Recruiting Through Networks - Wage Premiums and Rewards to Recommenders This paper examines the firm's use of recommenders in its recruiting process. In the model, recommenders possess personal information about the worker's ability and about the workplace. In view of this private information, the firm may reward recommenders for good recruiting, thus using recommenders as a screening device. In equilibrium the expected skill of a worker is higher if recruitment has occurred through a recommender rather than through the market, but there is no wage premium. Swedish survey data supports the absence of a wage premium for recommended workers. It has not been possible to test the expected skill or the firm's reward policy vis-à-vis the recommender. Job Search by Immigrants in Sweden This paper analyses the job search strategies of immigrants born outside Europe and compares these with the search strategies of the native population. The analysis uses unique Swedish data gathered during 1998. Two clear patterns can be traced in the empirical analysis: immigrants search more intensively than natives; also, the greater search intensity is a requisite for getting a job. Specifically, the first analysis shows that immigrants who got jobs were likely to have used networks or direct contact with employers to a greater extent than natives. Immigrants who got jobs had submitted more applications and spent more time on job search than natives, while those who did not get jobs had not spent more time on job search than natives. The fourth and last analysis looks at the number of methods used in job search. Immigrants who left unemployment had not used more methods than natives. On the other hand, immigrants who remained unemployed had used significantly more methods than natives, indicating that it is not necessarily productive to use too many methods. Wage Effects of Search Methods for Immigrants and Natives in Sweden Using unique cross-section survey data collected in 1998, this study examines whether successful job-search method differ between natives and immigrants from outside Europe, and whether there is a wage difference between the two groups associated with the search method used. It is found that those individuals from outside Europe who got jobs did relatively better when using formal methods than when using informal ones. Next, a wage analysis has been performed, which shows that there is an overall wage discount for those born outside Europe. The discount is larger when using informal methods rather than formal. To explore this further the informal method measure is divided in two parts, one part for contacts through friends and family and the second for contacts with the employer. The penalty for immigrants from outside Europe using an informal method as a successive job-search device is partly explained by contact with the employer, suggesting that the penalty for using informal methods has been underestimated in previous studies.An attempt has also been made to control for the effect of unobservable characteristics on wages, but this did not have any significant impact.

Preserving and improving the health and well-being of older people is a significant public health issue of the 21st century. The increased attention to the promotion of health in old age has given rise to an extensive body of literature on the subject of “healthy aging” – a discourse dedicated to understanding the multidimensional factors associated with aging and health and the application of this knowledge. Adopting a place-based, qualitative approach, this dissertation addresses key gaps in the healthy aging literature. The public life of older people aging in place was examined to understand how neighbourhoods, as important physical and social places of aging, contribute to the well-being and healthy aging of older people. This dissertation employed a critical geographical gerontology research framework and a methodology called ‘friendly visiting’ which combines ethnography, narrative and case study research and utilizes participant observation, visual methods and interview techniques. The qualitative data were analyzed using grounded theory and an adapted coding strategy that integrated the textual, visual, and auditory data. The analysis process highlighted theoretically-informed themes that characterized participant’s perceptions and experiences of their neighbourhoods. Findings reveal neighbourhoods are important places of aging that impact the well-being of older people aging in place. This dissertation provides insight into the micro-territorial functioning of neighbourhoods for older people. Embedded within these environments are key sites for informal public life called third places (e.g., parks, streets and coffee shops). Third places are important material and social places for older populations. Preparing for, journeying to, and engaging in these public sites promotes healthy aging by providing opportunities for engagement in life and facilitating social networks. Results advance healthy aging and aging and place research, contribute to gerontological and geographical methodologies, and have implications for policy and practice in areas such as health promotion and age-friendly community initiatives.

This dissertation examines how social inequalities are reinforced over time and in place by addressing a central question: How are power relations maintained and reproduced in space? I outline ways in which social networks contributed to the reproduction of social and economic power in early twentieth-century Toronto. I also pay particular attention to the ways in which particular spaces acted as a nexus for the reproduction of power and unequal social relations. My research captures the dynamism and complexity of social capital networks that stretched across space. These networks demonstrate that Toronto’s Anglo elite and Italian entrepreneurs lived in a world where persons interacted over a number of regions and scales. This study contributes to the body of knowledge in social capital, network and social boundary research. Although this dissertation is largely concerned with early twentieth-century Toronto class and power relations, the results have implications beyond this case study. This research makes a significant contribution to historical geography by providing scholars interested in contemporary power relations and social networks with an empirically rich historical perspective. This study extends previous examinations of social inequality by examining how power relations were reproduced over time and through space. I analyze how social capital can be conceptualized as set of processes that is 1) integral to the acquisition of economic capital, 2) significant in constraining the action of others by redrawing the social boundaries of class and ethnicity, and 3) critical for the building of alliances across space. This research offers a complementary method to the inequality studies of David Ward, Joe Darden, Nan Lin, Richard Harris, James Barrett, and David Harvey by historically situating questions about the reproduction of social inequality through the examination of social networks.

Preserving and improving the health and well-being of older people is a significant public health issue of the 21st century. The increased attention to the promotion of health in old age has given rise to an extensive body of literature on the subject of “healthy aging” – a discourse dedicated to understanding the multidimensional factors associated with aging and health and the application of this knowledge. Adopting a place-based, qualitative approach, this dissertation addresses key gaps in the healthy aging literature. The public life of older people aging in place was examined to understand how neighbourhoods, as important physical and social places of aging, contribute to the well-being and healthy aging of older people. This dissertation employed a critical geographical gerontology research framework and a methodology called ‘friendly visiting’ which combines ethnography, narrative and case study research and utilizes participant observation, visual methods and interview techniques. The qualitative data were analyzed using grounded theory and an adapted coding strategy that integrated the textual, visual, and auditory data. The analysis process highlighted theoretically-informed themes that characterized participant’s perceptions and experiences of their neighbourhoods. Findings reveal neighbourhoods are important places of aging that impact the well-being of older people aging in place. This dissertation provides insight into the micro-territorial functioning of neighbourhoods for older people. Embedded within these environments are key sites for informal public life called third places (e.g., parks, streets and coffee shops). Third places are important material and social places for older populations. Preparing for, journeying to, and engaging in these public sites promotes healthy aging by providing opportunities for engagement in life and facilitating social networks. Results advance healthy aging and aging and place research, contribute to gerontological and geographical methodologies, and have implications for policy and practice in areas such as health promotion and age-friendly community initiatives.

This dissertation examines how social inequalities are reinforced over time and in place by addressing a central question: How are power relations maintained and reproduced in space? I outline ways in which social networks contributed to the reproduction of social and economic power in early twentieth-century Toronto. I also pay particular attention to the ways in which particular spaces acted as a nexus for the reproduction of power and unequal social relations. My research captures the dynamism and complexity of social capital networks that stretched across space. These networks demonstrate that Toronto’s Anglo elite and Italian entrepreneurs lived in a world where persons interacted over a number of regions and scales. This study contributes to the body of knowledge in social capital, network and social boundary research. Although this dissertation is largely concerned with early twentieth-century Toronto class and power relations, the results have implications beyond this case study. This research makes a significant contribution to historical geography by providing scholars interested in contemporary power relations and social networks with an empirically rich historical perspective. This study extends previous examinations of social inequality by examining how power relations were reproduced over time and through space. I analyze how social capital can be conceptualized as set of processes that is 1) integral to the acquisition of economic capital, 2) significant in constraining the action of others by redrawing the social boundaries of class and ethnicity, and 3) critical for the building of alliances across space. This research offers a complementary method to the inequality studies of David Ward, Joe Darden, Nan Lin, Richard Harris, James Barrett, and David Harvey by historically situating questions about the reproduction of social inequality through the examination of social networks.

In the area of information visualization social or biological networks are visualized ina way so that they can be explored easily and one can get more information about thestructure of the network out of it. The use of network centralities in the field of network analysis plays an importantrole when it comes to the rating of the relative importance of vertices within the networkstructure based on the neighborhood of them. Such a single network can be renderedeasily by the use of standard graph drawing algorithms. But it is not only the explorationof one centrality which is important. Furthermore, the comparison of two or more of themis important to get some further meaning out of it. When visualizing the comparisonof two or more network centralities we are facing new problems of how to visualizethem in a way to get out the most meaning of it. We want to be able to track all thechanges in the networks between two centralities as well as visualize the single networksas best as possible. In the life sciences centrality measures help scientists to understand theunderlying biological processes and have been successfully applied to different biologicalnetworks. The aim of the thesis is it to overcome those problems and to come up with a new solutionof how to visualize networks and its centralities. This thesis introduces a new way ofrendering networks including their centrality values along a circular view. Researches canthen be focused on the exploration of the centrality values including the network structure,without dealing with visual clutter or occlusions of nodes. Furthermore, filtering based instatistical data concerning the datasets and centrality values support this.

New technologies are changing the way entrepreneurs network. Internet Based Neworking  Websites (IBNWs) are re shaping the process in which we network and communicate with  one another, on a personal and also on a professional level. The biggest example of this is  the incredible rise of IBNWs such as Facebook and LinkedIn that together hold more than  300 million users.  This is a very new form of networking where individuals are able to  communicate and connect with an almost limitless amount of people, regardless of their  geographical location. The more traditional forms of  networking are seen as phone calls  and face to face communication, while in the last two decades email has also been  incorporated into a common and professional form of networking for the purpose of  business. Since IBNWs are a new form of maintaining relationships, for our thesis we have  decided to address the question of how IBNWs affect the process of networking during the  development of ventures.     In the thesis we explore the concepts put forward by authors such as; Granovetter, Hoang  and Antoncic, Aldrich and Zimmer, Deutsch, Sonnenberg among others. In addition we  used the structure used by Hoand and Antoncic to create a framework when analyzing the  networking process though IBNWs. This framework is split in to three categories: Network  structure, governance, and content. Using a qualitative interpretivist approach we have  developed an extensive case study and we have interviewed ten entrepreneurs from a wide  array of industries and locations. To help us analyze the data retrieved we have also  interviewed an expert in the field of business and internet landscaping. The aim of the study  is to generate a new framework for networking in the 21st century in light of the IBNW  boom.  The findings demonstrate that IBNWs are being used widely by entrepreneurs, but  mainly for advices and information or in other words, providing low commitment content.  We have concluded that IBNWs are perceived as an informal cold and weak form of  networking and maintaining business networks and if relationships where to progress to  higher levels of commitment then entepreneurs will turn to more traditional ways of  network maintenance such as face-to-face meetings.

Blood-borne infectious diseases such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)and Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) spread when the addicts share needles and injecting equipmentwithin contact networks. A quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted in Winnipeg,Canada in December 2003 - September 2004. Through a special questionnaire, respondentswere asked to answer questions about themselves and about their contacts, about relationshipsand how they shared syringes and other injection supplies. Blood tests were used to identifywhether they carried any blood-borne infectious diseases. We selected some variables from theoriginal data set. The purpose was to explain who shared syringes and why these particularindividuals shared syringes. The key finding was that injection drug users were more concernedabout the health of others than their own health; this was shown particularly when it came tosharing of needles. Respondents chose to use their contacts needles despite knowing that thecontact was HCV positive, they were more cautious regarding HIV-infected contacts. Womenshared syringes to a greater extent with their sexual partners, while men more frequently sharedsyringes with his drug connections. It was also shown that ethnicity played a role regarding thesharing of needles.

No description available.

Improving road safety and traffic efficiency has been a long-term endeavor for the government, automobile industry and academia. Recently, the U.S. Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has allocated a 75 MHz spectrum at 5.9 GHz for vehicular communications, opening a new door to combat the road fatalities by letting vehicles communicate to each other on the roads. Those communicating vehicles form a huge Ad Hoc Network, namely Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET). In VANETs, a variety of applications ranging from the safety related (e.g. emergence report, collision warning) to the non-safety related (e.g., delay tolerant network, infortainment sharing) are enabled by vehicle-to-vehicle (V-2-V) and vehicle-to-roadside (V-2-I) communications. However, the flourish of VANETs still hinges on fully understanding and managing the challenging issues over which the public show concern, particularly, security and privacy preservation issues. If the traffic related messages are not authenticated and integrity-protected in VANETs, a single bogus and/or malicious message can potentially incur a terrible traffic accident. In addition, considering VANET is usually implemented in civilian scenarios where locations of vehicles are closely related to drivers, VANET cannot be widely accepted by the public if VANET discloses the privacy information of the drivers, i.e., identity privacy and location privacy. Therefore, security and privacy preservation must be well addressed prior to its wide acceptance. Over the past years, much research has been done on considering VANET's unique characteristics and addressed some security and privacy issues in VANETs; however, little of it has taken the social characteristics of VANET into consideration. In VANETs, vehicles are usually driven in a city environment, and thus we can envision that the mobility of vehicles directly reflects drivers' social preferences and daily tasks, for example, the places where they usually go for shopping or work. Due to these human factors in VANETs, not only the safety related applications but also the non-safety related applications will have some social characteristics. In this thesis, we emphasize VANET's social characteristics and introduce the concept of vehicular social network (VSN), where both the safety and non-safety related applications in VANETs are influenced by human factors including human mobility, human self-interest status, and human preferences. In particular, we carry on research on vehicular delay tolerant networks and infotainment sharing --- two important non-safety related applications of VSN, and address the challenging security and privacy issues related to them. The main contributions are, i) taking the human mobility into consideration, we first propose a novel social based privacy-preserving packet forwarding protocol, called SPRING, for vehicular delay tolerant network, which is characterized by deploying roadside units (RSUs) at high social intersections to assist in packet forwarding. With the help of high-social RSUs, the probability of packet drop is dramatically reduced and as a result high reliability of packet forwarding in vehicular delay tolerant network can be achieved. In addition, the SPRING protocol also achieves conditional privacy preservation and resist most attacks facing vehicular delay tolerant network, such as packet analysis attack, packet tracing attack, and black (grey) hole attacks. Furthermore, based on the ``Sacrificing the Plum Tree for the Peach Tree" --- one of the Thirty-Six Strategies of Ancient China, we also propose a socialspot-based packet forwarding (SPF) protocol for protecting receiver-location privacy, and present an effective pseudonyms changing at social spots strategy, called PCS, to facilitate vehicles to achieve high-level location privacy in vehicular social network; ii) to protect the human factor --- interest preference privacy in vehicular social networks, we propose an efficient privacy-preserving protocol, called FLIP, for vehicles to find like-mined ones on the road, which allows two vehicles sharing the common interest to identify each other and establish a shared session key, and at the same time, protects their interest privacy (IP) from other vehicles who do not share the same interest on the road. To generalize the FLIP protocol, we also propose a lightweight privacy-preserving scalar product computation (PPSPC) protocol, which, compared with the previously reported PPSPC protocols, is more efficient in terms of computation and communication overheads; and iii) to deal with the human factor -- self-interest issue in vehicular delay tolerant network, we propose a practical incentive protocol, called Pi, to stimulate self-interest vehicles to cooperate in forwarding bundle packets. Through the adoption of the proper incentive policies, the proposed Pi protocol can not only improve the whole vehicle delay tolerant network's performance in terms of high delivery ratio and low average delay, but also achieve the fairness among vehicles. The research results of the thesis should be useful to the implementation of secure and privacy-preserving vehicular social networks.