The seasonal variation in suicides in Hong Kong and Taiwan during the period 1981 to 1993 was examined using harmonic analysis. A single cycle per year with lowest incidence in the winter months was found in both locations and for both sexes. Despite the regional differences in ascertainment procedures and preferred suicide methods, the absence of a biseasonal distribution of female suicides wa...

MORE THAN 32,000 nurses and around 8,000 allied health professionals (AHPs) have experienced the Leading Empowered Organisations (LEO) programme during the three-year lifetime of the NHS national nursing leadership programme. An article in last month’s Nursing Management (Faugier and Woolnough 2003) outlined the main findings from its evaluation. This month’s highlights similarities and differe...

Almost all parents have preference to the number and sex of children, somebody like boy more and somebody like girl more. The ideal sex composition of children to most couples in China is to have one boy and one girl (Zheng, 2004), which was also true in China for the last two thousand years. If there were no limit to number of children, and if a couple had very strong sex preference of childre...

We investigated to what extent the length of people's gazes during conversations with opposite-sex persons is affected by the physical attractiveness of the partner. Single participants (N = 115) conversed for 5 min with confederates who were rated either as low or high on physical attractiveness. From a mating strategy perspective, we hypothesized that men's increased dating desire towards hig...

In this study, Weiss's (1973) theorizing about the sources of emotional and social loneliness is elaborated--with notions about the asymmetric gratifications derived from marriage, about the conflicting loyalties that result from remarriage, and about selection into marriage--in order to reach an understanding of gender differences in loneliness, both in and outside of marriage. First and subse...

This research note provides some preliminary findings of a study examining the behaviour of male and female international students while they are travelling. It is based on information collected about the behaviour of Chinese international students during their holiday in the UK. This work is required because of the importance of international students to the tourism industry and the paucity of...

This paper explores self-perceived mate value (SPMV), and its association with self-esteem, in eight cultures. 1066 participants, from 8 cultural groups in 7 countries, rated themselves on 24 SPMVs and completed a measure of self-esteem. Consistent with evolutionary theory, women were more likely to emphasise their caring and passionate romantic nature. In line with previous cross-cultural rese...