Cultural Stress,Emotional well-being,and Health Risk Behaviors among Recent Immigrant Latinx families: The Moderating Role of Perceived Neighborhood Characteristics

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Latinx families can experience cultural stressors, which can negatively influence their emotional and behavioral health. Few studies have examined if perceived...     

Personal Identity Development in Hispanic Immigrant Adolescents: Links with Positive Psychosocial Functioning,Depressive Symptoms,and Externalizing Problems

The present study was designed to examine trajectories of personal identity coherence and confusion among Hispanic recent-immigrant adolescents, as well as the effects of these trajectories on psychosocial and risk-taking outcomes. Personal identity is extremely important in anchoring young immigrants during a time of acute cultural change. A sample of 302 recently immigrated (5 years or less in the United States at baseline) Hispanic adolescents (M_age?=?14.51 years at baseline; SD?=?0.88 years, range 14–17) from Miami and Los Angeles (47?% girls) completed measures of personal identity coherence and confusion at the first five waves of a six-wave longitudinal study; and reported on positive psychosocial functioning, depressive symptoms, and externalizing problems at baseline and at Time 6. Results indicated that identity coherence increased linearly across time, but that there were no significant changes in confusion over time and no individual differences in confusion trajectories. Higher baseline levels of, and improvements in, coherence predicted higher levels of self-esteem, optimism, and prosocial behavior at the final study timepoint. Higher baseline levels of confusion predicted lower self-esteem, greater depressive symptoms, more aggressive behavior, and more rule breaking at the final study timepoint. These results are discussed in terms of the importance of personal identity for Hispanic immigrant adolescents, and in terms of implications for intervention.     

Establishing Confucius Institutes: a tool for promoting China’s soft power?

Soft power has become China’s new diplomatic tool to spread its influence in today’s changing international landscape. The establishment of Confucius Institutes (CIs) since 2004 to promote the understanding of Chinese language and culture is a striking example of how the government promotes soft power through cultural means. Through the macro- and micro-level analysis of CIs, this study shows that CIs fail to increase the soft power of China because many countries regard CIs as a propaganda tool and a threat to academic freedom and the local community. It shows that China’s soft power is not so attractive in the eyes of receivers. In fact, China’s aggressive cultural initiatives through the establishment of CIs have triggered another version of the ‘China threat’.     

The Open Method of Coordination: A New Supranational Form of Governance?

The open method of coordination (OMC) has emerged as a new policy instrument in the European context. While it was initially confined to the employment field, it has recently been applied to several other areas. The aim of this article is to provide a reconstruction of the OMC. The focus is in particular on the structure and process of the OMC, but also on the new approach to law that it proposes. The OMC differs from traditional EC methods but also from traditional soft-law mechanisms. In order to highlight those original features, the paper analyses the key steps in the evolution of a strategy, the European employment strategy, which slowly became a new mode of governance.     

Atypical injury pattern of a pedestrian run over by an unimog in the epigastric region

Strongly intoxicated, a 37-year-old man fell in front of the right back wheel of an emergency vehicle (MB Unimog) and was run over according to eye witnesses. He died in hospital shortly afterwards. The autopsy revealed that he bled to death from a traumatic liver rupture (bursting of the right hepatic lobe and severing of a piece of tissue measuring 17 x 8 x 4 cm). There were no injuries classicaly seen in victims run over by a car. The atypical injury findings in this case are due to the special features of the accident vehicle: The Unimog (an all-wheel vehicle with a fixed rear axle and flat coils) struck the right side of the body lying on the street with its rear wheel and was then lifted over the body by its fixed axle without touching the left side.     

Zygomaticomaxillary suture shape analyzed with digital morphometrics: reassessing patterns of variation in American Indian and European populations

Typological classification of human zygomaticomaxillary suture (ZMS) shape is often used in forensic assessment of ancestry, following earlier studies reporting higher frequencies of "angled" sutures among American Indians and higher frequencies of "curved" sutures among Caucasians. In this paper we present a new method of digital morphometrics to quantify and compare ZMS shape in 60 American Indian and 60 European crania. Suture outlines were recorded as three-dimensional (3D) contours on digital models of adult male and female crania created with a portable 3D laser scanner. Each contour was represented by about four hundred point coordinates, which were transformed via Fourier analysis into amplitude coefficients suitable for use in linear discriminant analysis. Discriminant functions were created that accurately predicted group membership for 83% of the crania in the sample, after leave-one-out cross-validation. The results were compared with traditional typological classifications based on visual evaluation of ZMS shape, and the contour-based method was found to be more effective than the typological approach. However, the distribution of ZMS types within the two sample groups did not conform to previously reported patterns. This discrepancy indicates that ZMS shape may reflect not only genetic factors, but also environmental factors such as diet and stress. In addition, some evidence for sexual dimorphism in the zygomaticomaxillary complex was observed. Based on these findings, we recommend caution when using ZMS shape analysis in forensic ancestry determination.