Are midwifery clients in Ontario making informed choices about prenatal screening?

BackgroundInformed choice is often lacking in women's decisions about prenatal screening.AimThe aim of this study is to evaluate how well midwives in Ontario, Canada are facilitating informed choice in this area.MethodsAn Internet-based survey was used to investigate 171 midwifery clients’ knowledge, attitude towards and experience of prenatal genetic screening tests, and to determine the proportion of study participants who made an informed choice about prenatal screening.FindingsAll participants demonstrated adequate knowledge of prenatal screening. The vast majority (93.0%) of participants made an informed choice. Participants who chose to screen had lower knowledge scores than those who opted out of screening. Client satisfaction rates in regard to care received in this area ranged from 97% to 100%.ConclusionsResults of this study suggest that Ontario midwives are effective in conveying information on prenatal genetic screening, contributing to high levels of client knowledge and satisfaction in comparison to similar studies in other jurisdictions.     

试析雷蒙·威廉斯的“文化”定义

威廉斯的“文化”定义一面为学界津津乐道、引为正典,一面却又遭遇着断章取义、不求甚解的粗暴误读。因此,有必要重新回返1950年代后期英国的社会历史情境,在多重结构性因素的参照之下,读解并勾连起威廉斯早期文本中的“文化”思想,进而探析威廉斯的“文化”定义之于“文化研究”的意义。     

利用信息优势构建内陆开放平台下的宁夏-阿拉伯经贸发展研究

基于信息经济学和生产要素禀赋理论,分析宁夏在中国-阿拉伯国家经贸交往中的信息禀赋优势,提出在内陆开放平台下将“涉阿信息”优势转化为提升宁夏与阿拉伯国家经贸发展经济优势的对策与建议。     

云南省经济结构调整与农村劳动力转移

经济结构与就业结构之间存在着一种对称性关系。在经济结构转变过程中,产业结构和体制结构会直接影响到就业结构,影响到劳动力流动的流向、规模和特点。云南省经济结构调整的特征分析,云南省农村劳动力转移的特点,未来云南省农村劳动力转移中存在的困难和压力,促进云南省农村劳动力转移的政策建议。     

Challenges in Multidisciplinary Systematic Reviewing: A Study on Social Exclusion and Mental Health Policy

In the clinical sciences, systematic reviews have proved useful in the aggregation of diverse sources of evidence. They identify, characterize and summate evidence, but these methodologies have not always proved suitable for the social sciences. We discuss some of the practical problems faced by researchers undertaking reviews of complex and cross‐disciplinary topics, using the example of mental health and social exclusion. The barriers to carrying out social science and cross‐disciplinary reviews are reported and some proposals for overcoming these barriers are made, not all of them tried and tested, and some of them controversial. Using a mapping approach, a wide‐ranging search of both clinical and social science databases was undertaken and a large volume of references was identified and characterized. Population sampling techniques were used to manage these references. The challenges encountered include: inconsistent definitions of social phenomena, differing use of key concepts across research fields and practical problems relating to database compatibility and computer processing power. The challenges and opportunities for social scientists or multidisciplinary research teams carrying out reviews are discussed. Literature mapping and systematic reviews are useful tools but methods need to be tailored to optimize their usefulness in the social sciences.     

Rational beliefs in extensive games

Given an extensive game, with every node x and every player i a subset k _i (x) of the set of terminal nodes is associated, and is given the interpretation of player i's knowledge (or information) at node x. A belief of player i is a function that associates with every node x an element of the set K _i (x). A belief system is an n-tuple of beliefs, one for each player. A belief system is rational if it satisfies some natural consistency properties. The main result of the paper is that the notion of rational belief system gives rise to a refinement of the notion of subgame-perfect equilibrium.     

视译训练的信息处理与应用策略

视译作为口译的一种特殊形式,具有不同于其他口译的传译机制和训练技巧,对提高口译能力起到至关重要的作用。结合社会认知学、心理学、语言学和大脑神经学等理论知识,通过探索视译训练中信息处理的模式,找到有效的信息处理方法与应用策略,并为提高口译能力的学习与记忆提供了依据。     

智慧城市建设中的信息技术隐患与现实危机

智慧城市的发展紧密依托物联网、云计算和移动互联网为代表的新型信息科技,从而使城市达到"智慧"的状态。然而,"智慧"格局所暗含的安全隐患,却使新技术在为智慧城市带来无限愿景的同时,也给城市管理与社会安全带来严峻挑战。从上海未来城市建设和发展的角度思考,在智慧城市赖以支撑的庞大信息体系中,对信息技术不同层次的安全问题需要区别认识和对待,同时也不能忽略技术以外的措施与应对策略。具体做法是:借鉴国外经验,建立关键信息基础设施保护早期预警与响应机制;建设与完善信息安全法制体系与诚信系统;政府与企业和社会机构合作,提升全民网络安全意识。     

Teaching crisis management in Arab universities: A critical assessment

This research looks at the teaching of crisis management at the colleges and departments of communication and public relations in the Arab world. Major findings of the study suggest that out of 24 colleges and departments of communication and public relations surveyed by this research, only two universities teach the course crisis management in their curriculum. The latest developments in the Arab world dictate new mechanisms in managing information and news and dealing with publics and the mass media locally and internationally. The new trends of teaching crisis management focus on the multidisciplinary approach which consists of a good knowledge of news management, dealing with the media, dealing with people, business administration, information technology, social and anthropological context. All these fields of knowledge are indispensable for understanding the general background of the issues and for choosing and selecting the best communication and persuasion techniques and tactics to manage crises effectively and successfully.     

Resistance distance,closeness, and betweenness

In a seminal paper Stephenson and Zelen (1989) rethought centrality in networks proposing an information-theoretic distance measure among nodes in a network. The suggested information distance diverges from the classical geodesic metric since it is sensible to all paths (not just to the shortest ones) and it diminishes as soon as there are more routes between a pair of nodes. Interestingly, information distance has a clear interpretation in electrical network theory that was missed by the proposing authors. When a fixed resistor is imagined on each edge of the graph, information distance, known as resistance distance in this context, corresponds to the effective resistance between two nodes when a battery is connected across them. Here, we review resistance distance, showing once again, with a simple proof, that it matches information distance. Hence, we interpret both current-flow closeness and current-flow betweenness centrality in terms of resistance distance. We show that this interpretation has semantic, theoretical, and computational benefits.