Late fertility decline in the Netherlands: The influence of religious denomination,socioeconomic group and region

Both published results from the 1930, 1947, 1960 and 1971 censuses and unpublished ones are used to examine the influence that religious denomination, socio-economic group and region exerted on the fertility of marriages contracted between 1876 and 1959. A theory formulated by Lesthaeghe and Wilson on the relation between modes of production and secularization and the pace of fertility decline in Western Europe offers — in combination with van Heek's views on the special position of Dutch Roman Catholicism — a starting point for an explanation of why the fertility decline of Roman Catholics, self-employed and agricultural labourers lagged behind.     

Beggars can be choosers: Resource scarcity,dynamism, search activities,and their joint impact on performance

Research on firm search stresses the need for firms to adapt and align concurrently with their environment to optimize the ability to sense and seize opportunities for sustained performance. We postulate resource scarcity as an important contingency factor for the search-performance relationship, and assess its joint influence with high and low dynamism. Using a dataset spanning 23 years, we examine the performance implications of combinations of internal and external exploratory and exploitative search in resource-scarce environments, under conditions of high and low dynamism. We find that resource scarcity is an important condition for performance stemming from exploratory and exploitative search: even under conditions that involve low dynamism, but joined with resource scarcity, firms may benefit from pursuing exploratory and exploitative knowledge simultaneously.     

Interrupted stories, interrupted lives

In attempting to manage their practices efficiently, doctors may not allow seriously ill patients enough time to sort out their feelings and raise important questions. What is at stake here is not information about prognosis and treatments but the very survival of the soul.     

Basic aspects of evolution strategies

Evolution strategies (ESs) are a special class of probabilistic, direct, global optimization methods. They are similar to genetic algorithms but work in continuous spaces and have the additional capability of self-adapting their major strategy parameters. This paper presents the most important features of ESs, namely their self-adaptation, as well as their robustness and potential for parallelization which they share with other evolutionary algorithms.Besides the early (1 + 1)-ES and its underlying theoretical results, the modern ( + )-ES and (, )-ES are presented with special emphasis on the self-adaptation of strategy parameters, a mechanism which enables the algorithm to evolve not only the object variables but also the characteristics of the probability distributions of normally distributed mutations. The self-adaptation property of the algorithm is also illustrated by an experimental example.The robustness of ESs is demonstrated for noisy fitness evaluations and by its application to discrete optimization problems, namely the travelling salesman problem (TSP).Finally, the paper concludes by summarizing existing work and general possibilities regarding the parallelization of evolution strategies and evolutionary algorithms in general.     

Sampling from spatial databases

This paper deals with techniques for obtaining random point samples from spatial databases. We seek random points from a continuous domain (usually ²) which satisfy a spatial predicate that is represented in the database as a collection of polygons. Several applications of spatial sampling (e.g. environmental monitoring, agronomy, forestry, etc) are described. Sampling problems are characterized in terms of two key parameters: coverage (selectivity), and expected stabbing number (overlap). We discuss two fundamental approaches to sampling with spatial predicates, depending on whether we sample first or evaluate the predicate first. The approaches are described in the context of both quadtrees and R-trees, detailing the sample first, acceptance/rejection tree, and partial area tree algorithms. A sequential algorithm, the one-pass spatial reservoir algorithm is also described. The relative performance of the various sampling algorithms is compared and choice of preferred algorithms is suggested. We conclude with a short discussion of possible extensions.     

Axiomatizations of the normalized Banzhaf value and the Shapley value

A cooperative game with transferable utilities– or simply a TU-game – describes a situation in which players can obtain certain payoffs by cooperation. A solution concept for these games is a function which assigns to every such a game a distribution of payoffs over the players in the game. Famous solution concepts for TU-games are the Shapley value and the Banzhaf value. Both solution concepts have been axiomatized in various ways. An important difference between these two solution concepts is the fact that the Shapley value always distributes the payoff that can be obtained by the `grand coalition' consisting of all players cooperating together while the Banzhaf value does not satisfy this property, i.e., the Banzhaf value is not efficient. In this paper we consider the normalized Banzhaf value which distributes the payoff that can be obtained by the `grand coalition' proportional to the Banzhaf values of the players. This value does not satisfy certain axioms underlying the Banzhaf value. In this paper we introduce some new axioms that characterize the normalized Banzhaf value. We also provide an axiomatization of the Shapley value using similar axioms. Received: 10 April 1996 / Accepted: 2 June 1997     

Going to Pieces: Paul Monette and the Fragments of the Tribe

Author of the highly acclaimed Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (1988) and winner of the 1992 National Book Award for his autobiography Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, Paul Monette died of complications from AIDS in Los Angeles on February 12, 1995. His most recent work, Last Watch of the Night: Essays Too Personal and Otherwise (1994), is his third volume in a trilogy of autobiographical writing on growing up gay, coming-out, and living with AIDS. A graduate of Phillips Academy and Yale University, Monette received a number of awards for his writing and his work as an outspoken voice in the battle against AIDS, including the National Book Award, three Lambda Literary awards, the PEN Center West Freedom to Write Award, and three honorary doctorate degrees, from Wesleyan University, the City University of New York, and the State University of New York at Oswego. A memorial service was held for Monette on Sunday, February 19, 1995, at the Directors Guild of America on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Paul Monette was 49.     

Hospital-sponsored networks. The rush to consolidate and the future of medical practice

As the medical delivery system undergoes fundamental change, there is a growing pressure on hospitals to form networks with physicians. The prime motivation for these entities is to preserve market share and fill beds. There is likewise intense pressure on physicians to join them, even if these networks do not serve their best interests, or the goal of fostering physician-centered practice. A transformation is under way, however, that may well place doctors again in the central role of guiding the new modes of medical practice in the United States.     

Waste paper and the market mechanism

Increasing attention is being given to the possible consequences which might follow from the exhaustion of the world's natural resources. Countering the pessimistic conclusions of such institutions as the Club of Rome, economists such as Wilfred Beckerman have emphasized the importance of substitution, pointing to many examples where a shortage of one raw material has led to the discovery or development of alternative materials, e.g. artificial for natural rubber, aluminium for copper.Substitution usually occurs through normal market mechanisms, i.e. changes in relative prices. However in some circumstances the market mechanism may be inhibited by a variety of factors, so that its operation requires to be supplemented by an outside agency. This article explores this possibility in relation to the paper making industry, which provides a particularly interesting example owing to the existence of a well established market in waste paper, the main substitute for the major natural resource, woodpulp.A brief indication is given of the relative importance of waste paper and an outline of the structure of the U.K. market; the conditions under which greater utilization of waste paper might occur are then considered taking a sideways look at the influence of the individual. In the final section the various implications for the role of the state are summarized.