Sources,Characteristics and Effects of Mass Media Communication on Science: A Review of the Literature,Current Trends and Areas for Future Research

A significant amount of science coverage can be found nowadays in the mass media and is the main source of information about science for many. Accordingly, the relation between science and the media has been intensively analyzed within the social scientific community. It is difficult to keep track of this research, however, as a flurry of studies has been published on the issue. This article provides such an overview. First, it lays out the main theoretical models of science communication, that is, the ‘public understanding of science’ and the ‘mediatization’ model. Second, it describes existing empirical research. In this section, it demonstrates how science’s agenda‐building has improved, how science journalists working routines are described, how different scientific disciplines are presented in the mass media and what effects these media representations (might) have on the audience. Third, the article points out future fields of research.     

Writing from practice

This study investigates the effects of integration change on the integration success of German acquisitions in Poland. It is argued that the degree of integration change has a positive impact on two success measures, namely, economic growth and efficient co-operation, in the acquisition target. It is further argued that process transparency, participation and positive reinforcement are moderators in this relationship between degree of integration change and integration success. Hypotheses are tested on 521 Polish employees from twenty-nine German acquisitions made in Poland between 1991 and 1999. The results show that there was a positive relationship between degree of integration change and integration success as expected and that only process transparency emerged as a significant moderator of this relationship. Consequences for post-acquisition management after German acquisitions in Poland and limitations of the study are discussed.     

Health informatics for older people: a review of ICT facilitated integrated care for older people

Growing demands on welfare services, arising from expanding populations of older people in many countries, has led policy makers to consider the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) as a means to transform the cost-effective delivery of health and social care. The evidence for these claims is examined by reporting the main findings of a review of worldwide published literature documenting the adoption of health informatics applications to improve health and social care for older people. It focuses around two dimensions of the UK government's programme for 'modernising' public services, which emphasise the use of ICTs to facilitate the sharing of health and social services information and its potential to foster person-centred approaches to independent living. Findings suggest that there is little evidence that these dimensions have been realised in practice and the perceived incompatibility between them is more likely to produce expensive and ineffective health informatics outcomes.     

Some sufficient conditions for the type 1 optimality of block designs

In this paper, we investigate the problem of determining block designs which are optimal under type 1 optimality criteria within various classes of designs having υ treatments arranged in b blocks of size k. The solutions to two optimization problems are given which are related to a general result obtained by Cheng (1978) and which are useful in this investigation. As one application of the solutions obtained, the definition of a regular graph design given in Mitchell and John (1977) is extended to that of a semi-regular graph design and some sufficient conditions are derived for the existence of a semi-regular graph design which is optimal under a given type 1 criterion. A result is also given which shows how the sufficient conditions derived can be used to establish the optimality under a specific type 1 criterion of some particular types of semi- regular graph designs having both equal and unequal numbers of replicates. Finally,some sufficient conditions are obtained for the dual of an A- or D-optimal design to be A- or D-optimal within an appropriate class of dual designs.     

The dynamic household as a logical concept and its use in demography

Event history models for aggregate units such as households are complicated by the fact that such entities do not have a well-defined identity through time. The difficulties of applying conventional transition-based models to household change are discussed. More generally, what constitutes time and change are also considered. It is argued that many changes occurring within households such as leaving home are better-considered as fuzzy than crisp phenomena. An alternative perspective based on household change considered as an evolving network is proposed. The implications for sample designs which are designed to track explicithousehold dynamics (such as the Panel Study on Income Dynamics) are discussed. The ways in which particular forms of analysis come to dominate the scientific literature, including those for analysing household change is discussed in relation to non-linear dynamic models. Finally, it is argued that there would be considerable benefits if insights available from the physical, mathematical and biological sciences were to be more widely incorporated within technical demography.Les modèles d'analyse biographique d'unités agrégées, telles que les ménages, sont complexes, car ces entités ne peuvent être définies avec précision au cours du temps. Nous discutons ici les difficultés d'appliquer les modèles habituels basés sur des transitions, aux changements connus par les ménages. Plus généralement, nous analysons ce qui constitue «le temps» et le «changement». Nous montrons ainsi que de nombreux changements connus par les ménages, tels que la décohabitation, sont mieux saisis comme des évévements «flous» plutôt que comme des événements ponctuels. Nous proposons dès lors une autre perspective, basée sur les changements survenus dans des réseaux en évolution. Nous en discutons les implications sur les méthodes d'échantillonnage destinées à tracer l'évolution explicite des ménages (telles que l'étude par panel sur l'évolution des revenus). Les façons selon lesquelles certaines formes d'analyse en viennent à avoir une position dominante dans la littérature scientifique, y compris celles qui permettent l'analyse des changements dans les ménages, sont discutées en liaison avec les modèles dynamiques non-linéaires. Finalement, nous montrons qu'il y a des avantages importants à ce que des approches suivies dans les sciences physiques, mathématiques et biologiques, soient plus largement introduites dans les techniques d'analyse démographique.