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Objective:  The interrelationship between functional capacity, informal networks and the physical environment of the residence and residential location is used to describe age‐care service utilisation and non‐utilisation. Methods:  Fifty‐two applicants for home‐care services were matched with 52 non‐applicants, and 40 applicants for day‐care services were matched with 40 non‐applicants according to age, gender, mental status, and physical functioning. Results:  Discriminant Function Analyses indicated home‐care applications are related to network isolation within existing neighbourhoods and that day‐care applicant networks were insufficient to accommodate challenges presented by the immediate physical environment of the residence. The physical environment of the residence also distinguished home‐care applicants from day‐care applicants. Conclusion:  The findings support the proposed model of functional interdependence that describes service utilisation and non‐utilisation as a function of the interrelationship between functional capacity and the capacity of family, friends, neighbours and communities of interest to accommodate challenges present in the elder persons residence and residential context.

Recent surveys have shown that an increasing portion of the US public believes the two major US parties adequately represent the US public opinion and think additional parties are needed [1]. However, there are high barriers for third parties in political elections. In this paper, we aim to address two questions: "How well do the two major US parties represent the public's ideology?" and "Does a more-than-two-party system better represent the ideology of the public?". To address these questions, we utilize the American National Election Studies Time series dataset [2]. We perform unsupervised clustering with Gaussian Mixture Model method on this dataset. When clustered into two clusters, we find a large centrist cluster and a small right-wing cluster. The Democratic Party's position (estimated using the mean position of the individuals self-identified with the parties) is similar to that of the centrist cluster, and the Republican Party's position is between the two clusters. We investigate if more than two parties represent the population better by comparing the Akaike Information Criteria for clustering results of the various number of clusters. We find that additional clusters give a better representation of the data, even after penalizing for the additional parameters. This suggests a multiparty system represents of the ideology of the public better.

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