Neo-natal mortality in South Asia: The special role of tetanus

Summary First-year mortality in rural Uttar Pradesh is characterized by a predominance (60 per cent) of deaths during the first month of life, of which 66 per cent are reported to be due to tetanus. This pattern is not typical of the historical experience of many developed countries and the current experience of some less developed countries where post-neo-natal mortality predominates. To examine this phenomenon, two causal models of neo-natal mortality (one for tetanus and one for all other diseases) are developed and tested using retrospective survey data from 2000 couples living in rural Uttar Pradesh. Neo-natal tetanus mortality is found to be primarily a function of opportunities for exposure to the disease (e.g. lack of antiseptic birth practices, ownership of large animals) rather than of socio-economic status or demographic variables. The importance of examining neo-natal mortality by cause, and the shortcomings inherent in making inferences from the historical experiences of Western nations are emphasized.     

Risk Communication in The Netherlands: The Monitored Introduction of the EC "Post-Seveso" Directive

Implementation of article 8.1 of the EC-"Seveso" Directive (82/501/EC) is now under way in many countries in Europe. In The Netherlands, the implementation of the Directive started with a carefully monitored introduction of active information provision at two sites (Dordrecht and Elst). This introduction was supported by a multidisciplinary research group. This group helped to develop the risk communication program and also played a role in the evaluation of the program. This paper describes these processes and their evaluation. We will focus on the design of the risk communication programs and the effects of the programs on knowledge and attitudes of the local target groups. This effort and its results clearly started an institutional learning process involving governmental bodies at several organizational levels (local, regional, and national), and industrial organizations (individual firms and organizations of industries). Monitoring the design, the implementation, and the effects of active information provision proves an effective means to gain experience with the implementation of the Seveso Directive and could help to facilitate further implementation.     

Innovation in education: Technological economics

Technological change and innovation are vital parts of the economy. This paper concerns one particular attempt to study both the process of innovation itself and possible means of increasing its effectiveness: Technological Economics. Barriers to innovation, intellectual and organizational, are described from the experience at the University of Stirling.     

The Current State of Women Print Journalists: An Analysis of the Status and Careers of Females in Newspapers Sports Departments

The purpose of this study was to provide an analysis of the current state of women journalists within the sports departments at newspapers across the United States. This investigation involved a determination of their demographic make-up, job status within the sports department, rationale for entering the field, and advice for younger women preparing to follow in their footsteps. The findings suggest that although the large majority of women have faced discrimination in the sport media, they believe improvements have been made towards equity. The majority of respondents noted that they were happy with the assignments they had been given. Subjects did, however, feel that they were assigned to cover females more than their male counterparts, and some responses regarding dissatisfaction with their positions was also noted.     

Older adults' attitudes toward death: links to perceptions of health and concerns about end-of-life issues

The current study had two primary goals, to determine whether: 1) self-rated mental and physical health, pain, and experience with health problems were predictors of elderly adults' attitudes toward death; and 2) death attitudes predict end-of-life medical treatment concerns. Participants were 109 adults, 65 years of age or older (M=78.74 years), recruited from the local community. Regression analysis indicated that poorer perceived physical health predicted a greater likelihood of viewing death as an escape, and poorer perceived mental health predicted a greater fear of death. Viewing death as an escape and fearing death predicted end-of-life medical treatment concerns; a greater endorsement of either attitude predicted more concern. Possible explanations for the links between perceived health, attitudes toward death, and concern about end-of-life issues are suggested.     

The Impact of Community Prestige upon Personal Appraisals of Life Conditions: A Comparative Analysis*

On a recolte des donnees sur une ville manufacturiere de Costa Rica, une communaute paysanne du Guatemala et un village rural de l'Etat du Michigan, dans le but d'examiner les relations qui existent entre les systemes de prestige de la communaute et revolution personnelle des habitants de leur situation dans la vie. La liaison entre ces deux variables est faible dans ces trois unites sociales. Cependant, les criteres utilises dans chaque communaute pour refleter les deux systemes devaluation comportent des differences importantes. S'ap-puyant sur ces resultats, l'auteur suggere que le prestige communautaire et 1'evaluation personnelle de sa situation dans la vie subissent independamment l'influence de quatre attributs structurels majeurs. C'est en tenant compte de la configuration de ces attributs structurels que Ton en vient a saisir la nature des liens qui existent entre ces deux systemes dévaluation. Data from a Costa Rican factory town, a Guatemalan peasant community and a Michigan rural community are utilized to inquire into the relationship between community prestige systems and individuals' private appraisals of their conditions in life. In each community, little relationship exists between these two variables. However, there are important variations among the communities in the criteria involved in both systems of evaluation. On the basis of these findings it is suggested that community prestige and personal appraisals of life conditions are independently influenced by four key structural attributes. The relationship between the two evaluative systems is dependent upon the configuration of the structural attributes.     

A hybrid elitist pareto-based coordinate exchange algorithm for constructing multi-criteria optimal experimental designs

This paper presents a new Pareto-based coordinate exchange algorithm for populating or approximating the true Pareto front for multi-criteria optimal experimental design problems that arise naturally in a range of industrial applications. This heuristic combines an elitist-like operator inspired by evolutionary multi-objective optimization algorithms with a coordinate exchange operator that is commonly used to construct optimal designs. Benchmarking results from both a two-dimensional and three-dimensional example demonstrate that the proposed hybrid algorithm can generate highly reliable Pareto fronts with less computational effort than existing procedures in the statistics literature. The proposed algorithm also utilizes a multi-start operator, which makes it readily parallelizable for high performance computing infrastructures.     

Post-neonatal mortality in Rural India: Implications of an economic model

In this paper we develop and test a theory of childhood mortality after the first month of life. Parents are assumed to have well-defined family size and sex composition objectives and to face severe budget constraints. In this set of circumstances, it is understandable that they will make allocative decisions that will affect the survival probabilities of children. These decisions and the environmental influences on mortality are the basic forces which determine whether a child will survive through the post-neonatal period. The model is tested with survey data from rural Uttar Pradesh, India. The results are consistent with the hypothetical framework discussed above. The burden of this pattern of choice is felt particularly strongly by female births.     

Organizational Justice and Job Satisfaction in Coaching

This study explored organizational climate perceptions within high school athletic departments from the point of view of coaches. Five key facets of job satisfaction and satisfaction with the job in general were assessed as well as the relationship between each facet and three distinctive dimensions of organizational justice. High school coaches (N = 392) indicated that their athletic departments maintained a fair operating climate and were satisfied with each of the five facets and their jobs in general. Also, a linear relationship (p ≤ 0.05) was found between each of the three fairness dimensions and each of the job satisfaction facets as well as the job itself.