhouse populations contained large numbers of adults of working age and the absence of children from workhouses in the conurbation is particularly striking.     

一个新的稳健ARCH检验和YJ-GARCH模型

 众所周知,Engle (1982) 的ARCH检验对于条件均值模型误设并不稳健,特别地,当条件均值是非线性过程而我们仅对之建立线性模型时,它过度地拒绝真实的原假设,导致出现严重的水平扭曲 (size distortion)。因此,本文在文献当中首次利用Yeo-Johnson变换方法来转换均值模型的因变量以排除ARCH 过程中均值部分的非线性,进而提出一个新的稳健ARCH检验以及一个新的GARCH模型——Yeo-Johnson (YJ) GARCH模型。蒙特卡罗模拟结果表明,稳健的ARCH检验在水平 (size) 和势 (power) 方面的表现要显著优于Engle (1982) 的ARCH检验。对上证综指收益率的实证研究结果表明,YJ-GARCH模型的拟合效果要显著优于线性GARCH模型。     

中国农村贫困人口的估计与瞄准问题

随着农村低保的全面实施,中国的农村扶贫从开发式扶贫为主转变为扶贫开发与最低生活保障并重,扶贫资源也大幅度增加.然而,这一政策转变似乎没有带来明显的减贫效果.我们的研究发现,由于数据基础和估计方法不同,国家统计局估计的贫困人口和民政部门确定的低保人口在很大程度上是两个不同的群体.国家统计局估计的是经济上的贫困人口,而这些贫困人口绝大部分有劳动能力.民政部门确定的农村低保人口主要是一些特殊的人群(残疾人、慢性病人等没有劳动能力的人口).这些人口中的相当部分的收入水平并不低于贫困线.中国需要建立统一的贫困人口识别机制,改善农村扶贫对象的选择和瞄准机制,以提高扶贫效果.     

Predictors of the transition from experimental to daily smoking in late adolescence and young adulthood

Although smoking initiation is rare in young adulthood, the progression to a higher level of smoking still occurs at this developmental stage. Thus, this study was aimed at exploring predictors of the transition from experimental to daily smoking in late teens and young adults using the 2nd and 3rd waves from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Predictors were chosen based on Problem Behavior Theory and others that have been found to be influential in the literature. Of the variables studied, age, racial-ethnic identity (Black and Hispanic as compared to White youth), risk-taking tendency, and marijuana use predicted daily smoking 5 years later. Only one predictor, GPA, was protective for reducing the likelihood for the transition to daily smoking. The results are discussed in regard to implications for prevention of the progression to persistent daily smoking.