Different Factors for Different Causes: Analysis of the Spatial Aggregations of Fire Ignitions in Catalonia (Spain)

The present study analyzes the effects of different socioeconomic factors on the frequency of fire ignition occurrence, according to different original causes. The data include a set of documented ignition points in the region of Catalonia for the period 1995–2008. The analysis focused on the spatial aggregation patterns of the ignitions for each specific ignition cause. The point‐based data on ignitions were interpolated into municipality‐level information using kernel methods as the basis for defining five ignition density levels. Afterwards, the combination of socioeconomic factors influencing the ignition density levels of the municipalities was analyzed for each documented cause of ignition using a principal component analysis. The obtained results confirmed the idea that both the spatial aggregation patterns of fire ignitions and the factors defining their occurrence were specific for each of the causes of ignition. Intentional fires and those of unknown origin were found to have similar spatial aggregation patterns, and the presence of high ignition density areas was related to high population and high unemployment rates. Additionally, it was found that fires originated from forest work, agricultural activities, pasture burning, and lightning had a very specific behavior on their own, differing from the similarities found on the spatial aggregation of ignitions originated from smokers, electric lines, machinery, campfires, and those of intentional or unknown origin.     

Implementing Meritocracy in Senior Public Administration: the Dilemma for Chilean Politicians

This article addresses the question of whether politicians are willing to overcome patronage by creating a merit-based recruitment and selection system of the senior civil servants with the purpose of making public administration more effective. To answer the question the paper analyses the Chilean administrative reform of 2003. It concludes that the reform created a hybrid system of appointment of top civil servants: one with elements of meritocracy but restricted to the members of the political coalition in power. Information came from 67 interviews to key actors, official documents, academic literature and the press.     

Price and consumer behaviour—A review

The concepts of the traditional theory of demand have not been found suitable for realistic studies of consumers' behaviour. Since 1954, however, new lines of exploration have evolved, of which that of Professor Jean Stoetzel has proved most fruitful. The idea that, since price served as a powerful indicator of quality, the consumer bent on a purchase will approach the market with two price limits in mind was verified and further developed by the Nottingham University Consumer Study Group. The theory has been successfully extended to the competition between leading brands and applied to the exploration of consumer behaviour during the decimalization period in the U.K. Advances have been made also in the quantitative study of other related problems, such as the price image of retail establishments and the relationship between pack size, price and purchasing behaviour.     

Digitally Mediated (Dis)embodiment

This article aims to demonstrate that the philosophical anthropology of the German philosopher Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985) enables us to gain a better understanding of the experiential presuppositions and implications of information and communication technologies, such as telepresence and virtual reality, than we can obtain through interpretations that start from a dualistic, Cartesian ontology. With the help of Plessner's concept of "excentric positionality', developed in Stages of the Organic and Man (1928), Hans Moravec's Utopian claims about the possibility of disembodied existence in cyberspace are criticized and an alternative, more adequate interpretation is presented. It is argued that the corporal "poly-excentric positionality' that is inherent in the human experience of telepresence and virtual reality, radicalizes the existential " homelessness' which characterizes human life.     

An empirical comparison of EM,SEM and MCMC performance for problematic Gaussian mixture likelihoods

We compare EM, SEM, and MCMC algorithms to estimate the parameters of the Gaussian mixture model. We focus on problems in estimation arising from the likelihood function having a sharp ridge or saddle points. We use both synthetic and empirical data with those features. The comparison includes Bayesian approaches with different prior specifications and various procedures to deal with label switching. Although the solutions provided by these stochastic algorithms are more often degenerate, we conclude that SEM and MCMC may display faster convergence and improve the ability to locate the global maximum of the likelihood function.     

Peace Fair or Warfare: Educating the Community

Psychologists who wish to promote peace and justice must investigate how to mobilize the political will of the people in order to improve the policy making of the elite. This is the second study in a program of action research designed to investigate ways of encouraging people to accept personal responsiblity for influencing governmental foreign policy. It reports an attempt to create an ideal educational experience—a peace fair—that would provide the set of conditions that the first study suggested were essential for the acceptance of personal responsibility. The fair was successful in convincing individuals that they personally could do something to help prevent nuclear war. However, it revealed a serious weakness in the current peace movement—an inability to portray convincingly a course of national action that could promote peace and justice. This is an essential component for efficient action. Suggestions are made for the next round of research.     

与时俱进开拓创新努力做好新时期关心下一代工作

在学校党委的领导下,发挥离退休老同志的育人作用,做好青年学生的思想政治工作,全面提高综合素质,是高校关心下一代工作的重要内容。文章就发挥好离退休人员的育人职能、加强自身建设、探索有效载体等方面,阐述了新时期,如何做好高校关心下一代工作。     

Markov random field-based image subsampling method

The use of Bayesian models for the reconstruction of images degraded by both some blurring function H and the presence of noise has become popular in recent years. Making an analogy between classical degradation processes and resampling, we propose a Bayesian model for generating finer resolution images. The approach involves defining resampling, or aggregation, as a linear operator applied to an original picture to produce derived lower resolution data which represent our available experimental infor-mation. Within this framework, the operation of making inference on the orginal data can be viewed as an inverse linear transformation problem. This problem, formalized through Bayes' theorem, can be solved by the classical maximum a posteriori estimation procedure. Image local characteristics are assumed to follow a Gaussian Markov random field. Under some mild assumptions, simple, iterative and local operations are involved, making parallel 'relaxation' processing feasible. experimental results are shown on some images, for which good subsampling estimates are obtained.