The Chinese Cashmere Industry: A Global Value Chain Analysis

Growth and internationalisation of the Chinese economy have reconfigured the global value chains of many commodities with important implications for industry and rural and regional development both in and outside China. This article analyses the chain for cashmere, all stages of which have gravitated to China, and the impacts on rural development, especially for herders in remote pastoral regions. Traditionally a high‐value product, cashmere has become increasingly generic and adulterated over the past decade. More formal and closer integration of Chinese actors into the global industry and re‐orienting policy from supply‐side intervention to the enforcement of standards would enhance the competitiveness of Chinese cashmere in international fibre markets.     

The effects of teenage fatherhood on young adult outcomes

This paper uses national longitudinal data and several new empirical strategies to examine the consequences of teenage fatherhood. The key contribution is to compare economic outcomes of young fathers to young men whose partners experienced a miscarriage rather than a live birth. The results suggest that teenage fatherhood decreases years of schooling and the likelihood of receiving a high school diploma and increases general educational development receipt. Teenage fatherhood also appears to increase early marriage and cohabitation, and has mixed short-term effects on several labor market outcomes.     

Attention Capture by Direct Gaze is Robust to Context and Task Demands

Eye-tracking was used to investigate whether gaze direction would influence the visual scanning of faces, when presented in the context of a full character, in different social settings, and with different task demands. Participants viewed individual computer agents against either a blank background or a bar scene setting, during both a free-viewing task and an attractiveness rating task for each character. Faces with a direct gaze were viewed longer than faces with an averted gaze regardless of body context, social settings, and task demands. Additionally, participants evaluated characters with a direct gaze as more attractive than characters with an averted gaze. These results, obtained with pictures of computer agents rather than real people, suggest that direct gaze is a powerful attention grabbing stimulus that is robust to background context or task demands.     

Mobility of students and attractiveness of universities. The case of Sapienza University of Rome

Human mobility is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. While labour migration has been widely and deeply investigated – through theoretical and empirical analysis – other forms of mobility have received much less attention. Students' mobility is a peculiar form of temporary movement that can be considered as neither migration nor tourism. It is rapidly growing: in the period 1975–2005 the number of tertiary education students abroad increased fourfold, from 0.61 million to 2.73 million, following the trend of the internationalization of economy and globalization of culture. In 2009 almost 3.7 million tertiary students were enrolled outside their country of origin, an increase of more than 6% from the previous year.

In this paper we analyse the international mobility of university students, using a unique data set built through surveys conducted at the Sapienza University of Rome. The data collected cover a rich array of information on students' characteristics and backgrounds, provenance places, family conditions, individual aspirations, and job preferences. The empirical analysis of those data offers an opportunity for understanding a relevant part of mobility decisions of (prospective) highly qualified workers. The Sapienza University, moreover, is at present the largest university in Europe for number of students and a pole of attraction for both European and non-European students. This allows us to enlarge our analysis at a global level.     

Promoting work ability and well-being in hospital nursing: the interplay of age, job control, and successful ageing strategies

Previous research shows that work ability of nurses decreases with age. In our study we therefore addressed the following questions: Do successful ageing strategies at work in terms of selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) support the work ability of nurses? Does SOC mediate the relationship between job control (i.e., decision opportunities at work) and work ability? Does the mediation differ between age-groups? 438 nurses (Age Range 21-63 years) completed a questionnaire in the course of an employee survey. Results show that SOC is positively related with work ability. The positive effect of job control on work ability is significantly mediated by SOC. There are stronger mediating effects for elder nurses than for younger nurses. Results indicate that the interplay of job control and SOC at work helps to maintain the work ability of nurses in nursing care.     

Cognitively automated assembly processes: a simulation based evaluation of performance

The numerical control of an experimental assembly cell with two robots--termed a cognitive control unit (CCU)--is able to simulate human information processing at a rule-based level of cognitive control. To enable the CCU to work on a large range of assembly tasks expected of a human operator, the cognitive architecture SOAR is used. The CCU can plan assembly processes autonomously and react to ad-hoc changes in assembly sequences effectively. Extensive simulation studies have shown that cognitive automation based on SOAR is especially suitable for random parts supply, which reduces planning effort in logistics. Conversely, a disproportional increase in processing time was observed for deterministic parts supply, especially for assemblies containing large numbers of identical parts. In this contribution, the effect of phase-shifts in deterministic part supply is investigated for assemblies containing maximal different parts. It can be shown that the concept of cognitive automation is as well suitable for these planning problems.     

Ergonomics in projects of oil platforms in a change context

The context of oil platform design is changing in order to increase competitiveness and be prepared for difficult operations, mainly in fields more distant from the coast, like pre-salt. The currently preceding context is marked by projects guidelines designed to reduce projects and operation costs, including an important reducing in the number of people on board. The main objective of this research is to verify and discuss if the experience of use in platforms designed in a previous context, in which the people on board is practically twice, can contribute and/or can be transferred to new projects. From the ergonomic intervention in the design of two oil platform, with the work of team on board investigated on previous projects as reference, it was possible analyze if the previous use is still applicable to new projects. As a result, about 90% of the recommendations based on use are applicable to the current context. The restrictions on the transfer or operational experience are mainly related to the time of entry of ergonomics in the design process, the subsequent transformations costs and the advance of the execution phase started with the detailed design.     

Development of guidelines for designing appliances for older persons

The ability of older adults to use a domestic appliance depends on their comprehension of the appliance's operation. This may depend on transfer of understanding from similar, more familiar technology. While this may assist their interaction with the new device, it may constrain the discovery of new functionality not represented in the familiar technology, and, thereby, constrain the discovery of advanced functionality. Older adults experience declining cognitive abilities associated with attention, perceptual encoding, and memory (cueing and recall). Designing appliances to extend cognitive abilities provides opportunity to prolong functional independence. Concepts from cognitive psychology, human factors, and gerontology are reviewed to explain age-related behavior towards technology to support innovative product development of technologies for older adults.     

The amount of ergonomics and user involvement in 151 design processes

Ergonomics, usability and user-centered design are terms that are well known among designers. Yet, products often seem to fail to meet the users' needs, resulting in a gap between expected and experienced usability. To understand the possible causes of this gap the actions taken by the designer during the design process are studied in this paper. This can show whether and how certain actions influence the user-friendliness of the design products. The aim of this research was to understand whether ergonomic principles and methods are included in the design process, whether users are involved in this process and whether the experience of the designer (in ergonomics/user involvement) has an effect on the end product usability. In this study the design processes of 151 tangible products of students in design were analyzed. It showed that in 75% of the cases some ergonomic principles were applied. User involvement was performed in only 1/3 of the design cases. Hardly any correlation was found between the designers' experience in ergonomic principles and the way they applied it and no correlations were found between the designers' experience in user involvement and the users' involvement in the design process.