Producing mobility: visual narratives of the rural migrant worker in Chinese television

This paper employs literatures of mobility to explore the ways which rural migrant workers in China are represented publicly via television drama. Through an analysis of the popular serial Mingong, the paper examines the underlying politics of contemporary migration in China through three themes: the territorialisation of rural and urban spaces; the embodiment of boundaries via corporeal practices and subjectivities; and the politicisation of rural migrant desires. This analysis demonstrates the significance of television in crafting discursive understandings of mobility and migrants that are suffused with contemporary governmentalities of generating but also managing and excluding migration.     

Providers’ perspectives of barriers experienced in maternal health care among Marshallese women

Problem

Pacific Islanders are disproportionately burdened by poorer maternal health outcomes with higher rates of pre-term births, low birth weight babies, infant mortality, and inadequate or no prenatal care.

Footprints in the Sand: Personal,Psychological, and Relational Profiles of Religious,Spiritual, and Atheist LGB Individuals

The present study offers a comparison of the demographic features and lived experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals with religious, spiritual, or atheist (R/S/A) belief systems. In this sample of 212 participants, the relationship of participants’ R/S/A beliefs to personal variables (e.g., age, gender, race), mental health variables (e.g., life satisfaction, psychological distress, internalized heterosexism, self-esteem), and relational variables (e.g., outness, connection to LGBTQ communities) were assessed. Correlational analyses indicated that level of R/S/A belief was unrelated to self-esteem, life satisfaction, or psychological distress; however, greater religious belief was correlated positively and significantly with internalized heterosexism and outness as LGB. To test the interactions of R/S/A beliefs and categorical variables of interest (e.g., race), log-linear analyses with follow-up chi-square tests were conducted. Findings suggested more similarities than differences for LGB people across R/S/A systems of belief. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.     

Assessing the Tongzhi Label: Self-Identification and Public Opinion

Tongzhi is one of several Chinese terms that refer to individuals who are attracted to the same sex. Using data from two different surveys in Hong Kong, this research note examines how the term tongzhi coexists with other terms. We investigate the prevalence of self-identification as tongzhi, and we explore the extent to which using the term tongzhi influences public attitudes toward gay people and gay rights. Activists began popularizing the term tongzhi in the late 1980s, but less than one third of the participants in our 2008 survey of sexual orientation minorities (n = 728) described themselves as tongzhi. Using a split-ballot experiment in a 2013 public opinion poll (n = 831), we found that attitudes toward gay people and gay rights were not significantly impacted by whether questions were phrased in terms of tongzhi or the main alternative term tongxinglianzhe. We discuss how our findings can enrich understandings of earlier research and illuminate avenues for future study.     

摩梭母系婚姻家庭形态研究的再思考

中国西南地区泸沽湖周围的摩梭人,至今仍保留着母系家庭与母系文化,这从一个重要方面展现了中华文化及人类社会文化的多样性.近年来,由于经济社会发展的不断加快,摩梭母系家庭数量已明显减少,余下的母系家庭也渐"空壳化".在摩梭母系文化面临解体之时,学术界应深入研究,为这一文化的保护提供参考.泸沽湖周边摩梭母系婚姻家庭的出现与长期延续,除与其居住地特殊自然、地理环境有关外,还与其族源有关.泸沽湖摩梭人的母系文化虽然有其特点,但应是川滇之间历史上曾存在的"母系文化带"的一部份.摩梭社会中出现母系、父系及双系家庭并存现象有着经济、政治、文化等多方面的原因,但双系家庭并非母系家庭与父系家庭间的过渡.摩梭母系文化的深入研究,还应注意与四川甘孜道孚县扎巴母系文化作比较,这样既可更多的更大范围的了解"母系文化带",也可加深对泸沽湖边摩梭母系文化特点的认识.     

Evaluating the Temporal Location of Feedback: Providing Feedback Following Performance vs. Prior to Performance

In order to make feedback as effective as possible, it is important to understand its function in the three-term contingency (TTC) and the impact of various factors involved in delivering feedback. Timing of feedback is one factor that can affect the impact of feedback on learner’s behavior. An analysis of timing of feeback may help us getting closer to better understanding how feedback functions in the TTC. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of feedback at different temporal locations. Specifically, feedback was provided either immediately (a) after a teaching session or (b) before the following teaching session, on teaching performance of undergraduate psychology students. The results indicated that feedback provided before the teaching session was more effective in improving teaching skills than feedback that was provided after the session. These findings suggest that feedback may function primarily as an antecedent to future performance and not necessarily as a consequence for past performance. However, the behavioral mechanism that explains these results is not yet clear. Future studies should investigate this further by manipulating the content of feedback prior to the teaching performance.     

Dual class shares,board of directors’ effectiveness and firm’s market value: an empirical study

This study aims to identify whether a relationship exists between the controlling shareholders’ voting power and outside directors’ effectiveness in maximizing firms’ financial performance. We analyze a panel data with 3057 observations for the 2000–2012 period using a random effects model, logit and probit regressions, and the two-stage model of Heckman in the Brazilian stock market. Our findings show that firms whose controlling shareholders use dual class shares to leverage their voting power have less independence from the board and worse financial performance and market value. Further, the percentage of outside directors tends to be ineffective in increasing the firm’s value, and in changing the firm’s chief executive officer (CEO) when (1) the controlling shareholder’s voting power is leveraged, or (2) when the CEO assumes a position on the board of directors simultaneously. We interpreted that these results are in line with the arguments in favor of the existence of a new agency cost, which is related to the undue obedience of board members to authority, such as the largest controlling shareholder or the CEO in Brazilian listed firms.     

Generating a smallest binary tree by proper selection of the longest edges to bisect in a unit simplex refinement

In several areas like global optimization using branch-and-bound methods for mixture design, the unit n-simplex is refined by longest edge bisection (LEB). This process provides a binary search tree. For \(n>2\), simplices appearing during the refinement process can have more than one longest edge (LE). The size of the resulting binary tree depends on the specific sequence of bisected longest edges. The questions are how to calculate the size of one of the smallest binary trees generated by LEB and how to find the corresponding sequence of LEs to bisect, which can be represented by a set of LE indices. Algorithms answering these questions are presented here. We focus on sets of LE indices that are repeated at a level of the binary tree. A set of LEs was presented in Aparicio et al. (Informatica 26(1):17–32, 2015), for \(n=3\). An additional question is whether this set is the best one under the so-called \(m_k\)-valid condition.     

Navigating health care: brokerage and access for undocumented Latino immigrants under the 2010 Affordable Care Act

ABSTRACT

Brokerage is a prominent mechanism that explains access for Latino immigrants to many American institutions. However, few studies examine the dual nature of brokerage in answering questions on access to health care for undocumented Latino immigrants. The growing importance of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and ethnic navigators connecting immigrants to health care under the 2010 Affordable Care Act calls attention to the duality of brokers and its role in access. The study draws from 44 in-depth interviews with providers, clinic directors, navigators, and immigrant patients and two years of fieldwork in FQHCs in California’s San Francisco Bay Area (2011–2013). Results show that brokers enable access through coaching and myth-busting but they also hinder it through scrutiny and bureaucratic filtering. The widespread dependence on brokerage, I argue, leads to ersatz brokerage, such as when providers navigate the health-care system for the undocumented without the appropriate linguistic resources or coordination. Furthermore, the study shows that the duality in brokerage generates misinformation, churning, and alienation. Understanding the relational processes that both include and exclude vulnerable populations from needed services enhances theories of immigrant integration and can help design more efficient policies and address inequalities related to documentation status.