A Shot of Morality? Hispanic Immigration,Religious Contextual Characteristics,and Violence

Extant research often finds that the relative size of the Hispanic immigrant population is inversely associated with rates of crime at the macro level. Yet, few studies have empirically examined the indirect pathways through which Hispanic immigration might impact crime, especially sociocultural characteristics such as religious context. Utilizing data on known violent crimes from over 600 U.S. counties in 2010 paired with religious contextual data from the Religious Congregation and Membership Survey (RCMS), we observe that the presence of Hispanic immigrants is positively associated with community-level Catholic adherence, civically engaged religious adherence, and religious homogeneity that, in turn, are negatively associated with violent crime. Overall, religious contextual characteristics appear to significantly mediate the link between Hispanic immigration and violence at the macro level. Implications for the immigration-crime literature and broader macro-structural research are discussed.     

University Binge Drinking Patterns and Changes in Patterns of Alcohol Consumption Among Chinese Undergraduates in a Hong Kong University

Abstract

Objective: To examine patterns of binge drinking and changes in drinking patterns among Chinese university students. Participants and Methods: Responses to an anonymous questionnaire were compared between a random sample of 411 second year Chinese undergraduate students in 2006 and 2,630 first year students from the previous year. Students reporting any symptoms of alcohol abuse were classified as alcohol abusers whereas those reporting repeated inability to curtail use were categorized as alcohol dependent. Results: After 1 year of university, greatly increased rates of past-month drinking of different degrees were found in both genders. Binge drinking among second year undergraduates was significantly correlated with male gender, living in a student residence hall, smoking, drinking to relieve stress, and having friends who frequently drank. Conclusions: Alcohol misuse is a health hazard to Chinese students in a university environment. Proactive policies aimed at preventing harmful alcohol use should be considered by university authorities.     

大型医疗设备管理的思考与建议——以某三甲医院典型大型设备为例

文章通过分析某三甲医院的三种大型医疗设备的使用情况和PET/CT的经济效益(包括该设备收入、成本分析、投资回收期分析和盈亏平衡分析),从如何提高医疗设备的经济效益、管理水平以及兼顾社会效益三个方面提出思考和建议.     

Nurturing “Critical Hope” in Teaching Feminist Social Work Research

Despite the congruence between critical feminist values and the cardinal values of the social work profession, feminist research in social work has lagged behind its feminist cousins in the social sciences, particularly in terms of critical uses of theory, reflexivity, and the troubling of binaries. This article presents as praxis our reflections as researchers, teachers, and feminists inside social work. We draw from a review of feminist social work research and offer suggestions for teaching critical feminist approaches in social work research. Incorporating critical feminist values and research practices into social work research courses creates the potential for greater integration of research, practice, and the principal values of our profession.     

Teachers' Attitudes toward Reporting Child Sexual Abuse: Problems with Existing Research Leading to New Scale Development

This paper details a systematic literature review identifying problems in extant research relating to teachers' attitudes toward reporting child sexual abuse and offers a model for new attitude scale development and testing. Scale development comprised a five-phase process grounded in contemporary attitude theories, including (a) developing the initial item pool, (b) conducting a panel review, (c) refining the scale via an expert focus group, (d) building content validity through cognitive interviews, and (e) assessing internal consistency via field testing. The resulting 21-item scale displayed construct validity in preliminary testing. The scale may prove useful as a research tool, given the theoretical supposition that attitudes may be changed with time, context, experience, and education. Further investigation with a larger sample is warranted.     

The Use of Social Surveys to Measure Drought and the Impact of Drought

Although the term drought is widely used, defining it is conceptually and technically difficult and there is no generally accepted definition. This article uses data from an Australian social survey of people living in agricultural areas to test the validity of using general social surveys to ask respondents whether they are living in an area that is drought affected. Strong evidence is found that the survey based self-report measure of drought is both internally consistent and correlated with the standard Australian meteorological (rainfall deficit) measures of drought and thus provides a valid measure of whether individuals are experiencing the drought. The relationship between self-report drought and the standard meteorological measure of drought and financial hardship and changes in financial position is estimated. While a negative association between drought and financial position is found for both measures, the relationship is stronger for the self-report than the meteorological definition. The self-report measure is more closely linked to the economic, social and community impacts of low rainfall and provides greater flexibility in the geographic area over which drought is measured—thus survey data about drought allows respondents to define the area in way which is meteorologically, topographically or agriculturally meaningful.     

Social Support,Retirement Resources,and the Gendered Experiences of Aging for Tunisian Older Adults

Cultural context plays an important role in the experience of aging. The country of Tunisia is of particular interest because limited studies on aging have been done in the past decade. The study examined data collected from Tunisian older adults in an attempt to gain additional information about their experience aging in this culture. The purpose of this study was to identify key information tied to social policy factors that have the potential to impact older adults living in Tunisia. From June to July 2017, semi-structured interviews were completed with 60 older adults covering topics about family history, daily activities, health and health satisfaction, retirement benefits and satisfaction, medical coverage, social support, service availability, feelings of growing older, as well as advice provided to younger adults. Findings include gender differences in retirement resources and benefits, sources of support, and older adults’ self-reported desires for the future. This work adds to the growing body of literature concerning differences in global aging and provides greater awareness of aging in the distinctive context of Tunisia. Additional work should seek to deepen the investigation of the various social policies that impact the Tunisian older adult.     

基于多目标多元学习细菌觅食优化算法的混合数据聚类

针对混合属性数据聚类问题,本文提出一种基于多目标多元学习细菌觅食优化算法。首先,基于改进的细菌觅食优化算法,提出多目标优化算法框架。然后,提出多元学习策略来提高算法性能。具体地,对于细菌个体,细菌之间采用环形拓扑学习策略,每个细菌只能向其邻域最优个体学习;细菌个体还可以向外部档案非支配个体学习。通过该学习策略,不仅可以保持种群的多样性,也可以加快算法收敛速度。对于外部档案非支配个体,记录其变化趋势,当非支配个体的变化处于停滞状态时,采用精英学习策略对非支配个体进行微扰动,提高非支配解的多样性。最后,为解决混合属性数据聚类问题,设计了一种具有属性权重的混合属性转换策略。为了验证所提算法的性能,将该算法与两个多目标进化算法和三个经典聚类算法在六个标准数据集上进行对比实验。实验结果表明,所提算法在解决数值、分类和混合属性数据聚类问题上具有显著优势。同时,以金融领域信用卡申请客户数据为例,进一步证实了所提算法的可行性,也表明了所提算法在涉及混合属性数据集的医疗、管理、工程等领域有一定的应用前景。     

Understanding the effects of outsourcing: unpacking the total factor productivity variable

Research on why firms should outsource and how they should do it has proliferated in the past two decades, but few consistent findings have emerged concerning the benefits of outsourcing. We argue that this is in part due to the lack of an adequate framework for measuring the effects of outsourcing. To address this, we present such a framework based upon the Cobb–Douglas productivity function. We explain how our framework can be used to unpack one component of the Cobb–Douglas productivity function, the ‘total factor productivity’, which represents the other numerous sub-variables that affect outsourcing productivity, beyond the capital and labour expenditures. We also demonstrate the framework using a simple illustrative example.