HEALTHY IMMIGRANTS? EXPLORING COUNTRY OF ORIGIN, PRE-IMMIGRATION EXPERIENCES, AND ACCULTURATION IN RELATIONSHIP TO U.S. IMMIGRANTS’ HEALTH

Immigrants belonging to some racial/ethnic minority groups might not be benefitting from the healthy migrant effect. With data from the New Immigrant Survey (2003), which includes immigrants from Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Jamaica, I examine the odds of three health outcomes, chronic conditions, depressive symptoms, and fair or poor self-rated health using a series of logistic regression analyses. I draw on segmented assimilation and the cumulative inequality theories to understand and explicate the extent to which immigrants’ demographic characteristics, pre-immigration experiences, and acculturation in the U.S. might have an impact on immigrants’ health outcomes. Compared to Mexican immigrants, I find evidence to support that Cuban and Jamaican immigrants have significantly higher odds of reporting chronic conditions and Dominican Republic and Cuban immigrants report higher odds of depressive symptoms, while Haitian immigrants have lower odds of depressive symptoms. Female immigrants have higher odds of reporting all three health outcomes compared to their male counterparts. Relative to immigrants with good childhood health, those with unfavorable childhood health have higher odds of reporting worse health outcomes. In the logistic regression models, age of migration is not a major predictor of chronic conditions, however, immigrants who migrated at older age report higher odds of depressive symptoms and fair or poor self-rated health. Acculturation is not a significant predictor of chronic conditions and depressive symptoms. However, immigrants who are acculturated have lower odds of reporting fair or poor self-rated health than those who are not. By shedding light on the health status of understudied Caribbean immigrant groups in comparison with Mexican immigrants, this study serves as a starting point to guide policies that aim at decreasing health disparities among different immigrant groups

The Perceptual Experience Of Slope By Foot And By Finger

Historically, the bodily senses have often been regarded as impeccable sources of spatial information and as being the teacher of vision. Here, the authors report that the haptic perception of slope by means of the foot is greatly exaggerated. The exaggeration is present in verbal as well as proprioceptive judgments. It is shown that this misperception of pedal slope is not caused by calibration to the well-established visual misperception of slope because it is present in congenitally blind individuals as well. The pedal misperception of slope is contrasted with the perception of slope by dynamic touch with a finger in a force-feedback device. Although slopes feel slightly exaggerated even when explored by finger, they tend to show much less exaggeration than when equivalent slopes are stood on. The results are discussed in terms of a theory of coding efficiency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)(journal abstract

The Malaysian disclosure framework on executive directors’ remuneration: A critical review and closing its loops

Disclosure of executive directors’ remuneration especially on their individual pay continues to be a sensitive issue especially in a country like Malaysia where ownership is tightly held and potential rent extractions are significant.The objective of this paper is to provide a critical review on the existing Malaysian disclosure framework on executive directors’ remuneration. It outlines and assesses the current disclosure frameworks in ensuring high level of disclosure on executive directors’ remuneration, covering the Malaysian Corporate Governance Code, the Bursa Malaysia Listing Rule and the Malaysian Financial Reporting Standards.The review shows that there are weaknesses in the overall framework and offer suggestions on how to close the loops in order to improve the level of disclosure of executive directors’ remuneration.It is suggested that the Malaysian regulators adopt a mandatory and prescriptive approach in dealing with the disclosure of executive directors’ remuneration and to step up their enforcement to ensure full compliance to the disclosure framework

The voluntary disclosure of Malaysian executive directors’ remuneration under an evolving regulatory framework

This study examined the level of voluntary disclosure of executive directors’ remuneration in Malaysia.The study period covered a period of significant changes in the Malaysian regulatory framework on disclosure over 2000 to 2008.It applied an un-weighted disclosure index to determine a voluntary disclosure score that was determined as score of excess of the mandatory disclosure requirements.The study found a significant improvement in the level of voluntary score after the introduction of the reforms.However, they appeared to be exploitation of the weaknesses in the reforms that limited their effectiveness in improving the disclosure of executive directors’ remuneration

Cooperative learning: Buddy system in an advanced accounting subject

Co-operative learning in the form of a buddy system was adopted in teaching third year advanced accounting subject.Length of lectures were limited to incorporate more co-operative learning activities such as oral and poster presentations, jigsaws and buddy discussions.Mid-way through the course, students wrote a short reflection on their buddy experience.At the end of the course, a survey was conducted on the perceptions of students towards the buddy system and teamwork. The result of the survey indicated a positive rating towards students’ perceptions on the buddy system and teamwork and the chances of improving their grades.Findings also suggested that although there had been some resistance by the students towards the pre-selection of buddies and issues in its implementation, co-operative learning appeared to create a safer and conducive environment for students in achieving the learning outcomes

Physical Health Impacts of Grandparenting Children with Disabilities

Although caring for grandchildren with disabilities often brings substantial joy to grandparents, it can adversely impact grandparents\u27 physical health. For many grandparents, caring for their grandchildren makes them feel younger, mostly because they are more physically active and maintain healthier diets

Enhanced wetland monitoring, assessment and indicators to support European and global environmental policy

SWOS Technical publicationBetween 2015 and 2018, the Horizon 2020 SWOS project has supported policies by developing and applying science-based methods that aim at standardising wetland definition, identification, delimitation, and delineation. The primary outputs of the project are satellite-based monitoring tools (SWOS toolbox1, GEO-Wetlands Community Portal2) to enable improved wetland assessment and monitoring capabilities, as well as their application in management and reporting at different scales, and by different users. In addition, the SWOS project includes a capacity-building component to facilitate the uptake of the tools by users. This report presents the project’s technical results (Chapter 3), as well as applied examples of the improved capabilities for wetland conservation and restoration needs (Chapter 4). These two chapters are preceded by an introduction (Chapter 1) and a review of the global and EU policies related to wetlands, including a perspective on the post-2020 agenda (Chapter 2)

Operations and Maintenance Optimization of Stochastic Systems: Three Essays

This dissertation presents three essays on topics related to optimally operating and maintaining systems that evolve randomly over time. Two primary areas are considered: (i) joint staffing and pricing strategies for call centers that use co-sourcing to improve service operations and reduce costs; and (ii) optimally maintaining stochastically degrading systems when either multiple systems are associated via a common environment, or when a single-unit system is maintained using a population of heterogeneous spare parts. First we present a queueing and stochastic programming framework for optimally staffing a call center utilizing co-sourced service capacity. The interplay between the call center and external service provider is modeled as a leader-follower game in which the call center, acting as the follower, solves a two-stage stochastic integer program. The problem is reformulated as a quadratically-constrained linear program to obtain the optimal contract prices and the optimal staffing problem yields a closed-form solution. Numerically we demonstrate that significant cost reductions can be achieved, even in the presence of imperfect and asymmetric information. Second the problem of optimally replacing multiple stochastically degrading systems using condition-based maintenance is considered. Properties of the optimal value function and policy motivate a tractable, approximate model with state- and action-space transformations and a basis-function approximation of the action-value function. It is demonstrated that near optimal policies are attainable and significantly outperform heuristics. Finally, we consider the problem of optimally maintaining a stochastically degrading system using spares of varying quality. Conditions are provided under which the optimal value function exhibits monotonicity and the optimal policy is characterized. Numerically we demonstrate the utility of our proposed framework, and provide insights into the optimal policy as an exploration-exploitation type policy

EMPLOYING ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY COMPONENTS IN ENHANCING CORPORATE PERFORMANCE

Purpose: Ongoing investigations on modern markets demonstrated that organizational limit structure some portion of the organization’s environment that affect its performance. Knowing its standing to the industry, a recent study inspected the effect of organizational capacity on business performance in Malaysia. The research focuses on attaining two objectives. Firstly, to analyze the perceptions of Malaysian listed companies’ directors on business capacity components. Secondly, to analyze whether different components of organizational capacity effect the performance of organizations listed in  Malaysia. Methodology: A questionnaire survey and the regression analysis have been used in obtaining the data and answering the research questions respectively. Main Findings: The consequences of this study show that company structure plays an important role in manipulating the organization’s performance. Nonetheless, organizational learning was established not to explain Malaysian companies’ performance. Hence, the results assist the firm in their hunt for better performance through using suitable business resources. Implications/Applications: Recognizing organizational structure as an important organizational capacity element might improve the performance of local business in the market to withstand competitive advantage

The impact of female overlapping audit committee member on earnings management in Nigeria

Managers have been managing earnings especially through accruals for their personal benefits.This led to collapse of companies and loss of investments around the world.Audit committee is identified as an internal corporate governance mechanism that can monitor the managers and mitigate earnings management though with mixed result.The focus of this study is to examine whether female audit committee member who is also members of other board committee have a role in curbing opportunistic earnings management.However, some argue that gender has no additional value and overlapping overburden the audit committee members, which affect their monitoring performance and ability to mitigate earning management.This study uses modified Jones model as a proxy for earning management and document how inclusion of female overlapping director in an audit committee mitigates opportunistic earning management