关掉电灯——合理使用照明

2003年8月的一个下午,包括百老汇在内的美国东北部、中西部城市以及加拿大安大略省经历了一次大停电,约5千万人受到这次停电事故的影响。除了抱怨不方便、公交乘客一筹莫展、以及饭店和市场里的食品腐败变质之外,许多城市居民感到震撼的是,当夜幕降临时,透过黑暗的摩天大楼,人们凝望天空,看到了令人惊讶的景象——璀璨星空。这些居住在东北部电力发达城市的居民自发聚集,凝望星空这一幕被《纽约时报》报道。     

Adolescent Self‐cutting: An Embodiment of the Unsaid

This paper describes adolescent self‐cutting from a systemic–relational standpoint utilising two key concepts: embodied mind and the unsaid. Varella's notion of embodiment is introduced to understand the body as a field of meaning and the unsaid is conceptualised as what holds ‘said meaning’ and gives a sense of identity. These ideas are illustrated by reflections on a clinical vignette.     

The modified Fréchet distribution and its properties

The Fréchet distribution is an absolutely continuous model which has wide applicability in extreme value theory. In this paper, we propose a new three-parameter model, so-called the modified Fréchet distribution, to extend the Fréchet distribution. By using the Lambert function, we obtain some properties of the new distribution. We provide a simulation study to illustrate the performance of the maximum likelihood estimates. The flexibility of the introduced distribution is illustrated by means of a real data set. We use some goodness-of-fit statistics to verify the adequacy of the proposed model. We prove empirically that it is appropriate for lifetime applications.     

Involvement and emancipation of the worker. Action research in a university hospital

The present action research article is linked to an ergonomics project in a university hospital. The author's proposal is to focus action on the effective worker involvement required for the creation of spaces/mechanisms within organizations where people can enhance cooperation and deliberation on matters relating to work. For this purpose, a committee was introduced to assist in finding problems and solutions directly in work situations, so that workers could experience relative autonomy allowing them to develop procedures and choose tools appropriate to their own real needs. Based on this organizational implementation and on subsequent interviews, the practical results are analyzed and related to employee involvement. One can conclude that workers in all areas of the organization can be active elements for improving working conditions and productivity in companies.     

The workers role in knowledge management and sustainability policies

Based on the concepts of sustainability and knowledge management, this article seeks to identify points of contact between the two themes through an exploratory study of existing literature. The first objective is to find, in international literature, the largest number of papers jointly related to the theme of knowledge management and sustainability. In these documents, the authors looked at the kind of relationship existing between the two themes and what the benefits introduced in organizations are. Based on an ergonomic point of view, the second objective of this article is to analyze the role of the worker (whether at the strategic or operational level) and his importance in this context. The results demonstrate that there is very little literature that addresses the two themes together. The few papers found, however, can be said to show the many advantages of introducing sustainability policies supported by adequate knowledge management. Very little has been studied with regards to the role of workers, which could be interpreted as meaning that little importance is given to the proactive role they may play. On the other hand, there is a high potential for future research in these areas, based on the high level of consideration of workers in knowledge management and sustainability literature, as well as in literature in the areas of ergonomics and sociology.     

Evolution and decomposition of income inequality in Italy, 1991–2004

The aggregate measures of inequality do not display any significant trend in the concentration of equivalent income among the Italian households in the early 2000s. Yet some sizeable shifts in the income distribution seem to suggest that the relative positions of groups of households have changed on the income scale. Through a decomposition analysis of Gini index by income source we find that in the more recent years the income from self-employment is the main disequalizing factor. The decomposition by social groups provides the evidence that it is the group of self-employed and managers who have gained more ground on the income scale. This work has been debated by the three Authors under the coordination of Claudio Quintano. Rosalia Castellano has written Sect. 1, while Andrea Regoli has written Sects. 2 to 6.     

Polysubstance use patterns in underground rave attenders: a cluster analysis

Drug use in mainstream rave parties has been widely documented in a large number of studies. However, not much is known about drug use in underground raves. The purpose of this study is to find out the polysubstance use patterns at underground raves. Two hundred and fifty-two young people between the ages of 18 and 30 who went to underground raves were interviewed. They were given a questionnaire to collect information on drug use at raves. Ravers used a mean of 4.9 different drugs at the last rave they had been to. Over 75% of them used tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, and amphetamine, and over half also used powder ecstasy. Two differentiated use patterns were found: one pattern concentrated more on the use of stimulants and the other on the use of hallucinogens. Underground ravers have a "standard" sociodemographic profile. The use of drugs is much higher than equivalent age group. Higher drug use prevalence than in mainstream rave parties is also observed. Different patterns of use appear which will be necessary to consider in designing preventions and risk reduction strategies,     

Bayesian correlated factor analysis of socio-demographic indicators

Recent changes in European family dynamics are often linked to common latent trends of economic and ideational change. Using Bayesian factor analysis, we extract three latent variables from eight socio-demographic indicators related to family formation, dissolution, and gender system and collected on 19 European countries within four periods (1970, 1980, 1990, 1998). The flexibility of the Bayesian approach allows us to introduce an innovative temporal factor model, adding the temporal dimension to the traditional factorial analysis. The underlying structure of the Bayesian factor model proposed reflects our idea of an autoregressive pattern in the latent variables relative to adjacent time periods. The results we obtain are consistent with current interpretations in European demographic trends.