The Partnership: The Horse‐Rider Relationship in Eventing

This article examines the dimensions of a partnership in the sport of eventing. Riders use the term “partnership” to describe the kind of relationship they strive for with their horses. Compatibility as well as mutual respect, trust, confidence, and close communication are all essential components. Although the focus is on the processes involved in building partnerships, their weakening and/or breakdown is, to a lesser extent, explored since the opposite processes are involved. The development of a partnership with one particular horse over a three‐year period is also examined.     

Absence Because of Family Responsibilities: An Examination of Explanatory Factors

This article presents findings from the first comprehensive study of the determinants of absence from work caused by family responsibilities. Two types of absence—absence to care for ill family members and absence for other family reasons—are considered. Data from a sample of 2,642 Australian employees are used to test six hypotheses. Results suggest that absence caused by family illness varies by sex, that job satisfaction is related to men's but not women's absence for family illness, that workplace flexibility is related to women's but not men's family-related absence, that child care arrangements are associated with the probability of absence for family illness for parents of preschoolers, and that the presence of dependent children is strongly related to absence for family reasons.     

Drinking plans and drinking outcomes: examining young adults' weekend drinking behavior

This study examined relationships among drinking intentions, environments, and outcomes in a random sample of 566 undergraduate college students. Telephone interviews were conducted with respondents before and after a single weekend assessing drinking intentions for the coming weekend related to subsequent drinking behaviors. Latent class analyses found evidence for four distinct drinking environments distinguished by private/public setting and presence of few/many intoxicated people. There was evidence that the drinking environment mediated the relationship between drinking intentions and heavy episodic drinking in this young adult sample. Future research might focus on examining person/environment interactions as they relate to heavy episodic drinking.     

Intertwined therapeutic mobilities: knowledge,plants, healers on the move between Laos and the U.S.

ABSTRACT

We investigate the notion of therapeutic mobilities through the case study of transnational health care practices and medicinal flows within the Hmong diaspora between Laos and the U.S. Drawing upon narratives of traditional healers, pickers, and plant sellers, as well as a collection of postal registers, we highlight how therapeutic mobilities follow the routes of migration and organize the practices of healing among Hmong in receiving countries, particularly in the U.S. Through the different and multidirectional aspects of therapeutic mobilities, we illustrate how transnational healing touches upon questions of cultural identity within the Hmong diaspora. Therapeutic mobilities not only involve border-crossing, they also strengthen existing bonds within the Hmong diaspora. Similarly, herbal treatments not only achieve a therapeutic function, they also represent a range of meanings and values for patients. We explore the fabric of therapeutic mobilities through the prism of translocality and medical pluralism.     

Mobility and Nunavut Inuit youth: lessons from Northern Youth Abroad

In this paper we examine the impacts of the mobility that Nunavut Inuit youth experience with Northern Youth Abroad (NYA), a Canadian volunteer travel program that sends northern youth to southern Canada and Botswana. Using a case study approach and drawing from archival research and interviews with 10 former participants, a staff member, and a member of the board of directors, we argue that NYA illustrates how volunteer travel programs for Indigenous youth can yield distinct benefits for its participants in comparison to mainstream volunteer travel programs, particularly with regard to participants' sense of cultural identity and pride. By enabling participants to foster career goals and a deeper sense of cultural pride, NYA presents a counter-example to some of the common critiques of volunteer tourism programs, and illustrates the complex interconnections between cultural pride, well-being, and career advancement for Nunavut Inuit youth.     

STATISTICAL INFERENCE OF TRANSMISSION FIDELITY OF DNA METHYLATION PATTERNS OVER SOMATIC CELL DIVISIONS IN MAMMALS

We develop Bayesian inference methods for a recently-emerging type of epigenetic data to study the transmission fidelity of DNA methylation patterns over cell divisions. The data consist of parent-daughter double-stranded DNA methylation patterns with each pattern coming from a single cell and represented as an unordered pair of binary strings. The data are technically difficult and time-consuming to collect, putting a premium on an efficient inference method. Our aim is to estimate rates for the maintenance and de novo methylation events that gave rise to the observed patterns, while accounting for measurement error. We model data at multiple sites jointly, thus using whole-strand information, and considerably reduce confounding between parameters. We also adopt a hierarchical structure that allows for variation in rates across sites without an explosion in the effective number of parameters. Our context-specific priors capture the expected stationarity, or near-stationarity, of the stochastic process that generated the data analyzed here. This expected stationarity is shown to greatly increase the precision of the estimation. Applying our model to a data set collected at the human FMR1 locus, we find that measurement errors, generally ignored in similar studies, occur at a non-trivial rate (inappropriate bisulfite conversion error: 1.6% with 80% CI: 0.9-2.3%). Accounting for these errors has a substantial impact on estimates of key biological parameters. The estimated average failure of maintenance rate and daughter de novo rate decline from 0.04 to 0.024 and from 0.14 to 0.07, respectively, when errors are accounted for. Our results also provide evidence that de novo events may occur on both parent and daughter strands: the median parent and daughter de novo rates are 0.08 (80% CI: 0.04-0.13) and 0.07 (80% CI: 0.04-0.11), respectively.     

Bias-Corrected Maximum Likelihood Estimators in Nonlinear Heteroscedastic Models

Nonlinear heteroscedastic models are widely used in econometrics and statistical applications. We derive matrix formulae for the second-order biases of the maximum likelihood estimators of the parameters in the mean and variance response which generalize previous results by Cook et al. (1986 Cook , D. R. , Tsai , C. L. , Wei , B. C. ( 1986 ). Bias in nonlinear regression . Biometrika 73 : 615 – 623 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Cordeiro (1993 Cordeiro , G. M. ( 1993 ). Bartlett corrections and bias correction for two heteroscedastic regression models . Commun. Statist. Theor. Meth. 22 : 169 – 188 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The biases of the estimators are easily obtained as vectors of regression coefficients from suitable weighted linear regressions. The practical use of such biases is illustrated in a simulation study and in an application to a real data set.     

Recasting the dynamics of post-acquisition integration: An embeddedness perspective

M&A scholars have generally assumed that post-acquisition integration is a self-contained process. However this ignores that this process rarely unfolds as the only ongoing initiative in an organization. We contend that post-acquisition integration is not detached from other simultaneous change processes in the organizational context and this has important implications for our understanding of how integration dynamics actually evolve. To further understand this embeddedness we examine the unfolding of a post-acquisition integration process in a company faced with an unanticipated drop in demand due to the global economic crisis. Through a qualitative, longitudinal study conducted over three years, we carried out 151 interviews to uncover the unfolding of the post-acquisition process. We find that post-acquisition integration is embedded in a set of co-evolving processes. We highlight four mechanisms (coordination, cohesion, disconnection, alienation) that arise from the co-evolution of processes that either facilitate or impede integration. Our findings contribute to our understanding of post-acquisition integration dynamics by recasting the integration process as embedded in a set of co-evolving processes that shape its unfolding.     

Measuring college students' alcohol consumption in natural drinking environments: field methodologies for bars and parties

In recent years researchers have paid substantial attention to the issue of college students' alcohol use. One limitation to the current literature is an over reliance on retrospective, self-report survey data. This article presents field methodologies for measuring college students' alcohol consumption in natural drinking environments. Specifically, we present the methodology from a large field study of student drinking environments along with some illustrative data from the same study. Field surveys, observational methods, sampling issues, and breath alcohol concentration sample collection are detailed.     

The revised safe at home instrument for assessing readiness to change intimate partner violence

This article describes the development and factor structure of the Revised Safe At Home instrument, a 35-item self-report measure designed to assess individuals' readiness to change their intimate partner violence behaviors. Seven new items have been added, representing content specific to the Maintenance stage, and other items have been revised to strengthen the assessment of earlier stages and address gender concerns. Confirmatory factor analysis using multisite data (two sites, a total of 281 men at intake) supported the conclusion that a four-factor model (Precontemplation, Contemplation, Preparation/Action, and Maintenance stages) was consistent with the observed covariances. A high degree of correlation between the Preparation/Action and Maintenance scales was observed, but subsequent testing indicated a need to treat the two as distinct factors in the model. It is recommended that scoring include only 31 items that perform well.