When parents migrate, leaving their children in the origin country, transnational families are formed. Transnational family studies on children who are "left behind" indicate that children suffer psychologically from parental migration. Many of the factors identified as affecting children's responses to parental migration however are not considered in child psychology and family sociology studies. This study aims to bridge these areas of knowledge by quantitatively investigating the association between transnational families and children's psychological well-being. It analyzes a survey conducted in three African countries in 2010-11 (Ghana N = 2760; Angola N = 2243; Nigeria N = 2168) amongst pupils of secondary schools. The study compares children in transnational families to those living with their parents in their country of origin. Children's psychological well-being is measured through the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Multiple regression analyses reveal that children in transnational families fare worse than their counterparts living with both parents but not in Ghana where living conditions mediate this relationship. This paper also looks at four characteristics of transnational families and finds that specific characteristics of transnational families and country contexts matter: (1) changing caregivers is associated with poorer well-being in all countries; (2) which parent migrates does not make a difference in Ghana, when mothers migrate and fathers are caregivers results in poorer well-being in Nigeria, and both mother's and father's migration result in worse outcomes in Angola; (3) the kin relationship of the caregiver is not associated with poorer well-being in Ghana and Nigeria but is in Angola; (4) children with parents who migrate internationally do not show different results than children whose parents migrate nationally in Ghana and Nigeria but in Angola international parental migration is associated with poorer psychological well-being. The study shows that broader characteristics in the population rather than parental migration per se are associated with decreased levels of well-being.

The term 'nexting' has been used by psychologists to refer to the propensity of people and many other animals to continually predict what will happen next in an immediate, local, and personal sense. The ability to 'next' constitutes a basic kind of awareness and knowledge of one's environment. In this paper we present results with a robot that learns to next in real time, making thousands of predictions about sensory input signals at timescales from 0.1 to 8 seconds. Our predictions are formulated as a generalization of the value functions commonly used in reinforcement learning, where now an arbitrary function of the sensory input signals is used as a pseudo reward, and the discount rate determines the timescale. We show that six thousand predictions, each computed as a function of six thousand features of the state, can be learned and updated online ten times per second on a laptop computer, using the standard temporal-difference(l) algorithm with linear function approximation. This approach is sufficiently computationally efficient to be used for real-time learning on the robot and sufficiently data efficient to achieve substantial accuracy within 30 minutes. Moreover, a single tile-coded feature representation suffices to accurately predict many different signals over a significant range of timescales. We also extend nexting beyond simple timescales by letting the discount rate be a function of the state and show that nexting predictions of this more general form can also be learned with substantial accuracy. General nexting provides a simple yet powerful mechanism for a robot to acquire predictive knowledge of the dynamics of its environment.

No abstract

Drawing on the use of children-centred visual research methods, primarily artwork and photography, in Irish primary schools, this article compares the use of artwork and photography as visual methods and outlines the theoretical frameworks within which the data produced can be made meaningful. The ways in which the social worlds of migrant children both converged with, and diverged from, those of children who were born in Ireland are also explored.

Research with injecting drug users (IDUs) suggests greater willingness to report sensitive and stigmatised behaviour via audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (ACASI) methods than during face-to-face interviews (FFIs); however, previous studies were limited in verifying this within the same individuals at the same time point. This study examines the relative willingness of IDUs to report sensitive information via ACASI and during a face-to-face clinical assessment administered in health services for IDUs. During recruitment for a randomised controlled trial undertaken at two IDU-targeted health services, assessments were undertaken as per clinical protocols, followed by referral of eligible clients to the trial, in which baseline self-report data were collected via ACASI. Five questions about sensitive injecting and sexual risk behaviours were administered to participants during both clinical interviews and baseline research data collection. "Percentage agreement" determined the magnitude of concordance/discordance in responses across interview methods, while tests appropriate to data format assessed the statistical significance of this variation. Results for all five variables suggest that, relative to ACASI, FFI elicited responses that may be perceived as more socially desirable. Discordance was statistically significant for four of the five variables examined. Participants who reported a history of sex work were more likely to provide discordant responses to at least one socially sensitive item. In health services for IDUs, information collection via ACASI may elicit more reliable and valid responses than FFI. Adoption of a universal precautionary approach to complement individually tailored assessment of and advice regarding health risk behaviours for IDUs may address this issue.

This article introduces a special issue on childhood and migration. It argues that understandings of the ways in which children form belongings and attachments are enhanced by conducting research with children who migrate or who live mobile and transnational lives. The articles in this collection highlight the mobile and translocal nature of children’s lives, from different perspectives and in different global and migration contexts. Taken together, they make a number of key contributions to an emerging literature on the lives of migrant, mobile and diasporic children and young people. They emphasize the situated and contextualized nature of migrant children’s negotiations of home and belonging. In particular, the collection explores children’s and young people’s constructions of home and belonging, often negotiated in contradictory or challenging circumstances and frequently destabilizing powerful assumptions about the nature of migration, mobility and childhood, such as ideals of childhood based on notions of residential fixity.

Summary Servicizing—the transformation from product‐to service‐based enterprise—is a major force in changing how firms manage material input, throughput, and output. Redefinition of the firm as a service provider instead of a product manufacturer means that function, not form, is the source of added value delivered to the customer. To realize the dematerialization benefits of such a transformation requires a fundamental realignment of the supplier‐customer relationship. Instead of the traditional incentives to maximize the volume of physical product sold, servicizing requires a partnership wherein the financial rewards of reduced material consumption are shared between supplier and customer. We illustrate this partnership concept with the example of chemical management services (CMS), an approach that is gaining momentum in the automobile and electronics sector. Compensation and gain‐sharing based on chemical efficiency and chemical use reduction, often tied to fixed price mechanisms, lie at the core of the CMS model. Diffusion of the servicizing model holds much promise for driving dematerialization while reducing the environmental burden of product manufacturers.

Purpose This study examined African American adolescents’ perceptions of a mobile cell phone (MCP)-enhanced intervention and development of an MCP-based HIV prevention intervention. Design and Methods One focus group was conducted with 11 adolescents who participated in the Becoming a Responsible Teen Text Messaging project. Results Adolescents said they benefited from the MCP-enhanced approach and were receptive to the idea of developing an MCP-based intervention. Practice Implications Nurses can use the findings of this report as a starting point in examining the development of MCP-based sexuality education with parents and adolescents.