Gatekeeper's response: A rejoinder

Gender, marital status, age, and race were considered in relation to the amount and assessment of social ties among 1,124 unmarried men and women aged 40 and over. When there were significant effects of marital status, widowed people tended to be advantaged in amount and supportiveness of their informal ties, although the influence of marital status was affected by age and race. Contrary to some literature, gender differences in social relationships favoring women were not consistently observed. The oldest never married may have the greatest potential needs for affective and instrumental support.     

Peaceful power transfers or successions and democratic consolidation in South Korea

This article sheds light on the positive role of power transfers or leadership successions in the democratic consolidation process in South Korea. In this study, we argue that democratic consolidation in South Korea is slowly taking place, and it is best measured by institutional rather than an individual president’s accomplishment. Therefore, democratic consolidation is not directly related to the success or failure of presidents since the transition to democracy occurred in 1987. Regardless of each president’s performance, repeated power shifts and successions through fair elections are likely to lead to the creation of a favorable political environment for democratic institutions to mature, which will support continued democratic consolidation in South Korea.     

Local influence in multivariate regression

The method of local influence is generalized to the multivariate regression. The scheme of perturbations adopted in multivariate regression is similar in spirit to the perturbation of case-weights in univariate regression case. The method developed here is useful for identifying influential observations in multivariate regression as an exploratory or confirmatory data analysis. An illustrative example is given for the effectiveness of the local influence approach in multivariate regression.     

Revisiting occupational sex segregation in the United States, 1910–1990: Results from a log-linear approach

I reexamine trends in the strength and structure of occupational sex segregation in the United States from 1910 to 1990. Log-multiplicative models show significant change in the association between gender and occupation. Contrary to conventional characterizations, a substantial proportion of this change occurred before 1970. Likewise, a margin-free index shows more integration over the century than do conventional indices. These discrepancies arise from occupation-specific variations in the trajectory of sex segregation: Highly segregated occupations were especially likely to integrate between 1930 and 1940. I identify regions of the occupational structure and pivotal periods in which shifts in segregation occurred and compare these results with conventional historical accounts.     

Welfare Queens,Thrifty Housewives,and Do-It-All Mums

In this paper, we consider how the cultural politics of austerity within Britain plays out on the celebrity maternal body. We locate austerity as a discursive and disciplinary field and contribute to emerging feminist scholarship exploring how broader political and socio-economic shifts interact with cultural constructions of femininity and motherhood. To analyse the symbolic function of mediated celebrity maternity within austerity, the paper draws on a textual analysis of three celebrity mothers: Kate Middleton, Kim Kardashian, and Beyoncé. This analysis was undertaken as part of a larger qualitative study into celebrity culture and young people's classed and gendered aspirations. We show how these celebrity mothers represent the folk devils and fantasy figures of the maternal under austerity—the thrifty, happy housewife, the benefits mum, and the do-it-all working mum—and attempt to unpick what cultural work they do in the context of austerity within Britain. Through the lens of celebrity motherhood, we offer a feminist critique of austerity as a programme that both consolidates unequal class relations and makes punishing demands on women in general, and mothers in particular.     

Testing Branching Process Estimators of Cascading Failure with Data from a Simulation of Transmission Line Outages

We suggest a statistical estimator to quantify the propagation of cascading transmission line failures in large blackouts of electric power systems. We use a Galton‐Watson branching process model of cascading failure and the standard Harris estimator of the mean propagation modified to work when the process saturates at a maximum number of components. If the mean number of initial failures and the mean propagation are estimated, then the branching process model predicts the distribution of the total number of failures. We initially test this prediction on failure data generated by a simulation of cascading transmission line outages on two standard test systems. We discuss the effectiveness of the estimator in terms of how many cascades need to be simulated to predict the distribution of the total number of line outages accurately.     

The Effectiveness of Educational Programs to Improve Recognition and Reporting of Elder Abuse and Neglect: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Health professionals often lack adequate protocols or knowledge to detect, manage, and prevent elder maltreatment. This systematic review describes and evaluates existing literature on the effectiveness of educational interventions to improve health professionals' recognition and reporting of elder abuse and neglect. Fourteen articles described 22 programs ranging from brief didactics to experiential learning and targeted a variety of health and social service audiences. Most evaluations were limited to satisfaction measures. These programs may result in increased awareness, collaboration, and improved case finding. However, using the published literature to guide new program planning is constrained by lack of details and limited evaluations.     

Disentangling the Influence of Value Predispositions and Risk/Benefit Perceptions on Support for Nanotechnology Among the American Public

Using nanotechnology as a case study, this article explores (1) how people's perceptions of benefits and risks are related to their approval of nanotechnology, (2) which information‐processing factors contribute to public risk/benefit perceptions, and (3) whether individuals’ predispositions (i.e., deference to scientific authority and ideology) may moderate the relationship between cognitive processing and risk perceptions of the technology. Results indicate that benefit perceptions positively affect public support for nanotechnology; perceptions of risk tend to be more influenced by systematic processing than by heuristic cues, whereas both heuristic and systematic processing influence benefit perceptions. People who are more liberal‐minded tend to be more affected by systematic processing when thinking about the benefits of nanotechnology than those who are more conservative. Compared to less deferent individuals, those who are more deferent to scientific authority tend to be less influenced by systematic processing when making judgments about the benefits and risks of nanotechnology. Implications are discussed.