Values and Vegetarianism: An Exploratory Analysis1

The American diet has changed substantially over the last few decades. These changes provide a test for social theory and have substantial effects on the demand for various food products, thus impacting U.S. agriculture. In this paper a rapidly growing dietary choice—vegetarianism—is explored. Prevalence of various forms of vegetarianism is estimated in a representative sample of a suburban population and factors that influence choice of a vegetarian diet are examined. About 7 percent of the sample report they are vegetarians. The prevalence of vegetarianism is not influenced by age, gender, or education, but individuals holding traditional values are less likely to be vegetarian than others. There also is some evidence mat individuals holding altruistic values are more likely than others to be vegetarians.     

Consortium for Atlantic Regional Assessment: Information Tools for Community Adaptation to Changes in Climate or Land Use

To inform local and regional decisions about protecting short-term and long-term quality of life, the Consortium for Atlantic Regional Assessment (CARA) provides data and tools (for the northeastern United States) that can help decision makers understand how outcomes of their decisions could be affected by potential changes in both climate and land use. On an interactive, user-friendly website, CARA has amassed data on climate (historical records and future projections for seven global climate models), land cover, and socioeconomic and environmental variables, along with tools to help decision makers tailor the data for their own decision types and locations. CARA Advisory Council stakeholders help identify what information and tools stakeholders would find most useful and how to present these; they also provide in-depth feedback for subregion case studies. General lessons include: (1) decision makers want detailed local projections for periods short enough to account for extreme events, in contrast to the broader spatial and temporal observations and projections that are available or consistent at a regional level; (2) stakeholders will not use such a website unless it is visually appealing and easy to find the information they want; (3) some stakeholders need background while others want to go immediately to data, and some want maps while others want text or tables. This article also compares what has been learned across case studies of Cape May County, New Jersey, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Hampton Roads, Virginia, relating specifically to sea-level rise. Lessons include: (1) groups can be affected differently by physical dangers compared with economic dangers; (2) decisions will differ according to decision makers' preferences about waiting and risk tolerance; (3) future scenarios and maps can help assess the impacts of dangers to emergency evacuation routes, homes, and infrastructure, and the natural environment; (4) residents' and decision makers' perceptions are affected by information about potential local impacts from global climate change.     

One parent or two? The intertwining of American marriage and fertility patterns

Marriage and fertility in the United States have become less firmly entwined as more women bear children without marrying and more couples with children divorce. Today a sizeable number of children are expected to spend a portion of their childhood in one-parent households. Despite the trends in illegitimacy and divorce, the actual effect of out-of-wedlock childbearing on the living arrangements of children has not been fully explicated. Using the National Survey of Family Growth Cycle III, this paper estimates the probability that children aged 0–13 in 1982 are living in two-parent households, controlling for their mothers' marital statuses at their births. We find that marital status at birth is an important predictor of household structure at later ages for both white and black populations; however, the childhood environment is actually quite elastic as women marry, divorce, remarry, and redivorce.     

Personality theory and clinical social work practice

This paper investigates the relevance of personality theories for clinical social work practice. Writings in comparative personality theory and the epistemology of clinical psychology and social work are sources. Clinical action, the time with a client, and clinical reflection, the thinking about or presenting of the client, are seen as importantly different moments in practice. Clinical action is characterized by humanistic, narrative forms of thought more than scientific, paradigmatic ones. Formal theory informs action indirectly through its shaping of the clinician's philosophy, attention, and priorities. Clinical reflection is shaped more directly by formal theories and benefits from the holding of multiple theories.     

Optimal pension funding with demographic instability and endogenous returns on investment

This paper tries to explore some optimal funding policies for pension systems in a general equilibrium setting where funding affects returns on investment and wages through its impact on capital formation. This is done in the context of irregular demographic evolutions such as those expected in developed countries for the next century. Particular attention is given to the intergenerational welfare criterion which is used for designing optimal policies. It appears that funding receives low justification with a welfare criterion which assumes a high substitutability between consumptions of successive cohorts, implying a low concern for intergenerational equity. Funding is highly justified in the opposite case where a high level of consumption for some cohorts is not considered as a compensation for low consumption by others. However the optimal patterns of transfers and savings which are found in this latter case are not straightforward. Some simpler funding rules are explored in the last section of this paper, which show that non-optimal funding may imply, on the contrary, a high level of inequality between subsequent generations.Paper presented at the ISPE-conference Fiscal implications of an ageing population, May–June 1990 at Vaalsbroek, The Netherlands. We thank Pierre Pestieau for his remarks on a first draft of this paper. We also thank for their comments our two discussants Carol Propper and Lans Bovenberg, as well as other participants to the ISPE Conference. Any errors are, of course, ours.     

长江经济带高技术产业创新要素集聚的空间溢出效应研究

高技术产业在推动产业升级和创新驱动方面具有重要带动作用。以长江经济带11省市高技术产业为研究对象,运用空间杜宾模型,选取2006—2015年面板数据,研究创新要素集聚及其对高技术产业的空间溢出效应。研究表明：创新要素集聚的非均衡分布特征明显;除资本投入和劳动力投入外,创新要素集聚对高技术产业发展的促进作用最为显著;创新要素集聚在省域间的溢出效应大于省域内的溢出效应。     

Does surprise enhance infant memory? Assessing the impact of the encoding context on subsequent object recognition

A discrepancy between what was predicted and what is observed has been linked to increased looking times, changes in brain electrical activity, and increased pupil dilation in infants. These processes associated with heightened attention and readiness to learn might enhance the encoding and memory consolidation of the surprising object, as suggested by both the infant and the adult literature. We therefore investigated whether the presence of surprise during the encoding context enhances subsequent encoding and recognition memory processes for the items that violated infants' expectations. Seventeen-month-olds viewed 20 familiar objects, half of which were labeled correctly, while the other half were mislabeled. Subsequently, infants were presented with a silent recognition memory test where the previously labeled objects appeared along with new images. Pupil dilation was measured, with more dilated pupils indicating (1) surprise during those labeling events where the item was mislabeled and (2) successful retrieval processes during the memory test. Infants responded with more pupil dilation to mislabeling compared to correct labeling. Importantly, despite the presence of a surprise response during mislabeling, infants only differentiated between the previously seen and unseen items at the memory test, offering no evidence that surprise had facilitated the encoding of the mislabeled items.     

State of the Art in Risk Analysis of Workforce Criticality Influencing Disaster Preparedness for Interdependent Systems

The objective of this article is to discuss a needed paradigm shift in disaster risk analysis to emphasize the role of the workforce in managing the recovery of interdependent infrastructure and economic systems. Much of the work that has been done on disaster risk analysis has focused primarily on preparedness and recovery strategies for disrupted infrastructure systems. The reliability of systems such as transportation, electric power, and telecommunications is crucial in sustaining business processes, supply chains, and regional livelihoods, as well as ensuring the availability of vital services in the aftermath of disasters. There has been a growing momentum in recognizing workforce criticality in the aftermath of disasters; nevertheless, significant gaps still remain in modeling, assessing, and managing workforce disruptions and their associated ripple effects to other interdependent systems. The workforce plays a pivotal role in ensuring that a disrupted region continues to function and subsequently recover from the adverse effects of disasters. With this in mind, this article presents a review of recent studies that have underscored the criticality of workforce sectors in formulating synergistic preparedness and recovery policies for interdependent infrastructure and regional economic systems.     

Emotional Climate in Families Experiencing Homelessness: Associations with Child Affect and Socioemotional Adjustment in School

This study examined associations among family‐level risks, emotional climate, and child adjustment in families experiencing homelessness. Emotional climate, an indirect aspect of emotion socialization, was indexed by parents’ expressed emotion while describing their children. Sociodemographic risk and parent internalizing distress were hypothesized to predict more negativity and less warmth in the emotional climate. Emotional climate was expected to predict observer‐rated child affect and teacher‐reported socioemotional adjustment, mediating effects of risk. Participants were 138 homeless parents (64 percent African‐American) and their four‐ to six‐year‐old children (43.5 percent male). During semi‐structured interviews, parents reported demographic risks and internalizing distress and completed a Five Minute Speech Sample about their child, later rated for warmth and negativity. Children's positive and negative affect were coded from videotapes of structured parent‐child interaction tasks. Socioemotional adjustment (externalizing behavior, peer acceptance, and prosocial behavior) was reported by teachers a few months later. Hypotheses were partially supported. Parent internalizing distress was associated with higher parent negativity, which was linked to more negative affect in children, and parent warmth was associated with children's positive affect. Neither emotional climate nor child affect predicted teacher‐reported externalizing behavior or peer acceptance, but parental negativity and male sex predicted lower prosocial behavior in the classroom. Future research directions and clinical implications are discussed.