Behavioral responses of rural and urban greater white-toothed shrews (Crocidura russula) to sound disturbance

Urban Ecosystems - The development of urban areas imposes challenges that wildlife must adapt to in order to persist in these new habitats. One of the greatest changes brought by urbanization has...     

Job Insecurity and the Timing of Parenthood: A Comparison between Eastern and Western Germany

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the economic determinants of fertility behavior by addressing the role of job insecurity in couples’ intentions concerning parenthood and its timing. It starts from the hypothesis that cultural values moderate individuals’ reactions to job insecurity and the way it is related to family formation. With a systematic thematic content analysis of a set of semi-structured interviews with childless men and women around the age of 30 in eastern and western Germany, we are able to show that there are substantial differences in the consequences of job insecurity on intentions to have a first child. In western Germany, a relatively secure job career is expected to precede family formation, and this sequence of transitions is rather rigid, whereas in eastern Germany job security and family formation are thought of and practiced as parallel investments. We suggest that the lack of convergence in family formation patterns between eastern and western Germany after the unification of the country in 1990 is partially related to different attitudes toward job insecurity in the two contexts.     

A Unified Approach to the Approximation of Multivariate Densities

Approximation of a density by another density is considered in the case of different dimensionalities of the distributions. The results have been derived by inverting expansions of characteristic functions with the help of matrix techniques. The approximations obtained are all functions of cumulant differences and derivatives of the approximating density. The multivariate Edgeworth expansion follows from the results as a special case. Furthermore, the density functions of the trace and eigenvalues of the sample covariance matrix are approximated by the multivariate normal density and a numerical example is given     

Impact of physical activity on activity of daily living in moderate to severe dementia: a critical review

The objectives of this study were to describe the different modalities of physical activity programs designed for moderate to severe dementia and to identify their impact on functional independence in activities of daily living (ADL). A critical review of randomized controlled trials related to the impact of physical activity programs in moderately to severely demented persons on ADL performance and meta-analysis of the identified studies were performed. Among the 303 identified articles, five responded to the selection criteria. Four out of the five studies demonstrated limited methodological quality. In one high-quality study, physical activity programs significantly delayed deterioration of ADL performance. The program components and ADL assessment tools vary widely across studies. Although the proposed treatments have not proven their efficiency in improving the ADL status of the patients, they were able to limit the decline in ADL functioning. Future research is warranted in order to identify clinically relevant modalities for physical activity programs for people with moderate to severe dementia.     

Mapping movement landscapes in South Africa

ABSTRACT

The concept of a movement landscape is used to analyse continuities and changes in popular mobilization since the end of formal apartheid. Focusing on four different episodes of protest since 1997, the article examines their relationship to the ANC movement and traditions, and their organizational forms. It finds a general theme of fluid and ephemeral organization, and a distrust of formal hierarchal organization, that is relatively new in South Africa. The Marikana strikes produced the most far-reaching organizational realignments, while the student struggles generated the most innovative re-imaginings of political forms and discourses. It concludes that although there have been critiques of and challenges to the ANC tradition, and experiments with new forms of organizing, they have not produced alternatives that have lasted or dislodged the dominant approaches defined and popularized by the ANC movement.     

Same same but different: managerial influences on organisational performance in foundations and associations

In the last few years the management orientation of nonprofit organisation (NPOs) has been gaining importance. Management is said to have made the organisation of NPOs more effective and efficient. However, the influence of the institutional settings is often neglected in nonprofit management literature. By using a quantitative empirical approach this study investigates the influence of the legal type of Swiss nonprofits on the relationship between management dimensions and organisational performance. The research findings reveal significant differences in the management of foundations and associations. In particular, foundations have a competitive advantage in terms of innovation and market orientation. Whereas associations profit from investing in governance issues.     

Defender–Attacker Decision Tree Analysis to Combat Terrorism

We propose a methodology, called defender–attacker decision tree analysis, to evaluate defensive actions against terrorist attacks in a dynamic and hostile environment. Like most game‐theoretic formulations of this problem, we assume that the defenders act rationally by maximizing their expected utility or minimizing their expected costs. However, we do not assume that attackers maximize their expected utilities. Instead, we encode the defender's limited knowledge about the attacker's motivations and capabilities as a conditional probability distribution over the attacker's decisions. We apply this methodology to the problem of defending against possible terrorist attacks on commercial airplanes, using one of three weapons: infrared‐guided MANPADS (man‐portable air defense systems), laser‐guided MANPADS, or visually targeted RPGs (rocket propelled grenades). We also evaluate three countermeasures against these weapons: DIRCMs (directional infrared countermeasures), perimeter control around the airport, and hardening airplanes. The model includes deterrence effects, the effectiveness of the countermeasures, and the substitution of weapons and targets once a specific countermeasure is selected. It also includes a second stage of defensive decisions after an attack occurs. Key findings are: (1) due to the high cost of the countermeasures, not implementing countermeasures is the preferred defensive alternative for a large range of parameters; (2) if the probability of an attack and the associated consequences are large, a combination of DIRCMs and ground perimeter control are preferred over any single countermeasure.