The Relationship Between Psychological Functioning in a College Sample and Retrospective Reports of Parental Loyalty Conflicts and Psychological Maltreatment

Two-hundred forty participants completed questionnaires that explored parental unions, experiences of parental loyalty conflict behaviors, psychological functioning, and frequency of exposure to maltreatment. Significant relationships were found between nonintact parental union status and experiences of parental loyalty conflict, parental loyalty conflict and psychological abuse, and parental loyalty conflict and anxiety and depression symptoms. Relatively low frequencies of experiencing parental loyalty conflict can negatively affect psychological functioning. Implications for psychological, social, and legal service providers are presented.     

Determinants of innovativeness in SMEs: disentangling core innovation and technology adoption capabilities

This paper studies innovativeness in SMEs from a set of innovation indicators at the firm level, capturing various types of innovation (product, process, organisational, and marketing innovations) and the level of innovativeness in these firm’s developments. The article identifies two separate dimensions in the innovativeness of Spanish SMEs, using factor analysis techniques. One dimension is associated with the capabilities for core/internal innovation and the other with the capabilities for the adoption of technology. The paper shows that significant differences exist in the personal and organisational factors that favour these two dimensions. The entrepreneur’s motivation, business planning, and cooperation in R&D activities constitute significant factors when considering the core dimension of a firechnology adoption. However, the use of external consultancy services seems to have no significant effect on the core dimension of the innovativeness of an SME, whereas it is a relevant factor for its technology adoption. Furthermore, it is shown that the entrepreneur’s education plays a more significant role in the core dimension of a firm’s innovativeness than in its capabilities for technology adoption. Depending on the policy objectives, these differences should lead to the application of specific policy approaches when an attempt to stimulate innovation in SMEs is made.     

Role Conflict among Family Childcare Providers in the Bronx

Family childcare (FCC) providers provide childcare for many low‐income families in the United States, and the literature suggests they take on several other support roles as well. The current study consisted of focus groups and interviews in which FCC providers (N = 22) shared successes and challenges in their profession. Using grounded theory we identified four primary FCC roles: teacher, caregiver, social worker and business owner. Conflict within and between roles was related to considerable stress. Because roles varied across a spectrum from entangled to rigid professional relationship boundaries, many FCC providers struggled with the limits of their daily work. Suggestions are made to limit role conflict, re‐establish boundaries and promote FCC providers’ well‐being.     

Ergonomics and design for sustainability in healthcare: ambient assisted living and the social-environmental impact of patients lifestyle

This work presents considerations on Ergonomics and Design for Sustainability in the healthcare field based on research experiences of the Technology and Design for Healthcare (TeDH) research group of INDACO (Industrial design, communication, arts and fashion) department of Politecnico di Milano. In order to develop a multidisciplinary approach to design able to answer to specific user needs such as elderly in an environmental sustainable way (1) this paper shows the results we achieved concerning ergonomics and environmental impact in product development (2), the extension of this approach to interior and home design and the advantage of the application of Information Communication Technologies (ICT). ICT can help people with special needs to make their everyday life easier and more safe, at the same time, ICT can make social-environmental impact of everyday behavior evident and can be applied to manage sustainability. The specific theme is thus to integrate ergonomics and sustainability competences in the development of Ambient Assisted Living through a Product- Service System approach. The concept of product service system has the potential to improve product performances and services, establish new relations and networks with different actors in order to satisfy user needs and apply a systems approach considering environmental, social and economic factors in the users' environment.     

The Sonoran Desert’s Domestic Bracero Programme: Institutional Actors and the Creation of Labour Migration Streams

This paper traces the journeys of male migrants to Empalme, Sonora, Mexico to uncover the development of the often overlooked domestic bracero programme that operated in conjunction with its well‐known international equivalent. Drawing on interviews and observations with ex‐braceros who met at a park near the Mexico‐US border, I examine their experiences and participation in Mexico’s domestic bracero program, an unintended and unexplored consequence of its international counterpart. The study shows how regulation and control were constantly reinvented at every step of the selection process by state actors and their affiliates in Mexico. The paper reveals how the oversupply of labour and modernization of agriculture in Sonora resulted in the development of a migration industry where local municipal leaders, coyotes, the state, and Mexican agribusiness capitalized from men’s displacement. The migration industry during the bracero selection process controlled who gained access to the United States labour market by capturing migrant labour en route to the United States in the process fueling a thriving cotton industry in the otherwise stagnant Sonoran Desert economy. The study concludes by taking the lessons from the historic domestic bracero programme to show one instance in which internal and international labour markets were closely interwoven. In the end, I call for more research that examines the relationship between markets on both sides of the border that uncovers how networks are not only structured by personal ties but also by state and market relations.     

The Impact of Welfare Reform Policies on Child Protective Services: A National Study

The 1996 welfare reform bill set forth major changes in social welfare policies. In addition to federal work requirements and time limits, new state policies impose behavioral mandates that may be accompanied by financial sanctions for noncompliance. Analysis of a survey of state Child Protection Services (CPS) directors focuses on four major areas: effect of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) on CPS; interaction between the two agencies; role of TANF sanctions in referrals to CPS; and select special areas of concern. This research provides empirical insight into the interaction between these two agencies, specific TANF sanctions, and the potential conflicts between TANF policies and CPS concerns for the welfare of children and families under its charge.     

Inapproximability results for the lateral gene transfer problem

This paper concerns the Lateral Gene Transfer Problem. This minimization problem, defined by Hallett and Lagergren (2001), is that of finding the most parsimonious lateral gene transfer scenario for a given pair of gene and species trees. Our main results are the following:

Special pension schemes for workers in arduous and hazardous jobs: Functions and conditions to ensure equal treatment

Most jurisdictions grant differentiated and more beneficial treatment – usually in the form of early retirement, and commonly under special pension schemes – to workers in arduous or hazardous jobs. Several justifications for such treatment have been advanced, including i) compensating the worker for the hardship, ii) protecting the worker from the hazard, and iii) realizing the principle of equality in the distribution of costs and benefits in the social security system. This article analyses these functions from a socioeconomic perspective and explains how early retirement for workers in arduous and hazardous jobs is necessary to ensure equality by treating “unequals unequally”, and in proportion to their inequality. Moreover, this article presents a precise formula to calculate when a worker should be allowed to retire, so that workers in occupational domains with a shorter life expectancy do not systematically enjoy lower expected benefits from the pension system while having contributed the same amount. Implications for the design and desirability of special pension benefits are discussed.     

Asymptotic results for hybrids of empirical and partial sums processes

The present paper is devoted to the study of the hybrids of empirical and partial sums processes. In the first part, we present a synthesis of results related to these processes and their connection with the empirical and compound process. We obtain new results on the precise asymptotics in the law of the logarithm related to complete convergence and a.s. convergence, under some mild conditions, for the hybrids of empirical and partial sums processes. Finally, the weighted bootstrap processes and general hybrid processes are also discussed.