Death of a child: Perspective of Chinese mothers in Singapore

The grief of Chinese mothers is examined in a phenomenological exploratory study. Grieving for the deceased child is moderated by diverse Chinese religious beliefs intertwined with cultural practices. Five aspects of grieving include giving meaning to the child’s life and death, quality and assurance of the afterlife, the function of crying, and a continuing bond. Extrapolating from the mothers’ grieving are questions related to the implications of children’s death for other family members and the significance of the interconnectedness of the self, others, the environment and the universe in processing a crisis through religion and spirituality in multicultural social work.     

An Examination of School Counselors’ Competency Working with Lesbian,Gay and Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Students

This study aims to investigate school counselors’ competency level in working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) youth. Using a sample of 125 school counselors who are currently practicing in schools, this study found school counselors perceived themselves with very low competency levels. Spearman's rho correlation results indicated that only three demographic variables were significantly correlated with school counselors’ self-perceived competency level: sexual orientation, whether having received any postmasters trainings and geographic regions. Counselors identifying as nonheterosexual, those who received postmasters trainings or workshops, and those who reside in the West tend to have a higher self-perceived competency working with youth identifying as LGBT.     

Gambling Patterns and Problems of Gamblers on Licensed and Unlicensed Sites in France

In 2010 France enacted a law to regulate supply and consumption of online gambling. Its primary aim was to protect citizens from gambling-related harm. This study aims to assess differences in gambling patterns and related harm between online gamblers who use licensed versus unlicensed sites. Participants (N = 3860) completed a self-administered online survey on gambling practices. Pairwise logistic regressions examined the association between the legal statuses of gambling sites people patronized and demographic variables and gambling types. Multivariate logistic regression models explored associations between gambling patterns and related problems according to the legal status of sites people have gambled on. Overall, 53.7 % of online gamblers report gambling exclusively on licensed sites. Those who bet on regulated activities on unlicensed sites, versus licensed sites, are more likely to be female, younger, less educated, inactive in the labor market and are more likely to perceive their financial situation to be difficult. Gambling on unlicensed sites is associated with more intense gambling patterns and more gambling-related problems compared to licensed sites. Findings demonstrate that gambling activities carried out on state licensed sites are associated with less overall harm to gamblers. Implications of these findings on future policy are discussed and prospective research directions are outlined.     

The moral hazard of conditionality: Restoring the integrity of social security law

This article examines the extent to which the Australian and UK social security systems meet their legal obligations to provide basic relief to citizens in need. Conditionality and “mutual obligation” are at the core of both the UK and Australian social security systems and are based on the concept of moral hazard, the goal being to ensure that claimants do not consider living on benefits to be preferable to engaging in paid work. Yet, we argue that the element of “mutuality” is missing in both systems; welfare claimants are subject to myriad conditions and obligations, whilst the state operates free of any legal responsibility to provide even basic relief to those in need, to prevent or alleviate extreme poverty and destitution. We outline the extent to which Australian and UK social security laws require governments to relieve destitution, examining both domestic and human rights law. We conclude that legal protections are weak and that both systems fail to meet the basic conditions of humanity toward their citizens. On this basis, we argue that such failings demonstrate a lack of integrity which undermines the standing of both the UK and Australia to invoke a claim of moral hazard to defend claimant conditionality.     

Data relaying with constraints in hierarchical sensor networks

In this paper we present and discuss several optimisation problems that arise in the management of data flow in wireless sensor networks (WSNets). We consider a hierarchical architecture for WSNets composed of sensors, relays, and relay gateways. Sensors send data they generate at a known average bit rate to relays in one hop. The relay nodes use a multi-hop mechanism to reach a set of assigned gateways which then forward the data directly to the base station. We are concerned with finding an assignment of relay gateways to relays so that certain constraints are satisfied. We define a unified model in which constraints such as lifetime, data delay, and data flow splitting are formulated in terms of four optimisation problem in graphs.     

Whatever happened to environmental analysis?

This article discusses a longitudinal study of firms selected for their expertise in environmental analysis. It is primarily designed to test two general propositions. The first, that environmental analysis is increasing in importance over time— both within and between firms; and the second, that environmental analysis is most viable as a separate, freestanding function within the organization.     

Tackling the human problems in planning

This article presents findings from the first phase of a research program on the management of long-range planning systems. The initial focus is on behavioral problems encountered by those using planning systems and solutions for dealing with them. Both the problems and solutions were identified by chief planning officers during a university sponsored workshop. Some observations are offered about the way in which managerial thought processes affect the potential for resolving complex behavioral problems in organizations.     

国际援助：闪耀人性之光(英文)

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