Neighborhood Relationship Matters for Whom?: Interaction With Family Structure and Functional Conditions

Living environment is considered to have unignorable effect on our health and well-being, especially when we face shrinkage of mobility as we age. Social interaction with neighbors constitutes our social environment, and it may affect our well-being by interacting with other social resources such as support from family and professional care providers. In this study we examined the effect of social environment in neighborhood on older people’s well-being, and how its effect is moderated by their family structure, functional conditions, and LTC service usage. Data was obtained from the survey conducted in 2012 with nationally representative sample of Japanese adults aged 60 years and older. The results showed that for people with functional limitation but were not certified as needing LTC, neighborhood social network was positively associated with well-being. These results suggest the unique function of neighbors for frail people to keep everyday life in the community.

The association between childhood neighborhood relationship and mental health in middle and later life: Evidence from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

Background It is unclear that whether childhood neighborhood relationship is associated with mental health among middle-aged and older adults. To overcome this research gap, this study aimed to investigate the association between childhood neighborhood relationship and mental health among the middle-aged and older adults in China. Methods The data of this study was sourced from the 2014 and 2015 waves of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. We used ordinary least squares and logit regression models to explore the association between childhood neighborhood relationship and mental health among the middle-aged and older adults in China. Results The regression results indicate that the middle-aged and older adults who lived in place where neighbors had close-knit relationships at childhood was significantly associated with decreased odds of suffering from depressive symptoms (OR = 0.4259, p < 0.001). Furthermore, compared to the middle-aged and older adults who lived in place where neighbors were not close-knit at childhood, those who lived in place where neighbors were close-knit at childhood had a reduced CES–D score (coefficient = − 2.7822, p < 0.001). Conclusion This study demonstrates the importance of living in place where neighbors had close-knit relationships at childhood. The integrated interventions, including maintaining close-knit neighborhood relationships and strengthening the construction of community, may be useful to improve mental health.

Assessment of the health status of middle-aged and elderly men with head scale, SF-36, IIEF5, AMS, and IPSS

Background Identifying practical and distinguished indicators and influencing factors of male aging may be useful in predicting subsequent aging trends, designing personalized prevention, and improving lifestyle and health. Methods A cross-sectional, population-based study was performed in Jiashan County, China in 2016. A total of 690 local male residents, aged 40 to 80 years, were eligible for recruitment. Demographic and lifestyle information was collected through structured interviews. A self-designed head scale, the Medical Outcomes Study 36-item Short Form (SF-36), International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF5), Aging Males’ Symptoms (AMS), and International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS) were used. Analysis of variance, local polynomial regression smoothing curves, multiple linear regression, and partial correlation analyses were performed. Results All the scales deteriorated with increasing age (P < 0.01), especially from the age of 60. The most significant changes between adjacent age groups were found in IIEF5 scores (16.7, 43.5 and 39.4%). Income, nutrition, personality and neighborhood relationship had an effect on SF-36 and AMS after adjusting for age (P < 0.01). Furthermore, neighborhood relationship modified the age effect on the head scale score and IIEF5 (P = 0.03); nutrition modified the relationship between age and SF-36 (P < 0.01). Conclusions Recession of reproductive health may be a distinct predictor of male aging. The associations of social inequalities or personality and health offer potential interventions for men’s health in aging. Self-reported scales may limit the precision and more physical fitness tests could be combined for a more precise assessment.

The development and psychometric testing of the expressive and instrumental Online Neighborhood Network Uses Scale (ONNUS)

The current study presents an instrument to measure online neighborhood network (ONN) uses from a social capital perspective. Prior studies have provided tentative evidence that ONNs, developed on social media platforms, can be a means for residents to develop social capital. However, to investigate this claim, a quantitative measurement instrument tailored to group- instead of ego-centered networks, is necessary yet currently lacking. A multi-phase method was applied to develop and test the psychometric properties of our instrument. Drawing upon existing literature, we conceptualized two types of ONN uses: expressive and instrumental uses. Both constructs were subsequently operationalized in a series of research steps. The construct validity (both exploratory and confirmatory), criterion and theoretical validity, and internal consistency of the instrument were tested on a sample of ONN users (n = 668) in Flanders (Belgium). The findings showed that the designed instrument is valid and reliable for assessing ONN uses. As such, the means are provided for investigating the role of ONNs in neighborhood relationship and social capital development, discern between different types of ONN users, and to assess the quality of ONNs with respect to the neighborhood's social life from a policy perspective.

New hybrid flower pollination algorithm with dragonfly algorithm and jaccard index to enhance solving university course timetable problem

University course timetable problem (UCTP) is one of the problems on which many researches have been conducted over the years because of its importance in academic institutions. A nature-inspired metaheuristic optimization algorithm, Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA) has been adapted, so-called Adapted FPA (AFPA), to cope with UCTP in the previous work. However, AFPA suffers from the stagnation problem because of the non-diversity in the population. To improve the diversity of the population, this work introduces new Hybrid FPA with two variants: JFPA provided the Jaccard index to determine similarities among categorical data and the greedy selection mechanism to improve the selection of the random solution, and DFPA applied the navigational characteristics of the Dragonfly Algorithm (DA) to help in the neighborhood relationship. The results in this study indicate that the proposed algorithms have better exploration ability and fast convergence rate in comparison; JFPA outperforms AFPA in 3 out of 4 datasets for both small and large datasets, and DFPA outperforms AFPA and GA in all datasets while it outperforms PSO in 3 out of 4 small datasets and 2 complex large datasets.

LPCF: Robust Correlation Tracking via Locality Preserving Tracking Validation

In visual tracking, the tracking model must be updated online, which often leads to undesired inclusion of corrupted training samples, and hence inducing tracking failure. We present a locality preserving correlation filter (LPCF) integrating a novel and generic decontamination approach, which mitigates the model drift problem. Our decontamination approach maintains the local neighborhood feature points structures of the bounding box center. This proposed tracking-result validation approach models not only the spatial neighborhood relationship but also the topological structures of the bounding box center. Additionally, a closed-form solution to our approach is derived, which makes the tracking-result validation process could be accomplished in only milliseconds. Moreover, a dimensionality reduction strategy is introduced to improve the real-time performance of our translation estimation component. Comprehensive experiments are performed on OTB-2015, LASOT, TrackingNet. The experimental results show that our decontamination approach remarkably improves the overall performance by 6.2%, 12.6%, and 3%, meanwhile, our complete algorithm improves the baseline by 27.8%, 34.8%, and 15%. Finally, our tracker achieves the best performance among most existing decontamination trackers under the real-time requirement.

Conditions and Consequences of ELULU Improvement: Environmental Justice Lessons from San Francisco, CA

Existing locally unwanted land uses (ELULUs) are disproportionately located in low-income communities of color. As ELULUs fall into disrepair, can planners redevelop them in ways that advance environmental justice and, if so, how? Through a case study of a San Francisco ELULU redevelopment planning process, this article highlights the central role of community-based organizing in generating policy changes that promoted certain environmental justice outcomes. A reconceptualization of the agency-neighborhood relationship was key. Findings also identify the obduracy of infrastructure and directed redress as central planning considerations and tensions.