Being a Foster-to-Adopt Parent: Experiences of (Un)certainty and Their Influence on the Sense of Being the Parent

The Mixed-Bank Program (Quebec, Canada) is based on concurrent planning principles. While the primary goal of this placement is reunification of the child with their birth parents, the low probability of this happening calls for simultaneously planning for an alternative solution, such as adoption. As a result, foster-to-adopt families have to deal with the uncertainty of the adoptability of the child and having no legal status nor control over the situation. In a qualitative study focusing on understanding how foster families from the Mixed-Bank Program develop the sense of being the parent of the child they care for, 25 semi-structured interviews with foster parents from 20 different families were conducted. As part of grounded theory methodology, a typology of profiles according to the level of uncertainty was constructed: (1) experience of certainty, (2) experience of momentary uncertainty, and (3) chronic uncertainty. This article presents these profiles and discusses the following challenges: the willingness to settle for permanence without adoption in all profiles, the link between the level of uncertainty and the assiduity of birth parents to supervised visits with the child, and the lack of power and control over the fulfillment of the goal of having or completing a family.     

Diversity and assemblage filtering in ground-dwelling spiders (Araneae) along an urbanisation gradient in Denmark

Urban Ecosystems - We studied the effects on spiders of a three-step rural-urban urbanisation gradient near a Danish town embedded in a historically forested landscape. Using pitfall traps set in...     

Mapping responsible conduct in the uncharted field of research-creation: A scoping review

This scoping review addresses the issues of responsible conduct of research (RCR) that can arise in the practice of research-creation (RC), an emergent, interdisciplinary, and heterogeneous field at the interface of academic research and creative activities. Little is yet known about the nature and scope of RCR issues in RC, so our study examined three questions: (1) What are the specific issues in RC in relation to RCR? (2) How does the specificity of RC influence the understanding and practice of RCR? (3) What recommendations could help address the issues highlighted in the literature? To answer these questions, we conducted a scoping review of the academic literature (n = 181 texts) dealing with RCR in RC. We found that researcher-creators faced some very different RCR challenges in comparison with their colleagues in the rest of academia. Addressing these issues is important for both the RCR and RC communities in order to ensure that the rapid development of this field occurs in line with the norms of RCR which, nonetheless, should be adapted to respect the particularities of RC and allow its contributions to the academic world.     

Patchwork of promises: A critical analysis of immigration policies for unaccompanied undocumented children in the United States

In 2014, the United States saw a greater than 50% increase in the number of unaccompanied children from Mexico and Central America arriving at the U.S./Mexico border, and unaccompanied children continue to migrate to the United States in consistent numbers. The dramatic increase of 2014 exposed gaps in policies aimed at supporting unaccompanied children as they await legal adjudication. This paper begins with a historic review of immigration policies in the United States aimed at supporting unaccompanied migrant children. An analytic review is provided of existing immigration policies in the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, highlighting the competing paradigms created by missions of security‐focused policy versus child‐centred policy. A close examination of the values that influenced policy development in this area is included, along with a discussion of how social work practice can infuse elements of social justice into immigration policy reform. Areas for future research to reform immigration policy focused on supporting unaccompanied undocumented minors are highlighted.     

Body image,satisfaction with sexual life,self-esteem,and anxiodepressive symptoms: A comparative study between premenopausal,perimenopausal, and postmenopausal women

Menopause is an important life transition in women, and it is associated with significant physical and psychological changes. This study aimed at examining how the menopausal transition influences body image and satisfaction with sexual life. To this aim, body image dissatisfaction, sexual dissatisfaction, and self-esteem were compared in three groups of women with distinct menopausal status (premenopausal n = 142, perimenopausal n = 66, or postmenopausal n = 149), while controlling for depressive and anxiety symptoms and BMI. Using ANOVA between these three groups, we observed that dissatisfaction with body image was significantly higher in the perimenopausal sample compared with its premenopausal counterpart. In the postmenopausal sample, body image improved, as this group displayed body image scores close to the premenopausal level. In addition, sexual dissatisfaction was significantly increased in the perimenopausal and postmenopausal samples, which is compatible with the concept that higher body appreciation positively predicted sexual function. We conclude that body image dissatisfaction reaches a maximum during the perimenopausal phase, before returning to a level nearly identical between the premenopausal and the postmenopausal phases.     

农村金融发展与经济增长关系的实证研究

运用内生经济增长模型,结合我国农村地区金融和经济的实际情况,采取1981~2008年的时间序列数据,通过向量自回归检验我国农村金融发展与经济增长之间的某种关系,实证检验结果显示:我国农村金融发展与经济增长保持一种长期稳定关系,农村金融发展促进农村经济的增长。农村金融的介入激发了农村经济增长的潜力,收入是影响农村经济增长的主要因素,但是人均收入并不是金融发展的主要因素。农村投资产出比长期保持一个较低的水平,这种低水平状态表明了农村金融发展的薄弱,投资产出比与经济增长呈现负相关,投资量在产出量得比重太小,没有对经济产生影响;农村中的贷存比保持一个良好的状态,农村储蓄的资金更多流向了农村贷款。因此,在发展农村金融时,应该更加注重农村制度的改革,鼓励和支持民间金融的发展,实现农村金融机构和形式多样化,多渠道促进农村贷款量的增加,有效地促进农村金融体系适应农村经济的发展。     

Existence and Uniqueness of Solutions to the Bellman Equation in the Unbounded Case

We study the problem of the existence and uniqueness of solutions to the Bellman equation in the presence of unbounded returns. We introduce a new approach based both on consideration of a metric on the space of all continuous functions over the state space, and on the application of some metric fixed point theorems. With appropriate conditions we prove uniqueness of solutions with respect to the whole space of continuous functions. Furthermore, the paper provides new sufficient conditions for the existence of solutions that can be applied to fairly general models. It is also proven that the fixed point coincides with the value function and that it can be approached by successive iterations of the Bellman operator.     

On the use of extreme value tail modeling for generalized pairwise comparisons with censored outcomes

In randomized clinical trials, methods of pairwise comparisons such as the ‘Net Benefit’ or the ‘win ratio’ have recently gained much attention when interests lies in assessing the effect of a treatment as compared to a standard of care. Among other advantages, these methods are usually praised for delivering a treatment measure that can easily handle multiple outcomes of different nature, while keeping a meaningful interpretation for patients and clinicians. For time-to-event outcomes, a recent suggestion emerged in the literature for estimating these treatment measures by providing a natural handling of censored outcomes. However, this estimation procedure may lead to biased estimates when tails of survival functions cannot be reliably estimated using Kaplan–Meier estimators. The problem then extrapolates to the other outcomes incorporated in the pairwise comparison construction. In this work, we suggest to extend the procedure by the consideration of a hybrid survival function estimator that relies on an extreme value tail model through the Generalized Pareto distribution. We provide an estimator of treatment effect measures that notably improves on bias and remains easily apprehended for practical implementation. This is illustrated in an extensive simulation study as well as in an actual trial of a new cancer immunotherapy.     

Urban risks due to climate change in the Andean municipality of Pasto,Colombia: A Bayesian network approach

The current trends of climate change will increase people's exposure to urban risks related to events such as landslides, floods, forest fires, food production, health, and water availability, which are stochastic and very localized in nature. This research uses a Bayesian network (BN) approach to analyze the intensity of such urban risks for the Andean municipality of Pasto, Colombia, under climate change scenarios. The stochastic BN model is linked to correlational models and local scenarios of representative concentration trajectories (RCP) to project the possible risks to which the municipality of Pasto will be exposed in the future. The results show significant risks in crop yields, food security, water availability and disaster risks, but no significant risks on the incidence of acute diarrheal diseases (ADD) and acute respiratory infections (ARI), whereas positive outcomes are likely to occur in livestock production, influenced by population growth. The advantage of the BN approach is the possibility of updating beliefs in the probabilities of occurrence of events, especially in developing, intermediate cities with information-limited contexts.