Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for high dimensional inversion in remote sensing

Summary.  We discuss the inversion of the gas profiles (ozone, NO₃, NO₂, aerosols and neutral density) in the upper atmosphere from the spectral occultation measurements. The data are produced by the 'Global ozone monitoring of occultation of stars' instrument on board the Envisat satellite that was launched in March 2002. The instrument measures the attenuation of light spectra at various horizontal paths from about 100 km down to 10–20 km. The new feature is that these data allow the inversion of the gas concentration height profiles. A short introduction is given to the present operational data management procedure with examples of the first real data inversion. Several solution options for a more comprehensive statistical inversion are presented. A direct inversion leads to a non-linear model with hundreds of parameters to be estimated. The problem is solved with an adaptive single-step Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. Another approach is to divide the problem into several non-linear smaller dimensional problems, to run parallel adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo chains for them and to solve the gas profiles in repetitive linear steps. The effect of grid size is discussed, and we present how the prior regularization takes the grid size into account in a way that effectively leads to a grid-independent inversion.     

RFM customer analysis for product-oriented services and service business development: an interventionist case study of two machinery manufacturers

Journal of Management and Governance - This study examines how original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can segment their product-oriented services customers with the help of a recency, frequency,...     

Understanding performance measurement dynamism: a case study

This paper elaborates on the notion of performance measurement (PM) dynamism. The paper’s argument is based on a literature review and an interventionist case study. The analysis of the structure of PM dynamism is deepened by using New Institutional Sociology theory as a tool. PM dynamism was found to occur at four different levels: in setting the role of performance measures for decision making in general, in the use of measures, in the selection of measures and within the components of single measures. PM dynamism allows, for instance, measures used only for specific and topical purposes (ad hoc), in contrast to the views presented in the extant literature, which reject measures that are not institutionalized. The use of up-to-date measures, a major implication of understanding PM dynamism more thoroughly, could lead to more efficient strategy implementation and enactment at different levels. The originality of the article consists of identifying the rationale and the levels of PM dynamism and of the consideration that the use of ad hoc measures may have a positive impact on managing performance.     

Job demands and job control as correlates of early retirement thoughts in Finnish social and health care employees

Given the ageing workforce, there is an increasing interest in understanding the retirement process. This study examined whether early retirement thoughts can be explained by job demands, job control and their interaction, a hypothesis derived from the job demand-control model of Karasek (). The moderated hierarchical regression analyses of early retirement thoughts were based on a sample of 274 male and 2798 female employees aged 20 to 65 years in Finnish social and health care. Our results suggest that job demands and job control are independent predictors of early retirement thoughts even when adjusted for age, gender, educational level and self-rated health. Furthermore, our results offered support for the interaction effect of job demands and job control on early retirement thoughts. Among people over 45 years old, these associations were even stronger, compared to the whole sample. This indicates that one way to reduce the number of people taking early retirement would be to put the emphasis on psychosocial factors, such as job control, affecting the older workers.     

Study on a resource allocation formula for social services in Finland

This article considers how a specific need-based resource allocation formula for children's day care, income support, child welfare and other social services was developed. The formula is needed for the municipal allocation of state subsidies for social services, and the work was performed for the Ministry of Social Welfare and Health. Cross-sectional data were collected from the 436 Finnish municipalities and 37 small areas within the six largest cities. Because of the simultaneous relationship between supply and demand of services, two-stage least-square estimation and structural equations models were used in the analysis. After the effect of supply was removed from the service utilisation data, group-need factors (municipal variables) were found for these services. The new formula is financially and administratively feasible, transparent and reasonably simple.     

Thirty‐Year Trends in U.S. Adolescents' Civic Engagement: A Story of Changing Participation and Educational Differences

Using annual cross‐sectional data from Monitoring the Future, the present study examined trends in high school seniors' current and anticipated civic participation and beliefs over a 30‐year period. We examined overall trends and patterns based on youths' post‐high school educational plans. Findings point to declines in recent cohorts' involvement in conventional and alternative forms of engagement but greater involvement in community service. Regardless of period, the majority of youth said they intended to vote when eligible, but few expressed trust in the government or elected officials. All civic indicators showed significant differences based on youths' college aspirations: Youth who planned to graduate from a 4‐year college were more civically inclined than their peers with 2‐year or no college plans.     

Group decision making under uncertainty a note on the aggregation of “ordinal probabilities”

This paper is a first attempt to study the problem of aggregation of individual ordinal probabilistic beliefs in an Arrowian framework. We exhibit some properties an aggregation rule must fulfil; in particular we prove the existence of a quasi-dictator.     

Weak covering relations

This paper proposes and justifies a natural way to weaken the concept of covering relation defined on a finite tournament. Various weak covering relations, calledk-covering relations, are introduced. To eachk-covering relation corresponds a strong uncovered set containing all nonk-covered outcomes. It is proved that those strong uncovered sets may be empty. Moreover, the set of all tournaments having an empty strong uncovered set is characterized within two rather large classes of tournaments. Finally, we offer a complete study of the cases where the directed graph defined by ak-covering relation coincides with the initial tournament.     

DRAM: Efficient adaptive MCMC

We propose to combine two quite powerful ideas that have recently appeared in the Markov chain Monte Carlo literature: adaptive Metropolis samplers and delayed rejection. The ergodicity of the resulting non-Markovian sampler is proved, and the efficiency of the combination is demonstrated with various examples. We present situations where the combination outperforms the original methods: adaptation clearly enhances efficiency of the delayed rejection algorithm in cases where good proposal distributions are not available. Similarly, delayed rejection provides a systematic remedy when the adaptation process has a slow start.