It is vividly debated how the ongoing process of European integration will a¤ect the need and scope for welfare state activities. To some this process signals that welfare state activities have to be rolled back, while others stress that international integration may increase the need for (explicit or implicit) social insurance arrangements. This paper discusses these issues by first considerin...

We investigated the integration of both physical robotics and social robotics into formal middle school STEM curricula, and their effects on the interest and experiences of students in STEM-related activities. Both physical robotics and social robotics require the same STEM principles, but apply them to different problems and applications—the content is the same, but the context is different. O...

Micro-blogs like Twitter are playing increasingly important roles in social life. Some key users of Twitter have drawn huge attention from other people. Their opinions have had significant influence on the rest of Twitter users. In other words, these people are highly reputable and have more social capital in the Twitter world. But what factors contribute to the social capital in a part of the ...

This study investigated the effects of leisure and social activities on the ability of middle-aged adults to maintain activities of daily living (ADL), and whether performing these activities alone or with others contributed to the ability to perform ADL. The study used nationally representative longitudinal data of 22,770 adults in Japan, aged 50-59 years, who did not have limitations in perfo...

OBJECTIVES This study aimed to investigate longitudinal relations between leisure and social activities and mental health status, considering the presence or absence of other persons in the activity as an additional variable, among middle-aged adults in Japan. This study used nationally representative data in Japan with a five-year follow-up period. METHODS This study focused on 16,642 middle...

Recently, a large body of research has been devoted to examine the user behavioral patterns and the business implications of social media. However, relatively little research has been conducted regarding users’ deceptive activities in social media; these deceptive activities may hinder the effective application of the data collected from social media to perform e-marketing and initiate business...

BACKGROUND Activity scheduling is an established component of evidenced-based treatment for late-life depression in primary care. We examined participant records from the Improving Mood-Promoting Access to Collaborative Treatment (IMPACT) trial to identify activity scheduling strategies used in the context of successful depression care management (CM), associations of activity scheduling with s...