Development Guidelines from a Study of Suicide Prevention Mobile Applications (Apps)

Every day, Americans are inundated with advertisements and appeals to purchase the latest mobile technology in the form of smart phones, tablets, and their accompanying applications (apps). Human service organizations (HSOs) across the United States have begun to recognize that apps can provide a valuable resource for individuals and communities by addressing social issues. Additionally, forward-thinking HSOs are aware that apps are a fresh and important way of reaching a rapidly changing, tech-savvy population. But just like the marketplace at large yields a variety of apps that range from useful and engaging to poorly contrived and ineffective, HSOs' foray into app development has achieved mixed results. This report analyzes existing mobile applications available for one specific field of HSO service delivery—suicide prevention—in order to describe what is currently available and to generate beginning guidelines for the development, implementation, and evaluation of new suicide prevention apps for underserved populations. Twenty-seven apps were analyzed and recommendations for HSOs and future research are presented.     

Attitudes towards reproductive technologies for humans

Abstract

The aim of this exploratory study was to measure attitudes towards various applications of real and hypothetical reproductive technologies for humans, including prenatal gender selection. A total of 121 undergraduate university students completed a questionnaire measuring knowledge, interest, trust, risks and benefits, and attitudes towards reproductive technologies for humans. An exploratory factor analysis showed that participants rated the use of these technologies as unacceptable if it was for personal enhancement but acceptable for “medically useful” applications. Participants also reported not having a gender preference for their (hypothetical) unborn child, were they to use prenatal gender selection, an application very few approved of. Results failed to support a general desire to use prenatal gender selection or to hypothetically favour one gender over the other. Attitudes towards reproductive technologies cannot be simply summarised in a “pro or against” manner as they heavily depend on the context.     

Negotiating the ground: ‘mobilizing’ a divided field site in the ‘post-conflict’ city

ABSTRACT

While an exploration of mobility patterns in ‘post-conflict’ societies has much to tell us about how division is produced through ordinary activities, less work has considered the practical application of a mobilities ‘lens’ during fieldwork in such contexts. Negotiating the ground in highly polarized contexts presents a unique array of challenges, but also offers opportunities to make use of mobile methodologies. This paper discusses the advantages of GPS-based technologies and walking interviews to a recent activity-space segregation study in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and reflects on methodological issues posed by the ‘post-conflict’ field site.     

A Sales Forecast Model for Short‐Life‐Cycle Products: New Releases at Blockbuster

We develop, in this article, a sales model for movie and game products at Blockbuster. The model assumes that there are three sales components: the first is from consumers who have already committed to purchasing (or renting) a product (e.g., based on promotion of, or exposure to, the product prior to its launch); the second comes from consumers who are potential buyers of the product; and the third comes from either a networking effect on closely tied (as in a social group) potential buyers from previous buyers (in the case of movie rental and all retail products) or re‐rents (in the case of game rental). In addition, we explicitly formulate into our model dynamic interactions between these sales components, both within and across sales periods. This important feature is motivated by realism, and it significantly contributes to the accuracy of our model. The model is thoroughly tested against sales data for rental and retail products from Blockbuster. Our empirical results show that the model offers excellent fit to actual sales activity. We also demonstrate that the model is capable of delivering reasonable sales forecasts based solely on environmental data (e.g., theatrical sales, studio, genre, MPAA ratings, etc.) and actual first‐period sales. Accurate sales forecasts can lead to significant cost savings. In particular, it can improve the retail operations at Blockbuster by determining appropriate order quantities of products, which is critical in effective inventory management (i.e., it can reduce the extent of over‐stocking and under‐stocking). While our model is developed specifically for product sales at Blockbuster, we believe that with context‐dependent modifications, our modeling approach could also provide a reasonable basis for the study of sales for other short‐Life‐Cycle products.     

Dynamics of age- and size-structured populations in fluctuating environments: Applications of stochastic matrix models to natural populations

Recent developments of the theory of stochastic matrix modeling have made it possible to estimate general properties of age- and size-structured populations in fluctuating environments. However, applications of the theory to natural populations are still few. The empirical studies which have used stochastic matrix models are reviewed here to examine whether predictions made by the theory can be generally found in wild populations. The organisms studied include terrestrial grasses and herbs, a seaweed, a fish, a reptile, a deer and some marine invertebrates. In all the studies, the stochastic population growth rate (ln λ _s ) was no greater than the deterministic population growth rate determined using average vital rates, suggesting that the model based only on average vital rates may overestimate growth rates of populations in fluctuating environments. Factors affecting ln λ _s include the magnitude of variation in vital rates, probability distribution of random environments, fluctuation in different types of vital rates, covariances between vital rates, and autocorrelation between successive environments. However, comprehensive rules were hardly found through the comparisons of the empirical studies. Based on shortcomings of previous studies, I address some important subjects which should be examined in future studies.     

红色资源在高校学生党建工作中的功能与运用

红色资源主要是指中国共产党在领导全国各族人民在长期的革命斗争、建设实践与改革开放的伟大历程中形成的伟大精神及其物质载体,它具有革命性、传承性、先进性、教育性等特点。红色资源是高校学生党建工作的创新载体,其政治教育功能、自我教育功能和文化传播功能在学生党建工作中起到了十分重要的作用,因此,必须充分挖掘和利用红色资源,以进课堂、进校园、进社会的形式创新高校学生党建工作。     

基于连方概念的产品艺术构成设计应用

论述了连方将技术与艺术完美结合的要素及其基本元素组合与打散的过程,展示给人们以变化的乐趣和思维的训练过程。说明了组合后的连方展示的静态美,运用在产品设计中,可以从其外形、结构、文化等方面作为创意,结合现代技术进行新的设计创作,其独特的形式包容着大量的信息,既是装置又非一般装置,既是艺术品又非一般概念之中的艺术品,是一种生发于技术又超越于技术而直达艺术之域的产物。     

半干旱地区农作物全膜覆盖双垄面集雨沟播试验示范研究

榆林素有十年九旱之称,是典型的雨养农业区,干旱依然是困扰农业发展的主要因素,目前≤15°的旱坡地有1058．1万亩,占全市耕地总资源的64．3％。全膜覆盖双垄面集雨沟播技术是适宜于在粮、油等经济效益高的作物上应用,却具有投资少,见效快、易操作等优点,将为榆林旱作农业发展开辟新途径。     

第二语言习得理论中的过滤、变异及其应用

第二语言习得的心理进程有三个,即过滤、组织和监察。影响语言过滤的若干因素,有动机、情感状态、性格、年龄等。变体问题是第二语言习得过程中不可回避的问题,它对第二语习得的确有很大帮助,正确认识这个问题对语言习得和语言教学中的应用都非常有益。     

On necessary and sufficient condition for superiority of ridge estimator over least squares estimator

The necessary and sufficient condition is obtained such that ridge estimator is better than the least squares estimator relative to the matrix mean square error.