The Impact of Religiousness,Spirituality, and Social Support on Psychological Well-Being Among Older Adults in Rural Areas

Summary

This paper presents the results of a study on the impact of spirituality, religiousness, and social support on the psychological well-being among rural elderly. With a rural community sample of 215 older adults, hierarchical regression analyses found significant associations between dimensions of spirituality/religiousness, social support, and psychological well-being, with spirituality/religiousness inversely related to depression and social support, positively related to life satisfaction. Findings of this study suggest that practitioners need to develop programs or services that are congruent with religious/spiritual beliefs and practices in order to better enhance the psychosocial well-being and improve the quality of life among older persons in rural areas.     

Social issues in contemporary native America: reflections from Turtle Island

The purpose of this study was to explore how the death and dying-related beliefs of caregivers influence their actual caregiving behavior, and to explore factors that may prevent them from translating these beliefs into functional behavior. Using a biopsychosocial-spiritual- environmental framework, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with three primary caregivers of patients diagnosed with terminal illness. Caregiving behavior was found to be associated with the biopsychosocial-spiritual-environmental beliefs of the caregivers. These beliefs could have been influenced by the caregivers' past experiences with death and dying. Financial difficulty might also be a main obstacle hindering caregivers from providing the kind of care they believed was best for the patients.     

Post Acute Care of the Elderly in Singapore What Factors Influence Use of Services?

This research focused on understanding the factors associated with utilization of post-acute care services in Singapore and how these are woven into family care as well as the lived experience of elderly persons and their families. The multi-method study applied Andersen's model and the quantitative results of the 299 elderly Singaporeans surveyed showed medical and physical conditions, perceived health and utility, knowledge and previous use of service, ethnicity, family size, paid help, housing type, and living arrangement as significant factors. Qualitative results from interviews of a subsample of 13 elderly and their family members and focus group discussions of providers consistently pointed affordability of services as an important factor. Findings surfaced the question of service accessibility and its implications on practice, policy, and research.     

A Qualitative Study of Non-Affiliated,Non-Scientist Institutional Review Board Members

In addition to outlining criteria for the approval of human subjects research, federal regulations provide guidance regarding local institutional review board (IRB) membership. IRBs are mandated to include “at least one member whose primary concerns are in nonscientific areas” and “at least one member who is not otherwise affiliated with the institution.” Often a single individual serves both of these roles simultaneously. Although there have been calls for increased representation of lay community members on IRBs, little is known regarding their experiences or their perceptions of human subject protections and the IRB process. Using an ethnographic interview approach, this study seeks to gain a perspective from non-affiliated, non-scientist (NA/NS) IRB members about the process in which they participate. Findings suggest a need for clarification regarding whom NA/NS IRB members represent. They also suggest that NA/NS IRB members’ experiences could be improved by an increased show of respect from the IRB chair, other members, and staff; efforts to make participation more convenient for these volunteer members; and training tailored specifically to NA/NS members. Further research on this important and understudied topic is needed to determine best practice and policy recommendations.     

高校学报的困惑及出路选择

由于受学术研究体制、期刊评价指标体系、编排规范等诸多因素的影响,高校纯粹的教学和科研活动被“异化”,高校学报面临诸多困惑。这些困惑的改变,需优化学术生态环境,构建科学的期刊评价体系,改变“编风”,提高编辑人员的素质。     

A review on Ecological Engineering based Engineering Management

Engineering achievements have improved the quality of human life, provided creature comforts, and expanded the human domain to unprecedented levels. When enjoying all these achievements, human beings are coming to realize that the more invasion of the nature, the more environmental problems. Under the context of sustainable development, it is certain that effective Engineering Management calls for an ecological concept. The basic claim of this paper is that Engineering Management should be based on Ecological Engineering, which is an essential requirement of effective Engineering Management. At the same time, Ecological Engineering shall serve as the base of Engineering Management, which is commanded by the characteristics of Ecological Engineering. To date, there are only scattered studies focused on Engineering Management using the ecological concept. Moreover, there is no systematic concept of Ecological Engineering based Engineering Management (EMEE). In this paper, a thorough review of EMEE is presented. Our goals are to clarify this concept, promote this promising thought, summarize past research, and identify issues for future research to create impacts on the practice of Engineering Management.     

基于改进Feltham-Ohlson模型的公允价值会计信息相关性研究

2007年始在我国上市公司实行的新会计准则的核心之一是引入与国际趋同的公允价值计量属性。本文运用Feltham-Ohlson模型原式及作者提出的演化式,以我国A股上市公司为样本,实证探究新会计准则下公允价值会计信息的相关性。     

Supply Chain Management of Fresh Products with Producer Transportation*

This article considers a class of fresh‐product supply chains in which products need to be transported by the upstream producer from a production base to a distant retail market. Due to high perishablility a portion of the products being shipped may decay during transportation, and therefore, become unsaleable. We consider a supply chain consisting of a single producer and a single distributor, and investigate two commonly adopted business models: (i) In the “pull” model, the distributor places an order, then the producer determines the shipping quantity, taking into account potential product decay during transportation, and transports the products to the destination market of the distributor; (ii) In the “push” model, the producer ships a batch of products to a distant wholesale market, and then the distributor purchases and resells to end customers. By considering a price‐sensitive end‐customer demand, we investigate the optimal decisions for supply chain members, including order quantity, shipping quantity, and retail price. Our research shows that both the producer and distributor (and thus the supply chain) will perform better if the pull model is adopted. To improve the supply chain performance, we propose a fixed inventory‐plus factor (FIPF) strategy, in which the producer announces a pre‐determined inventory‐plus factor and the distributor compensates the producer for any surplus inventory that would otherwise be wasted. We show that this strategy is a Pareto improvement over the pull and push models for both parties. Finally, numerical experiments are conducted, which reveal some interesting managerial insights on the comparison between different business models.     

人力资源外包管理再探索

本文对人力资源外包管理涵义进行了明确的概括,并结合目前国内、外人力资源外包管理发展现状,分析了“外包”管理的优势与动机,对“外包”项目范围进行了界定。论文重点阐述了“外包”的六种方案,指出了“外包”可能引致企业机密外泄和不利于企业人力资源管理技能、经验和员工积极性提高等问题,同时提出了解决这些问题的一般思路。     

Environmental Migration and Sustainable Development in the Upper Reaches of the Yangtze River

This paper explores the demographic impacts of the implementation of the Grand Development in West China policies and environmental rehabilitation projects in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. It analyses the interaction between the environmental reconstruction and environment-related migration in this region. The intertwined nature of environmental, ethnic, and poverty problems not only bears negatively upon the alleviation of poverty conducing to the accruement of wealth of the poverty-stricken population, but also hinders the rehabilitation of the environment. It brings forth some opinions regarding improving the capacity of regional sustainable development through environmental migration.