Do close parent-child relations reduce the mortality risk of older parents?

This analysis examines the association between affectional solidarity in older parent-child relationships, and the parents' length of survival over a 14-year interval. It is hypothesized that close intergenerational relations have the capacity to reduce pathogenic stress among elderly parents, thereby enhancing their ability to survive. Direct and buffering effects of affectional solidarity, as expressed by 439 elderly parents, are tested using data from the U.S.C. Longitudinal Study of Generations collected between 1971 and 1985. Buffering effects are examined in the context of social decline and social loss experienced by the older parent. Hazard regression models indicate that greater intergenerational affect increases survival time among parents who experienced a loss in their social network, particularly among those who were widowed less than five years. Neither a direct effect of affection nor a buffering effect in the presence of social decline were found. It is concluded that the mortal health risks associated with the stress of being widowed can be partially offset by affectionate relations with adult children.     

Systematic planning and re-organization

In the last decade wages and salaries have more than doubled in most industrial countries. The amount of capital behind each person in industry has in many countries increased even more, partly to rationalize and compensate for the higher manpower costs. This high rate of investment made discount rates increase 50 – 100 per cent in most industrialized countries in the same period. On the other hand low-cost countries have steadily been pushing more and better products into the international markets. This increases competition. The strongest competition and challenge, however, may come from new technology, new materials, new products and above all from better management.

This development leads to a profit-squeeze for the static company. It gives smaller margins for slow and wrong decisions, and demands a dynamic forward-looking management that understands how to organize, how to develop and involve individual human resources, and how to draw up and use objectives, goals, plans, and programmes, both for present and future growth and progress.

In this article, which is based on management and consultant experience, the focus is put on the need of developing and using as management tools systematic planning and reorganization.     

Defence planning: The uncertainty factor

Failures to predict the course of future conflicts are historically even more numerous than failures to predict the weapons with which they would be fought. Defence has to do with a two-sided activity of conflict and confrontation and in that there is a built-in minimum 50 per cent failure rate. Lack of opportunity, for continuous or even frequent comparison of prediction with reality compounds the defence planner's difficulties. Political decisions on defence purport to be derived from military predictions among other factors, but for practical purposes, have to be regarded as a major element of unpredictability in their own right. Bred in this tradition, the defence planner puts a bold front on things, dreams up scenarios, and keeps his fingers crossed. Knowing that, if he has got them wrong, the ships, tanks and aircraft, will come in useful in the conflicts and confrontations ahead.     

Optimization techniques for robust multivariate location and scatter estimation

Computation of typical statistical sample estimates such as the median or least squares fit usually require the solution of an unconstrained optimization problem with a convex objective function, that can be solved efficiently by various methods. The presence of outliers in the data dictates the computation of a robust estimate, which can be defined as the optimum statistical estimate for a subset that contains at least half of the observations. The resulting problem is now a combinatorial optimization problem which is often computationally intractable. Classical statistical methods for multivariate location \(\varvec{\mu }\) and scatter matrix \(\varvec{\varSigma }\) estimation are based on the sample mean vector and covariance matrix, which are very sensitive in the presence of outlier observations. We propose a new method for robust location and scatter estimation which is composed of two stages. In the first stage an unbiased multivariate \(L_{1}\)-median center for all the observations is attained by a novel procedure called the least trimmed Euclidean deviations estimator. This robust median defines a coverage set of observations which is used in the second stage to iteratively compute the set of outliers which violate the correlational structure of the data set. Extensive computational experiments indicate that the proposed method outperforms existing methods in accuracy, robustness and computational time.     

Prohibition,Regulation or Free Market: A Mapping of Colombian People’s Perspectives Regarding National Drug Policies

Colombian laypersons’ perspectives regarding actual and potential drug policies were examined. Adults (N = 395) aged 18–68 and living in Bogota were presented with 24 vignettes that were composed according to two within-subject orthogonal factor designs: (a) Demand for drugs in the country × Current government policy regarding soft and hard drugs (from “laissez faire” policy for all drugs to complete prohibition of all drugs) and (b) Information campaigns regarding the dangerousness of drugs × Current policy. Participants rated the level of acceptability of each policy. Seven different perspectives were identified that can be grouped into five broad views. The first one (50 % of participants) was called “radical constructionists” because participants considered that all policies were unacceptable. The second one (19 %) was called “cultural conservatives” because only one drug policy was considered fully acceptable: complete prohibition (although half of the members of this group were willing to allow soft drugs to be sold freely). The third one (14 %) was called “progressive prohibitionists” because the preferred policies in this group were either complete prohibition or complete regulation by the government. The fourth one (8 %) was called “free trade libertarians” because the dominant opinion was that the drug market should be free. The last one (5 %) was called “progressive advocates of legalization” because the preferred policy in this group was complete regulation of all substances. In most cases, the presence of information campaigns was highly valued. Methodological implications and implications for decision-makers are discussed.