Maternal Household Decision-Making Autonomy and Adolescent Education in Honduras

Maternal decision-making autonomy has been linked to positive outcomes for children’s health and well-being early in life in low- and middle-income countries throughout the world. However, there is a dearth of research examining if and how maternal autonomy continues to influence children’s outcomes into adolescence and whether it impacts other domains of children’s lives beyond health, such as their education. The goal of this study was to determine whether high maternal decision-making was associated with school enrollment for secondary school-aged youth in Honduras. Further, we aimed to assess whether the relationships between maternal autonomy and school enrollment varied by adolescents’ environmental contexts and individual characteristics such as gender. Our analytical sample included 6579 adolescents ages 12–16 living with their mothers from the Honduran Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) 2011–2012. We used stepwise logistic regression models to investigate the association between maternal household decision-making autonomy and adolescents’ school enrollment. Our findings suggest that adolescents, especially girls, benefit from their mothers’ high decision-making autonomy. Findings suggest that maternal decision-making autonomy promotes adolescents’ school enrollment above and beyond other maternal, household, and regional influences.     

政策调整适应劳动力市场灵活性

20世纪90年代以来,是中国从计划经济向市场经济转轨、市场经济体制逐步形成的过程。在这一过程中,政府对市场的直接干预程度弱化,劳动力市场机制对资源配置的基础性作用不断增强。与此同时,劳动立法和执法工作滞后,导致正规就业岗位越来越少,灵活就业和非正规就业比重极大增加,工作任期普遍缩短,劳动力流动率提高,而社会保障、就业服务机会不足,劳动者就业的稳定感极大地降低,劳动力市场的总体就业安全性降低。在这一过程中,政府进行了一系列的立法、制度和政策调整,来适应不断增强的就业灵活性。本文主要从劳动力市场制度政策的角度,对这些调整进行评价,并提出建议。     

The brief sexual attitudes scale

The measurement of sexual attitudes is important, and ease of scale usability is one key aspect of measurement. This paper details three studies conducted to develop a briefer and thus more efficient version of the multidimensional Sexual Attitudes Scale (43 items). The first two studies (I and II) employed existing data sets to develop a 23-item version of the Sexual Attitudes Scale, using exploratory factor analysis in Study I and confirmatory factor analysis in Study II. The same four subscales of Permissiveness, Birth Control (formerly called Sexual Practices), Communion, and Instrumentality were retained in the 23-item measure, called the Brief Sexual Attitudes Scale. Study III was a prospective data collection using only the 23 items composing the Brief Sexual Attitudes Scale. The four subscales were hypothesized to correlate with a number of relationship measures in predictable ways. Results indicated that the Brief Sexual Attitudes Scale is a reliable and valid measure of the four sexual attitudes, and has strong psychometric properties. It should be effective and efficient for both research and clinical uses.     

Search techniques for zinc ore using computer simulation

Zinc ore exploration is generally undertaken through deep drilling in the area adjacent to the outcrop. Experience in one complex geological area suggests that, in that area, exploration might be more profitable if short holes were drilled to bedrock to locate the zinc ore body at the sub-outcrop (the interface between bedrock and the soil and glacier deposited cover).This problem is evaluated by assuming three logical shapes and sizes of ore body and selecting a method for drilling by utilizing a computer model to simulate drilling.The test results indicate that costs of using this proposed method of exploration are substantially less than the traditional approach of exploring for zinc ore and that probabilities of success can be predetermined.     

A Cultural-Psychological Theory of Contemporary Islamic Martyrdom

What political, economic, religious, and emotional factors are involved in a person's decision to kill civilians and military personnel through the sacrifice of his or her own life? Data for this research were secondary analyses of interviews with Islamic martyrs, as well as their leaders’ speeches. This investigation into the cultural‐psychological explanations for Islamic martyrdom leads to a model explaining a person's decision to carry out the mission as resulting from a combination of four factors: the historical‐cultural context, group processes, immediate and anticipated rewards, and mechanisms to eradicate possible doubts and guilt regarding this decision. Compared to existing models, this model is more integrative and focused on the psychological processes involved.     

Operational research in Indian defence

The paper gives an outline of the areas of Operational Research (OR) where work in the Defence Department in India has been successful, even though it has not been fully implemented due to certain reservations on the part of the users and some limitations of OR scientists. There is an ad hoc quality in the decision making of the customer, and no large scale OR models are available which give a total effect of defence spending on social measures and human resources development. OR would be able to contribute to a balanced spending on defence in developing countries, if effort were made to analyse defence problems in the wider context. The author was formerly Director of Scientific Evaluation, Ministry of Defence, India.     

Use of a case study in sequencing/scheduling research

This paper describes a study of an industrial sequencing/scheduling problem. The study contains the definition of the problem, data requirements and examination of solution technique. Definition of the problem is discussed from the aspect of uniqueness of the specific system. Discussion of data requirements includes availability and accuracy, while examination of solution technique considers limitation of time, computer capacity, etc., as well as the possibility of imbedding available algorithms into the solution procedure. Conclusions are presented relative to the use of the case study approach in sequencing/scheduling research.     

Baghdadi Jews in Hong Kong: converting cultural,social and economic capital among three transregional networks

This article is an analysis of the attempts of Baghdadi Jewish traders in Hong Kong in the second half of the nineteenth century to construct and convert cultural, social and economic capital within and between the transregional networks of the Baghdadi diaspora, the Jewish diaspora and the British colonial elite. The analysis of the multiple and multi‐directional intersections between the cultural, social and economic characteristics of the three networks shows that Baghdadi social capital accounted for significant ruptures and disjunctures between the increasing cosmopolitanization, deterritorialization and hybridization of the Baghdadi traders' cultural identities and the definition of Baghdadi cultural capital. An understanding of the role of Baghdadi social capital in accounting for the construction and convertibility of cultural, social and economic capital among these three transregional networks helps to explain the reproduction of social inequalities under increasing conditions of globalization, that is, under conditions that potentially augmented the number of sources defining cultural capital.