Variations in the gender composition of immigrant populations: how they matter

This paper estimates and interprets empirical shifts in the gender composition of immigrants to add to scholarship about the gendering of international migrations over time. We map shifts in gender ratios using micro-level data that permit us to create age-standardized estimates among adult foreign born stock living in the United States since 1850 and in 26 other nations worldwide since 1960. We examine regional and national variations in these shifts, and ask whether and how the gendered composition of foreigners from diverse origins in the United States – the nation that has received the largest populations of migrants for over a century – differs from other nations that receive large numbers of immigrants. We also examine recent variations in gender ratios among immigrants living in six regional destination countries. Results show substantial variation in the gender composition of foreign-born populations, and they offer a starting point for examining causes and consequences in future research.     

Walking the tightrope: developing a systems approach to balance safety and mobility for an aging society

In an aging population, safety and mobility are often viewed as being in conflict, when in fact they are two values that must be reflected equally in transportation policy. The challenge for policy makers and for society is to emphasize and optimize both. To achieve this, a comprehensive systems approach to driver health, personal decision-making and planning, community and transportation systems construction, vehicle design, and licensing regulations is needed. Such an approach requires crafting policies based on conceptualizing the issue as a continuum of resources facilitating safety and mobility regardless of driving status. The discussion that follows reviews components of the issue and suggestions for developing a comprehensive approach.     

Online tree node assignment with resource augmentation

Given a complete binary tree of height h, the online tree node assignment problem is to serve a sequence of assignment/release requests, where an assignment request, with an integer parameter 0≤i≤h, is served by assigning a (tree) node of level (or height) i and a release request is served by releasing a specified assigned node. The node assignments have to guarantee that no node is assigned to two assignment requests unreleased, and every leaf-to-root path of the tree contains at most one assigned node. With assigned node reassignments allowed, the target of the problem is to minimize the number of assignments/reassignments, i.e., the cost, to serve the whole sequence of requests. This online tree node assignment problem is fundamental to many applications, including OVSF code assignment in WCDMA networks, buddy memory allocation and hypercube subcube allocation.     

“My Life was Filled with Constant Anxiety”: Anti-Immigrant Discrimination,Undocumented Status,and Their Mental Health Implications for Brazilian Immigrants

Immigration reform and the various costs associated with undocumented immigration have been in national headlines in the past few years. The growth of Latinos as the US’ largest ethno-racial minority has sparked debates about the “browning” of the United States and led to an increase in anti-immigrant discrimination. While some researchers have documented the effects of racial discrimination on the mental health of ethno-racial minorities in the United States, less has explored how anti-immigrant discrimination and undocumented status influence the mental and psychological well-being of Latino immigrants, more specifically Brazilian immigrants, in the United States. Relying on data from in-depth interviews conducted with 49 Brazilian return migrants who immigrated to the United States and subsequently returned to Brazil, this paper will examine how their experiences living as racialized and primarily undocumented immigrants in the United States influenced their mental health. Specifically, I demonstrate that respondents experienced ethno-racial and anti-immigrant discrimination and endured various challenges that had negative implications for their mental health. This paper will also discuss additional factors that researchers should take into account when examining immigrants’ mental health and the challenges immigrants encounter in a racialized society with increasing anti-immigrant sentiment.     

Quantifying Water Pathogen Risk in an Epidemiological Framework

Traditionally, microbial risk assessors have used point estimates to evaluate the probability that an individual will become infected. We developed a quantitative approach that shifts the risk characterization perspective from point estimate to distributional estimate, and from individual to population. To this end, we first designed and implemented a dynamic model that tracks traditional epidemiological variables such as the number of susceptible, infected, diseased, and immune, and environmental variables such as pathogen density. Second, we used a simulation methodology that explicitly acknowledges the uncertainty and variability associated with the data. Specifically, the approach consists of assigning probability distributions to each parameter, sampling from these distributions for Monte Carlo simulations, and using a binary classification to assess the output of each simulation. A case study is presented that explores the uncertainties in assessing the risk of giardiasis when swimming in a recreational impoundment using reclaimed water. Using literature-based information to assign parameters ranges, our analysis demonstrated that the parameter describing the shedding of pathogens by infected swimmers was the factor that contributed most to the uncertainty in risk. The importance of other parameters was dependent on reducing the a priori range of this shedding parameter. By constraining the shedding parameter to its lower subrange, treatment efficiency was the parameter most important in predicting whether a simulation resulted in prevalences above or below non outbreak levels. Whereas parameters associated with human exposure were important when the shedding parameter was constrained to a higher subrange. This Monte Carlo simulation technique identified conditions in which outbreaks and/or nonoutbreaks are likely and identified the parameters that most contributed to the uncertainty associated with a risk prediction.     

Equality and Illusion: Gender and Tenure in Art History Careers

Using a national survey of 508 art history Ph.D.s including data on graduate school performance and careers 10 – 15 years post‐Ph.D., this study investigates gender, family, and academic tenure in art history, the humanities field with the highest proportion of women. Alternative hypotheses derived from three perspectives—termed here clockwork, two‐body, and synergy—are evaluated with multivariate logistic regression. Analysis finds that marriage increases men’s tenure odds and decreases women’s, but that some types of marriages do not decrease women’s odds, and some types dramatically increase men’s. This study calls attention to male advantage in female‐dominated academic disciplines and demonstrates the potential to better understand the interactions of gender, marriage, and careers by conceptualizing different types of marriages.     

Difference,subjectivities and power: (de)colonizing practices in internationalizing the curriculum

This paper problematizes the discourse of internationalizing the curriculum using a critical framework of difference. The author draws on her transnational experiences as an international postgraduate researcher in an Australian university, an educator in Malaysia and her present experiences as an academic in an Australian university. The notions of difference, power and subjectivities are used to unpack the academic and pedagogical practices of internationalizing the curriculum. A politics of difference in internationalizing the curriculum entails interrogating the power dynamics in the privileging and marginalization of knowledge, skills and ways of being, knowing and doing. Transnational connectivity and reciprocal flows of individuals and knowledge are emphasized within such practices.