The physical and the social foundations of technology

A conceptual framework for the analysis of various aspects of technology is indicated. The following points are discussed in succession: Science and technology, the transformation of input variables into output variables, technology as a means, the quasi-autonomy of technological progress. The analysis of the various factors delimiting the given technological possibilities and the investigation of the processes leading to the realization of a certain selection of these possibilities brings the technical and the social aspect together. In this way the assessment implied in the choice among alternative ways of instrumental action becomes evident, and the application of a certain technology can be reconstructed as resulting from a complex social decision.     

Human facial expression judgment in a conversational context

Two hundred eighty male and female college students scaled thirty-five human face photographs for the degree of annoyance, interest, understanding, and spontaneity expressed. An individual differences analysis of the scaling data indicated independence of these expression dimensions and resulted in 11 like-perceiving subgroups of subjects. These homogeneous subgroups were characterized on the basis of their differential use of facial features within as well as between expression dimensions and on their differences in a test of figural creativity.The authors are grateful to Dr. Dina Anselmi and Dr. Michael Tirrell for their contributions to the Phase II data collection.     

Interpolation,Glättung und Saisonbereinigung von Zeitreihen mit Splinefunktionen

This contribution explains the smoothing method with cubic splines with special regard to the problems of approximation for data points at the historical beginning and the actual end of time series. Seasonal adjustment using spline approximation will be shown. Numerical calculation and the discussion of the assumptions about stochastic disturbances require to distinguish between the spline approximation of data points for economic stock and flow variables. A numerical example for application will be presented for a monthly time series for car purchases in the Federal Republic of Germany. Finally, some properties of the smoothing method with splines in relation to a filter design will be discussed.     

Children with problematic sexualized behaviors in the child welfare system

This study assessed the utility of the Child Sexual Behavior Inventory (CSBI) in a child welfare sample. In this study, 97 children from ages 10 to 12 from either foster boarding homes or a residential treatment center participated. Researchers interviewed foster parents or primary therapists about children's sexual behavior, traumatic events, clinical symptoms, and their attitudes toward the child. Findings revealed that problematic sexualized behaviors were more prevalent in the residential treatment center (RTC) sample than they were in a normative sample. The pattern of associations between sexual behavior problems, traumatic events, and clinical syndromes in both the RTC and the foster boarding home (FBH) samples was similar to what has been found in samples in which biological custodial parents were the respondents. Analyses comparing youth who met the criterion for having problematic sexualized behaviors and youth who did not meet the criterion revealed that the two groups differed on clinical symptoms, prior traumatic events, and negative reports by caregivers. Results confirm the utility of the CSBI measure for this population and highlight several important clinical and programmatic concerns for addressing problematic sexual behavior in children in the child welfare system.     

A probabilistic synopsis of binary decision rules

Decision rules for Yes–No voting systems are placed in a probabilistic framework. Selfdual and permutationally invariant distributions are introduced. Under such distributions, the mean success margin of the majority rule and of the unanimity rule are shown to bound the mean success margin of all other decision rules. For bloc decision rules in the Penrose/Banzhaf model, a product formula for the voters’ influence probabilities is derived. Other indices and the Shapley/Shubik model are also discussed.     

Boosting flexible functional regression models with a high number of functional historical effects

We propose a general framework for regression models with functional response containing a potentially large number of flexible effects of functional and scalar covariates. Special emphasis is put on historical functional effects, where functional response and functional covariate are observed over the same interval and the response is only influenced by covariate values up to the current grid point. Historical functional effects are mostly used when functional response and covariate are observed on a common time interval, as they account for chronology. Our formulation allows for flexible integration limits including, e.g., lead or lag times. The functional responses can be observed on irregular curve-specific grids. Additionally, we introduce different parameterizations for historical effects and discuss identifiability issues.The models are estimated by a component-wise gradient boosting algorithm which is suitable for models with a potentially high number of covariate effects, even more than observations, and inherently does model selection. By minimizing corresponding loss functions, different features of the conditional response distribution can be modeled, including generalized and quantile regression models as special cases. The methods are implemented in the open-source R package FDboost. The methodological developments are motivated by biotechnological data on Escherichia coli fermentations, but cover a much broader model class.