Near Wins Prolong Gambling on a Video Lottery Terminal

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate whether near wins can prolong gambling activity on a video lottery terminal. In a three-reel game, near wins were operationally defined as two identical symbols followed by a third different symbol. Players in an experimental condition were exposed to 27% near wins in a series of continuous losses, whereas players in a control group were exposed to none. Participants played as long as they wished, and received real money for their wins. The results showed that players in the near win condition played 33% more games than did the control group. The results of this study suggest that near wins can be added to the list of factors that may motivate people to gamble despite the probability of monetary loss.     

On the separability of assembly preferences

Analyses of assembly elections often assume that voters have well-defined preferences over candidates, even though preferences over assemblies are the natural analytic starting point. This candidate-based approach is usually justified by an assumption that preferences over assemblies are separable. We show, however, that if preferences over assemblies are themselves derived from underlying preferences over legislative or economic outcomes, then preferences over assemblies will not in general be separable. Received: 23 June 1997/Accepted: 3 March 1998     

Parents' Attitudes, Knowledge, and Behavior Toward Youth Gambling: A Five-Year Follow-up

This study compares the attitudes, knowledge, and behavior of parents of 5- to 17-year-old children regarding youth gambling. This information was obtained through two telephone surveys conducted in 1995, and 5 years later in 2000, in the Québec City area. Survey 1, in 1995, was conducted on 279 respondents, while survey 2, in 2000, was carried out with 213 respondents. Results showed a number of changes in parents' attitudes, behavior, and knowledge concerning youth gambling: For example, parents' perception of the age of onset of gambling behavior had improved slightly at the end of the 5-year period. Furthermore, parents were more satisfied with government limitation of access to gambling, and more accurately informed about legal aspects of the sale of lottery tickets. However, the percentage of parents who failed to associate youth gambling with some of its correlates (arcade attendance, parental gambling problems, and friendship with gamblers) increased from 1995 to year 2000. The improvements that were observed suggested that parents had benefited from media-transmitted information during this period. However, the deterioration of some parental attitudes, and the stability of other variables, suggest that it is still important to educate parents about youth gambling, and to design interventions adapted to parents' needs.     

Eléments pour une sociologie des études féministes en Europe centrale et orientale

Women's/gender studies were established in the Eastern European post-communist countries during the 1990s, as a new field of academic research and higher education. Works produced in this framework are often used as expert studies and aim to contribute to the improvement of the condition of women in that region, being at the core of the social and political reconstitution programs during the post-communist era. They were established by agents who were simultaneously active in different social spheres (scientific space, civil society associations, or institutionalized politics) and who exemplarily personify the multisituated feminism of the globalization era. These studies criss-cross national and international levels as well as scientific and militant logics. Hence they seem a pertinent entry to study the reconstruction of social sciences, the emergence of new academic topics, the international circulation and the importation of scientific questions and, finally, the recomposition of the academic elites within the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The article begins with a general point about the East-European context of the 1990s, when the socio-economic degradation of women's condition met a widely-spread rejection of feminist ideas due to their ideological manipulation by the socialist regimes. Then a zoom on the Romanian case allows us a reflection on the construction of the ‘women's issue’ during the post-communist transition, when several types of agents involved in the democratization reforms make theirs the transnational concern for women's rights. Finally, on the basis of these preliminary ideas, some research axes and working hypotheses are presented, such as: the sociology of gender studies as a new academic discipline, in a perspective inspired by the social history of social sciences; the sociology of the international circulation of feminist ideas and of the dynamics of East–West intellectual debates on the topic of women's condition in the post-communist countries; the analysis of the multiplying bureaucratic uses of ‘gender’ consequences.     

Organization and Work Situations: Which sources for the learning process?

ABSTRACT: The observation of economic activity grants an equally important place to learning as some recent theoretical problems. However, what is meant by learning, and what in the productive activity enables the application of the learning process? This paper examines the notion of learning, as far as the firm is concerned, putting the emphasis on two main directions. On one hand, learning is not only a dynamic but also a process: it is not only a matter of going from one point to another, but also a process of construction of knowledge and rules. On the other hand, this process must be understood as an articulation between individual and organizational learning.     

Non‐Parametric Estimation of the Conditional Distribution of the Interjumping Times for Piecewise‐Deterministic Markov Processes

This paper presents a non‐parametric method for estimating the conditional density associated to the jump rate of a piecewise‐deterministic Markov process. In our framework, the estimation needs only one observation of the process within a long time interval. Our method relies on a generalization of Aalen's multiplicative intensity model. We prove the uniform consistency of our estimator, under some reasonable assumptions related to the primitive characteristics of the process. A simulation study illustrates the behaviour of our estimator.     

Smart elements in combinatorial group testing problems

In combinatorial group testing problems the questioner needs to find a special element \(x \in [n]\) by testing subsets of [n]. Tapolcai et al. (in: Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM, Toronto, Canada, pp 1860–1868, 2014; IEEE Trans Commun 64(6):2527–2538, 2016) introduced a new model, where each element knows the answer for those queries that contain it and each element should be able to identify the special one. Using classical results of extremal set theory we prove that if \(\mathcal {F}_n \subseteq 2^{[n]}\) solves the non-adaptive version of this problem and has minimal cardinality, then

$$\begin{aligned} \lim _{n \rightarrow \infty } \frac{|\mathcal {F}_n|}{\log _2 n} = \log _{(3/2)}2. \end{aligned}$$

This improves results in Tapolcai et al. (2014, 2016). We also consider related models inspired by secret sharing models, where the elements should share information among them to find out the special one. Finally the adaptive versions of the different models are investigated.

     

Social Class and Conversion Capacity: Deprivation Trends in the Great Recession in Ireland

In this paper, we draw on Irish SILC data to examine the roles of social class, non-class risk groups and state policies in influencing enforced material deprivation as Ireland moved from a period of economic boom through deep recession and on to early recovery. We also employ Sen’s capability approach to explore the extent to which certain social risk groups differ in their capacity to convert social class-differentiated resources into increased capability in relation to avoiding material deprivation. The findings refute the notion of polarization either across time as a result of recession or as a result of more vulnerable social risk groups experiencing more pronounced social class differences. Instead, the impact of recession on social class and social risk group operated mainly in an additive manner with each having a relatively independent impact on deprivation. The exception was lone parents who were less able to convert the benefits of higher social class position into reduced deprivation levels.