Marital protection and marital selection: Evidence from a historical-prospective sample of American men

Whether marriage causes people to live longer or whether healthier people select into marriage is an open question. In this study I followed a sample of men from age 18 to first marriage and ultimately to death. Health in early adulthood was represented by height and weight around age 20. The probability of ever marrying and the conditional probability of marriage in a given time period were lower for smaller men and greater for larger men. Marriage significantly lowered mortality risk even after controlling for health in early adulthood. Thus I found support both for selection into marriage and for protective effects of marriage.     

Brain hemisphere dominance and vocational preference: a preliminary analysis

Recent developments in split-brain theory add support to the concept of specialization within brain hemispheres. Holland's vocational personality theory may overlap with Human Information Processing (HIP) characteristics. Holland's six RIASEC codes were developed to identify vocational personality characteristics, and HIP scales were designed to measure hemispheric laterality. Relationships between the two scales were evaluated through canonical correlation with some significant results, however not all Holland scale scores correlated with left, right, or integrated hemispheric preference. Additional findings related to participants self-perception of music and math ability were also correlated. Findings on this added analysis revealed a high correlation between perception of musical ability and right brain function but not between mathematical concept and left brain alone. Implications regarding vocational choice and work are discussed.     

Dynamic Bayesian forecasting of AFL match results using the Skellam distribution

The scoring and defensive abilities of Australian Rules Football teams change over time as a result of evolving player rosters, tactics and other management factors. We develop a dynamic model based on the Poisson difference (Skellam) distribution which simultaneously models the two different point scoring mechanisms in Australian Rules Football, the motivation for which comes from work on predicting outcomes in soccer matches. Our model is developed in a Bayesian framework and is fitted using the Stan modelling language. Model validation is performed on the 2015 Australian Football league (AFL) home and away season.     

RISING AUTISM PREVALENCE: REAL OR DISPLACING OTHER MENTAL DISORDERS? EVIDENCE FROM DEMAND FOR AUXILIARY HEALTHCARE WORKERS IN CALIFORNIA

Autism is a development disorder that has increased in prevalence from 0.5 to 14.7 per 1,000 children over 1970–2010. Using annual wages and provider counts from the American Community Survey and information from 21 regional development centers in California, we estimate the labor demand for auxiliary health providers. We focus on this subset of providers because, unlike physicians and psychologists who can diagnose autism, these workers cannot induce their own demand. If the incidence of autism is increasing independently of other mental disorders, then the demand for auxiliary health providers should increase, leading to higher wages and labor supply. Otherwise, the increase in autism diagnosis is merely displacing other mental disorders. We find that a 100% increase in autism cases increases the wages of auxiliary health workers over non‐autism health occupations by 8–11% and the number of providers by 9–14%. Furthermore, we find that one of every three new autism diagnoses is merely supplanting mental retardation diagnoses, but does not displace other mental disorders. These estimates suggest that at least part of the increase in autism diagnoses, about 50–65%, reflects an increase in the true prevalence of the disorder. (JEL L11, J2, J3)     

Locating the Wild Man: Rain Forest Enchantments and Settler Colonial Fantasies Amid the Ruins of the Anthropocene

The figure of the Wild Man resides at the hinge where nature meets culture. In the Pacific Northwest, the Wild Man is known locally by different names and is interpreted through a variety of cultural and historical lenses. Settler colonialism in the region, for example, situated the Wild Man within wilderness and anachronistic spaces, aligning him with a bygone and romanticized indigeneity. Conversely, Coast Salish people invigorate new stories of the Wild Man as critique of the ruins of late capitalism. The Wild Man provides them with strength to assert their autonomy and authority in leading the restoration of the natural environment. This article explores monstrous entanglements between settler colonialism, indigeneity and the Wild Man on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.     

Beyond the urban stream syndrome: organic matter budget for diagnostics and restoration of an impaired urban river

In response to water quality standard violations linked to excessive organic matter (OM) and a lack of sampling data informing the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), an organic matter budget was created to quantify and identify sources of OM in the lower Jordan River (Salt Lake City, UT). By sampling dissolved, fine, and coarse particulate OM, as well as measuring ecosystem metabolism at seven different sites, the researchers aimed to identify the origin of excess OM, and understand pathways by which different size classes of the OM pool are generated. The dissolved fraction (DOM; 94 %) was found to be the dominant form of OM transported within the river with fine particulate organic matter (FPOM; 6 %) the second most abundant, and coarse particulate organic matter (CPOM; 1 %) transport relatively insignificant in the overall OM budget. Primary production exceeded respiratory losses in the upper river, and this, along with OM inputs from two tributaries (where water reclamation facilities discharge into the river) delivered excess OM to the impaired lower reaches. Increasing stream metabolism index (SMI) with distance downstream (>1 in the lower river) further demonstrated that transport of excessive organic matter into the lower river was from upstream sources and not due to lateral inputs. This simple approach to characterizing the organic matter budget as it relates to water quality in the Jordan River was effective and could serve as a model for future studies attempting to quantify and identify sources of OM in urban ecosystems.     

Couple Counselling Outcomes in an Australian Not for Profit: Evidence for the Effectiveness of Couple Counselling Conducted Within Routine Practice

Over 30 randomised controlled trials have shown the efficacy of couple therapy under controlled conditions. However only four studies explore effectiveness of couple therapy as commonly practised in the community (i.e., routine practice). These studies suggest effectiveness is about half that reported in randomised controlled trials. Further, there are no published couple therapy effectiveness data currently from Australia or New Zealand. This is troubling because (1) couple distress has negative effects on individual adults, couples, and families; (2) funders increasingly want proof of return on financial investment; and (3) clients want hope that their emotional investment in therapy is worthwhile. The first aim of this paper is to report the outcomes of a milestone multi‐centre study of over 1,500 Relationships Australia clients attending couple counselling. It outlines a simple, intuitive method for assessing effectiveness of couple counselling in routine practice that may motivate others to conduct effectiveness studies. The study used a cross‐sectional design and assessed current couple satisfaction and retrospective recall of couple satisfaction before attending counselling. Results revealed a moderate effect size improvement in relationship satisfaction. The results support previous published studies of couple therapy effectiveness in routine practice. The second aim of the paper is to increase interest in others doing similar research by addressing key barriers to the implementation of effectiveness studies within routine practice. These barriers include administrative burden, integration across services, and conceptual buy‐in by practitioners. The use of the retrospective measure of ‘pre counselling’ couple satisfaction measure overcomes these barriers in part. The paper concludes with a discussion of design limitations and suggestions for counselling agencies seeking to conduct their own effectiveness studies.     

Exploring short-term and long-term time frames in Australian population carrying capacity assessment

Time frames are vital determinants in carrying capacity assessment modelling, but their quantification can be problematic. A strictly literal definition of sustainable carrying capacity implies calculating the maximum number of people a landscape can support in perpetuity. However, the concept of perpetuity, representing infinite time, renders the concept impractical, if not impossible, to quantify; so a more pragmatic approach can be to perform assessments for a range of time frames in order to establish potential trends. One Australian-orientated model, the Carrying Capacity Dashboard, was developed to begin exploring temporal flexibility in resource-based carrying capacity modelling. It offers users the ability to choose projected time frames of between one and 150 years for a variety of landscape scales and consumption patterns. Generally, the longer time frames resulted in reduced carrying capacities. One reason for this result is that a completely self-sufficient population would need to match its consumption and hence its size to the anticipated least productive year within any given time frame; and as projected time periods increase, the likelihood of encountering more extreme climatic conditions with smaller yields increases.