Drinking patterns, problems, and motivations among collegiate bisexual women

OBJECTIVE AND PARTICIPANTS: The authors compared the drinking behaviors, motivations, and problems of collegiate bisexual women with those of heterosexual women (N = 2,788; n = 86 bisexual women). METHODS: Data came from the 2003 Student Life Survey, a random population-based survey at a large midwestern university. The authors explored the hypothesis that bisexual women would be more likely than heterosexual women to report drinking motivations related to stress and coping as a result of sexual identity stigma. RESULTS: They found that bisexual women drank significantly less than did heterosexual women. There were few differences between the 2 groups in drinking motivations and problems. Bisexual women reported a comparable number of problems related to their drinking but were significantly more likely to report contemplating suicide after drinking than were heterosexual women. CONCLUSIONS: More research is needed to understand the finding that despite lower levels of alcohol consumption, bisexual women reported a comparable number of drinking problems. College health educators and health care providers need to be aware of findings related to heightened suicidal risk among bisexual women.     

“Spilling the tea” on generation Z social media use and body image

Over ninety percent of American teens and the majority of children have smartphones. As access to social media increases so does the growing concern for the psychological well-being of today's youth. The current cross-sectional study examined the media use, appearance pressure, and body image of 150 Midwestern American Generation Z (born in 1997–2012) youth. This study assessed media use by child-report, parent-report, and by gathering data directly from the child's smartphone. Results demonstrated that media use was higher in teens than children, but did not suggest strong gender differences. The data also showed the inconsistencies present in media use reporting, with parents overestimating the amount of time their children spend on phones. Media use was found to be unrelated to body image. Media pressure and social media integration into participants’ social routines were intercorrelated and higher in the older age groups than the younger ones. Media pressure and media use was found to be less gendered than expected, but greatly shifted with age. Time spent on social media may be less influential on body image than the content of the media being consumed.     

Intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of yard vegetation in urban residential areas: implications for conservation planning

Residential green areas often represent a significant portion of a city’s green infrastructure which has generated great interest in studying the factors that contribute to the formation of plant associations in residential yards. This project evaluated the external factors to the household social-ecological system that influence the availability of plants for residential landscapes and how they may influence the presence of native plants in residential yards on households within the Río Piedras watershed in the metropolitan area of San Juan, Puerto Rico. The methods used included a residential survey with open and closed questions that addressed the sources of plants used in landscaping and an evaluation of ornamental plant species inventories from local nurseries. A total of 432 yards were surveyed. Yard plants in this watershed have multiple sources. Aside from obtaining plants at local nurseries, natural dispersion, exchanges among family and friends and historical plantings can be just as important sources of yard plants. Our results also suggest that the majority of residents do not know where to get native plants which could represent a challenge for the development and implementation of initiatives for natives gardening. At the same time, most commercial nurseries have a deficit of native plants in their inventories. This information is critical to species conservation strategies that seek the inclusion of urban residential areas and may help improve initiatives about the involvement of individual citizens in sustainable gardening practices at the residential scale.     

维吾尔语与西班牙语的音节对比

本文采用对比分析法,对维吾尔语与西班牙语的音节进行对比分析,找出维吾尔语与西班牙语音节的异同。本文的研究,首先是维吾尔语与西班牙语音节对比,主要由四个部分支撑下来:第一,维吾尔语音节组成与特点;第二,西班牙语音节组成与特点;第三,部分维吾尔语与西班牙语音节对比;第四,基于音节对比的分析结论。研究结果表明:1.维吾尔语有八个元音,西班牙语有五个元音,而西班牙语中的五个元音在维吾尔语中都有。西班牙语在拉丁美洲没有舌尖元音。2.西班牙语中可以有二合元音与三合元音,维吾尔语音节则没有。3.维吾尔语和西班牙语有18个相同辅音,维吾尔语中的6个辅音在西班牙语中则没有,西班牙语中的14个辅音在维吾尔语中没有。相对维吾尔语来说,西班牙语中有较多的浊辅音。4.维吾尔语和西班牙语音节中不能没有元音,辅音不能单独构成音节。西班牙语中有流化现象,维吾尔语中则不发生流化现象。5.西班牙语没有摩擦音与非摩擦音,维吾尔语则没有牙齿摩擦音、腭鼻音、卷舌鼻音"?"、卷舌边音"?"。6.维吾尔语和西班牙语都有元辅音组合,西班牙语的元辅音组合则很少。本文通过现代维吾尔语与西班牙语音节比较,根据两种语言音节上的异同点,提出两个方面的教学策略:一是讲解音节知识;二是根据音节知识讲解具体的语言教学技巧。     

Inherent Costs and Interdependent Impacts of Infrastructure Network Resilience

Recent studies in system resilience have proposed metrics to understand the ability of systems to recover from a disruptive event, often offering a qualitative treatment of resilience. This work provides a quantitative treatment of resilience and focuses specifically on measuring resilience in infrastructure networks. Inherent cost metrics are introduced: loss of service cost and total network restoration cost. Further, “costs” of network resilience are often shared across multiple infrastructures and industries that rely upon those networks, particularly when such networks become inoperable in the face of disruptive events. As such, this work integrates the quantitative resilience approach with a model describing the regional, multi‐industry impacts of a disruptive event to measure the interdependent impacts of network resilience. The approaches discussed in this article are deployed in a case study of an inland waterway transportation network, the Mississippi River Navigation System.     

The successive raising estimator and its relation with the ridge estimator

The raised estimators are used to reduce collinearity in linear regression models by raising a column in the experimental data matrix which may be nearly linear with the other columns. The raising procedure has two components, namely stretching and rotating, which we can analyze separately. We give the relationship between the raised estimators and the classical ridge estimators. Using a case study, we show how to determine the perturbation parameter for the raised estimators by controlling the amount of precision to be retained in the original data.     

“My Dog's Just Like Me”: Dog Ownership as a Gender Display

Based on interviews with twenty‐six dog owners in northeast Georgia, this article examines how people rely on gender norms to organize their relationships with their dogs. Owners use gender norms to (1) select what they consider to be suitable dogs, (2) describe their dogs' behaviors and personalities, and (3) use their dogs as props to display their own gender identities. Although these findings are specific to dog owners, they suggest ways individuals may attempt to display gender in other relationships characterized by a power imbalance.