An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Disasters and Stress: The Promise of an Ecological Framework

This integrative literature review examines the sources of the persistent debate over the influence of disasters on individual mental health that characterizes the disaster research literature. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this paper highlights how the connections between individuals and the systems in which they are embedded influence people's varied responses to disaster. Consistent with the emerging emphasis in the social sciences on contextualizing individual behavior, this paper examines how family, community, social structural, cultural, and environmental factors affect the development of stress in disaster populations. It concludes with recommendations for policy, practice, and research related to disaster recovery.     

论基于建构主义的探究性学习与知识创造过程

为完善并丰富知识创造过程理论,以建构主义的学习理论为基础,描述了知识创造的过程。知识创造来自于探究性学习活动,基于建构主义的知识同化与顺应的过程,是个人隐性知识的建构过程,也是从个人所创造的隐性知识向人类社会显性知识转化的过程。     

孟子民本思想对构建和谐社会的历史启迪

孟子民本思想的终极目的是实现天下太平,建立一个他所理想的和谐社会.为实现这一目的,孟子提出了许多涉及政治、经济、文化等方面的主张和措施.这些主张和措施对建设社会主义和谐社会很有启发和借鉴意义.     

Migration from Latin American countries to the United States: the economic,social and reproductive lives of Hispanic female immigrants, 1980

The authors describe the socioeconomic characteristics and fertility patterns of female immigrants from Latin America to the United States, with a focus on reasons for fertility differentials. "Using the one per cent public use sample from the 1970 and 1980 United States census, we first compare changes in socio economic characteristics from 1970 to 1980, and then examine the determinants of fertility of female immigrants to the United States, aged 16-49, from four Latin American areas or countries of birth.... The findings...suggest that there are direct effects of demographic, assimilation, and socioeconomic variables beyond those mediated by the variables in each of these sets. Further, regardless of the model, the effect of the clusters of demographic characteristics is most apparent. Age categories and marital status are the strongest indexed determinants of immigrant fertility.... The effect of education and employment is strong. Among assimilation variables, duration of residence and language ability are significant determinants of Hispanic immigrant fertility." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

A NOTE ON A SEQUENTIAL GROUP t-TEST

A sequential probability ratio test (SPET) of the mean of a normal distribution with unknown variance, based on an independent sequence of groups of observations, is investigated and its efficiency compared with that of the WAGE sequential t-test, which is based on an invariantly sufficient sequence of test statistics.     

Behavioural Social Work with Schizophrenic Patients in the Community

Summary A preliminary project on the application of behaviour modificationprocedures in the home setting is reported together with commentson the social needs of schizophrenic patients and their families.The article includes suggestions about social work with thisclient group based on the project experience.     

Family composition preferences in a developing culture: The case of Taiwan, 1973

Abstract As fertility comes increasingly under voluntary control in a developing society, it can be argued that individual desires or preferences about children will become more salient and more significant for eventual fertility. Hence, the study of preferences is increasingly important as contraceptive use is extended and results in decreasing the number of unwanted births.(1) Further changes in fertility then depend on changes in preferences. The assumption is that people will at least try to achieve the families they want, if the means to do so are available. The fact that contraception is used at all is some evidence of the soundness of this assumption, although it should be recognized that family size desires operate in a complex of preferences, under varying degrees of conflict and control. To expect a one-to-one relationship between attitudes or preferences and overt behaviour would be simplistic.     

Ambulance allocation for maximal survival with heterogeneous outcome measures

This paper proposes new models for locating emergency medical services (EMS) by incorporating survival functions for capturing multiple-classes of heterogeneous patients. The Maximal Expected Survival Location Model for Heterogeneous Patients (MESLMHP) aims to maximize the overall expected survival probability of multiple-classes of patients, whereby different classes could be defined according to agreed patient categories based on response time targets, or by capturing differing medical conditions each with a corresponding survival function. Furthermore, we propose and demonstrate an approximation approach to solving the extended stochastic version of MESLMHP, which utilizes queuing theory to permit the modeling of congestion and utilization at each ambulance station, and does not require assumptions to be made on the utilization of ambulances. Both models are demonstrated using data from the ambulance service in Wales. We show that our multiple outcome measures and survival-maximizing approach, rather than one based on average response time targets alone or a single patient class provides more effective EMS ambulance allocations.     

Energy and the economy— A reply to Smil and Kuz

In the June 1976 edition of this journal Smil and Kuz discussed the case for saying that there are quite firm relationships between energy consumption and GDP. They argued broadly that there was no general relationship, but, instead, the individual countries are locked into individual patterns of energy consumption. The proponents of the ‘there is a relationship’ school of thought include the author of this reply who is employed in the Economics and Programmes Branch of the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.