Safety Risk Analysis of an Innovative Environmental Technology

The authors describe a decision and risk analysis performed for the cleanup of a large Department of Energy mixed-waste subsurface disposal area governed by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). In a previous study, the authors worked with the site decision makers, state regulators, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional regulators to develop a CERCLA-based multiobjective decision analysis value model and used the model to perform a screening analysis of 28 remedial alternatives. The analysis results identified an innovative technology, in situ vitrification, with high effectiveness versus cost. Since this technology had not been used on this scale before, the major uncertainties were contaminant migration and pressure buildup. Pressure buildup was a safety concern due to the potential risks to worker safety. With the help of environmental technology experts remedial alternative changes were identified to mitigate the concerns about contaminant migration and pressure buildup. The analysis results showed that the probability of an event with a risk to worker safety had been significantly reduced. Based on these results, site decision makers have refocused their test program to examine in situ vitrification and have continued the use of the CERCLA-based decision analysis methodology to analyze remedial alternatives.     

Associations Between Social Anxiety and Nonverbal Processing Skill in Preadolescent Boys and Girls

This study was designed to investigate the potential association between social anxiety and children's ability to decode nonverbal emotional cues. Participants were 62 children between 8 and 10 years of age, who completed self-report measures of social anxiety, depressive symptomatology, and nonspecific anxious symptomatology, as well as nonverbal decoding tasks assessing accuracy at identifying emotion in facial expressions and vocal tones. Data were analyzed with multiple regression analyses controlling for generalized cognitive ability, and nonspecific anxious and depressive symptomatology. Results provided partial support for the hypothesis that social anxiety would relate to nonverbal decoding accuracy. Difficulty identifying emotions conveyed in children's and adults' voices was associated with general social avoidance and distress. At higher levels of social anxiety, children more frequently mislabeled fearful voices as sad. Possible explanations for the obtained results are explored.     

Some Limitations of Aggregate Exposure Metrics

Aggregate exposure metrics based on sums or weighted averages of component exposures are widely used in risk assessments of complex mixtures, such as asbestos-associated dusts and fibers. Allowed exposure levels based on total particle or fiber counts and estimated ambient concentrations of such mixtures may be used to make costly risk-management decisions intended to protect human health and to remediate hazardous environments. We show that, in general, aggregate exposure information alone may be inherently unable to guide rational risk-management decisions when the components of the mixture differ significantly in potency and when the percentage compositions of the mixture exposures differ significantly across locations. Under these conditions, which are not uncommon in practice, aggregate exposure metrics may be "worse than useless," in that risk-management decisions based on them are less effective than decisions that ignore the aggregate exposure information and select risk-management actions at random. The potential practical significance of these results is illustrated by a case study of 27 exposure scenarios in El Dorado Hills, California, where applying an aggregate unit risk factor (from EPA's IRIS database) to aggregate exposure metrics produces average risk estimates about 25 times greater - and of uncertain predictive validity - compared to risk estimates based on specific components of the mixture that have been hypothesized to pose risks of human lung cancer and mesothelioma.     

How Probabilistic Risk Assessment Can Mislead Terrorism Risk Analysts

Traditional probabilistic risk assessment (PRA), of the type originally developed for engineered systems, is still proposed for terrorism risk analysis. We show that such PRA applications are unjustified in general. The capacity of terrorists to seek and use information and to actively research different attack options before deciding what to do raises unique features of terrorism risk assessment that are not adequately addressed by conventional PRA for natural and engineered systems—in part because decisions based on such PRA estimates do not adequately hedge against the different probabilities that attackers may eventually act upon. These probabilities may differ from the defender's (even if the defender's experts are thoroughly trained, well calibrated, unbiased probability assessors) because they may be conditioned on different information. We illustrate the fundamental differences between PRA and terrorism risk analysis, and suggest use of robust decision analysis for risk management when attackers may know more about some attack options than we do.     

“The Rule Was the Rule”: new member socialization in rigidly structured totalistic organizations

This study examined member encounter in two organizations with rigid rule structures and great reach into members’ lives: the U.S. military and the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church. Interviews conducted with members allowed emergence of the lived experience of organizational entry in the words of participants in thematic categories. Findings challenge current views of encounter as a negotiation between currently held beliefs and organizational role and suggest a more nuanced view of organizational encounter that is tied to the reach of the organization into the member’s life. Findings also suggest that in totalistic organizations, encounter is designed to quickly manufacture enacted organizational identities that maintain and reproduce organizational rule systems.     

Collective preferences as predictors of interstate migration

The comparison of objective and subjective social indicators can be illuminated by comparing their relations to individual choice, of which migration is an important instance. We have replicated for U.S. states Lowry's (1966) regression model of migration among SMSA's, and added an indirect subjective measure of quality of life in each state. This measure is based on a Gallup survey asking respondents about their preferences among states of the United States as places to live. A measure of collective preference for each state, as viewed by outsiders, is constructed from these responses. This new variable increases R ² from 0.798 to 0.828, and is itself predicted with an R ² of only 0.355 by objective variables. Objective indicators of well-being had increased R ² only from 0.762 to 0.798. We conclude that collective preferences — the subjective measure we have used — play an independent part in predicting migration.     

Fertility Differences between the Majority and Minority Nationality Groups in China

There is an extensive sociological and demographic literature about why racial and ethnic minority groups in the U.S. have different levels of fertility, usually higher, than the majority white group. The four major hypotheses are the subcultural hypothesis, the social characteristics hypothesis, the minority group status hypothesis, and the economic hypothesis. In this paper we focus on fertility patterns of the majority Han and the larger minority groups in China and examine the degree to which the above hypotheses may be useful in articulating the reasons why the fertility of the Han majority differs from that of the minorities. We first present a brief historical review of the genesis and development of the majority and minority nationalities in China. We next present short vignettes of each of the eight minority nationalities we will be examining. We then review the Western literature on fertility differentials between majority and minority nationalities, and summarize the theoretical expectations behind the four prominent hypotheses to be tested. Finally, we present the results of the analysis, and draw out the implications of our work.     

A special section for correspondence and controversy

This paper gives crude estimates of the environmental consequences associated with the birth of one baby in the United States. We calculate the magnitude of one hundred environmental impacts which one American born today will cause over a lifetime. The impacts are grouped under five headings: waste generation, mineral consumption, energy consumption, ecosystem alteration, and food consumption. We also consider, but do not quantify, impacts on extinctions of species and indigenous cultures. Our purpose is to emphasize the role of population growth in the creation of environmental problems, and to make potential parents aware of their ability to impact the global environment. We conclude that one especially effective way for individuals to protect the national and global environment, and hence protect the wellbeing of all existing people, is to stop creating more humans.