Interparental Conflict,Parenting, and Childhood Depression in a Diverse Urban Population: The Role of General Cognitive Style

Research on the mechanisms by which interparental conflict (IPC) affects child depression suggests that both parenting and children’s conflict appraisals play important roles, but few studies have explored the role of general cognitive style or included both parenting and cognitions in the same design. Moreover, the effects of IPC on minority children are not well understood. In this longitudinal study, parenting was examined as a mediator of the relation between increasing IPC and change in depression. General cognitive style was included as a moderator. The combined influence of parenting and cognitions was also explored. A racially and ethnically diverse sample of 88 fifth and sixth graders from two urban schools reported their cognitive style, depressive symptoms, and perceptions of conflict and parenting at two time points separated by one year. Parental warmth/rejection mediated the relation between IPC and depression, and general cognitive style acted as a moderator. Parenting, cognitive style, and IPC did not significantly interact to predict change in depression over time. Findings indicate that both parenting and children’s general cognitive style play a role in understanding the impact of increasing IPC on children’s well-being.     

Country level efficiency and national systems of entrepreneurship: a data envelopment analysis approach

This paper tests the efficiency hypothesis of the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship. Using a comprehensive database for 63 countries for 2012, we employ data envelopment analysis to directly test how countries capitalize on their available entrepreneurial resources. Results support the efficiency hypothesis of knowledge spillover entrepreneurship. We find that innovation-driven economies make a more efficient use of their resources, and that the accumulation of market potential by existing incumbent businesses explains country-level inefficiency. Regardless of the stage of development, knowledge formation is a response to market opportunities and a healthy national system of entrepreneurship is associated with knowledge spillovers that are a prerequisite for higher levels of efficiency. Public policies promoting economic growth should consider national systems of entrepreneurship as a critical priority, so that entrepreneurs can effectively allocate resources in the economy.     

中国与拉美社会保障比较:传统文化与制度安排——提高覆盖率的角度

欧洲、拉丁美洲和中国的文化与社会保障改革取向存在差异性.与西欧相比,拉美和中国之间的相似性更多一些,例如低收入的经济背景、积累性质的融资模式、个人账户的引入等,其改革效果也存在一些相似性.例如覆盖面狭小等.中国和拉美社保覆盖面狭小的原因在于传统文化存在较大差异性,即拉美缺乏储蓄文化,其社保改革之后"对等原则"的引入并没有为提高覆盖率和遵缴率作出很大贡献,但对中国住房公积金制度进行分析和对比之后发现,在浓厚的储蓄文化背景之下,中国社保覆盖率狭小的原因正是由于缺乏"对等原则"因素所致.不同文化背景下,社保制度中"对等原则"效果截然相反.鉴于此,本文认为,如果将目前统账结合制度改造为大账户制或名义账户制,将个人和单位缴费完全划入个人账户,覆盖率和遵缴率就会像住房公积金那样立即提高,实现应保尽保.     

Determinants of Performance Measurement: An Investigation into the Decision to Conduct Citizen Surveys

This article develops and tests a comprehensive framework explaining the decision to measure performance, specifically the decision of local governments to conduct citizen surveys. It is structured around a fundamental distinction between subjective performance measures obtained for use in decision making and those that are produced solely for their symbolic value. The author suggests that the field of public administration may be taking a simplified view concerning the promotion and adoption of citizen surveys, overlooking important aspects of the decision-making process of performance-oriented public managers and neglecting the impact of politics and symbols. Political rationality may undercut managerial rationality in the decision to adopt citizen surveys, and symbolic adoption may be the underlying cause of low levels of information use. This study identifies policies to increase adoption of citizen surveys but cautions that simply promoting the adoption of surveys as inherently good may be a naive and wasteful course of action. Practitioners who have already made the decision to measure subjective performance through citizen surveys, or are facing such a decision, can find in this analysis a structure to assess past decisions or guide future decisions.     

A simple and efficient method for extracting DNA from old and burned bone

It has been a challenge to extract DNA from bones previously soaked in water, burned, or buried for a long time, due to the reduced quality and quantity of DNA in the bone samples. The dramatic degradation of the DNA and the presence of PCR inhibitors in the collagen significantly complicate the process of DNA identification in dated and charred bones. In this article, we present a novel strategy to obtain DNA from bones based on the use of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) lysis buffer and isoamyl alcohol-chloroform extraction with subsequent DNA purification using the DNA IQ System, or alternatively the QIAquick system. When applied to bones soaked, burned or buried for up to nine years, this method increases the purity and yield of DNA with respect to the traditional phenol-chloroform method and significantly improves multiplex STR genotyping using fluorescence-based methods. The results of this research will assist forensic scientists in the identification of DNA from victims whose bodies underwent significant trauma or burning, precluding the utilization of traditional forensic DNA identification techniques.     

TheContaduria Mayor de Cuentas at the time of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile (1474–1516)

TheContaduría Mayor de Cuentas of Castile—that is, the Audit Board of the Accounts of Castile—is one of the earliest supreme state auditing institutions of which we have a documentary record. This article discusses what we know about the organization and functions of theContaduría Mayor de Cuentas of Castile on the threshold of the modern age, in the hopes of finding some elements that can be incorporated into, and so enrich, our theoretical approach to the economic functions of supreme auditing institutions.     

Do intergovernmental transfers affect the distribution of manufacturing production across regions in federal countries? Theory and evidence for Argentina

The effect of changes in the distribution of top-to-bottom intergovernmental transfers on the location of manufacturing production is analysed using a modified version of the footloose capital model. An increase in the share of transfers received by a region increases its share of manufacturing production the larger are transaction costs; the larger is the share of transfers going directly to consumers; the larger is the share of manufacturing consumption vis-à-vis non-tradable consumption; and the easier consumers can substitute among manufacturing varieties. Using data for Argentina for 1983-2005, the empirical analysis appears to support the existence of two distinctive regimes, with smaller/poorer provinces benefiting in terms of the location of manufacturing production as a response to an increase in transfers. Also, for these provinces, the benefits are greater if they are politically aligned with the federal government, especially through the receipt of discretionary transfers. For large/rich provinces, the evidence is less conclusive.     

Effect of Temperature on Bone Tissue: Histological Changes

The analysis of burned human remains has been of great interest among forensic anthropologists largely due to the difficulty that their recovery, classification, reconstruction, and identification present. The main purpose of this analysis is to present histological methodology for the interpretation of bones altered by thermal processes. We include analyses of the microscopic changes among bones exposed to different temperatures, with the goal of establishing categories of histological morphology in relation to fire temperature. Samples of bone (ilium) were exposed systematically to controlled temperatures. Analysis of the resulting histological changes has allowed the formation of a clear four‐stage classification of the alterations observed. This classification should prove useful in assessing bone changes in relation to temperature of exposure, particularly in cases where this temperature was previously not known.     

Third-worldism: sensibility and ideology in Uruguay – from Third Position to the thought of Carlos Real de Azúa

This article examines the trajectory of the concepts ‘Third World’ and ‘Third-worldism’ in Uruguay, and attempts to prove that, although Third-worldism developed thoroughly as sensibility, it did not have the same success as ideology. The article examines authors and intellectual groups who reflected on the Third World, and especially on ‘tercerismo’ (Third Position) – understood as a set of ideas related to Third-worldism but not part of Third-worldism as such. It next explains the importance of the thought of Carlos Real de Azúa, identified as the main ideologist of Third-worldism in Uruguay. The research shows as a result that there was great concern about the Third World, especially in the 1960s and the 1970s, expressed in articles, reports and speeches, among others. Nevertheless, a full conceptualisation was never realised, except in the contribution made by Real de Azúa. The article concludes that, paradoxically, ‘tercerismo’ blocked the development of more elaborated third-worldist thought in Uruguay.