Consumer Protection for Prospective Assisted Living Facility Residents: Gordian Knot or Solvable Problem?

The consumer protection safety net for prospective assisted living facility residents and their caregivers is a work in progress and is filled with numerous potential pitfalls. Notwithstanding a recent deluge of recent state legislation, baselines in crucial areas remain erratic and confusing; in addition, useful factual information is hard to come by. Using a legal perspective, based on statutory and regulatory examples from different states and interviews with industry stakeholders, the author explores the causes of assisted living facilities choice problems, potential solutions, and the obstacles affecting these solutions.     

The SLA DBIO 100 Poll: 100 Journals Voted by SLA’s BioMedical and Life Sciences Division as the Most Influential over the Last 100 Years

An expert opinion poll of the members of the BioMedical and Life Sciences Division (DBIO) of the Special Libraries Association (SLA), conducted on the occasion of the SLA's Centennial (Washington, DC, June 14–17, 2009), identified 100 journals across three major categories (Clinical Medicine and Allied Health Sciences, Journals Primarily Reporting Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Journals of Natural History) as the most influential over the last 100 years. The Top Ten, containing winners from all three of these groups, were also named, as were a “Journal” and a “Publisher” of the Centennial.”     

Anatomy of a Market Failure: NYSE Trading Suspensions (1974–1988)

A cross-sectional analysis of all trading suspensions that occurred during the period 1974–1988 in the New York Stock Exchange reveals that, though the desire to maintain price continuity remains an important motivation to suspend trade, inventory-imbalance fears are pronounced for large firms. Adverse-selection concerns afflict all news-related suspensions irrespective of firm size. Furthermore, we find substitutability among the various dimensions of liquidity: Although large- cap stocks have lower bid-ask spreads, they halt more often. A time series analysis shows that the resiliency of the exchange—its ability to absorb severe volatility shocks—has improved in this period.     

Rawlsian optimal population size

In this paper, I examine the implications of the Rawlsian maximin criterion for optimal population size and intergenerational allocation of resource when fertility is endogenous. I show that whenever children are better-off than their parents in laissez-faire, then the size of the population and parental bequests are also optimal according to the Rawlsian criterion. Otherwise, laissez-faire leads to overpopulation and suboptimal bequests. I then show that by using proper price-based corrective policies, society can achieve a Rawlsian optimal allocation. These policies involve either a combination of a subsidy to aggregate future consumption and a per-capita tax on children, or a subsidy to average future consumption.For their comments, I thank two anonymous referees. I also thank Assaf Razin and Efraim Sadka for their comments on an earlier draft.     

Sortabilities of Partition Properties

Consider the partition of a set of integers into parts. Various partition properties have been proposed in the literature to facilitate the restriction of the focus of attention to some small class of partitions. Recently, Hwang, Rothblum and Yao defined and studied the sortability of these partition properties as a tool to prove the existence of a partition with such a property in a given family. In this paper we determine the sortability indices of the seven most interesting properties of partitions providing a complete solution to the sortability issue.     

The use of edge-directions and linear programming to enumerate vertices

Given a list of vectors that contains directions of the edges of a given polytope ℘ and the availability of an algorithm that solves linear programs over ℘, we describe a method for enumerating the vertices of ℘; in particular, the method is adaptable to polytopes which are presented as (linear) projections of polytopes having linear inequality representation. Polynomial complexity bounds under both the real and the binary computation models are derived when the dimension of the polytope is fixed and the given LP algorithm is polynomial. Dedicated to Professor Frank K. Hwang on the occasion of his sixty fifth birthday. Supported in part by a grant from ISF—the Israel Science Foundation, by a VPR grant at the Technion and by the Fund for the Promotion of Research at the Technion.     

Experiences of Mothers Who Are Child Sexual Abuse Survivors: A Qualitative Exploration

Child sexual abuse has been associated with a number of problems affecting women over their lifespan, including difficulties with parenting. However, there is a modest number of qualitative studies examining the impact of child sexual abuse on survivors who are mothers. There is a particular need for qualitative investigations that ask survivors who are mothers general questions about the impact of child sexual abuse on their lives rather than those that specifically ask about the impact of child sexual abuse on parenting. The former approach would allow survivors to describe effects that may impact parenting but that survivors do not consciously link to affecting their parenting. Such information may inform interventions to assist this population of survivors. This secondary data analysis examined themes revealed in interviews with 44 survivors of child sexual abuse who were mothers. Participants were seeking treatment for their child sexual abuse and completed an in-person interview in which they were asked open-ended questions about the sexual abuse they experienced as a child and how their abuse affects them now as adults. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded using thematic analysis. The following six themes emerged from the narratives: (a) being a parent, (b) family of origin dysfunction, (c) the impact of abuse, (d) the abuse history and response to abuse, (e) coping, and (f) hopes and desires for the future. This study highlights several ways in which child sexual abuse impacts survivors who are mothers, areas for further study, and the need for interventions to assist this population in meeting the challenges they face as mothers.