Force steadiness in the lower extremities as an independent predictor of functional performance in older women

The relationship between isometric force control and functional performance is unknown. Submaximal steadiness and accuracy were measured during a constant force-matching task at 50% of maximal isometric voluntary contraction (MVC) of the knee extensors in 19 older women (70-89 years). Other variables included MVC, rate of torque development, and EMG activity. Functional performance was assessed during maximal performance of walking endurance, chair rising, and stair climbing. Isometric steadiness (but not accuracy) was found to independently predict chair-rise time and stair-climbing power and explained more variance in these tasks than any other variable. Walking endurance was related to muscle strength but not steadiness. These results suggest that steadiness is an independent predictor of brief, stressful functional-performance tasks in older women with mild functional impairment. Thus, improving steadiness might help reduce functional limitations or disability in older adults.     

Emergent Indicators Lock and Unlock Public Organizations: An Ethic of Commitment

This article focuses on management indicators, their emergence, theirs functions and their impact for a public action. It does so through an analysis of the implementation of indicators in three forest management units in Belgium, France and Luxembourg. M. Crozier theory and M. Callon theory are crossed to drawn attention to the manner in which, at the micro-level, indicators are worked out. We argue that these emergent measurements are vectors of a particular ethic of behavior. Our aim is to contribute to the study of indicators in three aspects. First, it offers a more detailed understanding of the double nature of indicators: they constrain action and, at the same time, support actors autonomy. Second, it illustrates the major functions of indicators but also theirs paradoxes: actually, indicators lock and unlock organizations. Third, it brings to light the practical rationality and the ethic of commitment connected to indicators.     

The impartial culture maximizes the probability of majority cycles

Many papers have studied the probability of majority cycles, also called the Condorcet paradox, using the impartial culture or related distributional assumptions. While it is widely acknowledged that the impartial culture is unrealistic, conclusions drawn from the impartial culture are nevertheless still widely advertised and reproduced in textbooks. We demonstrate that the impartial culture is the worst case scenario among a very broad range of possible voter preference distributions. More specifically, any deviation from the impartial culture over linear orders reduces the probability of majority cycles in infinite samples unless the culture from which we sample is itself inherently intransitive. We prove this statement for the case of three candidates and we provide arguments for the conjecture that it extends to any number of candidates.All three authors thank the Fuqua School of Business for supporting their research collaboration. Regenwetter and Grofman gratefully acknowledge the precious support of the National Science Foundation through grant #SBR-9730076 on Probabilistic Models of Social Choice (Methodology, Measurement and Statistics program). We are grateful to the referees and we thank Saa Peke for critical comments on an earlier draft. Grofman thanks Scott L. Feld for numerous reminders about the implausibility of the impartial culture assumption which helped lead to this paper.     

An axiomatic characterization of Borda's k-choice function

This paper presents an extension of Borda's choice function to k-choice function (the k-choice set may be understood as the set of equally best elites of k alternatives). Young's axiomatic conditions are then generalized to k-choice functions and a simple combinatorial proof is exposed for the axiomatic characterization of Borda's k-choice function.