The aborted sibling factor: A case study

The number of abortions in the world is steadily increasing, and there are now millions of children who have survived the abortion of a sibling. There is increasing evidence that even very young children may be aware of maternal abortions despite family attempts to maintain secrecy. For those children experiencing other powerfully unresolved conflicts, the abortion of a sibling may trigger a severe reaction. A case is presented in which it gradually became clear that a 5-year-old girl's withdrawn regression was related to her mother's multiple abortions and her own fear of being destroyed through maternal aggression.     

The professionalization of psychiatric nursing. From doctors' handmaidens to empowered professionals

The professionalization of psychiatric nursing in the United States has been subject to political, economic, and theoretical influences, and prominent individuals such as Florence Nightingale and Hildegard Peplau have caused changes over time. Throughout history, professional and societal beliefs about mental illness have affected the nature of psychiatric nursing. In colonial times, people with mental illnesses were considered to be either possessed by demons or inferior and treated as animals. Today, psychobiological causes of mental illness are better understood, and treatment is aimed at adjusting disordered physiology and implementing psychosocial interventions. Care of people with mental illnesses has echoed this shift with increasing professionalization of psychiatric nurses. Attention to the lessons of history can help psychiatric nurses identify current societal influences, act on them according to their own vision, and further increase their professionalism.     

Aggregate consumption functions for India: A cointegration analysis under structural changes, 1919-86

This paper extends cointegration methodology to include the effect of possible structural changes on aggregate consumption behaviour in India during 1919-86. The only cointegrated relation is found to be a dynamic linear regression of lag order two, with 1944 as the year in which structural change began. The estimated short-run marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is greater than the long-run MPC. The estimates of the MPC are different from previous estimates for the Indian economy based on conventional econometrics. The initial year of structural change has been selected by extending the method of Perron and that of Zivot and Andrews.     

Supply chain strategies for speciality foods: a Norwegian case study

Despite strong market interest in speciality foods, producers find market access and distribution challenging. This exploratory research includes a literature review and five case studies of supply chains relating to shellfish, cheese, meat, potato and miscellaneous speciality foods in the mid-Norway region. The study identifies key supply chain configuration parameters from the extant literature, and these are used to analyse the cases. The study makes three main contributions to the literature: an analytical framework for analysing the supply chain characteristics of speciality foods; important supply chain factors for accessing the conventional food supply chain; and five propositions for improving market access. We argue that the speciality foods supply chain should be configured according to these propositions to ensure responsiveness to customer needs and to strengthen market access.     

Identification of partly destroyed objects using deformable templates

This article addresses the problem of identification of partly destroyed human melanoma cancer cells in confocal microscopy imaging. Complete cancer cells are nearly circular and most of them have a nearly homogeneous boundary and interior region. A deformable template (Grenander, 1993) is well suited for these complete cells and models a cell as a natural deformed template or prototype. We will in this article focus on the remaining cells which have lost parts of the boundary region most probably due to a 'capping' phenomenon. We can interpret these cells as being partly destroyed, where in our statistical model the lost part of the boundary region is generated by a destructive deformation field acting and living on the cell or template. By doing simultaneous inference for both the natural and destructive deformation field, we are able to obtain reliable estimates of the outline in addition to where on the boundary the cell is destroyed. We apply our model to identifying partly destroyed human melanoma cancer cells with good results.     

Substance use during sexual and physical assault in HIV-infected persons

Data from the HIV-Alcohol Longitudinal Cohort was used to determine the prevalence of substance use by victims and assailants during physical and sexual assault against HIV-infected persons and whether these findings differed by gender. Of the sexually assaulted participants, 31% of victims and 70% of assailant(s) had used drugs/alcohol during sexual assault. Compared with men, women had higher odds of substance use during sexual assault (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 3.8, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.6 to 8.7) and of substance use by their assailant(s) during sexual assault (adjusted OR 5.9, 95% CI 1.7 to 20.6) in adjusted analysis. Of the physically assaulted participants, 66% of victims and 85% of assailants used drugs/alcohol during physical assault; these results did not differ by gender.     

Childcare Cash Benefits and Fertility Timing in Norway

In 1998 a new cash benefit for parents with young children was introduced in Norway. Its purpose was to provide a cash payment to parents who either preferred to care for their children at home or to compensate those who were not offered external childcare provision. It has been argued that the new policy encouraged women to stay at home with their children, possibly reducing labour supply. The policy was consequently considered gender-biased, creating reduced incentives for women to participate in the labour market and therefore encouraging a more traditional division of labour of husbands and wives. Given this background of the policy, we undertake an analysis in two parts. We ask first the question “who takes the cash benefit?” Second, by applying simple matching techniques, we ask the question “Do couples taking the benefit behave differently in terms of their fertility timing?” Using information from Norwegian registers we find that more traditional households (in a broad sense) are more likely to take the cash benefit. Those taking the benefit accelerate childbearing significantly, though the reasons why they do so varies by socio-economic groups.     

A New Asymmetric Interaction Ridge (AIR) Regression Method

Despite that interaction terms are standard tools of regression analysis, the side effects of the inclusion of these terms in models estimated by ordinary least squares (OLS) are yet not fully penetrated. The inclusion of interaction effects induces multicollinearity problems since all non zero values are equal between the interaction term and the regressor. In this article, we propose a procedure to remedy this problem by the use of new ridge regression (RR) shrinkage parameters—which we call the asymmetric interaction ridge (AIR) regression method. By means of Monte Carlo simulations we evaluate both OLS and AIR using the mean square error (MSE) performance criterion. The result from the simulation study confirms our hypothesis that AIR always should be preferred to OLS since it has a lower estimated MSE. Moreover, the advantages of our new method are demonstrated in an empirical application where positive asymmetric price transmission effects are exposed for the mortgage interest rates of Handelsbanken Stadshypotek. It is observed that the mortgage interest rates increase more fully and rapidly to an increase in the bank's borrowing costs than to a decrease. This asymmetry is defined as positive asymmetric price transmission (APT).     

Educational attainment and employment of young adults ageing out of care: A registry study based on the Finnish birth cohort 1987

Adolescents growing up outside their birth homes are at major risk for multiple adversities in early adulthood, including low education and unemployment. The transition from out-of-home placement to independent living overlaps with the transition from school to work and higher education. However, the support during this critical phase is often inadequate. Adolescents ageing out of care are also more likely to have faced adversities in their birth families. Yet, the interplay between different risk factors and having aged out of care has gained little attention. This study aimed to assess known risk factors for low education and unstable employment and their interaction with ageing out of care, controlling for birth-home-related adversities. We assessed this topic using logistic and linear regression modelling based on the Finnish birth cohort 1987 (n = 59 476) registry. Our analysis showed that obtaining upper secondary and higher education was much less likely among those ageing out of care, and they had spent 52–80 fewer days annually in employment after graduation. Few interactions with other risk factors were, however, found. Efforts are needed to prevent inequalities in education and employment for those ageing out of care in the transition phase from school to work.     

Employment Protection and the Incidence of Unemployment: A Theoretical Framework

Abstract. The present paper aims to analyse the effects of employment protection on a heterogeneous labour force. To this end, a standard matching model with employment protection has been extended to allow for the existence of two types of workers differing from each other only in the probability of becoming less productive while holding a job. In working out the model it turns out that in equilibrium workers with a relatively higher probability of becoming less productive face both a higher turnover and a longer duration of unemployment. Therefore, employment protection here raises the unemployment rate of this worker category, a result which looks consistent with consolidated evidence but contrasts with standard theoretical results.