Grandparents in the blues. The effect of childcare on grandparents’ depression

Review of Economics of the Household - We estimate the effect of grandchild care on the depression of grandmothers and grandfathers, using data from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in...     

Social media time,identity narratives and the construction of political biographies

ABSTRACT

The question of identity narrative is at the core of the interaction between social movements and temporalities. In this paper, we draw on long-term qualitative research amongst activists engaged in Italian social movements and argue that identity narratives are often the result of a complex mnemonic, contradictory and open-ended process that spans through a life-time of engagement with multiple collectives. We then question whether the use of social media reshape these dynamics. The analysis shows that the construction of identity narratives on social media tends to take place with knowledge of the complexity and overlaps that characterise these processes online. Nevertheless, the temporality of social media, based on immediacy, archival and predictive time, challenges the unpredictable, contradictory, and open-ended nature of political identity construction offline. The need to escape the hegemonic temporalities of social media poses new challenges to activists in their creative agency.     

Perceptions of rodent-associated problems: an experience in urban and rural areas of Yucatan,Mexico

Rodents are a threat to agriculture and homes, and are a public health risk. Local perceptions about rodents and the damage they cause are vital, as a first step, to the design and implementation of rodent control or educational programs. A total of 111 interviews were conducted in two urban neighborhoods and two rural villages in Yucatan, Mexico. More than 90% of the interviewed inhabitants perceived rodents as a problem. The fear of rodents (57%), damage to food and stocks (56%), and damage to clothes (34%), were the most cited problems. In the urban neighborhoods, the use of rodent control methods was more frequent (57%) than in the villages (33%) in this study. In addition, the percentage of damage to domestic appliances was lower in villages (10%) than in neighborhoods (33%). Our preliminary results suggest that rodent pests represent a threat to human health and to human food security in the studied sites.     

Potential impact of COVID-19 on ongoing clinical trials: a simulation study with the neurological Yale Global Tic Severity Scale based on the CANNA-TICS study

The COVID-19 pandemic has manifold impacts on clinical trials. In response, drug regulatory agencies and public health bodies have issued guidance on how to assess potential impacts on ongoing clinical trials and stress the importance of a risk-assessment as a pre-requisite for modifications to the clinical trial conduct. This article presents a simulation study to assess the impact on the power of an ongoing clinical trial without the need to unblind trial data and compromise trial integrity. In the context of the CANNA-TICS trial, investigating the effect of nabiximols on reducing the total tic score of the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS-TTS) in patients with chronic tic disorders and Tourette syndrome, the impact of the two COVID-19 related intercurrent events handled by a treatment policy strategy is investigated using a multiplicative and additive data generating model. The empirical power is examined for the analysis of the YGTSS-TTS as a continuous and dichotomized endpoint using analysis techniques adjusted and unadjusted for the occurrence of the intercurrent event. In the investigated scenarios, the simulation studies showed that substantial power losses are possible, potentially making sample size increases necessary to retain sufficient power. However, we were also able to identify scenarios with only limited loss of power. By adjusting for the occurrence of the intercurrent event, the power loss could be diminished to different degrees in most scenarios. In summary, the presented risk assessment approach may support decisions on trial modifications like sample size increases, while maintaining trial integrity.     

The work-technology nexus and working-class environmentalism: Workerism versus capitalist noxiousness in Italy’s Long 1968

Theory and Society - This article traces the trajectory of theory and praxis around nocività or noxiousness – i.e., health damage and environmental degradation – drawn by the...     

Not just any direct experience will do: recasting the multicultural teaching practicum as active,collaborative and transformative

Providing a teaching practicum where university students preparing to be teachers can interact with children from different cultures has been widely praised as an effective means to improve teachers’ cross‐cultural sensitivity and teaching effectiveness. However, some research suggests that direct experience with minority children may in fact serve to confirm racist or stereotypical perceptions, particularly in school settings. This paper describes and analyses a community‐based practicum taking place in the USA, where university students and children at a Latin American Community Center completed long‐term collaborative projects. These projects provided the active focus around which we hoped that students and children would form relationships that transcended and transformed the kinds of relationships they might form in schools, where institutional constraints help structure the roles people play and the expectations they have of each other.     

Immigrants in Spanish prisons: searching for an educational way out

In recent years, the Spanish prison system has undergone major changes, with a marked increase in the number of immigrant inmates. Thus, educational interventions in prisons must be set against this backdrop of ethnocultural diversity, especially if the aim is re-education and reinsertion into society. This paper focuses on the design, implementation and evaluation of a comprehensive educational intervention programme for closed prisons, adaptable to diverse prison situations and educational aims. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between immigration and crime, the potential for educational intervention in this context, and possible strategies favouring intercultural communication within prisons.     

Promoting interculturality in Spain: assessing the use of the Jigsaw classroom method

This note examines the effectiveness of a program in Spain that uses the Jigsaw learning technique as an educational intervention. We used a quasi‐experimental research design with two groups, two measures and an independent variable (the program). Use of the Jigsaw technique is shown to have been fairly effective on a series of measures.     

QUOTA‐HOPPING IN‐BOND DIVERSION

We show that the U.S. in‐bond system of imports may be used by firms to illegally avoid trade barriers, a practice known as in‐bond diversion. The illicit scheme involves declaring Chinese exports bound for Mexico but diverting them to the U.S. market while in transit, thus creating a gap between Chinese and Mexican reports. Using the phaseout and removal of U.S. quotas at the end of the Multifiber Agreement as a policy experiment, as well as variation in quota bindingness across products, we show that quota‐bound products were associated with larger trade gaps which shrunk following the quota removals. (JEL F13, O17, O19)     

Frailty selection in bivariate survival models: A cautionary note

One problem that researchers face in analyzing the survival times of groups of related individuals is selecting how the distribution of frailty—an unobserved (or not adequately observed) random factor— should be specified. Several distributions have received attention—for instance, the gamma distribution and a nonparametric N‐point, discrete probability distribution. Researchers have selected these distributions more for mathematical convenience than for their ability to represent biological, social, or economic reality, and the implications of choosing one functional representation of frailty over alternative choices have not been studied extensively. In particular, researchers have paid little attention to the type of association that exists among survival times of individuals in a group or between those of a pair under specific frailty distributions. This research paper explores the association among survival times under gamma, inverse Gaussian, nonparametric N‐point, and Poisson distributions. It shows that the pattern and strength of this association depends on how the distribution of frailty is specified.