Migration and Pacific Mortality: Estimating Migration Effects on Pacific Mortality Rates Using Bayesian Models

Pacific people living in New Zealand have higher mortality rates than New Zealand residents of European/Other ethnicity. The aim of this paper is to see whether Pacific mortality rates vary by natality and duration of residence. We used linked census-mortality information for 25- to 74-year-olds in the 2001 census followed for up to three years. Hierarchical Bayesian modeling provided a means of handling sparse data. Posterior mortality rates were directly age-standardized. We found little evidence of mortality differences between the overseas-born and the New Zealand–born for all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality. However, we found evidence for lower all-cause (and possibly cancer and CVD) mortality rates for Pacific migrants resident in New Zealand for less than 25 years relative to those resident for more than 25 years. This result may arise from a combination of processes operating over time, including health selection effects from variations in New Zealand’s immigration policy, the location of Pacific migrants within the social, political, and cultural environment of the host community, and health impacts of the host culture. We could not determine the relative importance of these processes, but identifying the (modifiable) drivers of the inferred long-term decline in health of the overseas-born Pacific population relative to more-recent Pacific migrants is important to Pacific communities and from a national health and policy perspective.     

From cathedral to supermarket: mourning, silence and solidarity1

Where do mobile, individualistic members of modem Britain spontaneously congregate, eg, for public mourning, atid what does this tell us about the construction of solidarity and a sense of society? Where flowers were laid atid books of condoletice provided after the death of Princess Diana in 1997 provides a case study. A survey of 147 cities, towns and villages found that churches were important in cities and villages, but elsewhere, town halls, war memorials, shops and public buildings provided the magnets to bring people together. The role of war memorials and supermarkets is then examined in an analysis of the 1995 revival of the 11th November silence for the war dead. This indicates a) the payoff for companies in showing that they care, b) the impori;ance of practical logistics of space and time. In a plural and secular society, ritual ‘words against death’ become ‘silences against death.’ These congregations of contemporary nomads may not be full‐blown Durkheimian rites, but they are a representation of existing society at the same time as representing popular hope for a better society.     

The dangers posed by saddle points,and other problems,when using central composite designs

This paper discusses two problems, which can occur when using central composite designs (CCDs), that are not generally covered in the literature but can lead to wrong decisions-and therefore incorrect models-if they are ignored. Most industrialbased experimental designs are sequential. This usually involves running as few initial tests as possible, while getting enough information as is needed to provide a reasonable approximation to reality (the screening stage). The CCD design strategy generally requires the running of a full or fractional factorial design (the cube or hypercube) with one or more additional centre points. The cube is augmented, if deemed necessary, by additional experiments known as star-points. The major problems highlighted here concern the decision to run the star points or not. If the difference between the average response at the centre of the design and the average of the cube results is significant, there is probably a need for one or more quadratic terms in the predictive model. If not, then a simpler model that includes only main effects and interactions is usually considered sufficient. This test for 'curvature' in a main effect will often fail if the design space contains or surrounds a saddle-point. Such a point may disguise the need for a quadratic term. This paper describes the occurrence of a real saddle-point from an industrial project and how this was overcome. The second problem occurs because the cube and star point portions of a CCD are sometimes run as orthogonal blocks. Indeed, theory would suggest that this is the correct procedure. However in the industrial context, where minimizing the total number of tests is at a premium, this can lead to designs with star points a long way from the cube. In such a situation, were the curvature test to be found non-significant, we could end with a model that predicted well within the cube portion of the design space but that would be unreliable in the balance of the total area of investigation. The paper discusses just such a design, one that disguised the real need for a quadratic term.     

Less tangible ways of reading

Using the Internet, people realize the identity of their offline selves alongside establishing the nature of online simulacra, screen content. Drawing on European philosophy, responding to Asian audiences, the authors argue here for a theory of these processes as seriously ludic (or 'ludenic'). Asserting the 'primacy of play' in human-computer interaction (HCI), 'epistemological Calvinism' (Stone 1995, p. 9) is critiqued. Internet users' plural personalities switch between enabling roles in mundane material and mediated virtual worlds: they alternate aspects of the self, with the hermeneutic goal of constructing from hypertext menus online narratives of the read and hence (explicitly or implicitly) of the reader. The authors' hypothetical account of multicultural media appropriation as fundamentally (if not entirely) ludic is tested against the recorded evidence of Chinese and Malays talking in Malaysian focus groups about their experience of reading three online versions of newspapers. The virtual journalism accessed here was located on websites for the Australian (Melbourne) Age, UK (London) Times, and US (New York) Times. The Internet genre of e-journalism provides its readers with ludic gratification. Engaging with online news narratives can be an enjoyable escape from the daily round. Dutiful Internet use with a worldly purpose is more constrained in its capacity to liberate. As instrumental (with an extrinsic goal), it is therefore less than entirely playful but more materially functional. Nevertheless, the authors seek to show that such obligatory activity on the Web remains liminally ludic.     

Development of a short-form scale of public attitudes toward homelessness

How do urban Americans regard the problem of homelessness? Recent surveys by pollsters and social scientists seem to document a “backlash” during the 1980s, with public sentiment shifting from sympathy to resentment. The U.S. Supreme Court, for example, recently upheld a controversial 1990 New York City law forbidding poor people from panhandling in the city's subways. This study was designed to develop a brief, reliable, valid scale to more precisely assess public attitudes toward homelessness (acronym PATH), which future researchers can use to more exactly chart changes and correlates of public opinion toward homelessness. Here, a cross section of 222 adults in New York City responded to a 38- item survey containing PATH and five other brief scales. Analysis of responses found general support for four initial hypotheses: (1) There was indeed a remarkable diversity of public opinion, from 3 to 20 points on the 0– 20- point PA TH Scale, ranging from profound sympathy to anger and disgust. (2) A short- form of MacDonald's Poverty Scale correlated only modestly with one's PATH score (r=+0.49) that, along with respondents' comments, suggests these two forms of social distress may now be viewed quite separately in the American psyche. (3) Psychometrically, the 5- item PATH proved to be high in internal reliability (α=0.74), and in construct validity, with significant correlations with 4 other items. (4) Results so far indicate at least some personality basis for PATH. As expected, those most sympathetic to the homeless were significantly lower in authoritarian personality (r=?0.24) and in belief in a just world (r=?0.13). Unexpectedly, PATH correlated negatively with Social Desirability (r=? 0.15, p < 0.05). Potential uses of this PATH scale are explored, along with the notion of important distinctions in poverty and homelessness as two increasingly separate forms of social distress.     

‘Farming miners’ or ‘mining farmers’?: Diamond mining and rural development in post-conflict Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is currently emerging from a brutal civil war that lasted most of the 1990s, and now has the dubious distinction of being ranked among the world's poorest countries. As thousands of displaced people move back to their villages, a large proportion of the predominantly farm-based rural population are growing food crops for the first time in a decade. Alluvial diamond mining makes an important contribution to the national economy, though some would argue that Sierra Leone's diamonds are a ‘resource curse’. Drawing upon research undertaken in the 1970s and also in the post-conflict period, the paper provides a longitudinal perspective on the complex links between the farming and mining sectors. Recent field research in Sierra Leone's Eastern Province, indicates that many links between farming and diamond mining have actually been maintained despite severe dislocation. These links could play a key role in rejuvenating market-oriented food production, providing the much-needed impetus for post-war rural development. In charting a future development trajectory, the paper recognizes the urgent need for an effective management scheme for both mining and marketing diamonds, given the potentially destabilizing effect on the country of the uncontrolled exploitation of this valuable resource. In this context, a recent community-based, integrated management initiative adopted by one local NGO, the Peace Diamond Alliance, is examined. If meaningful rural development is to be achieved among desperately poor communities, development strategies must be based on a detailed understanding of the nature of inter-locking livelihoods in the agricultural and mining sectors.