An examination of sexual risk behaviors in adolescent substance users

ABSTRACT. Objectives: This study examined the risk for engaging in high-risk sexual behavior associated with substance use in a sample of U.S. adolescents. Methods: The sample (N = 15,425) was obtained via the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, a survey of public high school students. Results: Substance use was associated with sexual risk behaviors, with odds ratios being greatest for adolescents who used cigarettes and illicit substances, as well as those who engaged in injection drug use. Conclusions: Results highlight the need for prevention and intervention programs targeting sexual risk behaviors in substance-using adolescents as a means to decrease the spread of sexually transmitted infections.     

Governance and strategy within the financial system: tradition and innovation

Italian banks have undergone an evolutionary process and development of corporate, retail and private banking within the Italian banking system as a response to market pressures exerted by business and private customers for a broadening and qualitative expansion of offerings and organization of available competencies. This not only refers to large enterprises, whose relations with the financial system are autonomous, on equal terms and for some time now have opened up internationally, but above all the large number of SMEs found in Italy’s economic system. Interpreting governance and strategy takes place in a broad perspective in which banks and the financial system have to deal with five significant factors today: regulations, customers, knowledge, capital and synergies. Interaction with these five factors is undoubtedly not only guided by a choice made by shareholders and managers but represents the set of decisions that mitigate ideological factors, choices concerning sustainability and social acceptance of these choices. This paper intends to explore this interaction, drawing on and utilizing the most significant studies in the Italian Banking & Finance sector, with a specific focus on relations between the financial system and businesses, that is to say, the corporate banking area.     

The Effect of Changing Sexual, Marital and Contraceptive Behaviour on Conceptions, Abortions, and Births

A model is proposed to estimate the number of conceptions during a single year using scarce survey data, official data on births and abortions for the two years following the survey, and some parameters on contraception failure. The model is fitted for 1979, 1989, 1994 to Puglia, a Southern Italian region with a population of 4 millions. Simulations are also produced.The decrease in births is caused mainly by the decline in wanted births, whereas the decline in abortions is caused by diffusion of the pill, IUD, and condom. The rapid increase in the proportion of never-married women explains the slow decrease in unwanted births and conceptions, compared to the fast decline in wanted ones. This situation is different compared to other Western countries (e.g. France, UK, and USA) where the decline in TFR during the 1960s and 1970s was largely caused by the decline in unwanted fertility, thanks to improved modern contraception and sterilisation.     

On a class of distributions on the simplex

In the present paper we define and investigate a novel class of distributions on the simplex, termed normalized infinitely divisible distributions, which includes the Dirichlet distribution. Distributional properties and general moment formulae are derived. Particular attention is devoted to special cases of normalized infinitely divisible distributions which lead to explicit expressions. As a by-product new distributions over the unit interval and a generalization of the Bessel function distribution are obtained.     

Agriculture,Pesticide Use,and Economic Development: A Global Examination (1990–2014)

Modern agricultural production typically requires large quantities of chemical pesticides, a potential source of both environmental and human harm. Previous social science research has suggested that environmental problems such as those associated with pesticide use may begin to decline at higher levels of economic development. Using fixed effects models, we examine whether this possible relationship holds within nations and over time. This study draws on data from the World Bank as well as pesticide use data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to examine the relationship between pesticide use and economic development within nations from 1990 to 2014. The findings are considered from theoretical perspectives in environmental sociology on the drivers of environmental impacts: the treadmill of production theory, structural human ecology, ecological modernization theory, and the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. The results of this study show a positive relationship between economic development and pesticide consumption over time, with no decline in use at higher levels of economic development. Thus, they generally support the claims made by treadmill of production and structural human ecology.     

Discussing Measures of Financial Inclusion for the Main Euro Area Countries

Since financial inclusion has become a policy target in many countries, properly measuring it is crucial. Usual indexes of financial inclusion include inappropriate variables and don’t take into account other relevant aspects, thus misrepresenting the phenomenon. In this work we focus on the diffusion of electronic cards, generally not included in the usual indexes of financial inclusion notwithstanding they provide alternatives to usual saving practices and allow less costly transactions across larger markets and wider geographic areas. We show that, taking these instruments into account, the comparative valuation of the degree of financial inclusion between the main euro area countries changes substantially. We also employ survey data to analyze cross-country differences in the degree of financial inclusion and the distribution of multidimensional deprivations of specific sub-groups of populations.

     

Back to Stir It Up: Erectile Dysfunction in an Evolutionary,Developmental, and Clinical Perspective

In this review, we analyze erectile dysfunction (ED) in the context of sexual selection. We highlight that ED is a specific human male characteristic linked to the loss of the baculum or penile bone and results from a range of physical and psychological factors. We discuss evolutionary interpretations that consider dysfunctional penile erection as an honest signal of a low-quality male. We further emphasize the importance of considering psychosocial context and early attachment dynamics for understanding the etiology of some types of ED. Finally, we suggest that the integration of developmental factors for understanding the emergence of this sexual disorder is instrumental for the calibration of more effective therapies.     

Employment status and education/employment relationship of PhD graduates from the University of Ferrara

Two sample surveys of Post-Docs were planned and carried out at the University of Ferrara in 2004 and 2007 aimed at determining the professional status of Post-Docs, the relationship between their PhD education and employment, and their satisfaction with certain aspects of the education and research program. As part of these surveys, two methodological contributions were developed. The first concerns an extension of the non-parametric combination of dependent rankings to construct a synthesis of composite indicators measuring satisfaction with particular aspects of PhD programs [R. Arboretti Giancristofaro and L. Salmaso, Global ranking indicators with application to the evaluation of PhD programs, Atti del Convegno “Valutazione e Customer Satisfaction per la Qualità dei Servizi”, Roma, 8–9 Settembre 2005, pp. 19–22; R. Arboretti Giancristofaro, S. Bonnini, and L. Salmaso, A performance indicator for multivariate data, Quad. Stat. 9 (2007), pp. 1–29; R. Arboretti Giancristofaro, F. Pesarin, and L. Salmaso, Nonparametric approaches for multivariate testing with mixed variables and for ranking on ordered categorical variables with an application to the evaluation of PhD programs, in Real Data Analysis, S. Sawilowsky, ed., a volume in Quantitative Methods in Education and the Behavioral Sciences: Issues, Research and Teaching, Ronald C. Serlin, series ed., Information Age Publishing, Charlotte, North Carolina, 2007, pp. 355–385]. The procedure was applied to highlight differences in the interviewed Post-Docs’ multivariate satisfaction profiles in relation to two aspects: education/employment relationship; employment expectations; and opportunities. The second consists of an inferential procedure providing a solution to the problem of hypothesis testing, where the objective is to compare the heterogeneity of two populations on the basis of sampling data [G.R. Arboretti, S. Bonnini, and F. Pesarin, A permutation approach for testing heterogeneity in two-sample categorical variables, Stat. Comput. (2009) doi: 10.1007/S11222-008-9085-8.]. The procedure was applied to compare the degrees of heterogeneity of Post-Doc judgments in the two surveys with regard to the adequacy of the PhD education for the work carried out.