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The use and abuse of alcohol is problematic for a person’s social and individual development. Maintenance of abstinence after detoxification programs is difficult for patients who experience a craving, and relapses during the course of the disorder are common. The purpose of this paper is to describe the socio-demographic and clinical features of alcohol-dependent patients by sex and alcohol use status and to analyze the percentage of patients who remained abstinent after 10 months of psychological treatment.

In total, 50 alcohol-dependent patients were enrolled (34 men and 16 women). The patients attended a psychological treatment program at a therapeutic community, Projecte Home Balears, Spain. This paper used the European Addiction Severity Index to collect socio-demographic data and data on alcohol and other drugs and the Trait Meta-Mood Scale-24 to measure emotional management.

Significant differences were observed in occupation (χ² = 9.9; p = 0.007) and duration of alcohol use (U = 137.000; p = 0.005) by sex and hospitalizations during the previous months (χ² = 15.477; p = 0.009) and type of chronic disorder (χ² = 7.6; p = 0.022) and duration (in months) of the longest period of abstinence after treatment in facilities (U = 219.500; p = 0.097) by alcohol use status. The survival analysis showed that 25% of relapses happened after 4.5 months of treatment; at 7.3 months, 50% of the sample remained abstinent.

Women had used alcohol for longer since age at onset than men. Furthermore, after 7.3 months of intensive therapy, 50% of alcohol-dependent patients were abstinent.

For many years, science fiction has been perceived as “rayguns and rocket ships” boys' literature. Any number of impressionistic and statistical studies have identified the typical SF reader as male, between the ages of twelve and twenty and, in the case of adults, employed in some technical field. Yet I continually find myself having conversations with women, only to find that they, like myself, began reading science fiction between the ages of six and ten, have been reading it voraciously ever since, and were often frustrated at the absence of satisfying female characters and the presence of misogynistic elements in what they read. The stereotype of the male reader and the generally male SF environment mask both the increasing presence of women writers in the field of science fiction and the existence of a feminist dialog within some SF novels. This dialog had its beginnings in the mid‐sixties and is still going strong. It is the hope of the feminist SF community that this effacement can be counteracted.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyse gender differences in job quality during the first years of the economic crisis in Spain.

The paper uses microdata from the Quality of Working Life Survey. A representative sample of 5,381 and 4,925 Spanish employees (men and women) in 2008 and 2010, and a two-stage structural equation modelling (SEM) are empirically tested.

The study revealed three main results. First, the improvement in job quality was more favourable to men than it was to women. Second, the gender differences in the explanation of job quality increased considerably in favour of men. Third, this increase in gender-related job inequality in favour of men is explained by a worsening of 4 of the 5 explanatory dimensions thereof: intrinsic job quality; work organisation and workplace relationships; working conditions, work intensity and health and safety at work; and extrinsic rewards. Only inequality in the work-life balance dimension remained stable.

The availability of more detailed microdata for other countries and new statistical methods for analysing causal relationships, particularly SEM-PLS, would allow new approaches to be taken.

Public policy measures required to fight against gender inequalities are discussed.

The paper contributes to enrich the understanding of the multidimensional and gender-related determinants of job quality and, in particular, of studying the effects of the first years of the economic crisis.

There is no clear understanding on the terms and concepts of development, both in the academic literature of tourism and in general. What constitutes “growth”, and what is “development”? The emphasis on mathematical modeling has favored the use of simplifying hypothesis, with dubious practical results for the real problems of development. This chapter discusses the most relevant aspects of theories of development, enunciated at different times in the course of the last two centuries, with the purpose of illuminating different theoretical approaches to analysis and policy formulation that may support actual strategy and practice in tourism.

This chapter does three things. First, it estimates regional gross domestic product (GDP) for three different geographical levels in Switzerland (97 micro regions, 16 labor market basins, and 3 large regions). Second, it analyzes the evolution of regional inequality relying on a heuristic model inspired by Williamson (1965), which features an initial growth impulse in one or several core regions and subsequent diffusion. Third, it uses index number theory to decompose regional inequality into three different effects: sectoral structure, productivity, and comparative advantage.

The results can be summarized as follows: As a consequence of the existence of multiple core regions, Swiss regional inequality has been comparatively low at higher geographical levels. Spatial diffusion of economic growth occurred across different parts of the country and within different labor market regions. This resulted in a bell-shaped evolution of regional inequality at the micro regional level and convergence at higher geographical levels. In early and in late stages of the development process, productivity differentials were the main drivers of inequality, whereas economic structure was determinant between 1888 and 1941. The poorest regions suffered from comparative disadvantage, that is, they were specialized in the vary sector (agriculture), where their relative productivity was comparatively lowest.

This paper aims to apply the Capital Market Liability of Foreignness (CMLOF) framework to the audit fees of a sample of foreign firms listed on US exchanges to examine whether American auditors price foreignness.

The four components of the CMLOF are institutional distance (civil versus common law system and enforcement), information asymmetry (disclosures and mandatory IFRS adoption), unfamiliarity (exports, English language and geographical distance) and cultural difference [Hofstede (1980) dimensions of culture]. These variables are examined in a regression model that explains audit fees to determine the auditor perception of risk associated with the CMLOF.

Examining the factors that mitigate perceived agency costs, this investigation determines that auditors price risk according to each component of the liability of foreignness. Audit fees are higher for shareholders of firms headquartered in countries exhibiting greater institutional distance, unfamiliarity and cultural distance. Audit fees are higher for firms when their home country requires additional disclosures or the adoption of IFRS to reduce information asymmetry.

CMLOF is costly for capital market participants and has implications for auditors, shareholders of foreign firms and managers considering listing in the US Auditors, and investors should carefully assess this risk for pricing and valuation, and managers should take action, to the extent possible, to reduce the firm-specific level of unfamiliarity and increase transparency.

This paper is the first to apply the CMLOF to examine whether auditors price aspects of foreignness of their non-US-headquartered clients.

This chapter introduces the topic of cooperation and co-innovation between the audiovisual media and education sectors. It first discusses the emergence of educational film approximately a hundred years go – together with a new institutional framework, industry media, rulebooks, etc. It then discusses the ways public service media have addressed educational programming over the decades, including developing complex cross-media strategies and educational content databases more recently. The second half of the chapter is dedicated to the emergence of educational digital games, with their own institutional setups, production cultures, and training programmes. The chapter points, however, to a relative lack of cooperation between commercial game producers and educational institutions to date.

IDEAL methods of Library service; this, in simple translation is the purpose before the Library Association Conference at Manchester this year. The first thing that strikes any observer is the great variety of current library work. There was a day, so recent that fairly young men can remember it, when a Library Association Conference could focus its attention upon such matters as public library charging systems, open access versus the indicator, the annotated versus the title‐a‐line catalogue, the imposition of fines and penalties; in short, on those details of working which are now settled in the main and do not admit of general discussion. All of them, too, it will be observed, are problems of the public library. When those of other libraries came into view in those days they were seen only on the horizon. It was believed that there was no nexus of interest in libraries other than the municipal variety. Each of the others was a law unto itself, and its problems concerned no one else. The provision of books for villages, it is true, was always before the public librarian; he knew the problem. In this journal James Duff Brown wrote frequently concerning it; before the Library Assistants' Association, Mr. Harry Farr, then Deputy Librarian of Cardiff, wrote an admirable plea for its development. Wyndham Hulme once addressed an annual dinner suggesting it as the problem for the younger librarians. Carnegie money made the scheme possible. But contemporaneously with the development of the Rural Library system, which now calls itself the County Library system as an earnest of its ultimate intentions, there has been a coming together of the librarians of research and similar libraries. We have a section for them in the Library Association.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the interplay between national traditions and international influence on the CSR discourses and practices, in the context of two very different national contexts, namely France and Brazil.

The paper is based on a literature review as well as on interviews with representatives from companies and other stakeholder groups in France and Brazil.

The paper highlights the impact of national traditions, such as the strong intervention of the State in France and the lack of monitoring legislation by public authorities in Brazil, on the CSR discourses and practices in both countries. But it also shows that multinational companies, international NGOs as well as international standardization organizations lead to a certain homogenisation of the CSR discourses and practices.

This exploratory research should be complemented in the future by more in‐depth research, for example by comparing the CSR discourses and practices of multinational companies having activities in both countries.

The paper highlights the importance for managers in companies having activities in different countries to adapt their CSR discourses and practices to the local contexts, while maintaining a coherent strategy at the international level based on the respect of some universal principles.

Few researches have been conducted on the CSR discourses and practices in France and in Brazil. This paper highlights the main characters of the CSR discourses and practices in both countries, while targeting their common points and differences.