Small-scale farming in semi-arid areas: Livelihood dynamics between 1997 and 2010 in Laikipia,Kenya

The rural population of semi-arid lands in Kenya face multiple challenges that result from population growth, poor markets, land use and climatic changes. In particular, subsistence oriented farmers face various risks and opportunities in their attempt to secure their livelihoods. This paper presents an analysis on how livelihood assets and strategies of smallholders in Laikipia County, Kenya, have changed within the last decade and discusses the implications for development interventions. The analysis is based on bi-temporal data from 170 semi-structured household interviews in 1997 and a follow-up survey of 30 households conducted in 2010. Well-being indicators were developed and livelihood portfolios compared. The results show a striking persistence in low asset endowment for the majority of smallholders from an aggregated perspective, whereas transitions into and out of better livelihood conditions become evident from a household perspective. The investment in, and accumulation of, conventional buffer or productive assets, such as grain stocks, livestock or land, does not shield households from adverse shocks and stresses as smallholders were shown to easily slip back into poverty. Household portfolios display particular constraints for smallholders in expanding natural resource related activities and a substantial decrease in livestock numbers. While off-farm activities could possibly increase well-being, the prevailing low income levels and high insecurity for the majority who are engaged in off-farm employment, limits the ability to increase livelihood assets in the area.     

Kontaktgenerierung auf StudiVZ: Wie über Social Networking Platforms alte Freundschaften gepflegt und neue geschlossen werden

Virtual communication continuously gains importance in modern society, as the growing success of “social networking platforms”(SNPs) like Facebook, XING or StudiVZ indicates. In this article we compare such platforms in regard to their instrumental vs. expressive orientation. It is supposed, that amore expressive orientation of a platform like Facebook or StudiVZ is not only functional to manage contacts to friends already known outside the internet (“social searching”), like studies on user's reports on their own motivations have recently shown for Facebook, but also helps generating new contacts to people not already known before (“social browsing”). This more implicit function might be promoted by the trust-promising visuability of a person's network contacts, especially in the face of strangers. An online survey on StudiVZ with n = 1316 randomized participants confirms both hypotheses.     

Situationen gestalten,um Ärzte am Krankenhaus zu halten

The situation at work in a hospital is often exhausting for medical doctors. Besides deteriorating health, doctors report a diminishing quality of their work. As a consequence, the willingness to change the hospital one is employed by is increased. Aside from important political decisions, doctors and others of responsibility can design their working situation more positively. The authors discuss the doctors’ challenges based on a current survey and introduces situational design—an approach to design working situations optimally so that they positively enhance wellbeing and productivity.     

Spiritual needs of mothers with sick new born or premature infants—A cross sectional survey among German mothers

Background

Spirituality is part of the basic needs of all humans, yet often undervalued by health professionals. Less is known about the spiritual needs of mothers of preterm or sick new born children.

Sum-of-squares rank upper bounds for matching problems

The matching problem is one of the most studied combinatorial optimization problems in the context of extended formulations and convex relaxations. In this paper we provide upper bounds for the rank of the sum-of-squares/Lasserre hierarchy for a family of matching problems. In particular, we show that when the problem formulation is strengthened by incorporating the objective function in the constraints, the hierarchy requires at most \(\left\lceil \frac{k}{2} \right\rceil \) levels to refute the existence of a perfect matching in an odd clique of size \(2k+1\).     

DISAPPOINTMENT AVERSION AND SOCIAL COMPARISONS IN A REAL‐EFFORT COMPETITION

We present an experiment to investigate the source of disappointment aversion in a sequential real‐effort competition. Specifically, we study the contribution of social comparison effects to the disappointment aversion previously identified in a two‐person real‐effort competition (Gill, D., and V. Prowse. “A Structural Analysis of Disappointment Aversion in a Real Effort Competition.” American Economic Review, 102, 2012, 469–503). To do this we compare “social” and “asocial” versions of the Gill and Prowse experiment, where the latter treatment removes the scope for social comparisons. If disappointment aversion simply reflects an asymmetric evaluation of losses and gains we would expect it to survive in our asocial treatment. Alternatively, if losing to or winning against another person affects the evaluation of losses/gains, as we show would be theoretically the case under asymmetric inequality aversion, we would expect treatment differences. We find behavior in social and asocial treatments to be similar, suggesting that social comparisons have little impact in this setting. Unlike in Gill and Prowse we do not find evidence of disappointment aversion. (JEL C91, D12, D81, D84)     

The Mirror to Our Soul? Comparisons of Spontaneous and Posed Vocal Expression of Emotion

It has been the subject of much debate in the study of vocal expression of emotions whether posed expressions (e.g., actor portrayals) are different from spontaneous expressions. In the present investigation, we assembled a new database consisting of 1877 voice clips from 23 datasets, and used it to systematically compare spontaneous and posed expressions across 3 experiments. Results showed that (a) spontaneous expressions were generally rated as more genuinely emotional than were posed expressions, even when controlling for differences in emotion intensity, (b) there were differences between the two stimulus types with regard to their acoustic characteristics, and (c) spontaneous expressions with a high emotion intensity conveyed discrete emotions to listeners to a similar degree as has previously been found for posed expressions, supporting a dose–response relationship between intensity of expression and discreteness in perceived emotions. Our conclusion is that there are reliable differences between spontaneous and posed expressions, though not necessarily in the ways commonly assumed. Implications for emotion theories and the use of emotion portrayals in studies of vocal expression are discussed.     

Expanding uses of building information modeling in life-cycle construction projects

BIM is targeted at providing information about the entire building and a complete set of design documents and data stored in an integrated database. In this paper, we study the use of BIM in two life-cycle construction projects in Kuopio, Finland during 2011. The analysis of uses of BIM and their main problems will constitute a foundation for an intervention. We will focus on the following questions: (1) How different partners use the composite BIM model? (2) What are the major contradictions or problems in the BIM use? The preliminary findings reported in this study show that BIM has been adopted quite generally to design use but the old ways of collaboration seem to prevail, especially between designers and between designers and building sites. BIM has provided new means and demands for collaboration but expansive uses of BIM for providing new interactive processes across professional fields have not much come true.     

Visual ergonomics interventions in mail sorting facilities

This study was performed between 2004 and 2011 at mail sorting facilities in Sweden. During this time, different interventions were performed. The first was a lighting intervention that had a positive impact on the postal workers, especially those with eyestrain. A new lighting system also improved the illuminance and gave better light distribution. The second intervention involved new personal spectacles for the postal workers who needed them and this had a positive effect on eyestrain. The third intervention involved a specific type of sorting spectacles for the postal workers who already used progressive lenses privately. The reading distances that the postal workers had while sorting the mail was inverted to the distances in their regular progressive lenses. The new sorting spectacles had a positive effect on head postures and on muscular activity.