What shapes plant and animal diversity on urban golf courses?

Recent concern over increasing loss of biodiversity has prompted considerable interest in the role of urban green spaces as reservoirs of local biodiversity. This study assessed the diversity of three indicator taxa - plants, ants and birds - on golf courses spanning a wide range of environmental variation in terms of climate, elevation, course age, size and connectivity to native woodland. Species richness and community composition was further compared between contrasting on-course habitat types that reflect different management intensities. We identified a set of taxon-specific environmental correlates indicating an intricate interplay of landscape- and local-scale variables that affect local species diversity. Our results show that floristic diversity is positively associated with the amount of rainfall, whereas ant and bird diversity are related to local-scale factors, particularly the number of trees and the size of water features on a site. The amount of on-course native habitat was a strong predictor of plant and ant diversity and was also associated with the number of unique species at the site level; this reinforces the value of remnant habitat patches as local biodiversity reservoirs that represent mini hot-spots in an otherwise species-poor urban landscape. Community composition for all three taxa differed markedly between non-playing and playing areas, with boundary and remnant habitats generally having more diverse, species-rich communities. Our results suggest that local floral and faunal biodiversity on urban golf courses can be enhanced by creating woody non-playing areas and, especially, by preserving, restoring or expanding remnant habitats.     

Life satisfaction in China and consumption and income inequalities

This research uses nationally representative data to study how economic resources and inequalities are associated with life satisfaction of Chinese residents. We construct economic resource and inequality measures from expenditure rather than from income, after confirming that expenditure inequality is a better measure in the Chinese context. We find that economic inequalities in general are negatively associated with life satisfaction, and that this association is larger for inequalities in the lower half of the distribution than those in the upper half of the distribution. We further explore the mechanisms under which inequality can be associated with life satisfaction, and find that aspiration is potentially one important channel.     

Disasters,local organizations,and poverty in the USA, 1998 to 2015

Disaster research has drawn attention to how natural hazards transform local organizational dynamics and social inequalities. It has yet to examine how these processes unfold together over time. We begin to fill this gap with a county-level, longitudinal analysis that examines how property damages from natural hazards correlate not only with local shifts in poverty a year later but also counts of for-profit as well as bonding and bridging social capital organizations. Results show that poverty and all organizational types tend to increase with local hazard damages. They also show that poverty tends to increase most where the number of bonding social capital organizations is also increasing. This pattern suggests a Janus-faced dynamic in which bonding, or more inwardly focused, organizations that arise after disaster may end up inadvertently marginalizing those in more dire need.     

Subsequent Migration of Immigrants Within Australia, 1981–2016

Australia is a major immigration country and immigrants currently represent around 28% of the total population. The aim of this research is to understand the long-term consequences of this immigration and, particularly, how migrants respond to opportunities within the country after arriving through the process of subsequent (internal) migration. The focus is on major immigrant groups in Australia, including persons born in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, China and India, and how their patterns differ from persons born in Australia. To conduct this analysis, we have gathered data for a 35-year period based on quinquennial census data. We also obtained birthplace-specific mortality data for constructing multiregional life tables for the immigrant populations. Subsequent migration is important for understanding population redistribution, and the relative attractiveness of destinations within host countries. Our results highlight the importance of subsequent migration and the diversity of migration behaviours amongst different immigrant groups in the context of overall declines in internal migration since 1981.     

Social Justice and the Capabilities Approach: Seeking a Global Blueprint for the EPAS

The concept of social justice shapes several of the competencies and practice behaviors of the Council of Social Work Education’s Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS). Furthermore, a global perspective guides the social work profession and influences its educational programs. A number of social work scholars have adopted the capabilities approach, as defined by economist Amartya Sen and political scientist Martha Nussbaum, as a globally relevant social justice framework. This article builds on this scholarship, suggesting that the capabilities approach provides a blueprint to rethink and conceptualize the EPAS social justice pedagogy in the global context. Teaching illustrations integrating the capabilities approach in an EPAS curriculum are offered.     

Loss of Control as a Discriminating Factor Between Different Latent Classes of Disordered Gambling Severity

Analyses of disordered gambling assessment data have indicated that commonly used screens appear to measure latent categories. This stands in contrast to the oft-held assumption that problem gambling is at the extreme of a continuum. To explore this further, we report a series of latent class analyses of a number of prevalent problem gambling assessments (PGSI, SOGS, DSM-IV Pathological Gambling based assessments) in nationally representative British surveys between 1999 and 2012, analysing data from nearly fifty thousand individuals. The analyses converged on a three class model in which the classes differed by problem gambling severity. This identified an initial class of gamblers showing minimal problems, a additional class predominantly endorsing indicators of preoccupation and loss chasing, and a third endorsing a range of disordered gambling criteria. However, there was considerable evidence to suggest that classes of intermediate and high severity disordered gamblers differed systematically in their responses to items related to loss of control, and not simply on the most ‘difficult’ items. It appeared that these differences were similar between assessments. An important exception to this was one set of DSM-IV criteria based analyses using a specific cutoff, which was also used in an analysis that identified an increase in UK problem gambling prevalence between 2007 and 2010. The results suggest that disordered gambling has a mixed latent structure, and that present assessments of problem gambling appear to converge on a broadly similar construct.