New bounds for locally irregular chromatic index of bipartite and subcubic graphs

A graph is locally irregular if the neighbors of every vertex v have degrees distinct from the degree of v. A locally irregular edge-coloring of a graph G is an (improper) edge-coloring such that the graph induced on the edges of any color class is locally irregular. It is conjectured that three colors suffice for a locally irregular edge-coloring. In the paper, we develop a method using which we prove four colors are enough for a locally irregular edge-coloring of any subcubic graph admiting such a coloring. We believe that our method can be further extended to prove the tight bound of three colors for such graphs. Furthermore, using a combination of existing results, we present an improvement of the bounds for bipartite graphs and general graphs, setting the best upper bounds to 7 and 220, respectively.     

Kontexteffekte in Familien – Angleichung von Paaren und intergenerationale Transmission am Beispiel Religiosität

The present contribution shows conceptual and methodological approaches for the study of social context effects within families. Family members mutually constitute the social context in which family behavior and personality development take place. Social influence in families becomes evident empirically in family members’ significant similarity concerning a wide variety of characteristics. The present study focuses on intrafamily convergence with regard to religiousness. In an empirical illustration, both (a) horizontal intracouple alignment and (b) vertical intergenerational transmission processes are examined. Besides the finding that experiences during religious socialization in the parental home have a stronger impact than partner influences in adulthood, our analyses show that social context effects are more pronounced the stronger the cohesion of the respective interaction dyad is (e.g., according to measures of relationship quality).     

Male Honor and the Ruralization of HIV/AIDS in Michoacán. A Case of Indigenous Return Migration in Mexico

The purpose of this text is to analyse the motives of seasonal migrant workers for attempting to get their wives pregnant when they return to Mexico. The meanings attributed to paternity, pregnancy and rearing are analysed from the perspective of the migrant worker and his wife. Ethnographic research was conducted in several Purépecha communities in Michoacán, supported by interviews with indigenous, who travelled to the United States for periods of up to three years, and with their wives, who stayed in Mexico. The migrant workers interviewed consider pregnancy and the paternity derived from it as an important means of male legitimization and sexual control of their wives, particularly valid in their rural communities of origin, where they know they are absentee males. When they return to Mexico they seek sexual relations for reproductive purposes, since they fear their wives will have extramarital relations in their absence. From these findings, it was considered necessary to implement sexual and reproductive health policies with pluri‐ethnic and gender approaches that take into account male beliefs and practices regarding paternity and pregnancy in a rural context. The development of sensitizing policies aimed at migrant males during their stays in Mexico is recommended.     

Alzheimer's disease and euthanasia

Employing the tenets of philosophical materialism, this paper discusses the ethical debate surrounding assisted suicide for persons suffering end-stage Alzheimer's. It first presents a classification of the dissociative situations between "human individual" and "human person". It then moves on to discuss challenges to diagnosed persons and their caregivers in relation to the cardinal virtues of Spinozistic ethics - strength of character (fortitudo), firmness (animositas) and generosity (generositas). Finally, a number of ideas attached to the debate - "right of choice", "death with dignity", "quality of life" and "compassion in dying" - are discussed in order to clarify their foundations.     

The Determinants of Lottery Sales in Portugal

In sum, this paper examines the core determinants of lottery sales in Portugal. With panel data analysis covering 18 Portuguese districts and 5 years, this study explains the variations in a district’s per-capita lottery sales in terms of key theoretical hypotheses such as per capita district income, age, education index, gender and religion. This paper concludes that the richer Portuguese districts spend more than the poorer districts and there is an inverted-U relationship between lottery sales and per capita income. The paper also concludes that married Catholic citizens spend more on lottery products than others and that the level of education returns a negative effect on lottery spending.     

Crying for Food: The Mexican Myths of ‘La Llorona’ and ‘The Hungry Woman’ in Cherríe L. Moraga

The Mexican legend of ‘La Llorona’ (‘The Weeping Woman’), who drowned her children out of revenge for being abandoned by her lover, and the Aztec creation myth of ‘The Hungry Woman’ — crying constantly for food, with mouths all around her body — have inspired Chicana writers in the symbolic representation of their own yearning, be it sexual, identity-building, or anti-patriarchal. This essay seeks to lay the mythical groundwork within this topic, as well as to illustrate with some particular examples the different reappropriations of these myths in Cherríe L. Moraga, mainly in her play The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea (2001). With a view to opening up a past ‘that can provide a kind of road map to our future’ (: ix), these examples of transgressive women will be deprived of the feminine colonial passivity imbued by the dominant male discourse, and analysed as a complex, active, polyvalent mythological female corpus that integrates both life and death, womb and grave. This hybrid approach is inherent to the Aztec mythology on which Moraga relies in order to transcend Manichaeistic resolutions and probe the social, political, and gender reasons leading a hungry mother to commit infanticide.     

Stress and musculoskeletal discomfort among hydrocarbon industry workers in Mexico

This study of 114 workers in the hydrocarbon industry was conducted to identify the relationship between stress and musculoskeletal discomfort, and to view the roles played by such factors as age, schooling, obesity, workplace and job seniority. All factors except seniority were found to affect the presence of musculoskeletal discomfort in some area of the body.     

Ergonomic work analysis of urban bus drivers in Rio de Janeiro city

This article is the result of a case study on ergonomic work analysis carried out in an urban bus company located in Ilha do Governador, Rio de Janeiro. The methodology used in this work follows the French-tradition Ergonomic Analysis of the Work (EWA) combined with the best tradition from anglo-saxon ergonomic work analysis. The situated diagnosis was performed to provide relevant information about the work conditions of a bus driver.     

Maximum force levels in different positions of shoulder and elbow

The number of occupational diseases in Mexico is alarming and clearly it is important to do studies with the purpose of improving the design of workstations. The objective of this research is to determine the maximum force levels in different positions of shoulder and elbow. An experiment was conducted with 16 subjects between 18 and 28 years old: 8 male and 8 female. We considered 16 different positions, working with the right and left arm to perform the tasks of pull and push. The tasks consisted of pushing or pulling a dynamometer for a period of 3 seconds as hard as possible. The results were presented in tables. The tables show the mean, standard deviation and range of force levels in different positions.