How to read efficiently

At present, the university graduates have mountains of books to read. For this phenomenon, this paper first indicates why the students must read extensively and then tentatively suggests three measures establish new concept in reading, practise reading pragmatically, review and exchange.     

什么是语用学(Pragmatics)?

“什么是语用学?”对于这个问题,我们尽最大努力以广见博闻的方式作出回答,而且,我们还期待着可能出现的前所未见的答案。从一开始,我们就不得不谨慎措词,以避免把那些传统上可能被认为是狭义语用学范围以外的课题排斥在外。因此,我们愿意强调,原则上说,语用学并不仅仅对语言(或言语)感兴趣,而是普遍关注任何种类的交际代码或交际行为,包括手势甚至音乐。简言之,我们认为语用学研究的是交际代码与其运用环境之间的相互影响。在可供研究的交际代码之中,语言理所当然地比其他任何代码在历史上受到更多的注意。因此我们期望,至少在一段时间内,论文要围绕语     

How to Measure Social Progress?

A good society is the goal for social policy. Recent years have seen a growing awareness that gross domestic product (GDP) alone does not measure this. Happiness and well‐being have increasingly been seen as elements that should influence welfare policies. This review article provides an overview of many of the ways to measure well‐being and happiness. It attempts to cover three distinct, but interrelated subjects. First, why and what can be used to complement GDP as measures for societal development. Second, is there a relation between well‐being, happiness and central social policy areas? Third, whether knowledge on what makes people happy could inform policymakers in their decisions. The article discusses the many new attempts to measure societal development, and the fact that there are so many that decision makers and citizens are drowning by numbers and thereby not able to grasp whether or not there is social progress. Lastly, by using the classical depiction of welfare states, the article analyses whether the indexes are in line herewith, and that, therefore, they might be used as an instrument for steering societies in the direction of a good society.     

How conservative are British attitudes to reproduction?

Current British attitudes concerning fertility are examined, and the probabilities that these will lead either to a further decline to below replacement-level fertility or to a level that will sustain population replacement are assessed. The author concludes that the optimistic, or replacement-level, alternative is the more likely. The evidence for this conclusion is examined, including evidence of conservative attitudes toward fertility and childbearing, and the relative stability of the family structure; comparisons are made with the situation elsewhere in Europe.     

How to deal with partially analyzable acts?

In some situations, a decision is best represented by an incompletely analyzed act: conditionally on a given event A, the consequences of the decision on sub-events are perfectly known and uncertainty becomes probabilizable, whereas the plausibility of this event itself remains vague and the decision outcome on the complementary event [`(A)]{\bar{A}} is imprecisely known. In this framework, we study an axiomatic decision model and prove a representation theorem. Resulting decision criteria aggregate partial evaluations consisting of (i) the conditional expected utility associated with the analyzed part of the decision, and (ii) the best and worst consequences of its non-analyzed part. The representation theorem is consistent with a wide variety of decision criteria, which allows for expressing various degrees of knowledge on (A, [`(A)]{A, \bar{A}}) and various types of attitude toward ambiguity and uncertainty. This diversity is taken into account by specific models already existing in the literature. We exploit this fact and propose some particular forms of our model incorporating these models as sub-models and moreover expressing various types of beliefs concerning the relative plausibility of the analyzed and the non-analyzed events ranging from probabilities to complete ignorance that include capacities.     

How to consult an expert? Opinion versus evidence

In this article, two modes of non-binding communication between an expert and a decision-maker are compared. They are distinguished mainly by the nature of the information transmitted by the expert. In the first one, the expert reports only his opinion (soft information) concerning the desirability of a certain action, whereas in the second one, he is consulted to provide evidence (hard information) to convince the decision-maker. The expert’s ability to provide evidence increases with the precision of his information. The article shows that requiring evidence is always beneficial to the decision-maker whereas it is beneficial to the expert, if and only if the preferences of both agents are different enough.     

How child inclusive were Australia's responses to COVID-19?

From March 2020, Australia introduced a range of policies to respond to COVID-19, most of which impacted significantly on the lives of children. This article applies a child-centred framework, developed from rights-based participatory research with children, to analyse how children have been represented in policy narratives around COVID-19 and the extent to which policy responses have been child-inclusive or child-centred. We argue that, overall, COVID-19 policy responses have failed to be child-inclusive or child-centred. This has important implications not only for understanding the impact of COVID-19 on children but also in understanding—and potentially rethinking—the place of children in policies as Australia emerges from COVID-19 restrictions.     

How Effective are Helpers to Older Adults’ Life Satisfaction?

The effectiveness of help received from home care workers and volunteers to the life satisfaction of community-dwelling older adults is vital but uncharted. To address the effectiveness, this study aims to optimize the use of social resources for the older adults’ life quality. The study thus surveyed 398 community-dwelling older adults in a city of China about the help and life satisfaction. Results showed a significant positive effect of help from home care workers, but not that from volunteers, on the older adult’s life satisfaction. Moreover, the effect of help from volunteers was significantly greater when the older adult had higher education or lower family income. These effects are explicable with resource theory and need fulfillment theory. They imply the worth of promoting help from home care workers generally and volunteers conditionally to champion older adults’ life satisfaction.     

How Many Balance Functions Does it Take to Determine a Utility Function?

Call b your balance function at wealth W if you are indifferent between W and a 50–50 lottery with outcomes x and b(x). Given one b, u is arbitrary on one side of W but then determined on the other. Given two b‘s, u is arbitrary between the two W′ s but then determined elsewhere. Additional properties of u restrict the b’s but do not ordinarily make u unique. Contradictions can occur. Given three b′ s, an algorithm is developed using minimal domains of definition that determines the relative utility of the W’s. If it is irrational, then the set S generated by applying all combinations of b’s to W′ s is dense and u is determined. If finitely many b’s are rationally related, then S is discrete, a further algorithm determines it, the values of u on S are equally spaced, and u is arbitrary between any two adjacent points of S but then determined elsewhere. Infinitely many balance functions determine u unless they are rationally related in a uniform way.JEL Classification: D81     

How to Observe the Impact of China''''s Entry into the WTO on Employment

本文认为,与中国改革开放以来就业结构和劳动力市场发育的趋势相一致,总体上说,加入WTO对就业的效应以正面为主。但是对就业机会的影响,则必需分部门和行业进行研究。加入WTO受到冲击最大的是农业,而对农业的影响主要不是体现在就业,而是体现在收入上,因此影响会存在巨大的地区差异。对第二产业的影响虽然有正有负,但综合效应仍然会使第二产业的就业机会增加。加入WTO受益最大的是第三产业,其中就业机会增加较多的行业主要包括零售批发和餐饮业、金融保险业和其他社会服务业。     

Commitment of Private and Public Agency Workers to Child Welfare: How Long Do They Plan to Stay?

ABSTRACT

Method: Child welfare professionals completing training to work in foster care were asked about reasons for taking their child welfare position, commitment to their agencies, and commitment to child welfare. Analyses compared responses from new public agency foster care workers (N = 100), public agency workers making lateral transfers to foster care (N = 64), and new private foster care workers (N = 105).

Results: Private agency foster care workers were less committed to their agencies and to child welfare and more likely to have taken the position because it was the only one available.

Conclusions: The practice by public child welfare of outsourcing foster care services to private agencies needs to be evaluated. This practice may not benefit children in care and may create organizational problems for agencies.     

Perfumer,chemist, machine: gas chromatography and the industrial search to “improve” flavor

Abstract

Drawing from published accounts of the use of gas chromatography (GC) in the food industry, found in industry-specific journals, this article examines the role of GC in changing how perfumers and flavorists think about and shape the sense-able world. It shows that the development of a novel twist on GC – the use of an expert’s nose as a detecting device directly connected to the exit gasses of the gas chromatograph, rather than an instrumental detector – opened the door to a new way of categorizing aromatic molecules that changed the purpose of expert practices of smelling within the industrial context. The marriage of human and machine not only offered those tasked with developing the perfect flavor the tools for gaining information about what aspects of a flavor they wished to keep, it also helped identify what aspects they ought to discard or obfuscate in their search to improve the natural world of tastes and smells.     

How Good a Deal Was the Tobacco Settlement?: Assessing Payments to Massachusetts

We estimate the increment in Massachusetts Medicaid program costs attributable to smoking from December 20, 1991 to 1998. We describe how our methods improve upon earlier estimates of analogous costs at the national level. Current costs to the Massachusetts Medicaid program approximate the payments to Massachusetts under the tobacco settlement of November 1998. Whether these payments are viewed as appropriate compensation for Medicaid costs over time depends upon the rate of increase in future health care costs, the rate of decline in smoking, the proportion of smoking that should be attributed to the actions of the tobacco companies and the likelihood the state would have prevailed at trial. The costs to the Medicaid program are dwarfed by the internal costs to smokers themselves.     

语言,是F(X),还是X(F)?——或新实用主义凭什么给语言划界

本文从清理二十世纪几个重要的思想事件入手 ,对新实用主义关于语言行为方面的观点作了分析。作者认为 ,新实用主义的语言表现也是语言行为主义 ,它把超验领域划出语言的边界之外 ,有其合理性 ,也有局限性。因为 ,语言不能表达本体 ,并不等于本体不存在 ;反过来说 ,本体不能表达 ,不等于不能影响表达     

Does The Chapter on Liuqiu in the Book of Sui Refer toLiuqiu (Present-day Okinawa)?

Inancienttimes,Liuqiu(today'sOkinawainJapan)hadneitherwrittenlanguagenorofficialrecords.ThenamefirstappearsinTheChapteronLiuqiuintheBookofSui,whichwascompiledinthelothyearoftheZhenguanreignperiodduringtheTangdynasty(636).ThisworkcoversLiuqiu'sgeographicalposition,itsfolkcustoms,farmingandproduce,royalfamily,aswellassocialandpoliticalaffairs.However,sincemoderntimes,someacademicshaveexpresseddoubtsaboutthereliabilityofTheChopteronLiuqiuintheBookofSui,andthishasledtodebateaboutwhetherthebo…     

Coexisting principles and logics of elder care: Help to self‐help and consumer‐oriented service?

Healthy and active ageing has become an ideal in Western societies. In the Nordic countries, this ideal has been supported through a policy of help to self‐help in elder care since the 1980s. However, reforms inspired by New Public Management (NPM) have introduced a new policy principle of consumer‐oriented service that stresses the wishes and priorities of older people. We have studied how these two principles are applied by care workers in Denmark. Is one principle or logic replacing the other, or do they coexist? Do they create tensions between professional knowledge and the autonomy of older people? Using neo‐institutional theory and feminist care theory, we analysed the articulation of the two policy principles in interviews and their logics in observations in four local authorities. We conclude that help to self‐help is the dominant principle, that it is deeply entrenched in the identity of the professional care worker and that it coexists with consumer‐oriented service and without major tensions in the logics identified in their practices.     

How to support families of children with disabilities? An exploratory study of social support services

Support services to families of children with disabilities have previously been documented. While the effectiveness and consequences of some support strategies have been defined, their comparison remains problematic primarily because of the diversified existing definitions. The present study aimed to elaborate and validate a typology to describe different types of support that can be offered to families of children with disabilities. A review of literature highlighted a variety of support services and allowed a categorical grouping. Content analysis ensured that each category was defined distinctively. Afterwards, a panel of experts and representatives of organizations from seven developed countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Sweden and Switzerland) validated the typology. A database of services offered in these countries was created. The resulting typology was divided into four categories related to the family needs: support, respite, child minding and emergency support. Each type of support can be illustrated within organizations in the database. As such, social workers can use the defined typology to identify the needs of families of children with disabilities and suggest alternatives when services are not available. Overall, the described typology should facilitate discussion between stakeholders and families by providing a common communication system.