Geschlecht, Schicht und Bildungspartizipation

Analyses of educational participation frequently assume that gender and social class have an independent effect on the participation level. In contrast to this assumption the paper analyses the question whether gender differences depend on social class or not. The Power-control theory of Hagan, Gillis and Simpson is applied to develop a theoretical answer to the question. The empirical analysis reveals two class dependent gender effects: Higher gender differences are observed for higher educational levels of parents and for households with a migration background. Further analysis indicates that distribution of power within the household can explain these effects.     

Inklusion durch Anerkennung

As common and plausible chronic diseases are for providing the rationale and relevance of preventive and rehabilitative interventions by the public health and nursing professions they do little to shape the every day practice and research of the health professions. Chronic diseases are often not treated as chronic but as either temporary crises or stable handicaps thereby ignoring the identity problems these people must contend with. While during the post 200 years respect for individual identity and approval for services have been kept distinct coping with the problems faced by those with chronic diseases have blurred the distinction between need for recognition and need for service. The blurring of the lines of distinction between need for recognition and the need for services is proven by a) the development of international standards of diagnoses and b) by the struggle of the welfare state against inequality in the face of chronic disease and death. This causes problems not only for the society but also for the chronically ill which should be analyzed within a theory of recognition.     

Soziale Ungleichheit und Bildungspartizipation im weiterführenden Schulsystem Österreichs

The paper investigates the relationship between social inequality and participation in the Austrian high school system (secondary level II). The European Community Household Panel is used as data basis. The results show differences in participation rate by sex and by the three classical dimensions of stratification, namely education, occupation and income of parents. Hence, social inequality still exists in Austria. Gender differences have been reversed: Nowadays, more girls attend high schools than boys. Inequalities are reduced by secondary technical and vocational colleges.     

Functional regression concurrent model with spatially correlated errors: application to rainfall ground validation

In this paper, we give an extension of the functional regression concurrent model to the case of spatially correlated errors. We propose estimating the spatial correlation structure by using functional geostatistics. The estimation of the regression parameters is carried out by feasible generalized least squares. This modeling approach is motivated by the problem of validating rainfall data retrieved from satellite sensors. In this sense, we use the methodology to study the relationship between satellite and ground rainfall time series recorded in 82 weather stations from Department of Valle del Cauca, Colombia. The model obtained allows predicting pentadal rainfall curves in many sites of the region of interest by using as input the satellite information. A residual analysis shows a good performance of the methodology proposed.     

Exhaustive k-nearest-neighbour subspace clustering

Cluster analysis is an important technique of explorative data mining. It refers to a collection of statistical methods for learning the structure of data by solely exploring pairwise distances or similarities. Often meaningful structures are not detectable in these high-dimensional feature spaces. Relevant features can be obfuscated by noise from irrelevant measurements. These observations led to the design of subspace clustering algorithms, which can identify clusters that originate from different subsets of features. Hunting for clusters in arbitrary subspaces is intractable due to the infinite search space spanned by all feature combinations. In this work, we present a subspace clustering algorithm that can be applied for exhaustively screening all feature combinations of small- or medium-sized datasets (approximately 30 features). Based on a robustness analysis via subsampling we are able to identify a set of stable candidate subspace cluster solutions.     

Alcohol and drug abuse: removing structural barriers to treatment for historically disadvantaged communities in Cape Town

The article reports on an exploratory study that examined access to alcohol and other drug treatment for historically disadvantaged communities in the Cape Town metropole. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 key informants from various sectors of the alcohol and drug treatment system, including treatment service providers, members of local drug action committees and social workers from district social service offices. Findings highlighted three structural barriers to service delivery: (i) difficulties in developing and implementing a strategic plan relating to alcohol and drug problems due to poor capacity and other infrastructural issues, such as a lack of information, poor intersectoral collaboration and limited consultation with service providers; (ii) limited allocation of resources to alcohol and drug treatment which has restricted the availability of affordable services as well as the capacity of established services to meet increased demand for services in this area; and (iii) fragmented service delivery. The study highlighted the need for further transformation of the South African social welfare system responsible for alcohol and drug treatment service delivery through public–private partnership development and the introduction of a management information system.     

Intraindividual and Interindividual Differences in Spontaneous Eye Blinking: Relationships to Working Memory Performance and Frontal EEG Asymmetry

The rate and timing of spontaneous eye blinking (SB) may be used to explore mechanisms of cognitive activity in infancy. In particular, SB rate is believed to reflect some dimensions of dopamine function; therefore, we hypothesized that SB rate would relate to working memory performance and to frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry. Forty, 10‐month‐old infants completed an A‐not‐B task while SB and EEG were measured throughout. We found that SB rate varied across phases of the task, variability in SB rate was positively related to working memory performance, and frontal EEG asymmetry was related to individual differences in the rate of SB. Results provide indirect, but convergent support for the hypothesis that SB rate reflects dopamine function early in human development. As such, these results have implications for understanding the tonic and phasic effects of dopamine on cognitive activity early in human development.     

In welchen Lebensbereichen lernen Jugendliche Ausländerfeindlichkeit?

Youth research largely ignores apprentices. What little evidence there is on hostility towards foreigners among apprentices is contradictory. Starting with this scant knowledge the paper investigates in which life spheres (family, peers, school, work) apprentices learn this hostility. The study surveyed 374 respondents with German parents in Nuremberg. The results show clear evidence that family and peers are particularly important.