Diet of Florida coyotes in a protected wildland and suburban habitat

Coyotes (Canis latrans) arrived to Florida (USA) in the 1960s and are currently found throughout most of the state. The purpose of this study was to determine if the diet of Florida coyotes differed between suburban and wildland habitat types or across seasons. Fresh coyote fecal samples were collected from wildland and suburban habitats in Pinellas County, Florida (USA; 27°54′N, 82°41′W) from May 2005 to March 2007. Diet items in the 49 wildland and 71 suburban samples were identified to the lowest possible taxonomic level by gross morphological characteristics and medullary configurations of dorsal guard hairs. A Poisson regression was utilized to determine the main and interactive effects of habitat and season on the number of different food items per sample. Coyotes in the wildland habitat had greater diet diversity than suburban coyotes. In addition, anthropogenic waste was recovered over twice as often from coyote fecal samples collected in the suburban habitat. In the wildland habitat, vegetative matter (96%), Insecta (53%), and Rodentia (45%) were recovered most often, as opposed to berries (56%) and Lagomorpha (32%) in the suburban habitat. In both habitats, vegetative matter, berries, and Lagomorpha were recovered most often from coyote fecal samples, whereas Odocoileus virginianus, Lagomorpha, and berries varied the most between wet and dry seasons. This study suggests that as urbanization increases, diet diversity for the coyote will likely decrease and consumption of anthropogenic items will likely increase. As a result of this, human–coyote conflicts may become more common—particularly in counties, like Pinellas, that are undergoing urbanization.     

Managing a crisis of confidence in Nigeria's banking and financial industry

An ongoing crisis of confidence in the banking and financial industry in Nigeria's emerging economy calls for using integrated marketing communications (IMC) in optimizing five potentially normative actions as a beachhead in procuring corporate benefits from three variables that predict significantly customers’ favorable impressions of business: satisfaction, trust, relationship commitment. The actions: (a) personalize the stakeholder experience, (b) integrate ethics into the workplace and into corporate communications, (c) participate in training sessions in applied ethics, (d) use brandstanding expansively and integratively, and (e) conduct rigorous outcomes assessment and disseminate its results promptly to stakeholders.     

Relation of transition probabilities in the Leslie model to those from experimental cumulative distributions

Summary We explore the relationship between transition probabilities in the Leslie model and those derived from experimental cumulative distributions. The nature of the two kinds of probabilities are discussed, and a formula derived for converting from one to the other. A numerical example is given to illustrate the differences.     

AGENCY, STRUCTURE, AND THE TRANSITION TO DISABILITY: A CASE STUDY WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR LIFE HISTORY RESEARCH

If life history research is ever to truly fulfill the promise of the sociological imagination, it will need to engage insights from agency-structure theory that have hitherto been neglected. Relatively few life history researchers have explicitly interpreted their subject matter in terms of agency-structure theory, and those who do rarely go beyond Giddens' initial formulation to incorporate more recent theoretical developments. This article attempts to fill this gap, offering an exemplar theorized life history that frames an actor's experience in terms of agency-structure theory. More specifically, I examine the life history of a former urban gang member who was shot and paralyzed and subsequently became a world-class wheelchair athlete. I interpret the life history in terms of the iterative, projective, and practical-evaluative agentive processes that were operative—sometimes simultaneously—at different points in time; and show how this individual's adaptation to disability was influenced by enabling structural conditions that facilitated his agentive actions and by prior experiences he was able to transpose to his new circumstances. In doing so, I also indicate how the body is an essential part of social experience and the vehicle through which agency and structure are enacted.     

Mexican Contract Workers and the U.S. Capitalist Agricultural Labor Process: The Formative Era, 1942–1964*

Abstract Rural sociologists have seemingly moved away from an active interest in the plight of migrant farmworkers and the centrality of their labor in the development of U.S. agribusiness. Answering Pfeffer's (1983) call to analyze the different forms of agricultural production, I focus on the key formative period of what I refer to as the U.S. capitalist agricultural labor process. During the United States‐Mexico Bracero Program, 1942–1964, U.S. agribusiness employed a coercive factory regime, introduced mechanization and increased work hazards, and employed a dual wage structure to keep Mexican contract workers at a serious disadvantage to advance their own collective well‐being. This study relies upon archival and oral history research to challenge the existing theoretical approaches to the labor process in capitalist agriculture and provide a theoretical explanation that more closely relates to U.S. post‐war agricultural production.     

Regional Variations in the Realignment of American Politics, 1944–2004*

Objective. Perennial questions in electoral studies are what constitutes realignment, and when and where do realignments occur? Using the concepts of critical and secular realignments as a framework, we model change in the end product of realignment, election outcomes. We test for secular and critical changes in partisan strength across six geographic regions of the United States, focusing on office‐holding data at both the federal and state legislative level. Methods. Using an interrupted time‐series model, we examine evidence for secular realignment and posit five critical interventions that have affected American politics since World War II. Results. Our findings suggest that there are elements of both critical and secular realignments at work with different patterns in each region, and that different regions have been affected by a variety of elections associated with critical events since 1944. Conclusions. The collapse of Republican hegemony in the Northeast and Pacific West has gone largely unnoticed, buried in the intense examination of the growth of the Republican Party in the American South. The 1994 election is the most prominent in terms of its impact on seat holding by the parties at both the state and national level, and constitutes a realigning election.     

The Accidental Statistician

During his long and distinguished career, Sir David Cox has played a substantial part in the development and growth of the discipline of statistics, but, as he tells Helen Joyce, he very nearly specialised in mathematical physics or analysis instead.     

Inducing risk-neutral preferences: Further analysis of the data

The lottery payoff procedure does not successfully induce risk-neutral bidding behavior in first-price, sealedbid auctions. This conclusion follows from both ordinary-least-squares estimation with natural data and leastabsolute-deviation estimation with transformed data from numerous experimental designs. Lottery payoffs do not succeed in inducing behavior predicted from standard expected utility theory assumptions or from assumed utility from winning and/or income thresholds. In contrast, first-price auction experiments with monetary payoffs yield results that are consistent with general models of bidding in the independent private values information environment.