Weighted Poisson and Semiparametric Kernel Models Applied to Parasite Growth

This work deals with some parametric and semiparametric modeling approaches for count data distributions related to development of spiraling whitefly which is an insect pest collected in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo. In this study, the count data distributions are assumed to be modified Poisson probability mass functions. For the discrete semiparametric associated kernel estimator investigated, its almost sure consistency and asymptotic normality are shown under some asumptions. Some weighted Poisson models (WPD) are applied in comparison with the semiparametric approach for finite samples characterizing the growth of spiraling whitefly. Finally, the discrete semiparametric estimation is simple and effective for estimating any count distribution while WPD are practically more meaningful.     

La New Day Co-op est-elle (réellement) une coopérative ? Revisiter les théories sur la coopération à partir d'une expérience de pensée

De manière similaire aux sciences physiques, la méthode d'expérience de pensée permet d’étudier la validité des théories dans un « contexte limite », où le chercheur manque de données expérimentales. The Wire (sur écoute), série policière ambitieuse des années 2000, peut être vu comme un tel objet d’études riche pour les chercheurs en sciences sociales à la fois comme reflet de la réalité mais aussi comme objet autonome proposant une certaine interprétation des problèmes économiques et sociaux. En tant qu’expérience de pensée de sciences sociales, sa mise en scène provocante de la vie quotidienne d'une coopérative de revente de drogues, la New Day Co-op, interroge les concepts clés des travaux portant sur la coopération, et notamment l'assimilation habituelle entre justice sociale, transformation sociale et démocratie économique. « Matériel empirique » important dans le cadre d'une théorie anti-essentialiste des organisations coopératives, elle est également un appel à la prise en compte d'une démarche réflexive en sciences sociales.     

“Jeunes à risque”: Généalogie d'un langage problématique

Se référant aux études sur la gouvernementalité, cet article propose une généalogie de la catégorie des “jeunes à risque” dans les recherches sur les adolescents et les jeunes adultes. La société du risque, les lieux de diffusion des savoirs scientifiques, les axes prioritaires du financement public et les structures institutionnelles encadrant la pratique des chercheurs forment une conjoncture singulière où a pu s'élaborer un véritable langage des “jeunes à risque.” Fruit d'une démarche de réflexivité critique, l'analyse souligne la responsabilité des chercheurs dans la légitimation de ce langage problématique et les défis que comporte le projet de le transformer. Based on governmentality studies, this article sketches out a genealogy of the “youth at‐risk” category in contemporary youth studies. A convergence of risk society, sites of dissemination for youth research, state priorities in research funding, and institutional structures that frame research practices serve to create a unique historical moment for the emergence of regulatory “youth at‐risk” language. As part of a critical reflexive approach to youth research, this article underscores youth scholars' responsibility to challenge this problematic language and pins down some of the difficulties this project faces in the academy.     

Quantitative methods and contemporary sociology in francophone Quebec

Le texte démontre la place marginale qu'occupe la sociologie quantitative dans l'activité officielle de cette discipline au Québec. Les chercheurs qui publient des articles quantitatifs sont peu nombreux et ne contribuent guère au développement des méthodes quantitatives dans la discipline. Les sujets traités se restreignent à quelques domaines seulement. Il semble par contre que les méthodes quantitatives soient plus répandues chez les sociologues non-universitaires. Par ailleurs, les études quantitatives sont perméables aux tendances dominantes de la sociologie québécoise; elles sont centrées sur le Québec comme objet d'analyse et elles utilisent un cadre théorique relativement élaboré.
This paper shows the marginal position of quantitative analysis in the articles published by Quebec francophone sociologists in the major journals of the discipline. Very few sociologists publish quantitative studies and they basically apply methods developed elsewhere. Quantitative analysis is confined to a few subject matters and is completely absent in many domains. It appears, however, that the quantitative approach is more widespread among non-university-based sociologists. Finally quantitative studies share some of the general characteristics of Quebec sociology: they focus almost entirely on Quebec as the object of analysis and they resort to an elaborate conceptual framework.     

A vision of re-distributed manufacturing for the UK’s consumer goods industry

Abstract

The linear production of consumer goods is characterised by mass manufacture, multinational enterprises and globally dispersed supply chains. Redistributed manufacture (RDM) is an emerging topic, which seeks to enable a transition of the current linear model of production and consumption, by taking advantage of new technologies. This paper aims to explore the challenges, opportunities and further research questions to set a vision of Redistributed manufacturing for the UK’s consumer goods industry. To set this vision, a literature survey was conducted followed by a qualitative enquiry where PESTLEref="#EN1">¹ aspects of RDM were analysed. This analysis was interpreted through a roadmap. As a result of this roadmap, four RDM characteristics (i.e. customisation, use of digital technologies, local production and the development of new business models) were identified. These characteristics helped to set the future vision of RDM in the UK’s consumer goods sector.     

Nested Kriging predictions for datasets with a large number of observations

This work falls within the context of predicting the value of a real function at some input locations given a limited number of observations of this function. The Kriging interpolation technique (or Gaussian process regression) is often considered to tackle such a problem, but the method suffers from its computational burden when the number of observation points is large. We introduce in this article nested Kriging predictors which are constructed by aggregating sub-models based on subsets of observation points. This approach is proven to have better theoretical properties than other aggregation methods that can be found in the literature. Contrarily to some other methods it can be shown that the proposed aggregation method is consistent. Finally, the practical interest of the proposed method is illustrated on simulated datasets and on an industrial test case with \(10^4\) observations in a 6-dimensional space.     

The feminist movement,gender relations and the Japanese university

This interview may allow a better approach to the Japanese feminist researcher Chizuko Ueno: first in her analysis of the place of women in a society mainly ruled by men and also in her idea of the way to account for historical issues without ignoring any longer the many-sided possible approaches. Gender segregation being deeply rooted into the Japanese society, gender studies could be inserted but slowly into universities. Nevertheless there were some successful achievements. Not only did gender studies receive academic status but above all the feminist activism of the Japanese researchers brought into the bright daylight the historical facts that the men had prudishly concealed from the public.     

Fibonacci index and stability number of graphs: a polyhedral study

The Fibonacci index of a graph is the number of its stable sets. This parameter is widely studied and has applications in chemical graph theory. In this paper, we establish tight upper bounds for the Fibonacci index in terms of the stability number and the order of general graphs and connected graphs. Turán graphs frequently appear in extremal graph theory. We show that Turán graphs and a connected variant of them are also extremal for these particular problems. We also make a polyhedral study by establishing all the optimal linear inequalities for the stability number and the Fibonacci index, inside the classes of general and connected graphs of order n.     

Effects of Regional Labour Markets on Migration Flows,by Education Level

European economies display large variations in unemployment rates across regions as well as between education groups. Insufficient labour mobility is widely believed to contribute to higher regional disparities and overall unemployment, but few studies have compared mobility responses of different education groups to regional shocks. This paper employs administrative registers covering the entire Norwegian population to compute annual time series from 1994 to 2004 of migration flows and regional labour market conditions by education level for 90 travel‐to‐work areas. We find that regional disparities in unemployment rates are decreasing in education level, whereas the response of migration flows to regional unemployment shocks is increasing in education level. The results suggest that low regional mobility of low‐educated workers may contribute to higher regional disparities and higher overall unemployment among the low educated.     

WebStress: A web interface to explore a multidatabase bibliographic corpus on occupational stress

A bibliographic study on a multidisciplinary subject, such as occupational stress, requires a multidatabase query facility. Given this, we searched eight databases belonging to different fields (medicine, psychology, etc.) and from different countries. Thus, more than 26000 references on occupational stress were gathered. A bibliographic corpus of this sort is unusable because of the heterogeneous format of the records and the number of duplicate entries. Considering the limitations of commercial programs, we have developed a system, called WebStress, for reformatting the data and removing duplicates. The huge number of references and the research needs of updating and searching have necessitated the addition of several other functions to WebStress. Therefore WebStress comprises a web interface that makes it possible to search the corpus with advanced features (using clustering, a specialized thesaurus on stress and Boolean queries). In addition to the usual bibliographic queries on a specific database such as Medline, WebStress provides bibliometric analysis of the corpus, which might contribute to a detailed analysis on occupational stress in order to highlight the networks of researchers and to find the main topics studied in this area. WebStress is not yet available to researchers in general. It is being further developed, and also permission needs to be obtained from the eight commercial bibliographic databases that it consults.