Human immunodeficiency virus risk: is it possible to dissuade people from having unsafe sex?

Summary. The cumulative number of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections worldwide has reached 60 million in little over 30 years. HIV continues to spread despite a detailed understanding of the manner in which it spreads and measures which can prevent spread. Some governments have been highly successful in containing the spread of HIV through blood products and from mother to child and among injecting drug users. Lack of political will, lack of resources or challenges to widely accepted scientific evidence have held back similar interventions in other countries. It has proved much more difficult to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV in both high and low income countries. A wide range of strategies has been identified but it remains unclear which strategies deserve priority and what methods of promoting them have the greatest effect. There is ample evidence that awareness of HIV and changes in sexual behaviour have occurred widely but the penetration of information remains poor in some vulnerable groups especially adolescents and women in poorer countries. Further obstacles face those who have information about the risk. The subordinate position of women and a desire for large families are important obstacles to condom negotiation and use. Urbanization, poverty, conflict and declining public services all exacerbate unsafe sexual behaviour. We argue that so-called 'structural' interventions directed at these wider contexts of unsafe behaviour merit greater attention. Such approaches have the added benefit of being less susceptible to 'risk compensation' which has the potential to undermine strategies directed at reducing the transmission efficiency of HIV.     

Statistical consulting

The paper and the special issue focus on the activity of statistical consulting and its varieties. This includes academic consulting, consulting to and in industry as well as statistics in public media.     

有关侵华日军细菌战问题的新补充

对侵华日军细菌战罪行的研究渐趋深入,但仍有不少空白点。如细菌战中受害的总人数、被用来进行人体实验的总人数、细菌战实施“种族灭绝”的危害性等,都有待我们进一步研究。     

PKI技术与应用

PKI是基于公钥加密体制的提供公钥加密和数字签名服务的系统或平台,主要由认证中心(CA)、数字证书库、密钥备份及恢复系统、证书撤销处理系统和应用程序接口(API)组成。其中CA是PKI的核心环节,具有证书发放、更新、撤销和验证等功能。PKI技术已在很多领域得到了广泛的应用。     

Some results on optimality in models with heteroscedastic errors from partial optimum designs

This paper studies optimum designs for linear models when the errors are heteroscedastic. Sufficient conditions are given in order to obtainD-, A- andE-optimum designs for a complete regression model from partial optimum designs for some sub-parameters. A result about optimality for a complete model from the optimality for the submodels is included. Supported by Junta de Andalucía, research group FQM244.     

A “brer rabbit” case for reverse mandated benefits

Reverse mandated benefits is a government-mandated policy that requires employees to provide their employers with benefits that workers would not provide otherwise. Of course, only those benefits would be mandated that are worth more to employers than they cost, as determined by political authorities. My case for such a policy argues that it is at least as sensible as policies mandating that employers provide benefits to their employees that would not be provided otherwise.