The Second Generation in New York City: A Demographic Overview

The study analyzes the forces leading to or impeding the assimilation of a 18-32 year olds from immigrant backgrounds that vary in terms of race, language, and the mix of skills and liabilities their parents brought to the United States. To make sure that what we find derives specifically from the immigrant experience, rather than simply being a young person in New York, we are also studying a "control group" of people from native born white, black, and Puerto Rican backgrounds. The main sample is drawn from the inner part of the region where the vast majority of immigrants and native born minority group members live and grow up. Our study groups make possible a number of interesting comparisons. Unlike many other immigrant groups, the West Indian first generation speaks English, but the dominant society racially classifies them as black. We are interested in ways that their experiences resemble or differ from native born African Americans. Dominicans and the Colombian-Peruvian-Ecuadoran population both speak Spanish, but live in different parts of New York, have different class backgrounds prior to immigration, and, quite often, different skin tones. We have compared them to Puerto Rican young people, who, along with their parents, have the benefit of citizenship. Chinese immigrants from the mainland tend to have little education, while young people with overseas Chinese parents come from families with higher incomes, more education, and more English fluency. According to the 1990 Census, the base year for looking at the first generation parents, these five groups accounted for 45 percent of the immigrants who had arrived in metropolitan New York since 1970. Our ability to compare these groups with native born whites, blacks and Puerto Ricans has permitted us to analyze the effects of nativity while controlling for race and language background

More than one way of being a moa: differences in leg bone robustness map divergent evolutionary trajectories in Dinornithidae and Emeidae (Dinornithiformes).

The extinct moa of New Zealand included three families (Megalapterygidae; Dinornithidae; Emeidae) of flightless palaeognath bird, ranging in mass from 200 kg. They are perceived to have evolved extremely robust leg bones, yet current estimates of body mass have very wide confidence intervals. Without reliable estimators of mass, the extent to which dinornithid and emeid hindlimbs were more robust than modern species remains unclear. Using the convex hull volumetric-based method on CT-scanned skeletons, we estimate the mass of a female Dinornis robustus (Dinornithidae) at 196 kg (range 155-245 kg) and of a female Pachyornis australis (Emeidae) as 50 kg (range 33-68 kg). Finite element analysis of CT-scanned femora and tibiotarsi of two moa and six species of modern palaeognath showed that P. australis experienced the lowest values for stress under all loading conditions, confirming it to be highly robust. In contrast, stress values in the femur of D. robustus were similar to those of modern flightless birds, whereas the tibiotarsus experienced the highest level of stress of any palaeognath. We consider that these two families of Dinornithiformes diverged in their biomechanical responses to selection for robustness and mobility, and exaggerated hindlimb strength was not the only successful evolutionary pathway

Cross-National Comparison of Provision and Outcomes for the Education of the Second Generation

This article introduces the special issue, which focuses on the ways in which educational institutions in Europe and North America are responding to the growing number of children of immigrants entering schools and universities. It discusses the ways in which the needs of children of immigrants Europe, North America, and other economically advanced societies have received millions of international migrants since the 1950s and now face the important task of integrating not only the immigrants themselves but also their children. Of the institutional domains involved in this process, one of the most crucial is the educational system: More than half of the student body in many urban schools and postsecondary educational institutions in Europe and North America were born abroad or are children of immigrants, presenting new challenges to these systems as they seek to prepare young people for employment and citizenship. This special issue considers the implications of this changing demography and the ways in which educational systems in Europe and North America are responding. It examines both the different approaches that countries are taking toward the integration of children of immigrants, and the more subtle ways in which general educational policies and the structure of education systems affect the trajectories that children of immigrants take into further education or the labor market and into their lives as citizens. The issue focuses primarily on the children of immigrants, or the second generation, as they are often referred to. 1 This is because most first-generation immigrants arrive as adults and, with the exception of foreign students in higher education (many of whom return), they do not generally attend school in the host country. It is also because it is the experience of their children that gives the first clear indication of how well immigrants are being integrated into the economic, political, and social life of the host country. A great deal of the research on immigrant integration focuses on the immigrants themselves, on the material resources and social and cultural capital that they bring with them, and their ability to use them to build new lives in the host country. Much less attention has been paid to the institutional arrangements they confront and the opportunity structure framed by these arrangements. But pathways and outcomes for immigrant groups depend crucially on the nature of educational policy and provision, the extent to which educational institutions constrain and maximize choice, and the ease with which they can be navigated. We recognize, of course, that the resources of immigrant groups and the agency of immigrant families are extremely important factors in shaping pathways and outcomes and that structural factors are not determining. Nonetheless, because the role of pagina 1 van 1

Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life in America

Recent immigrants are creating their own unique religious communities within existing denominations or developing hybrid identities that combine strands of several faiths or traditions. These changes call for new thinking among both scholars of religion and scholars of migration. Immigrant Faiths responds to these changes with fresh thinking from new and established scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Covering groups from across the U.S. and a range of religious traditions, Immigrant Faiths provides a needed overview to this expanding subfield

Taking Action on Air Pollution Control in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) Region: Progress, Challenges and Opportunities

Due to rapid urbanization, industrialization and motorization, a large number of Chinese cities are affected by heavy air pollution. In order to explore progress, remaining challenges, and sustainability of air pollution control in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region after 2013, a mixed method analysis was undertaken. The quantitative analysis comprised an overview of air quality management in the BTH region. Semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with 12 stakeholders from various levels of government and research institutions who played substantial roles either in decision-making or in research and advising on air pollution control in the BTH region. The results indicated that with the stringent air pollution control policies, the air quality in BTH meets the targets of the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan. However, improvements vary across the region and for different pollutants. Although implementation has been decisive and was at least in parts effectively enforced, significant challenges remained with regard to industrial and traffic emission control, and national air quality limits continued to be significantly exceeded and competing development interests remained mainly unsolved. There were also concerns about the sustainability of the current air pollution control measures especially for industries due to the top-down enforcement, and the associated large burden of social cost including unemployment and social inequity resulting industrial restructuring. Better mechanisms for ensuring cross-sectoral coordination and for improved central-local government communication were suggested. Further suggestions were provided to improve the conceptual design and effective implementation of respective air pollution control strategies in BTH. Our study highlights some of the major hurdles that need to be addressed to succeed with a comprehensive air pollution control management for the Chinese mega-urban agglomerations

Finite element analysis results.

<p>Combined compression-bending results for the femur (a) and tibiotarsus (b). Values represent maximum von Mises stress (Pa) recorded at the midshaft of the bone. Pink and blue shaded areas represent the range of stress values estimated by finite element analysis when incorporating maximum and minimum values for body mass in <i>D. robustus</i> and <i>P. australis</i> respectively. Area enclosed by dark blue box is expanded in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0082668#pone-0082668-g006" target="_blank">Figure 6</a>.</p

Convex hull specimen list and sources of body mass.

<p><i>M</i>_b) was estimated for the convex hull individuals by first generating species-specific least squares regressions of known body mass against a linear metric from the hind limb as reported in the literature. Body mass (</p><p><i>Dromaius novaehollandiae</i> femoral length against body mass derived from carcasses of known body mass from the University of Manchester. Regression equation of </p><p><i>Rhea spp.</i> tibiotarsal length against body mass generated from previously published raw data and one carcass from the University of Manchester. Regression equation of </p