Urban or rural fragments: which soil use in forest surroundings induces greater litter deposition?

Urban Ecosystems - The soil use in surroundings of forest remnants, as well as, variations in seasonality and rainfall totals from each year might influence the composition, structure, and...     

The Effects of Parenting Stress,Perceived Mastery,and Maternal Depression on Parent–Child Interaction

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to test a model that delineated the interrelationships among parenting stress, perceived mastery (defined as the belief that one's life chances are under one's own control), maternal depression, and parent–child interaction. A secondary data analysis of the Fragile Family and Child Well-Being Study was conducted, using a sample of 2,650 mothers. Results suggest that parenting stress undermines one's sense of perceived mastery which, in turn, resulted in depression. Moreover, the results also indicated that parenting stress directly affected maternal depression and parent–child interaction. There was no support for the hypothesis that parenting stress undermines one's sense of perceived mastery which, in turn, resulted in depression, which affected one's parent–child interaction. Implications of these findings for professionals working with mothers of young children are discussed. Future research should test this model using other forms of parenting behavior.     

Tagging for activist ends and strategic ephemerality: creating the Sex Work Database as an activist digital archive

The Sex Work Database project is an interdisciplinary collaboration, currently based in Canada, to research and design digital activist archives of “born digital” and digitized academic research, print and visual media, grassroots activism, and commemorative responses related to missing and murdered women and sex work. This paper discusses the project’s development over its first few years, and discusses the complexities of organizing and representing digital/digitized information using a feminist anti-violence framework. In doing so, we introduce and examine two challenges we have encountered to date: designing a tagging system that expresses the activist frame of the Sex Work Database, and the ethics and efficacy of strategic ephemerality for materials produced by sex worker activists.     

Agricultural Strategy Development in West Africa: The False Promise of Participation?

Participatory approaches are an increasingly prominent technique for designing agricultural strategies in sub‐Saharan Africa. However, they are frequently criticised for either not involving enough stakeholders or limiting the scope of their participation. This article concludes from a study of the situation in West Africa that a lack of broad‐based participation in these strategies is not a major problem; rather, the real challenge lies in transforming the outcomes of participatory processes into policies that can be feasibly implemented. It highlights why an emphasis on participation can sometimes result in disappointment amongst stakeholders and discusses a range of measures to help overcome this dilemma.     

Heteronormative bodies,queer futures: toward a theory of interpersonal panopticism

This essay examines the policing of sexual bodies via interactive online technologies. We draw from scholarly discourses regarding surveillance, queer theory, and affect to construct what we call interpersonal panopticism. Interpersonal panopticism serves as a theoretical account of the fluid nature of watching and being watched in relationships, especially in consideration of how intimate relationships and sexualities are surveilled and controlled in a digital era. To articulate the utility and potentials of this theoretical approach, we offer five cultural propositions that serve as a basis for interpersonal panopticism. Collectively these propositions illustrate the utility and potentials of unpacking the interplay of surveillance, heteronormativity, and affect through an interpersonal panoptic lens.     

Moments of a ratio of two quadratic forms

In this paper, we give the exact moments of a ratio of qua- dratic forms in normal variables, where the quadratic forms are not assumed to be independent. This problem was tackled by other authors who gave approximations and partial results. Here we will give the exact moments for the general case.     

IT Governance Characteristics,Electronic Medical Records Sophistication,and Financial Performance in U.S. Hospitals: An Empirical Investigation

As a result of a recent federal government mandate, an increasing number of hospitals have decided to adopt electronic medical record (EMR) systems. This initiative is expected to lead toward more efficient and higher quality health care; however, little is known about governance characteristics and organizational performance for EMR adopters. Our goal is to inform theory and practice by examining hospitals with a sophisticated EMR and comparing those hospitals to similar hospitals (with a less sophisticated EMR) to understand the association between information technology (IT) governance characteristics and the implications on financial performance. Leveraging elements of the upper echelon theory, we posit that hospitals in which the chief information officer (CIO) reports to the chief executive officer, CIO turnover is low, and an IT steering committee is present are more likely to have a sophisticated EMR. We argue that EMR sophistication leads to improved financial performance. Our results underscore the importance of continuity in the CIO position on successful EMR implementations. Results also show that hospital size and financial performance are strongly associated with EMR sophistication. In addition, we find that a sophisticated EMR appears to be a fundamental element in improving hospitals’ revenue cycle management. Moreover, we find that hospitals with a sophisticated EMR appear to be more profitable. Finally, we observe that total payroll expense adjusted by total discharges drops among the sophisticated hospitals, potentially due to an increase in employee productivity. These insights can serve as a basis for tempering expectations relative to the financial impact of EMR adoption.