Older women's fears of violence: the need for interventions that enable active ageing

Women's fear of violence can impact negatively on their active participation in life. An ageing survey conducted with 2,620 Australian respondents aged 50 to 90 years examined aspects of work, learning, social, spiritual and emotional status, health, vision, home, life events, demographics, and asked an open-ended question about what being actively engaged in life meant. Ordinal regression was carried out on two dependent variables: wanting and needing to learn to discourage violence. Analyses found that as women's age increased, those on lower incomes were more likely than others to say they needed to learn how to discourage violence against them. This paper investigates the variables associated with the findings-transport, finances, news media, home safety, and reduced social interactions. Results highlight the importance of understanding women's fear in the context of personal and social issues, and the need to provide learning opportunities to improve safety and social engagement.     

The use of defence mechanisms as precursors to coming out in post-apartheid South Africa: a gay and lesbian youth perspective

This article comprises one facet of a larger, three-year phenomenological study (1997-2000) of gay and lesbian youth coming out in post-apartheid South Africa. A nonprobability sample of 18 young people, aged between 16 and 21 years, was interviewed. The resultant data was content analyzed, and the trustworthiness of the information was ensured via member checking and utilizing an independent coder. Results consistently revealed that gay and lesbian youth use defense mechanisms, such as denial, avoidance, compartmentalization, suppression, compensation, sublimation, undoing, displacement, rationalization, and intellectualization, in a conscious manner during their coming out process. The young people in this study demonstrated resilience despite the prejudice and inner turmoil that they had experienced. Practice guidelines are suggested in terms of how health and social care practitioners can support gay and lesbian youth in coping with their coming out process.     

赋予作品灵魂的“大国錾刻师”——大国工匠之錾刻工孟剑锋

'弘扬工匠精神,打造技能强国'。为了实现制造强国的梦想,特别是在青少年中宣传和弘扬工匠精神,人力资源和社会保障部教材办公室组织制作了'大国工匠——工匠精神系列动画宣传片'。全片共15集,以动漫故事形式讲述了15位工匠式技能人物的先进事迹。片头:高铁奔行在神州大地上,不仅为人们的出行提供方便,还正在走向世界.     

反向操作的“周大神”——大国工匠之钢丝绳制造工周家荣

“弘扬工匠精神,打造技能强国”。为了实现制造强国的梦想,特别是在青少年中宣传和弘扬工匠精神,人力资源和社会保障部教材办公室组织制作了“大国工匠——工匠精神系列动画宣传片”。全片共15集,以动漫故事形式讲述了15位工匠式技能人物的先进事迹。高铁奔行在神州大地上,不仅为人们的出行提供方便,还正在走向世界,成为中国制造的新名片.     

谢尔登和萨拉夫合编:《中国劳动妇女的生活》

据英国《中国季刊》的介绍说,这是一本文笔流畅,引人注目的著作。它阐述了两个主题:中国妇女对中国(包括台湾,香港)的社会生活和经济发展所作出的贡献和生活史研究方法对中国问题研究所起的作用。谢里登和萨拉夫编写这本著作的目的是搜集     

Missing item imputation for quality-of-life instruments with application to asthma quality-of-life questionnaires

There has been increasing use of quality-of-life (QoL) instruments in drug development. Missing item values often occur in QoL data. A common approach to solve this problem is to impute the missing values before scoring. Several imputation procedures, such as imputing with the most correlated item and imputing with a row/column model or an item response model, have been proposed. We examine these procedures using data from two clinical trials, in which the original asthma quality-of-life questionnaire (AQLQ) and the miniAQLQ were used. We propose two modifications to existing procedures: truncating the imputed values to eliminate outliers and using the proportional odds model as the item response model for imputation. We also propose a novel imputation method based on a semi-parametric beta regression so that the imputed value is always in the correct range and illustrate how this approach can easily be implemented in commonly used statistical software. To compare these approaches, we deleted 5% of item values in the data according to three different missingness mechanisms, imputed them using these approaches and compared the imputed values with the true values. Our comparison showed that the row/column-model-based imputation with truncation generally performed better, whereas our new approach had better performance under a number scenarios.     

Profile information matrix for nonlinear transformation models

For semiparametric models, interval estimation and hypothesis testing based on the information matrix for the full model is a challenge because of potentially unlimited dimension. Use of the profile information matrix for a small set of parameters of interest is an appealing alternative. Existing approaches for the estimation of the profile information matrix are either subject to the curse of dimensionality, or are ad-hoc and approximate and can be unstable and numerically inefficient. We propose a numerically stable and efficient algorithm that delivers an exact observed profile information matrix for regression coefficients for the class of Nonlinear Transformation Models [A. Tsodikov (2003) J R Statist Soc Ser B 65:759-774]. The algorithm deals with the curse of dimensionality and requires neither large matrix inverses nor explicit expressions for the profile surface.     

撒马尔罕和它的湛蓝的圆顶塔——帖木儿故国游记

在旅行者头脑里有一幅幻想的地图,象蜘蛛网一样,上面密布着奇光异彩的城市,它们的名字象美妙的音乐一样悦耳。撒马尔罕就是其中一个城市,它的魅力来自它名字的四个奇妙的音节,好象银铃一样叮咚作响。鲁宾·达利奥眺望远方的地平线时,一首赞美撒马尔罕的《徘徊之曲》油然而成:     

穆斯林的复兴要求

在一本伊斯兰先知的旧书中写道:“将出现一个和平和稳定的新时期”。但是,在伊斯兰纪元的第十五世纪(就是说穆罕默德于622年从麦加逃亡到麦地那,从此开创了一个新的历史时期和伊斯兰教的光辉纪元),这种在其萌芽时期所做的不够慎重的估计似乎并没有得到证实。今天,整个穆斯林世界都在沸腾。伊朗正在向阿拉伯石油世界宣传它的革命经验;在马来西亚,“安拉的军队”,一个决定恢复“真正的信仰”的传教士组织,希望把所有的异教徒扔进海洋;在菲律宾,政府未能成功地制止南部穆斯林的叛乱;在土耳其,宗派之争在一年之内     

Assessing the relevance of higher education courses

The establishment of the European Higher Education Area has involved specifying lists of professional competencies that programs are expected to develop, and with this the need for procedures to measure how every course within a higher education program is aligned with the program's competencies. We propose an instrument for characterizing this alignment, a process that we call assessing the relevance of a course. Using information from the course syllabus (objectives, contents and assessment scheme), our instrument produces indicators for characterizing the syllabus in terms of a competence list and for assessing its coherence. Because assessment involves quality, the results obtained can also be used to revise and improve the course syllabus. We illustrate this process with an example of a methods course from a mathematics teacher education program at a Spanish university.