Deep Uncertainties in Sea-Level Rise and Storm Surge Projections: Implications for Coastal Flood Risk Management

Sea levels are rising in many areas around the world, posing risks to coastal communities and infrastructures. Strategies for managing these flood risks present decision challenges that require a combination of geophysical, economic, and infrastructure models. Previous studies have broken important new ground on the considerable tensions between the costs of upgrading infrastructure and the damages that could result from extreme flood events. However, many risk-based adaptation strategies remain silent on certain potentially important uncertainties, as well as the tradeoffs between competing objectives. Here, we implement and improve on a classic decision-analytical model (Van Dantzig 1956) to: (i) capture tradeoffs across conflicting stakeholder objectives, (ii) demonstrate the consequences of structural uncertainties in the sea-level rise and storm surge models, and (iii) identify the parametric uncertainties that most strongly influence each objective using global sensitivity analysis. We find that the flood adaptation model produces potentially myopic solutions when formulated using traditional mean-centric decision theory. Moving from a single-objective problem formulation to one with multiobjective tradeoffs dramatically expands the decision space, and highlights the need for compromise solutions to address stakeholder preferences. We find deep structural uncertainties that have large effects on the model outcome, with the storm surge parameters accounting for the greatest impacts. Global sensitivity analysis effectively identifies important parameter interactions that local methods overlook, and that could have critical implications for flood adaptation strategies.     

Exploring the link between integrated leadership and public sector performance

This study develops the concept of integrated leadership in the public sector. Integrated leadership is conceived as the combination of five leadership roles that are performed collectively by employees and managers at different levels of the hierarchy. The leadership roles are task-, relations-, change-, diversity-, and integrity-oriented leadership. Using data from the Federal Human Capital Survey and Program Assessment Rating Tool, we analyze the relationship between integrated leadership and federal program performance. The findings from the empirical analysis indicate that integrated leadership has a positive and sizeable effect on the performance of federal sub-agencies. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings and limitations of the study.     

Sexual identity distress, social support, and the health of gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth

Sex researchers and mental health clinicians have long recognized that the stigma surrounding homosexuality plays an important role in shaping the social psychological adjustment of gay, lesbian, and bisexual (g/l/b) people. In recent years, researchers have suggested that sexual identity- related distress may influence the physical health status of g/l/b people, primarily because of the ways these self-related feelings and beliefs impact patterns of health-related behavior. This study examines the influence of sexual identity distress and social support on g/l/b youth's drug and alcohol use, psychological distress, and risky sexual behavior. The data come from a services research demonstration program conducted at the Indiana Youth Group, Inc., a g/l/b youth development agency based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Results indicate that sexual identity distress is strongly associated with psychological distress, less frequent use of alcohol, and using fewer types of illegal drugs. Being out to more people in one's support network, however, attenuates the severity of youth's sexual identity-related distress. Youth who report more support ties to g/l/b people indicate engaging in more frequent risky sexual behavior. The implications of these findings for theories of g/l/b youth's sexual identity development are discussed.     

A feasibility approach for constructing combinatorial designs of circulant type

In this work, we propose an optimization approach for constructing various classes of circulant combinatorial designs that can be defined in terms of autocorrelation. The problem is formulated as a so-called feasibility problem having three sets, to which the Douglas–Rachford projection algorithm is applied. The approach is illustrated on three different classes of circulant combinatorial designs: circulant weighing matrices, D-optimal matrices of circulant type, and Hadamard matrices with two circulant cores. Furthermore, we explicitly construct two new circulant weighing matrices, a CW(126, 64) and a CW(198, 100), whose existence was previously marked as unresolved in the most recent version of Strassler’s table.     

Social Representational Communities and the Imagined Antebellum South

Tourists come to museums with varied expectations and leave appreciating different aspects of their presentations. Thus, tourists/audiences are primed to see, hear, and experience certain representations and narratives when they enter museums. This is particularly so with plantation museums. Most Americans possess at the very least a vague sense of the antebellum South. They have a vague sense of a time and of a place populated by wealthy and esteemed plantation owners and their Black enslaved labor. We use, as our raw material, visitors’ responses to the question: “What is your level of interest in ...,” ten topics related to plantations’ presentations. This question was asked of visitors returning from tours at three plantation museums. Specifically, all three differ in their presentation of enslavement and as so, have been selected to represent the spectrum of plantation museums in regards to presentation of slavery and enslaved labor. It is expected that the differences in presentations at the three sites reflect differences in plantation audiences. To this effect, plantation audiences are mapped and viewed through the framework of social representation theory in an attempt to discern social representation communities using visitors’ levels of interest in topics/items presented on plantation tours at sites. Disregarding incidental cultural tourists, we found there to be basically two social representations that visitors to these three plantation museums hold: a nostalgic social representation and a Janus social representation.     

Does Viewing Pornography Diminish Religiosity Over Time? Evidence From Two-Wave Panel Data

Research consistently shows a negative association between religiosity and viewing pornography. While scholars typically assume that greater religiosity leads to less frequent pornography use, none have empirically examined whether the reverse could be true: that greater pornography use may lead to lower levels of religiosity over time. I tested for this possibility using two waves of the nationally representative Portraits of American Life Study (PALS). Persons who viewed pornography at all at Wave 1 reported more religious doubt, lower religious salience, and lower prayer frequency at Wave 2 compared to those who never viewed porn. Considering the effect of porn-viewing frequency, viewing porn more often at Wave 1 corresponded to increases in religious doubt and declining religious salience at Wave 2. However, the effect of earlier pornography use on later religious service attendance and prayer was curvilinear: Religious service attendance and prayer decline to a point and then increase at higher levels of pornography viewing. Testing for interactions revealed that all effects appear to hold regardless of gender. Findings suggest that viewing pornography may lead to declines in some dimensions of religiosity but at more extreme levels may actually stimulate, or at least be conducive to, greater religiosity along other dimensions.     

“Unnatural Fornication” Cases Under State-Socialism: A Hungarian–Slovenian Comparative Social-Historical Approach

This comparative social-historical study examines different versions of state-socialist body politics manifested in Hungary and Slovenia mainly during the 1950s by using archive material of “unnatural fornication” court cases. By analyzing the available Hungarian “természet elleni fajtalanság” and Slovenian “nenaravno ob?evanje” court cases, we can shed light on how the defendants were treated by the police and the judiciary. On the basis of these archive data that have never been examined before from these angles, we can construct an at least partial picture of the practices and consequences of state surveillance of same-sex-attracted men during state-socialism. The article explores the functioning of state-socialist social control mechanisms directed at nonnormative sexualities that had long-lasting consequences on the social representation of homosexuality in both countries.     

What schools are doing around career development: implications for policy and practice

This article describes the role that schools are playing in supporting career development for young people. It examines the history of career-related programming in schools, including school-to-work programs, career and technical education, the college and career readiness movement, and current school reform initiatives. This understanding of schools' history, roles, opportunities, and constraints can help practitioners and policymakers think about how to build a system that supports youth development.