Letting Her Go: Western Adoptive Families’ Search and Reunion With Chinese Birth Parents

This is the first study to investigate the trend of adopted individuals from China who search for and reunite with their birth parents. The authors suggest that the closed nature of China's international adoption program and growing ethical concerns about children's true origins impact the desire to search. Due to the generally younger ages of Chinese adoptees, adoptive parents have taken an unprecedentedly proactive role in this process. This article relies on in-depth interviews with adopted children and adoptive parents from seven Western families who reunited with Chinese birth parents. Interviews focused on the decision to search and methods used; the initial reunion; the development of bonds between adoptive and birth families; and post-reunion views of searching.     

The triad of erectile dysfunction, testosterone deficiency syndrome and metabolic syndrome: findings from a multi-ethnic Asian men study (The Subang Men's Health Study)

The etiology of erectile dysfunction (ED) is multi-factorial. This paper examines the association between ED, testosterone deficiency syndrome (TDS) and metabolic syndrome (MS) in Malaysian men in an urban setting. One thousand and forty-six men aged ≥ 40 years from Subang Jaya, Malaysia were randomly selected from an electoral-roll list. The men completed questionnaires that included: socio-demographic data, self-reported medical problems and the International Index of erectile function (IIEF-5). Physical examination and the following biochemical tests were performed: lipid profile, fasting blood glucose (FBG) and total testosterone. The response rate was 62.8% and the mean age of men was 55.8 ± 8.4 (41-93) years. Ethnic distribution was Chinese, 48.9%; Malay, 34.5%; Indian, 14.8%. The prevalence of moderate-severe ED was 20.0%, while 16.1% of men had TDS (< 10.4 nmol/L) and 31.3% of men had MS. Indian and Malay men were significantly more likely to have ED (p = 0.001), TDS (p < 0.001) and MS (p < 0.001) than the Chinese. Multivariate regression analysis showed that elevated blood pressure, elevated FBG, low high-density lipoprotein and heart disease were predictors of ED while all MS components were independently associated with TDS. Malay and Indian men have a higher disease burden compared to Chinese men and were more likely to suffer with ED, TDS and MS. MS components were closely related to TDS and ED.     

Young Infants' Behavioral Reactivity to Mild Perturbation: Developmental Continuity,Stability, and Organization

This study investigated the developmental continuity, stability, and organization of infants' behavioral response to mild stress from 1 to 3 months of age. Changes in infant stress reactivity were expected to coincide with a suspected neurobiological shift around the 2nd month. A total of 53 infants and their mothers participated in this study. At 1 and 3 months, infants' stress reactivity to mild perturbation was assessed by withdrawing a pacifier during nonnutritive sucking. Infant baseline heart rate activity and maternal reports of infant temperament were also obtained. Focusing on facial and vocal negativity, behavioral measures of infant reactivity to pacifier withdrawal were coded from videos. Results showed that developmental continuity and individual instability characterized changes in infant stress reactivity over the 2nd‐month transition. Developmental reorganization was also evidenced by changes in the direction and magnitude of infant stress reactivity in relation to baseline heart period and maternal temperament ratings, respectively. These findings provide direct supporting evidence for the contention that changes in infant stress reactivity to mild perturbation may be a function of developmental shifts in underlying neurobiological mechanisms in early infancy.     

Bridging Adaptive Learning and Desired Natural Resource Management Outcomes: Insights from Australian Planners

Natural resource management (NRM) has been increasingly guided by governance arrangements seeking less centralized and hierarchical and more integrated and adaptive approaches to achieve desired social-ecological outcomes. Successful implementation of these approaches requires adaptive learning which entails the application of individual, institutional and social learning to adaptive co-management. This paper proposes and validates a conceptual model that identifies components of adaptive learning and their relationships with desired NRM outcomes. Supported by on-ground experience of Australian NRM planners, it discusses three key insights to enable bridging between adaptive learning and NRM outcomes: changing focus away from economic-efficiency culture, supporting learning and knowledge exchange structures, and reinventing practice.     

Simple Priorities and Core Stability in Hedonic Games

In this paper we study hedonic games where each player views every other player either as a friend or as an enemy. Two simple priority criteria for comparison of coalitions are suggested, and the corresponding preference restrictions based on appreciation of friends and aversion to enemies are considered. We characterize internally stable coalitions on the proposed domains and show how these characterizations can be used for generating a strict core element in the first case and a core element in the second case. Moreover, we prove that an element of the strict core under friends appreciation can be found in polynomial time, while finding an element of the core under enemies aversion is NP-hard.     

Grandfriends,an Intergenerational Program for Nursing-Home Residents and Preschoolers: A Randomized Trial

Intergenerational programs may improve meaningful engagement for people with dementia and for attitudes toward older people in youth. Grandfriends, a 12-week program increased passive engagement and enjoyment among nursing home residents when interacting with preschoolers (n = 21) in comparison to usual activities. Grandfriends participants (n = 20) did not show changes on quality of life, agitation, or sense of community in comparison to residents (n = 20) randomized to usual care. Suggestions for future programs are given.     

Identifying health inequalities between Māori and non‐Māori using mortality tables

Abstract

While there is a need for more detailed information on health inequality to guide public health policy, the most complete and easily available data remain those in mortality tables. We investigate, via a comparative analysis of data from New Zealand on Māori and non‐Māori mortality, whether more detailed information than raw life expectancy may be extracted from the mortality tables. Given a parametric distribution for the mortality capable of fitting irregularities in mortality table data, the curvature of the survival and hazard rates can identify changes in mortality rates, such as infant and late‐life adult mortality, which allows for straightforward comparisons between the two sub‐populations. Our results identify an exogenous effect in earlier mortality among Maori, which correlates well with many published observations of health and health‐care inequalities between Māori and non‐Māori. This “proof of concept” for our method of analysis indicates that examination of bulk data such as those in mortality tables has a potential role in the design of more detailed studies involving causes of mortality.     

灰色关联决策分析法在产业投资优势评估中的应用——以近期甘肃省对外招商和经济技术合作为例

本文旨在探讨如何从诸多投资产业中，选择最佳的产业及投资方案。在以往多目标决策法中，当要选择方案时，大都是由主观的判断或是复杂的计算来处理，如此并无法让决策者做整体性之判断。因此，本文使用灰色关联决策分析法，来分析投资方案间之关联度，透过关联度分析结果，除提供投资者做最佳产业及投资方案的选择外，并提供给甘肃省政府拟定政策、投资方案与改善投资环境之参考