Can We Perceive Near Miss? An Empirical Study

Near misses are a special kind of reinforcement which increases one’s desire to play. The aim of this paper is to examine the perception of near misses in normal population. We used a slot machine simulation running on a PC, where participants had to play four rounds with different near miss ratios (0, 15, 30 and 45%). Our sample consisted of 159 individuals with mean age of 22.8 and with no or little gambling experience. For data analysis we used chi-squared goodness-of-fit test and exact binomial test. Despite the fact, that there was a notable effect of near misses results showed that the subjects could not perceive trials of them.     

社会工作专业服务的本土框架和理论依据 ——一项本土专业服务场域的动态分析?

近十年来，在政府的大力推动下，中国社会工作的发展已经由体制外逐渐走进体制内，与体制的融合成为最迫切、最关键的问题，而融合的最基础专业服务场域就是社区。文章针对社区专业社会工作者与居委会动态关联的分析发现：（1）居委会承担着管理和服务双重角色，采取综合管理服务方式，与追求专业服务的社会工作存在不同的服务逻辑；（2）借助项目综合社会工作服务，能够把专业社会工作服务与居委会的综合管理服务融合起来。两种常见的融合方式，一是注重社区整体能力提升的社区社会工作；二是关注专项服务延伸的社区的社会工作；（3）本土社会工作专业服务的理论依据是“双主体（社会工作者和居委会）”的项目综合社会工作服务的场景服务逻辑，有别于西方七八十年出现的注重在实际生活场景中开展的综合社会工作服务逻辑。     

Impact of physical activity and sedentary behaviour on fall risks in older people: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies

The objective of this work was to summarise and evaluate the evidence showing that physical activity is a protector factor as regards falls in older people. Relevant studies were identified through a systematic search in the MEDLINE and Cochrane Library, under the keywords of accidental fall/numerical data and risk factors, and with the bibliographies of retrieved papers. The combined odds ratio (OR) [95% confidence interval] for physical activity was 0.75 [0.64, 0.88] with moderate heterogeneity (I ²?=?33%). For fall injury, it was 0.59 [0.47, 0.74] and, for falls in general, it rose to 0.94 [0.76, 1.17] with nil heterogeneity. The combined OR for sedentary factors was 1.14 [1.10, 1.82] with moderate heterogeneity (I ²?=?36%). Regular physical activity in daily life yields significant reduction in falls in older people, especially falls with injuries.     

A Discussion on the Eighteen Kingdoms of Ancient Zhang Zhung and Their Destruction

While combing through the threads of the history of the Zhang Zhung kingdom,one of the first things that we cannot avoid is its position in historical time. As we know,from the perspec-tive of literary...     

Introvision in der Arbeitsvermittlung für Fallmanager und Arbeitslose

In the context of a pilot study the effects of the educational-psychological intervention Introvision were tested with older long-term unemployed people. The project was accomplished in the time by 1.4.2010 to 31.12.2010 in co-operation between ARGE Paderborn and the research group Introvision. In the context of the project 16 employees of ARGE Paderborn participated in an advanced training to Introvision, 31 customers of ARGE Paderborn began a coaching to get introduction in Introvision and 20 have also finished. Nine customers decided to participate five individual coachings. The results show, that the offers have a high individual use for the participants. To the central changes belong improved handling of stress, decrease of social isolation, improved (self-) perception as well as a higher self-confidence and a more open co-operation between customers and employees of ARGE Paderborn. Besides four participation began a job on the first labour market and two could be connected to a honorary activity.     

孔子传播思想研究

孔子的传播理念是"和而不同",即"仁"与"礼"的统一。就人际传播而言,"仁"这一概念的提出为平等传播关系的建立提出了理论依据。孔子的传播思想博大精深,包罗万象,涉及传播符号、传播目的、受众思想、舆论思想、传播环境等诸多方面。其对传播符号的论述涉及传播符号的划分、语言的遮蔽性、语言的工具性、传播符号的规范、语言表达的有限性和无限性、形式与内容等方面;其传播目的论带有很强的实践理性色彩,认为传播的目的在于由"学"而"习",在于"言"和"行"的统一;风草论是孔子受众思想的重要方面,他一方面认为君子对民众的教化恰如风过草偃,效果明显,另一方面又认为传播威力虽然巨大,但也有一定限度,取得理想的传播效果非一日之功,这比"魔弹论"更加客观;历史传播方面,他认识到"载之空言"和"见之于行事"两种传播方式迥异的传播效果,发明了"托古立言"的传播方式;他还强调在舆论与独立思考之间加以平衡,既重视舆论又不盲从。     

The effects of state-dependent human behavior on the design of a serial line

Most research on line design assumes that human operators perform independently from the status of the line. Recent empirical evidence is contradictory. Humans are likely to change their working speed if they might otherwise cause idle time (Schultz et al., Manage Sci 44(12):1595–1607, 1998). This peculiarity of worker behavior is observed in a variety of settings but little is still known about optimal line design that accounts for this more realistic modeling of worker behavior. Therefore, we analyze work allocation in a serial line with limited buffer capacity and adaptive human behavior. An extensive simulation study reveals that optimal work allocation in state-dependent models is different from classical state-independent models. A bowl-shaped work allocation might be suboptimal and design guidelines are more complicated. Depending on the extent of human reactions, a bowl-shaped, balanced, or reversed-bowl work allocation can be preferable.     

Public Support for Sickle-Cell Disease Funding: Does Race Matter?

Despite the fact that sickle-cell disease (SCD) is perhaps the most “racialized” medical condition in the USA, very little is known about how “race” impacts public support for health policies related to the condition. We embedded an experiment within the 2011 Cooperative Congressional Election Study in order to assess perceptions about SCD among 1250 participants from diverse backgrounds and evaluate the extent to which these perceptions were associated with support for government spending on SCD-related benefits. We manipulated the racial phenotype of SCD advocates who requested additional government funding and asked participants to indicate how much the government should provide. Overall, participants expressed moderately positive attitudes about SCD, and there were no differences in funding support based on the race of the advocate. However, white participants supported less funding compared to nonwhite participants, even after adjusting for a number of demographic and attitudinal covariates. These findings suggest that a complex relationship between racial identification and implicit racism may shape public perceptions about SCD that negatively influences perceivers’ support for SCD-related policy.     

Reciprocal Family,Friendship and Church Support Networks of African Americans: Findings from the National Survey of American Life

This study examined reciprocal support networks involving extended family, friends and church members among African Americans. Our analysis examined specific patterns of reciprocal support (i.e., received only, gave only, both gave and received, neither gave or received), as well as network characteristics (i.e., contact and subjective closeness) as correlates of reciprocal support. The analysis is based on the African American subsample of the National Survey of American Life. Overall, our findings indicate that African Americans are very involved in reciprocal support networks with their extended family, friends and church members. Respondents were most extensively involved in reciprocal supports with extended family members, followed closely by friends and church networks. Network characteristics (i.e., contact and subjective closeness) were significantly and consistently associated with involvement with reciprocal support exchanges for all three networks. These and other findings are discussed in detail. This study complements previous work on the complementary roles of family, friend and congregational support networks, as well as studies of racial differences in informal support networks.     

On the robustness of the generalized fused lasso to prior specifications

Using networks as prior knowledge to guide model selection is a way to reach structured sparsity. In particular, the fused lasso that was originally designed to penalize differences of coefficients corresponding to successive features has been generalized to handle features whose effects are structured according to a given network. As any prior information, the network provided in the penalty may contain misleading edges that connect coefficients whose difference is not zero, and the extent to which the performance of the method depend on the suitability of the graph has never been clearly assessed. In this work we investigate the theoretical and empirical properties of the adaptive generalized fused lasso in the context of generalized linear models. In the fixed \(p\) setting, we show that, asymptotically, adding misleading edges in the graph does not prevent the adaptive generalized fused lasso from enjoying asymptotic oracle properties, while forgetting suitable edges can be more problematic. These theoretical results are complemented by an extensive simulation study that assesses the robustness of the adaptive generalized fused lasso against misspecification of the network as well as its applicability when theoretical coefficients are not exactly equal. Our contribution is also to evaluate the applicability of the generalized fused lasso for the joint modeling of multiple sparse regression functions. Illustrations are provided on two real data examples.