Bridging and bonding connections beyond the web: youth movements and civic engagement

Young people's participation, supported by the advent and the use of social media, seems to increase and become more definite, especially when it is linked to the local territory and its activities. In this respect, the connections the youths are able to create online go beyond the web, also developing social interactions with local communities. This article, starting from these premises, aims at investigating more deeply the debate about the civic use of the web by young people. The analysis focuses on 20 youth movements (cultural, social-collective, and environmental ones), with national/international relevance, mainly related to the web. Taking into account five main dimensions – internationalization, level of organization, participation, communication, and benefits for the social structure – the paper point outs different dynamics among the movements related to: (1) the use of the net, (2) the transfer from the online communication exchange to the local implementation of the civic actions, and (3) the involvement of the local public opinion. Moreover, the study reveals strong connections among participants, both in terms of bridging and bonding links so that the movements may be considered as a promising opportunity to strengthen civicness and foster social capital.     

The role of exercise on the innate immunity of the elderly

The increased life span in human population has shown that some diseases, as infections, cancer and autoimmune phenomena, occur more frequently in the elderly than in the younger. We describe the ageing process involving the innate immune system and the improvement given by moderate physical activity. In addition, we discuss the altered neutrophil granulocytes function, the role of macrophages and natural killer cells, besides the influence of cytokines and secretory IgA. The acquired information help us to explain how these changes could favor the onset of diseases in the elderly and how they may boost their immune function.     

New algorithms for k-center and extensions

The problem of interest is covering a given point set with homothetic copies of several convex containers C ₁,…,C _k , while the objective is to minimize the maximum over the dilatation factors. Such k-containment problems arise in various applications, e.g. in facility location, shape fitting, data classification or clustering. So far most attention has been paid to the special case of the Euclidean k-center problem, where all containers C _i are Euclidean unit balls. Recent developments based on so-called core-sets enable not only better theoretical bounds in the running time of approximation algorithms but also improvements in practically solvable input sizes. Here, we present some new geometric inequalities and a Mixed-Integer-Convex-Programming formulation. Both are used in a very effective branch-and-bound routine which not only improves on best known running times in the Euclidean case but also handles general and even different containers among the C _i .     

Young urban adults' heterosexual risk encounters and perceived risk and safety: a structured diary study

Using diary methods, the current study explored characteristics of young adults' sexual risk interactions over a two-week period and the associations between perceived risk and safety with regard to these sexual risk behaviors. We screened all participants to ensure a moderate to high scores on an HIV knowledge measure. Men (n = 44) and women ( n = 48) enrolled at an inner-city college collected diary data, generating reports of 440 sexual occasions over a 2-week period (1,278 person-days). Despite participation in sexual risk activities, including highly inconsistent condom use during intercourse, participants uniformly reported high safety and little to no risk. Only women's perceptions of safety (not risk) were associated with condom use, men's perceptions of both safety and risk were unrelated. Ratings of safety and risk appeared to operate independently for the most part. Sex with new partners and new sexual activity were associated with both judgments of greater risk and lower safety were associated for men only. These results add to the growing evidence that young people fail to integrate fully their general knowledge regarding HIV risk into their personal interactions. This study has implications for the development of cognitive models around sexual decision-making for young adults at risk for HIV and may provide insight into the contextual features of sexual interactions associated with young people's perceptions of risk and safety.     

Enhancing parent-child interaction during foster care visits: experimental assessment of an intervention

Mothers of young children recently placed in foster care participated in an intervention to enhance parent-child interaction during visits. The mothers all reported substantial loss and trauma histories. Immediately prior to the visits, the mothers were coached on strategies for separating from their children at the visit's end. The mothers displayed more behavioral strategies for supporting their children when the visit was over, but were less engaged with their children during the leave-taking sequence and displayed fewer ways of maintaining the child's involvement in mother-child interaction during leave-taking than those in a comparison group. This article discusses consideration of parents' trauma history in designing interventions to enhance parent-child interaction.     

Talking about Beauty: A Study of Everyday Aesthetics among Low‐Income Citizens of Milan

This paper reports on research undertaken into the aesthetics of the everyday. As well as the subject matter of aesthetic philosophy, art criticism and of the sociology of art, beauty, and beautiful are of course very ordinary matters too. To shed light on the meanings of beauty as used in everyday settings and in natural language, we use the data collected in a study conducted with a group of low‐income residents of the city of Milan. In this study we were interested in analyzing their lifestyle in terms of their relationship with aesthetics, i.e., with “beautiful” objects and/or experiences. Participants' self‐reported aesthetic appreciations suggest that conceptions of “beauty” are used as devices to narrate pieces of identity, memories, experiences, etc. Their aesthetic judgements take on an anthropological function, creating a framework of meanings that help the participants make sense of the world of objects and of their own lives with/through them.     

Fertility treatment and organizational discourses of the non-reproductive female body

This paper contributes to debates on the intersections between organizations, the body, and reproduction by exploring how the non-reproductive female body is discursively (re)constructed by organizations which provide fertility treatment, such as private clinics and fertility magazines. Organization studies has neglected the non-reproductive body, despite a fair amount of research on its reproductive counterpart, especially pregnant and maternal bodies. Equally, these discussions privilege the employment relationship – for example, how women are enjoined to manage their bodies at work – whereas we concentrate on the marketplace, or the field of fertility treatment, and the organizations therein. These organizations, while focused on reproducing bodies, also influence, compound, and challenge notions of the bodies they are involved with. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis of texts produced by UK fertility organizations, we present three discourses of the non-reproductive female body that (re)generate subject positions where the absence of reproduction is a medical condition, an emotionally distressing experience, and something that needs to be cared for. Our argument suggests how the texts can operate as a form of Foucauldian governmental biopower, emphasizing how they hail the infertile female subject.     

Integrating strategic planning and performance management in universities: a multiple case-study analysis

Journal of Management and Governance - Over time, public universities have been involved in a process of modernisation based on a new concept of governance and managerial methods for increasing...