She left, he left: how employment and satisfaction affect women's and men's decisions to leave marriages

Studies examining determinants of divorce have largely ignored differences between factors that elevate wives' and husbands' initiation of divorce. The authors use longitudinal data and a latent class model embedded in a competing-risks event history model to assess distinct predictors of wives and husbands leaving marriages. They find that when men are not employed, either spouse is more likely to leave. When wives report better-than-average marital satisfaction, their employment affects neither spouse's exit. However, when wives report below-average marital satisfaction, their employment makes it more likely they will leave. The authors' findings suggest that theories of divorce require "gendering" to reflect asymmetric gender change.     

Body Representation in the First Year of Life

Like faces, bodies are significant sources of social information. However, research suggests that infants do not develop body representation (i.e., knowledge about typical human bodies) until the second year of life, although they are sensitive to facial information much earlier. Yet, previous research only examined whether infants are sensitive to the typical arrangement of body parts. We examined whether younger infants have body knowledge of a different kind, namely the relative size of body parts. Five‐ and 9‐month‐old infants were tested for their preference between a normal versus a proportionally distorted body. Nine‐month‐olds exhibited a preference for the normal body when images were presented upright but not when they were inverted. Five‐month‐olds failed to exhibit a preference in either condition. These results indicate that infants have knowledge about human bodies by the second half of the first year of life. Moreover, given that better performance on upright than on inverted stimuli has been tied to expertise, the fact that older infants exhibited an inversion effect with body images indicates that at least some level of expertise in body processing develops by 9 months of age.     

Comparative Risk Analysis of Dioxins in Fish and Fine Particles from Heavy-Duty Vehicles

Dioxins and airborne fine particles are both environmental health problems that have been the subject of active public debate. Knowledge on fine particles has increased substantially during the last 10 years, and even the current, lowered levels in the Europe and in the United States appear to be a major public health problem. On the other hand, dioxins are ubiquitous persistent contaminants, some being carcinogens at high doses, and therefore of great concern. Our aim was to (a) quantitatively analyze the two pollutant health risks and (b) study the changes in risk in view of the current and forthcoming EU legislations on pollutants. We performed a comparative risk assessment for both pollutants in the Helsinki metropolitan area (Finland) and estimated the health effects with several scenarios. For primary fine particles: a comparison between the present emission situation for heavy-duty vehicles and the new fine particle emission standards set by the EU. For dioxins: an EU directive that regulates commercial fishing of Baltic salmon and herring that exceed the dioxin concentration limit set for fish meat, and a derogation (= exemption) from the directive for these two species. Both of these two decisions are very topical issues and this study estimates the expected changes in health effects due to these regulations. It was found that the estimated fine particle risk clearly outweighed the estimated dioxin risk. A substantial improvement to public health could be achieved by initiating reductions in emission standards; about 30 avoided premature deaths annually in the study area. In addition, the benefits of fish consumption due to omega-3 exposure were notably higher than the potential dioxin cancer risk. Both regulations were instigated as ways of promoting public health.