Quantitative Risk Assessment of Listeria monocytogenes in French Cold-Smoked Salmon: I. Quantitative Exposure Assessment

A quantitative assessment of the exposure to Listeria monocytogenes from cold-smoked salmon (CSS) consumption in France is developed. The general framework is a second-order (or two-dimensional) Monte Carlo simulation, which characterizes the uncertainty and variability of the exposure estimate. The model takes into account the competitive bacterial growth between L. monocytogenes and the background competitive flora from the end of the production line to the consumer phase. An original algorithm is proposed to integrate this growth in conditions of varying temperature. As part of a more general project led by the French Food Safety Agency (Afssa), specific data were acquired and modeled for this quantitative exposure assessment model, particularly time-temperature profiles, prevalence data, and contamination-level data. The sensitivity analysis points out the main influence of the mean temperature in household refrigerators and the prevalence of contaminated CSS on the exposure level. The outputs of this model can be used as inputs for further risk assessment.     

Men’s Aggression Toward Women: A 10‐Year Panel Study

The present study examined the longitudinal course of men’s physical and psychological aggression toward a partner across 10 years, using a community sample of young couples (N = 194) from at‐risk backgrounds. Findings indicated that men’s aggression decreased over time and that women’s antisocial behavior and depressive symptoms predicted changes in men’s aggression. This suggests the importance of studying social processes within the dyad to have a better understanding of men’s aggression toward a partner.     

Gender Differences in the Transition to Adulthood in France: Is There Convergence Over the Recent Period?

Numerous studies have shown that educational attainment and labour force status have a strong impact on the timing of family formation for both men and women. The effects of educational level, school enrolment and employment seem to be different for men and women. The aim of this article is to investigate how gender-specific differences in family formation have changed over time, and more particularly, whether these differences have disappeared in recent years. We use a large-scale survey (more than 240,000 men and women born after 1940) conducted within the French 1999 census and apply event history techniques. The sample size allows us to test our hypotheses with more sophisticated models that cover several interactions. Our data fully support the convergence hypothesis for men and women with regard to the effects of educational attainment and working status (working/not working). However, it is only partly relevant for the effects of their school enrolment status on entry into first union and parenthood. For both men and women, the impact of work experience on first union disappears over time, but remains important for first parenthood.     

Testing Fractional Order of Long Memory Processes: A Monte Carlo Study

Testing the fractionally integrated order of seasonal and nonseasonal unit roots is quite important for the economic and financial time series modeling. In this article, the widely used Robinson's (1994 Robinson , P. M. ( 1994 ). Efficient tests of nonstationary hypotheses . J. Am. Stat. Assoc. 89 ( 428 ): 1420 – 1437 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) test is applied to various well-known long memory models. Via Monte Carlo experiments, we study and compare the performances of this test using several sample sizes.     

Semiparametric Additive Accelerated Life Models

In this paper we investigate the asymptotic properties of estimators obtained for the semiparametric additive accelerated life model proposed by Bagdonavicius & Nikulin (1995). This model generalizes the well known additive hazards model of survival analysis and is close to the general transformation model (see Dabrowska & Doksum, 1988). Asymptotic properties of the estimator of the regression parameter and the estimator of the reliability function are given in the case of right censoring for discretized data and a numerical example illustrates these results.     

Structural instability and alternative development scenarios

Many past societies grew and flourished for several generations, and some for many centuries, prior to experiencing calamities that lowered wealth and/or productivity below some “critical levels.” In some cases, a collapse occurred; in others, the population reductions caused by emigration, plague, or warfare not only extended societies’ survival but induced a growth resurgence. These varied historical development scenarios are captured using a comparative dynamic analysis of structurally unstable variations of the Solow–Swan growth model. These results would seem to be relevant for understanding possibilities in the contemporary world.     

Non‐parametric Estimation of Extreme Risk Measures from Conditional Heavy‐tailed Distributions

In this paper, we introduce a new risk measure, the so‐called conditional tail moment. It is defined as the moment of order a ≥ 0 of the loss distribution above the upper α‐quantile where α ∈ (0,1). Estimating the conditional tail moment permits us to estimate all risk measures based on conditional moments such as conditional tail expectation, conditional value at risk or conditional tail variance. Here, we focus on the estimation of these risk measures in case of extreme losses (where α ↓0 is no longer fixed). It is moreover assumed that the loss distribution is heavy tailed and depends on a covariate. The estimation method thus combines non‐parametric kernel methods with extreme‐value statistics. The asymptotic distribution of the estimators is established, and their finite‐sample behaviour is illustrated both on simulated data and on a real data set of daily rainfalls.     

Prevalence of Sexual Abuse in Childhood: Some Critical Methodological Reflections

This article attempts to analyze the prevalence rates of sexual abuse in childhood reported in comparative empirical studies, giving an overview of a selection of representative studies reporting high rates of abuse and comparing it to an overview of studies reporting lower rates. Extremely discrepant rates of childhood sexual abuse are reported in a number of empirical studies conducted in this field over the past 26 years, particularly those looking beyond prevalence to study the links between this type of trauma and future motherhood. To shed light on the disparities in the reported prevalence rates, the article reviews the principal methodological biases that have contaminated the findings. The authors then offer several suggestions for improvement that might be implemented in future studies.     

Parental Divorce and Romantic Attachment in Young Adulthood: Important Role of Problematic Beliefs

In the current study 45 university students with either divorced or continuously married parents were surveyed about their romantic attachment, positive emotionality, depressive symptomology, self-esteem, and, when applicable, their retrospective beliefs about their parents’ marital dissolution. Findings revealed that parental divorce did not predict attachment insecurity, depression, or low self-esteem. In fact, adult children of divorced parents (ACDP) reported increased compassion, awe, enthusiasm, and perspective taking. Among ACDP, a composite factor representing increased fear of abandonment, peer rejection, and maternal blame was positively associated with adult attachment anxiety, even while controlling for parental conflict and divorce-related socioenvironmental disruption. Results are discussed in terms of their support of a complex understanding of the long-term effects of parental divorce, and in their inconsistency with a purely pathogenic model of parental divorce.