Retirement, Control, and the Challenges of Aging

The value of exploring the potential risks of retirement to individual well-being via a longitudinal analysis framed by theory is demonstrated in this study in a variety of ways. The measures for well-being are a sense of personal control and the experience of depression, and the sample used is of 260 individuals who were either working in 1995 (T1) and 1998 (T2), retired at both times, or who moved from work to retirement between T1 and T2. The analysis used was a mixed model repeated-measures ANOVA, and the theory which helped frame and interpret the analysis was social learning theory. Well-being, itself, is defined as the capacity to live life to its fullest - often characterized as self-actualization which in all likelihood will be increasingly important to many of the exploding number of individuals who find that much of their life may actually follow retirement, which, in fact, is a relatively recent social institution. Among findings in this study which may be worth pursuing in the future via both qualitative and quantitative research are that 1) individuals working at both T1 and T2 demonstrated a significantly greater sense of personal control than those retired at both time periods; 2) that individuals who moved from work to retirement between T1 and T2 actually showed a modest increase in their sense of personal control, as opposed to the other work status groups; and 3) that individuals who moved from work to retirement actually showed a significant decrease in the experience of depression, again as opposed to the other two work status groups. Some objectives of future research suggested by these findings might be to 1) design studies focused on well-being which begin tracking individuals prior to retirement, with pre-retirement preparation programs offered by many private and public institutions, and continue to study those individuals for at least ten years, or even longer, as with the Harvard Study of Adult Development; 2) develop domain specific scales for a sense of personal control for both the work and retirement environments; and 3)focus attention on, and stimulate policy debate around, the costs and benefits to society of a relatively new social institution: retirement

Privileged Executions: The Vestal Interment Ritual in Ancient Rome

Rather than trying to locate the Vestal interment ritual somewhere on the matrix of Roman crime and punishment, I suggest finding a more natural place for the live burial of Vestals in Roman ideologies of mortality as a variety of honorable death. I believe the Vestals\u27 unique status as the embodiments of Roman prosperity served as a justification for a modified punishment resulting in a respectable death, rather than a justification for an exceptionally punitive execution. I examine several other Roman death practices - military devotio, enforced suicide, and typical funerary rituals - and show that the Vestal ritual was carefully crafted to allow the doomed Vestal a modicum of dignity and honor, reflecting the continuation of her accustomed privilege even as she was executed. Indeed, the interment ritual, far from being a harshly punitive execution, allowed the Vestal to approximate the proverbial good death

Potential aquifer vulnerability in regions down-gradient from uranium \u3ci\u3ein situ\u3c/i\u3e recovery (ISR) sites

Sandstone-hosted roll-front uranium ore deposits originate when U(VI) dissolved in groundwater is reduced and precipitated as insoluble U(IV) minerals. Groundwater redox geochemistry, aqueous complexation, and solute migration are important in leaching uranium from source rocks and transporting it in low concentrations to a chemical redox interface where it is deposited in an ore zone typically containing the uranium minerals uraninite, pitchblende, and/or coffinite; various iron sulfides; native selenium; clays; and calcite. In situ recovery (ISR) of uranium ores is a process of contacting the uranium mineral deposit with leaching and oxidizing (lixiviant) fluids via injection of the lixiviant into wells drilled into the subsurface aquifer that hosts uranium ore, while other extraction wells pump the dissolved uranium after dissolution of the uranium minerals. Environmental concerns during and after ISR include water quality degradation from: 1) potential excursions of leaching solutions away from the injection zone into down-gradient, underlying, or overlying aquifers; 2) potential migration of uranium and its decay products (e.g., Ra, Rn, Pb); and, 3) potential mobilization and migration of redox-sensitive trace metals (e.g., Fe, Mn, Mo, Se, V), metalloids (e.g., As), and anions (e.g., sulfate). This review describes the geochemical processes that control roll-front uranium transport and fate in groundwater systems, identifies potential aquifer vulnerabilities to ISR operations, identifies data gaps in mitigating these vulnerabilities, and discusses the hydrogeological characterization involved in developing a monitoring program

Transport of moisture and solutes in the unsaturated zone by preferential flow

Environmental Hydrology presents a unified approach to the role of hydrology in environmental planning and management, emphasizing the consideration of the hydrological continuum in determining the fate and migration of chemicals as well as micro-organisms in the environment, both below the ground as well as on it. The eco-hydrological consequences of environmental management are also discussed, and an up- to-date account of the mathematical modeling of pollution is also presented

Do Small Businesses Create More Jobs? New Evidence for the United States from the National Establishment Time Series

We use the National Establishment Time Series (NETS) to revisit the debate about the role of small businesses in job creation (Birch, 1987; Davis, Haltiwanger, & Schuh, 1996a). Using the NETS data, we examine evidence for the overall economy, as well as for different sectors. The results indicate that small firms and small establishments create more jobs, on net, although the difference is much smaller than Birch's methods suggest. Moreover, in the recent period we study, a negative relationship between establishment size and net job creation holds for both the manufacturing and services sectors. © 2011 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.