Wild foods and household food security responses to AIDS: evidence from South Africa

Wild foods may offer unique benefits to households afflicted by AIDS, providing a nutritious and freely available food source at minimal labour and financial costs. This article presents the results of food security assessments in two rural South African sites. Detailed household dietary recalls from 227 households, combined with qualitative work, explored the association of household AIDS proxies (recent morbidity, mortality and orphan fostering) with household food security and dietary composition. The study found that AIDS-proxy households were significantly more food insecure, and households fostering orphans were both poorer and more food insecure. Wild foods were evident in 40.3% of the 48 h recalls, with significantly greater likelihood of use in households with fostering paternal orphans, and/or with at least one AIDS proxy. Only paternal orphans were significantly associated with likelihood of using wild foods when controlling for household socio-economic status. Qualitative data suggests that households afflicted by AIDS might curtail their use of wild foods due to household labour shortages and stigma. This is unfortunate, as regressions indicate that households using wild foods may be more economically resilient. This may be particularly important for households registering AIDS proxies, due to a demonstrated negative correlation between accumulated household AIDS proxies and household income.     

The potential impact of discrimination fears of older gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender individuals living in small- to moderate-sized cities on long-term health care

As an exploration of the potential impact of fears of discrimination against GLBTs in long-term health care settings, this study compared perceptions of GLBT persons and heterosexuals. A total of 132 GLBT persons and 187 heterosexuals living in Eastern Washington completed a survey that contained demographic questions and perceptions of discrimination in long-term care settings. Most respondents suspected that staff and residents of care facilities discriminate against GLBTs. GLBT respondents who believed that residents of care facilities are victims of discrimination were more likely to believe that they would have to hide their sexual orientation if admitted to a care facility. GLBT respondents were more likely than heterosexual respondents to believe that GLBTs do not have equal access to health care and social services, that GLBTs residents of care facilities are victims of discrimination, that GLBT sensitivity training programs would benefit staff and residents of care facilities, and that GLBT retirement facilities would be a positive development for older GLBTs. This study is offered as a preliminary investigation of concerns about GLBT discrimination in health care settings, how concerns are expressed, and the implications of those concerns for health care needs.     

A RECONSIDERATION OF THE ‘GREAT RATIOS’ OF ECONOMICS

Autocorrelations are found in the disturbance terms of regressions employed by L. R. Klein and R. F. Kosobud in a global model of growth employing five celebrated ratios of economics. This paper summarizes the Klein-Kosobud conclusions, modifies them by removing the autocorrelations, and extends the model to include more recent years. The modified conclusions hold even with the added observations.     

DETERMINING THE APPROPRIATE DISCOUNT RATES IN PURE CAPITAL RATIONING

This paper proposes an interpretation of the pure capital rationing problem as it is faced by many managers in decentralized firms in which budgets serve as the principal means of control. It is argued that the appropriate objective for situations such as these is the maximization of either undiscounted earnings over the planning horizon or total value of the investments at the horizon. When either objective function is used in conjunction with the frequently encountered linear programming models for the capital rationing problem, shadow prices result which give rise to discount rates that will reproduce the optimal solution using discounted cash flow as a criterion. These results are then used as a means for clarifying several confusing and misleading statements that have appeared in the literature.     

THE EFFECT OF MASCULINE AND FEMININE BRAND NAMES ON THE PERCEIVED TASTE OF A CIGARETTE *

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether brand name can affect the public's evaluation of a product. All subjects smoked identical cigarettes. One group of subjects, however, knew the cigarettes by the name of “Frontiersman,” a masculine name, while the other group knew the cigarettes as “April,” a feminine name. Male and female subjects were asked to rate the cigarette on seven measures. Results show that women gave a more positive evaluation to the cigarette purportedly named “April,” while men gave a more positive evaluation to the identical cigarette when they thought it was named “Frontiersman.” In addition, women reacted more strongly than did men to brand name influence.     

TEACHING EFFECTIVENESS IN THE DECISION SCIENCES: THE USE OF STUDENT EVALUATIONS

This article presents the results of an AIDS-sponsored investigation of teaching effectiveness in the decision sciences. Two national samples were employed in the study: a sample of 247 business school deans and a sample of 3,292 students from 32 different business schools. Included among the findings are that 87 percent of the deans responding indicate they require some sort of faculty teaching effectiveness evaluation, and that great care must be exercised when interpreting student ratings of an individual instructor's teaching effectiveness.     

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PREDICTIVE ABILITY OF ADAPTIVE FORECASTING,RE-ESTIMATION,AND RE-IDENTIFICATION USING BOX-JENKINS TIME-SERIES ANALYSIS ON QUARTERLY EARNINGS DATA

This paper assesses the predictive ability of the Box-Jenkins methodology when utilized in an on-going setting. Three procedures are utilized to update the original forecasts generated from the Box-Jenkins models: adaptive forecasting, re-estimation, and re-identification. The results indicate that constant monitoring of the structure and parameters of the time-series models are necessary through time. It appears that adaptive forecasting techniques are insufficient to update BJ time-series models when used in conjunction with quarterly earnings data. Re-estimation is recommended as each new observation becomes available. Re-identification procedures are recommended on a less frequent basis.     

A PLURALITY MAXIMIZING APPROACH TO THE ALLOCATION OF CAMPAIGN RESOURCES

An important problem in the planning of political campaigns is the allocation of resources to precincts and other geographical voting units in order to maximize a candidate's plurality. Essentially, parties may increase candidate plurality by engaging in registration drives, midcampaign activities such as canvassing and candidate appearances, and get-out-the-vote drives. Based on previous work which has related voter response to party identification, the authors develop a model for the optimal allocation of campaign resources to these activities. The computational feasibility of the solution procedure is made possible by a decomposition across activities.