Food Well-Being in Older Adults: Effects of a Universal Non-contributory Pension in Mexico

Social Indicators Research - One of the few universal programs in Latin America is the Food Pension for Adults Older than 68 (PAAM) of Mexico City, which aims to reduce food insecurity while...     

A doubly restricted exponential dispersion model

In this paper, we propose and develop a doubly restricted exponential dispersion model, i.e. a varying dispersion generalized linear model with two sets of restrictions, a set of linear restrictions for the mean response, and at the same time, for another set of linear restrictions for the dispersion of the distribution. This model would be useful to consider several situations where it is necessary to control/analyze drug-doses, active effects in factorial experiments, mean-variance relationships, among other situations. A penalized likelihood function is proposed and developed in order to achieve the restricted parameters and to develop the inferential results. Several special cases from the literature are commented on. A simply restricted varying dispersion beta regression model is exemplified by means of real and simulated data. Satisfactory and promising results are found.     

哲学践行:从理论走向实践的哲学运动——奥斯卡·博列尼菲尔访谈录

哲学学者不能仅满足于了解哲学,不能太过于侧重描述,而忽略了哲学本身是一种思考与改变现实世界的活动,这正是哲学践行的重要方面。随着人文精神的发展,人们意识到,真正的教育不应该是让学生"学习,然后复述",学习的目的不是为了简单地说出知识,而是要应用,要将知识外化出去,以使人类得到某种程度上的自主与自由。哲学教育的目的不是让学生机械地学习哲学知识,而应当是寻找"为何这样"、"如何改变"以及了解"你是谁"、"如何从事社会生活"等一系列问题答案的工作。这就需要进行有效地思考。然而,人们常谈论的"思考"大部分缺乏实质意义。当人的头脑中充满了各种观念和想法时,便无法有效思考。"思考"这一概念在哲学史上之所以意义深远在于它是一种有序的东西。在思考时,个体有时需要增加内容以把脑中繁杂的观念整理出一个结构;而有时却恰恰相反,个体需要丢弃一些观念以使自己的思想精简、清晰。在哲学史上,相较于各个哲学家所坚持的主张,他们的方法论更值得重视,因为不同的哲学家会有不同的思维直觉,他们所建构的方法论能够为人类提供许多与思考有关的工具,对我们建构思想以及澄清思维都很有好处。苏格拉底的追问式对话法、辩证法、现象学还原法以及中国的老子思想等都是对思考很有帮助的哲学工具。实际上,哲学可以被用在任何地方,哲学践行工作者可以在各种具体的社会情境中工作,在目前哲学践行发展的形势下,我们应当更多地鼓励人们认识、了解以及关注哲学的社会展现,将那种令人畏惧的学院派哲学逐渐转变为实用的、易于接受与应用的思想并带给社会大众。     

Dose-Response Model for 13 Strains of Salmonella

Data from a human feeding trial with healthy men were used to develop a dose-response model for 13 strains of Salmonella and to determine the effects of strain variation on the shape of the dose-response curve. Dose-response data for individual strains were fit to a three-phase linear model to determine minimum, median, and maximum illness doses, which were used to define Pert distributions in a computer simulation model. Pert distributions for illness dose of individual strains were combined in an Excel spreadsheet using a discrete distribution to model strain prevalence. In addition, a discrete distribution was used to model dose groups and thus create a model that simulated human feeding trials. During simulation of the model with @Risk, an illness dose and a dose consumed were randomly assigned to each consumption event in the simulated feeding trial and if the illness dose was greater than the dose consumed then the model predicted no illness, otherwise the model predicted that an illness would occur. To verify the dose-response model predictions, the original feeding trial was simulated. The dose-response model predicted a median of 69 (range of 43-101) illnesses compared to 74 in the original trial. Thus, its predictions were in agreement with the data used to develop it. However, predictions of the model are only valid for eggnog, healthy men, and the strains and doses of Salmonella used to develop it. When multiple strains of Salmonella were simulated together, the predicted dose-response curves were irregular in shape. Thus, the sigmoid shape of dose-response curves in feeding trials with one strain of Salmonella may not accurately reflect dose response in naturally contaminated food where multiple strains may be present.     

Public Opinion Surveys and the Formation of Privacy Policy

The laws that condition the boundaries that separate the public from the private spheres shape our expectations of privacy. Public opinion helps to shape the development and implementation of those laws. Commercial firms in the information-intensive industries have been the primary sponsors of public opinion surveys introduced into testimony as assessments of the public's will. Representatives of business and consumer organizations have relied upon the same industry-sponsored surveys to frame their arguments in support of or in opposition to specific privacy policies. In the past 25 years, references to public opinion have been used to frame the public as concerned, differentiated and, most recently, as willing to negotiate their privacy demands.     

Experientia Docet: Professionals Play Minimax in Laboratory Experiments

We study how professional players and college students play zero‐sum two‐person strategic games in a laboratory setting. We first ask professionals to play a 2 × 2 game that is formally identical to a strategic interaction situation that they face in their natural environment. Consistent with their behavior in the field, they play very close to the equilibrium of the game. In particular, (i) they equate their strategies' payoffs to the equilibrium ones and (ii) they generate sequences of choices that are serially independent. In sharp contrast, however, we find that college students play the game far from the equilibrium predictions. We then study the behavior of professional players and college students in the classic O'Neill 4 × 4 zero‐sum game, a game that none of the subjects has encountered previously, and find the same differences in the behavior of these two pools of subjects. The transfer of skills and experience from the familiar field to the unfamiliar laboratory observed for professional players is relevant to evaluate the circumstances under which behavior in a laboratory setting may be a reliable indicator of behavior in a naturally occurring setting. From a cognitive perspective, it is useful for research on recognition processes, intuition, and similarity as a basis for inductive reasoning.