Diversity of vascular plants growing on walls of a Brazilian city

City walls are very specialized environments, conditioned by human activities. There is little information about plants that invade human-made habitats, and no study done in Brazil with plants growing up on walls. The aim of the present study was to survey the wall vascular flora of a Brazilian city, comparing the diversity found in its downtown and neighborhoods. Fieldwork was done in Jundiaí, São Paulo State, where data was collected in downtown and in five neighborhoods. In each place, three transects of 1 km were established and every plant individual was registered. Twenty-eight species were identified, all of them on the downtown transect and most also on the neighborhood transects. Five species were the most frequent, although none were dominant. The diversity indicies of the six transects were not significantly different, with an overall diversity of H′ = 2.93.     

Variables related to psychiatric sick leave taken by Spanish secondary school teachers

This study analyses the relationships of certain sociodemographic, organizational, and personality variables with psychiatric sick leave taken by Spanish secondary school teachers. The sample comprised 200 teachers (84 men and 116 women) divided into two groups. The first group was composed of 100 teachers who had suffered from psychiatric disorders requiring sick leave. The second was a matched control group composed of 100 teachers with no history of psychiatric disorders. Both groups shared the same organizational variables (same centre, town, number of students, etc). Logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine any relationships and the risk and protection factors for psychiatric sick leave. It is concluded that the most significant variables related to psychiatric sick leave included competitiveness and hostility, as defined by Type A Behaviour Pattern, emotional exhaustion as a factor of burnout, and job dissatisfaction.     

Wage Expectations for Higher Education Students in Spain

We assess students' ability to forecast future earnings by using data on expected wages self‐reported by college students with different graduation horizons. We find a significant gender gap, by which wage expectations are systematically lower for women than for men. However, women do not fully account for the gender gap in their future earnings. We also find that student performance, degree type, and graduation horizon play a relevant role in wage forecasts. In any case, students' expectations do not conform market wages but become more realistic as they approach graduation.     

Employee and Volunteer

The purpose of this research is to analyze the different factors that determine the level of time devoted to volunteer activity involving employed people. To this end, we applied a logistic regression model to a sample of 5,067 employees, considering four categories of factors: family and personal, on the one hand, and contextual factors, on the other. This second group involves three factor categories: occupational, organizational, and community involvement factors. The findings of this work are especially relevant to two areas: first, to design a policy of corporate social responsibility that effectively integrates the figure of corporate volunteering, considering its pertinent factors; and second, to broaden the perspective of the third‐sector organizations beyond the traditional profile with which volunteers are commonly associated.     

The work–family challenge and mental health

The work–family literature is dominated by studies of white middle-class workers. In this study, we sought to expand this focus by examining work–family issues from the perspective of Mexicans who have immigrated to the USA within the past five years. Using data from qualitative in-depth interviews (N?=?22) and quantitative structured interviews (N?=?150), we documented the work–family experiences associated with immigration, and we examined the extent to which these experiences differed by gender as well as their mental health effects. The in-depth interviews clearly indicated that separation from family and community was a common and poignant strain experienced by Mexican immigrants who came to the USA to find work, and that these experiences did not differ between women and men. Quantitative analyses corroborated the qualitative findings by indicating women and men had similar levels of work–family strain. Analyses also indicated that higher levels of work–family strain were associated with more perceived stress, anxiety and depression, and that these associations did not differ between women and men. Finally, modest evidence suggested that the effects of work–family strain on mental health may be lower when the realities experienced by immigrants in finding employment and sending money home matched their expectations. This study adds a new voice to the work–family literature and the context and results make clear the tension between work and family: families frequently benefit from adults’ paid work, but this paid work is not without costs.     

The Rise of Social Cooperatives in Italy

This paper reports how a new model of social enterprise—the social cooperative (SCs)—has become instrumental, in the Italian context, in the expansion of the social economy. It underlines the contribution these associations have made toward broadening the concept and standard parameters of volunteer organizations, providing basic social welfare services, and integrating the disadvantaged into the mainstream of society. The paper focuses on some SCs organizational aspects, highlighting the many traditional and advantageous business features, the ease with which they have access to financial instruments, and their ability to activate wider social projects. Given their recent spreading in Italy, where the Third Sector is less developed than in other Western countries, SCs incorporate working modalities that could also be of interest and relevance to other countries. To adopt this type of organization, however, calls for adequate competencies and protection under specific laws because they are, on the whole, still small-sized and somewhat fragile.     

Communication,Modernity, and Democracy in Habermas and Dewey

The political culture of the Federal Republic [of Germany] would be worse today if it had not adopted impulses from American political culture during the first postwar decades. The Federal Republic opened itself for the first time to the West without reservations: we adopted the political theory of the Enlightenment, we grasped the pluralism which, first carried by religious sects, molded the political mentality, and we became acquainted with the radical democratic spirit of the American pragmatism of Peirce, Mead, and Dewey. (Jiirgen Habermas 1985a, p. 93)     

Classifying Speech Sonority Functional Data using a Projected Kolmogorov-Smirnov Approach

This paper addresses a linguistically motivated question of classification of functional data, namely the statistical classification of languages according to their rhythmic features. This is an important open problem in phonology. The analysis is based on the information provided by the sonority, which is an index of local regularity of the speech signal. Our main tool is the projected Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. This is a new goodness of fit test for functional data. The result obtained supports the linguistic conjecture of the existence of three rhythmic classes.     

Exploring the link between human resource practices and turnover in multi-brand companies: The role of brand units’ images

Using exploratory qualitative research undertaken in a multi-brand fashion company, this article investigates the role that brand units’ images play in the link between human resources management (HRM) practices and employee internal and external turnover. Our results suggest that the existence of imbalanced and differently attractive brand units’ images might weaken or remove the effectiveness of corporate HRM practices in keeping internal and external turnover rates low. This because employees may be interested in transferring to the most appealing brand(s) or, if not possible to do so, leaving the company. This article contributes to the debate regarding the use of HRM practices in multi-brand companies, especially in industries where both the brand and the product have a highly-symbolic content. Based on our conclusions, we recommend that brand units with less prestigious images compensate for their lower attractiveness with specific brand unit HRM practices to attract and retain their employees. Theoretical and policy implications of the findings are discussed.