Overfishing,social problems,and ecosocial sustainability in Senegalese fishing communities

ABSTRACT

This study explores living conditions of people in Senegalese fishing communities in relation to environmental change and unregulated fishing by foreign boats, weakening local opportunities and increasing forced migration of youth, creating problems for the future development of local fishery communities. It employs a postcolonial perspective and analyzes data collected through interviews with individuals from Senegalese fishing communities, social workers and relevant documents. The results show local reactions based on alliances between social workers and local community members to overfishing and the need for national and global structural changes. It is argued that EU’s fishing agreements with Senegalese government is one of the reasons behind youths’ forced migration to EU countries and that the betterment of the living conditions of fishery communities in Senegal requires not only already emerging alliances between social workers and local community members, but also national and global structural changes to protect Africa’s fishing communities and local fisheries.     

Peace and Conflict Resolution Organizations in Three Protracted Conflicts: Structures,Resources and Ideology

Guided by organizational and social movement theories, this study compares the structures, resource bases, ideologies, and strategies of nongovernmental organizations engaged in peace and conflict resolution (P/CROs) in three regions with extended violent conflicts: Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine. Qualitative content analysis techniques are used to analyze 27 detailed case reports. We analyze the funding patterns and structural attributes of the P/CROs in our sample, with particular attention to how they obtain fiscal resources and membership in spite of the risks they may experience. We then explore the degree of formalization among P/CROs over time and, finally, we examine the ideological frames that P/CROs use and how these frames relate to their tactics. Throughout the analysis we pay attention to how the political context of each region influences P/CRO behavior.     

Adaptive designs for IVPT data with mixed scaled average bioequivalence

In vitro permeation tests (IVPT) offer accurate and cost-effective development pathways for locally acting drugs, such as topical dermatological products. For assessment of bioequivalence, the FDA draft guidance on generic acyclovir 5% cream introduces a new experimental design, namely the single-dose, multiple-replicate per treatment group design, as IVPT pivotal study design. We examine the statistical properties of its hypothesis testing method—namely the mixed scaled average bioequivalence (MSABE). Meanwhile, some adaptive design features in clinical trials can help researchers make a decision earlier with fewer subjects or boost power, saving resources, while controlling the impact on family-wise error rate. Therefore, we incorporate MSABE in an adaptive design combining the group sequential design and sample size re-estimation. Simulation studies are conducted to study the passing rates of the proposed methods—both within and outside the average bioequivalence limits. We further consider modifications to the adaptive designs applied for IVPT BE trials, such as Bonferroni's adjustment and conditional power function. Finally, a case study with real data demonstrates the advantages of such adaptive methods.     

Testing the monotonicity or convexity of a function using regression splines

Methods for smoothed isotonic or convex regression are useful in many applications. Sometimes the shape assumptions constitute a priori knowledge about the regression function, but often the shape is part of the research question. The authors propose tests for monotonicity and convexity using constrained and unconstrained regression splines. The tests have good large‐sample properties and the small‐sample behaviour is illustrated through simulations. Extensions to the partial linear model and the generalized regression model are presented. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 39: 89–107; 2011 © 2011 Statistical Society of Canada     

Students Who Strip: The Benefits of Alternate Identities for Managing Stigma

We apply interactionist theories that highlight the contextual nature of stigma and the relational quality of stigmatization to the case of college students who work as topless dancers. We explore how the “toll of stripping” might be mediated by having an alternate, positive identity like “student.” Our analysis demonstrates that students who strip are distinctive from other strippers in important ways that stem from their salient, positive identity as students. Although they often feel as if they live a “double life” because they hide their occupation from family and friends, they benefit from sharing their student goals and ambitions with club customers. “Student” is a socially acceptable identity to share in routine social interactions and helps student strippers frame dancing as a transient occupation, offering them an opportunity to maintain a positive sense of self while buffering them from some of the negative effects of stripping.     

Understanding predictive information criteria for Bayesian models

We review the Akaike, deviance, and Watanabe-Akaike information criteria from a Bayesian perspective, where the goal is to estimate expected out-of-sample-prediction error using a bias-corrected adjustment of within-sample error. We focus on the choices involved in setting up these measures, and we compare them in three simple examples, one theoretical and two applied. The contribution of this paper is to put all these information criteria into a Bayesian predictive context and to better understand, through small examples, how these methods can apply in practice.     

The Income and Health Effects of Tribal Casino Gaming on American Indians

The legalization of American Indian casino gaming in the late 1980s allows examination of the relationship between income and health in a quasi-experimental way. Revenue from gaming accrues to individual tribes and has been used both to supplement tribe members’ income and to finance tribal infrastructure. We assembled annual data from 1988–2003 on tribal gaming, health care access (from the Area Resource File), and individual health and socioeconomic characteristics data (from the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System). We use this information within a structural, difference-in-differences framework to study the effect of casino gaming on tribal members’ income, health status, access to health care, and health-related behaviors. Our difference-in-differences framework relies on before-after comparisons among American Indians whose tribe has at some time operated a casino and with-without comparisons between American Indians whose tribe has and those whose tribe has not initiated gaming. Our results provide identified estimates of the positive effect of gaming on American Indian income and on several indicators of American Indian health, health-related behaviors, and access to health care.     

Celebrating Spring Festival with a Chinese Family

Bring gifts The nice thing about visiting Chinese families is that while k is polite to bring gifts, generic gifts are expected and even welcome. You don＇t have to go overboard, nor do you have to spen...     

Excluded losses and the demand for insurance

The demand for insurance is examined when the insured asset can incur losses that are excluded from insurance coverage. These losses are negatively correlated with covered losses and hence cannot be treated as background risk. Excluded losses have strikingly different effects on the demand for insurance than does background risk and lead to a modification of many standard insurance demand results. A number of new theorems concerning the effects of excluded losses are also presented. Risk-averse and prudent decision makers reduce their demand for insurance when excluded losses increase in size or riskiness. Excluded losses are a possible explanation for why many decision makers fail to take up insurance when it is offered.