Effects of Three Caregiver Interventions: Support,Educational Literature,and Creative Movement

The primary focus of this study is to compare the effectiveness of three distinct intervention techniques in relieving some of the stress experienced by midlife daughters' caregiving for their frail mothers. The three techniques are: (a) a home-based literature “tip of the week” group, (b) a caregiver's support group, and (c) a creative-movement group. Based on a review of caregiving literature, no other studies have utilized a home-based literature intervention or a creative-movement intervention with midlife daughters providing informal care to frail mothers. As part of the weekly assessment evaluation, participants were asked to rate how helpful the previous week's session was with respect to five mental health variables: irritability, depression, anxiety, stress, and concentration. Overall, the support-based group had higher average scores for each of the five mental health variables and the highest overall mental health score. Future research and promising applications of future intervention programs are discussed.     

A self-comfort oriented pattern of regulatory behavior and avoidant attachment are more likely among infants born moderate-to-late preterm

Infants born preterm (<37 gestational weeks, GW) are at increased risk for regulatory difficulties and insecure attachment. However, the association between infants' regulatory behavior patterns and their later attachment organization is understudied in the preterm population. We addressed this gap by utilizing a Portuguese sample of 202 mother–infant dyads. Specifically, we compared the regulatory behavior patterns of 74 infants born moderate-to-late preterm (MLPT, 32–36 GW) to those of 128 infants born full-term (FT, 37–42 GW) and evaluated the associations of these regulatory patterns with later attachment. Infants' regulatory behavior patterns (Social-Positive Oriented, Distressed-Inconsolable, or Self-Comfort Oriented) were evaluated in the Face-to-Face-Still-Face paradigm at 3 months, and their attachment organization (secure, insecure-avoidant, or insecure-ambivalent) was evaluated in the Strange Situation at 12 months corrected age. In both samples, the Social-Positive-Oriented regulatory pattern was associated with secure attachment; the Distressed-Inconsolable pattern with insecure-ambivalent attachment; and the Self-Comfort-Oriented pattern with insecure-avoidant attachment. However, compared to FT infants, infants born MLPT were more likely to exhibit a Self-Comfort-Oriented pattern and avoidant attachment. Most perinatal and demographic variables were not related to infant outcomes. However, infants with a higher 1-min Apgar were more likely to exhibit the Social-Positive-Oriented regulatory pattern and secure attachment.     

Outsourcing Manufacturing: Secure Price‐Masking Mechanisms for Purchasing Component Parts

This paper develops and tests a privacy‐preserving business process that supports the selection of a contract manufacturer by an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), and the determination of whether the OEM or the chosen contract manufacturer will procure each of the components to be used in the manufacture of the OEM's branded product. Our “secure price‐masking (SPM)” technology contributes to procurement theory and practice in four significant ways: First, it preserves the privacy of every party's individual component prices. Second, SPM assures that the contract manufacturers will bid their own private purchase cost (i.e., not add a margin to their cost). Third, SPM is not invertible; i.e., none of the participants can “solve” for the private inputs of any other participant based on its own inputs and the outputs provided to it by SPM. Fourth, the posterior distribution of any other participant's private inputs is practically indistinguishable from its prior distribution. We also describe the results of a proof‐of‐concept implementation.     

The mass class and teaching assistants: A case for discussion exercises

Sociology courses, particularly introductory courses, with 200 or more students are increasingly being offered in U.S. colleges and universities. Within the “mass class” structure, teaching assistants are often utilized to instruct students in smaller discussion sessions. This creates unique conditions of instruction for both professors and teaching assistants. For instance, professors are faced with coordinating teaching assistants’ activities, while teaching assistants need to develop skills relating to provoking discussion. Both must deal with effects of a hierarchy of instruction. After discussing these conditions we present structured classroom exercises that focus on sociological concepts typically presented in introductory courses to help teaching assistants create an engaging learning experience, attain teaching skills, and facilitate the professor’s coordination of instruction.     

New Methods for Resolving Conflicting Requests with Examples from Medical Residency Scheduling

In scheduling medical residents, the objective is often to maximize resident satisfaction across the space of feasible schedules, relative to the many hard constraints that ensure appropriate patient coverage, adequate training opportunities, etc. A common metric of resident satisfaction is the number of time‐off requests that are granted. Simply maximizing this total, however, may lead to undesirable schedules since some requests have higher priority than others. For example, it might be better to grant one resident's request for a family member's wedding in place of two residents’ requests to attend a rugby game. Another approach is to assign a weight to each request and maximize the total weight of granted requests, but determining weights that accurately represent residents’ and schedulers’ preferences can be quite challenging. Instead, we propose to identify the exhaustive collection of maximally feasible and minimally infeasible sets of requests which can then be used by schedulers to select their preferred solution. Specifically, we have developed two algorithms, which we call Sequential Request Selection Via Cuts (Sequential RSVC) and Simultaneous Request Selection Via Cuts (Simultaneous RSVC), to identify these sets by solving two sequences of optimization problems. We present these algorithms along with computational results based on a real‐world problem of scheduling residents at the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Pediatric Emergency Department. Although we focus our exposition on the problem of resident scheduling, our approach is applicable to a broad class of problems with soft constraints.     

Bullying and Victimization Among School-age Children: Stability and Links to Proactive and Reactive Aggression

The main aim of the study relates to the links between bullying and victimization on the one hand and reactive and proactive aggression on the other. In addition, we also investigated stability and incidence of bullying and victimization. At age 7, 236 children were rated on bullying and victimization using peer reports. At age 8, 242 children were rated again. Two hundred and fifteen children (114 girls and 101 boys) were present at both time points. Reactive and proactive aggression was assessed by teachers. The results showed that bullies and bully/victims were both reactively and proactively aggressive, while victims were only reactively aggressive. A moderate degree of stability of bullying and victimization was found, with bullying being more stable than victimization. Boys were more often bullies than girls and more stable than girls in victimization. Stable victims and stable bully/victims were more reactively aggressive than their unstable counterparts. The relevance of the outcomes to preventing future maladjustment and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Resolving an Insurance Allocation Problem: A Procedural Approach

In this paper we study the problem of the determination of a fair allocation in a co-insurance problem, i.e., how some insurance companies have to share the risk and the premium. We develop two procedures that produce a proportional and an equitable allocation, respectively. The procedures are applied to a real situation arising from environmental risk and the resulting allocations are compared with the classical quota share allocation and with an envy-free allocation resulting from a procedure presented in Fragnelli and Marina (Insur. Math Econ 33:75–85, 2003).     

Ecological resilience in urban ecosystems: Linking urban patterns to human and ecological functions

Urban ecosystems evolve over time and space as the outcome of dynamic interactions between socio-economic and biophysical processes operating over multiple scales. The ecological resilience of urban ecosystems—the degree to which they tolerate alteration before reorganizing around a new set of structures and processes—is influenced by these interactions. In cities and urbanizing areas fragmentation of natural habitats, simplification and homogenization of species composition, disruption of hydrological systems, and alteration of energy flow and nutrient cycling reduce cross-scale resilience, leaving systems increasingly vulnerable to shifts in system control and structure. Because varied urban development patterns affect the amount and interspersion of built and natural land cover, as well as the human demands on ecosystems differently, we argue that alternative urban patterns (i.e., urban form, land use distribution, and connectivity) generate varied effects on ecosystem dynamics and their ecological resilience. We build on urban economics, landscape ecology, population dynamics, and complex system science to propose a conceptual model and a set of hypotheses that explicitly link urban pattern to human and ecosystem functions in urban ecosystems. Drawing on preliminary results from an empirical study of the relationships between urban pattern and bird and aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity in the Puget Sound region, we propose that resilience in urban ecosystems is a function of the patterns of human activities and natural habitats that control and are controlled by both socio-economic and biophysical processes operating at various scales. We discuss the implications of this conceptual model for urban planning and design.     

Social support,the presence of barriers and ideas for the future from students with disabilities in the higher education system in Croatia

This paper examines how students with disabilities in Croatia perceive support, experience barriers and propose ways forward for equality of opportunities in the higher education system. In qualitative interviews, students were satisfied with the informal support they received from family and friends but dissatisfied with the formal support they received from universities and the government. Obstacles to inclusion included: inadequate transport and finance to attend university and minimal adaptation of buildings, toilets, lifts, classrooms and dormitories. Students proposed: investment in adapting buildings, personal assistants, educational grants and transport; coordination within the formal systems from national government to universities and non-governmental organisations; and measures to increase disability awareness for academics, professionals and other students within higher education. The situation for students with disabilities in Croatia is a reminder for those working in countries where policy and practice is relatively advanced that many disability battles are still to be won in newer nations.