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Material Resources (material + resource)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	40%
Life Sciences	13%
Earth and Environmental Science	13%

Selected Abstracts

Making the Best of a Bad Situation: Material Resources and Teenage Parenthood

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY, Issue 1 2007
Stefanie Mollborn
Past research has largely ignored the influence of material resources on teenage parents' life outcomes. A lack of resources such as housing, child care, and financial support is hypothesized to explain the negative effect of teenage parenthood on educational attainment. Regression analyses use nationally representative data from the 1988 , 2000 National Education Longitudinal Study (N = 8,432, n = 356 teenage parents). Results support the hypothesis completely for the teenage fathers in the sample and partially for mothers: Resources substantially diminish the educational penalty teenage parents paid by age 26. Gender influences which types of resources are protective, providing policy implications. Help with child care is critical for teenage mothers, whereas housing and financial resources may be important for men. [source]

The Long Parliament goes to war: the Irish campaigns, 1641,3*

HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 207 2007
Robert Armstrong
As England lurched towards war in 1642, the Westminster parliament had already become embroiled in a lengthy and costly war of reconquest in Ireland. An examination of the war effort in Ireland reveals the scale of parliament's commitment to sustained long-distance warfare, the range of initiatives developed to harness the necessary political and material resources, and its increasing reliance upon an emerging war interest of investors and suppliers. The outbreak of civil war in England saw parliament deploy a similar gamut of initiatives, nationally and locally, to those used in Ireland, but in very different strategic and political contexts. Parliament was engaged in a smaller-scale version of the multiple-front conflicts of the great European powers and disengagement from Ireland, England's Flanders, was not an option. [source]

New Directions in Natural Resource Management The Offer of Actor-Network Theory

IDS BULLETIN, Issue 4 2001
Nathalie A. Steins
Summaries The article offers theoretical insights from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as to how natural resource management (NRM) perspectives might be enhanced. ANT asks us to abolish the conventional sociological practice of studying phenomena in terms of predefined categories and principles, as they hinder our analysis of how the stakeholders involved construct resource management processes and the way these constructions are used. In this analytical process, any (uncertain) outcome of NRM is regarded as an effect of the interplay amongst the different stakes in the resource and the way stakeholders continuously mobilise social and material resources in order to achieve their goals. Only by analysing how certain outcomes have been achieved can we develop our understanding of the dynamics and uncertainties involved in NRM. The article uses empirical examples from coastal management scenarios to illustrate these theoretical points. [source]

Resource Consumption of New Urban Construction in China

JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY, Issue 2 2007
John E. Fernández
The volume of China's recent additions to its urban-built environment is unprecedented. China now accounts for half of all new building area in the world. Increases in building stocks of all types have occurred during an extended period of accelerated growth of the national economy. This expansion promises to continue through 2030. As a result, the rapid conversion of land from low-density agricultural and light manufacturing to new urban zones of high density and material-intensive commercial and residential buildings has consumed enormous quantities of domestic and imported resources and has irreversibly altered the Chinese landscape. This article examines the consumption of material resources dedicated to Chinese building construction through a survey and analysis of the material intensity of three major building types. This provides a basis for outlining the emerging life-cycle issues of recent additions to the built environment and of continued construction. With this as the starting point, the field of industrial ecology can work toward formulating strategies for a circular economy that include a resource-efficient urban China. [source]

Is Marriage More Than Cohabitation?

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY, Issue 5 2009
Well-Being Differences in 30 European Countries
The study aims to assess, first, whether there is a gap in well-being between unmarried cohabitants and the married, second, if selection factors can explain this so-called cohabitation gap, and third, if the size of the cohabitation gap differs across countries and how this can be explained. We use pooled data from young adults (18,44) in 3 rounds of the European Social Survey (N , 31, 500). Multilevel regression analyses show that there is a moderate cohabitation gap that can be partly explained with the selection factors material resources and religiosity. Country differences were clear and could partly be explained with the level of institutionalization: In countries where cohabitation is more accepted and more prevalent, the cohabitation gap is smaller. [source]

Making the Best of a Bad Situation: Material Resources and Teenage Parenthood

Social capital, social currency, and portable assets: The impact of residential mobility on exchanges of social support

PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS, Issue 2 2003
Lynn Magdol
We examined the impact of physical distance on mobilized social capital resources. Social capital theory assumes that physical proximity and residential stability are prerequisites to social capital assets. We tested these assumptions using a two-wave panel sample from the National Survey of Families and Households consisting of respondents who experienced residential moves between waves. We found local duration since the last move to be beneficial for involvement in social exchanges. Mobility distance was related to deficits for some exchanges but not for others. Rather than a simple dichotomy between material resources that require proximity and nonmaterial resources that do not, we found that emotional and financial support are not affected by mobility distance but that tangible favors and companionship are affected negatively. Although kin exchanges are negatively affected by distant and recent mobility, nonkin exchanges are more extensive for respondents whose kin ties are more distant, suggesting a process of substitutability whereby nonkin may replace kin in the network. Our findings confirm the assumption of social capital theory about distance. They also point to the importance of adding the dimension of distance to exchange theory. Our study demonstrates that place has not lost all relevance in our highly technological postmodern society. [source]

Context-specific mate choice criteria: Women's trade-offs in the contexts of long-term and extra-pair mateships

PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS, Issue 4 2001
JOANNA E. SCHEIB
Women's mate choice criteria were examined experimentally in the contexts of long-term and extra-pair mateship scenarios. In long-term mateships, women may benefit by pairing with males who provide material resources and assistance in child rearing. In contrast, in extra-pair mateships, women may benefit in other ways, with such benefits outweighing the potential costs imposed by a primary mate who discovers the relationship. One benefit, or evolutionary function, of extra-pair mateships may be to replace a primary mate, in which case mate preferences should look similar across long-term and extra-pair contexts. However, another function of extra-pair mateships may be to obtain high quality gametes (Le., "good genes"), in which case women should be differentially attracted to cues of heritable phenotypic quality, such as physical attractiveness. By using detailed verbal and pictorial descriptions of men and requiring participants to trade off physical attractiveness for good character (i.e., being a good cooperator and parent), it was possible to determine whether women's criteria for partners varied across experimental contexts. Findings suggest that extra-pair mateships may have served the evolutionary function of obtaining "good genes," because attractiveness was more important in extra-pair mateships to the detriment of good character. This effect was maintained even when characteristics of the female participants (age, parity, marital experience) were covaried. In addition, the preference for physical attractiveness was specific to the sexual context; it did not generalize, in a second experiment, to choices among short-term male coworkers. [source]

Habits of the heart: Life history and the developmental neuroendocrinology of emotion

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 6 2009
Carol M. Worthman
The centrality of emotion in cognition and social intelligence as well as its impact on health has intensified investigation into the causes and consequences of individual variation in emotion regulation. Central processing of experience directly informs regulation of endocrine axes, essentially forming a neuro-endocrine continuum integrating information intake, processing, and physiological and behavioral response. Two major elements of life history,resource allocation and niche partitioning,are served by linking cognitive-affective with physiologic and behavioral processes. Scarce cognitive resources (attention, memory, and time) are allocated under guidance from affective co-processing. Affective-cognitive processing, in turn, regulates physiologic activity through neuro-endocrine outflow and thereby orchestrates energetic resource allocation and trade-offs, both acutely and through time. Reciprocally, peripheral activity (e.g., immunologic, metabolic, or energetic markers) influences affective-cognitive processing. By guiding attention, memory, and behavior, affective-cognitive processing also informs individual stances toward, patterns of activity in, and relationships with the world. As such, it mediates processes of niche partitioning that adaptively exploit social and material resources. Developmental behavioral neurobiology has identified multiple factors that influence the ontogeny of emotion regulation to form affective and behavioral styles. Evidence is reviewed documenting roles for genetic, epigenetic, and experiential factors in the development of emotion regulation, social cognition, and behavior with important implications for understanding mechanisms that underlie life history construction and the sources of differential health. Overall, this dynamic arena for research promises to link the biological bases of life history theory with the psychobehavioral phenomena that figure so centrally in quotidian experience and adaptation, particularly, for humans. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

Personality traits and fear response to print advertisements: Theory and an empirical study

PSYCHOLOGY & MARKETING, Issue 11 2004
John C. Mowen
This study investigates the hypothesis that different personality traits influence fear responses to advertising appeals for two types of driver safety behavior. An experiment was conducted in which personality traits taken from the 3M model of motivation and personality (Mowen, 2000) were employed to predict fear responses to advertisements that targeted either aggressive driving or inattentive driving. For the aggressive-driving ad, introversion and need to protect and enhance body resources positively predicted fear response. For the inattentive-driving ad, introversion and need to protect and enhance body resources were again positive predictors of fear, but so also were emotional instability and agreeableness, whereas competitiveness, need for arousal, and the need for material resources were negative predictors. It is not clear why more traits predicted fear for inattentive driving than for aggressive driving. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]

Lifestyle incongruity, stress and immune function in indigenous Siberians: The health impacts of rapid social and economic change

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2009
Mark V. Sorensen
Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of economic and cultural change on immune function and psychosocial stress in an indigenous Siberian population. We examined Epstein-Barr virus antibodies (EBV), an indirect biomarker of cell-mediated immune function, in venous whole blood samples collected from 143 Yakut (Sakha) herders (45 men and 98 women) in six communities using a cross-sectional study design. We modeled economic change through the analysis of lifestyle incongruity (LI), calculated as the disparity between socioeconomic status and material lifestyle, computed with two orthogonal scales: market and subsistence lifestyle. EBV antibody level was significantly negatively associated with both a market and a subsistence lifestyle, indicating higher cell-mediated immune function associated with higher material lifestyle scores. In contrast, LI was significantly positively associated with EBV antibodies indicating lower immune function, and suggesting higher psychosocial stress, among individuals with economic status in excess of material lifestyle. Individuals with lower incongruity scores (i.e., economic status at parity with material resources, or with material resources in excess of economic status) had significantly lower EBV antibodies. The findings suggest significant health impacts of changes in material well-being and shifting status and prestige markers on health during the transition to a market economy in Siberia. The findings also suggest that relative, as opposed to absolute, level of economic status or material wealth is more strongly related to stress in the Siberian context. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2009. © 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

"SAVING" MALAWI: FAITHFUL RESPONSES TO ORPHANS AND VULNERABLE CHILDREN

ANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2010
Andrea Freidus
Malawi is scrambling to deal with one million orphans while contending with state rollbacks resulting in economic, political, and social breakdowns. As a result, a new space is emerging for faith-based organizations. Their presence is justified through a global discourse of connection rooted in the western ideology of childhood as a state of innocence and immaturity in need of protection and intervention. These organizations function with myriad ideologies, projects, and resources as they develop intimate linkages with children and communities. This article highlights the disjuncture between western conceptualizations and Malawian understandings of orphans, illustrating how this disjuncture results in unanticipated consequences as material resources are deployed and programs implemented. Two faith-based organizations focusing on orphans and some unanticipated outcomes of these emerging global ties are examined. [source]

Meso-Cenozoic Mineralization Pattern in the Continent of China

ACTA GEOLOGICA SINICA (ENGLISH EDITION), Issue 3 2000
CHEN Yuchuan
Abstract, Based on the complex structure and material resources, the complex geological setting of the Mesozoic-Cenozoic continent of China controlled four kinds of dynamic mechanisms of the continental tectonic-mineralization pattern, i.e. the dynamic mechanisms related to (1) underthrusting or collision, (2) activation of old tectonic belts or activity of new tectonic belts, (3) upwelling of mantle material and heat, and (4) interaction between the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and lithosphere. The four dynamic factors are related to and interact with each other; and the mantle-crust interaction leads to the regular time-space zonation of endogenetic deposits on a regional scale. The Meso-Cenozoic mineralization pattern in China can be outlined as the network tectono-metallogenic pattern constructed by NNE- and E-W-trending tectonics in eastern China, and multi-layer ring tectono-metallogenic pattern in the Qinghai-Tibet plateau and its northern and eastern neighbouring areas. [source]

Q- und R-Matten aus Kunststoff für Bewehrungsaufgaben in der Geotechnik

BAUTECHNIK, Issue 9 2004
Georg Heerten Dr.-Ing.
Wachsende Güterströme und Warenverkehre im Zentrum eines wachsenden Europas und zunehmender Warenaustausch als Folge der Globalisierung der Weltwirtschaft stellen erhebliche Anforderungen an den Erhalt und Ausbau leistungsfähiger Infrastruktursysteme (Straße, Schiene, Wasserstraße). Nachhaltigkeitskonzepte bei der Bautätigkeit und Finanzierungsprobleme der öffentlichen Auftraggeber sind aktuelle Randbedingungen, denen mit Geokunststoff-Bauweisen optimal Rechnung getragen werden kann. Es können neben den technischen auch die ökonomischen und ökologischen Vorteile , Baukosten sparen, Baustoffressourcen schonen , parallel genutzt werden. Eine Stützwand als "Bewehrte-Erde-Konstruktion" kann ganz erheblich kostengünstiger als eine Stahlbeton-Stützmauer hergestellt werden. Die Ertüchtigung von wenig tragfähigen Böden mit flächig angeordneten Bewehrungslagen und/oder pfahlartigen geokunststoffummantelten Bodensäulen vermeidet umfangreichen Bodenaustausch, spart Kosten, verhindert umfangreichen Transport von Bodenmassen mit LKWs. Hierdurch werden knappe Baustoffressourcen wie Sand und Kies geschont sowie eine z. T. erhebliche Entlastung örtlicher Verkehrswege bewirkt. Q and R mats made of synthetics for reinforcement functions in the field of geotechnics. An increasing flow of goods in a growing central Europe, resulting from the globalisation of the world economy, makes high demands on the maintenance and development of an efficient infrastructure (road, railway, waterway). Sustainability concepts for the construction activities and funding problems of the contracting authorities are current boundary conditions which can be accommodated optimally with geosynthetic construction methods. At the same time, besides the technical advantages, the economical and ecological advantages can be used too , saving of construction costs and taking care of building materials resources. A retaining wall as "Reinforced-Earth-Structure" can be constructed at much lower cost than a retaining wall made of reinforced concrete. The improvement of subsoils with low bearing capacity, by using reinforcing layers in the area and/or soil columns similar to piles wrapped with geosynthetics, avoids a considerable exchange of soil, saves costs and avoids substantial soil transports by trucks. Thus, care is taken on rare building materials resources like sand and gravel and the traffic routes are partly released to a high extent. [source]