Why is not design of experiments widely used by engineers in Europe?

An extensive literature review was carried out to detect why design of experiments (DoE) is not widely used among engineers in Europe. Once 16 main barriers were identified, a survey was carried out to obtain first-hand information about the significance of each. We obtained 101 responses from academics, consultants and practitioners interested in DoE. A statistical analysis of the survey is introduced, including: (a) a ranking of the barriers, (b) grouping of barriers using factorial analysis, (c) differences between characteristics of respondents. This exploratory analysis showed that the main barriers that hinder the widespread use of DoE are low managerial commitment and engineers’ general weakness in statistics. Once the barriers were classified, the most important resultant group was that related to business barriers.     

Chilean Adaptation and Validation of the Fisher Divorce Adjustment Scale–Short Form

The aim of this study was to determine the psychometric properties of a short version of the Fisher Divorce Adjustment Scale (FDAS–SF; Fisher, 1978) in the Chilean context. Participants were 260 individuals who were divorced or separated. The FDAS–SF included 22 of the original 100 items, and its factorial structure was evaluated using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Instead of the 6 original subscales proposed by its author, the structure that showed the best fit to the data was composed of 5 subscales: self-worth, disentanglement from the ex-partner, anger, grief, and social trust. The social self-worth subscale was excluded. Reliability analyses revealed good internal consistency of the subscales and adequate convergent validity with depression, anxiety, stress, and life satisfaction. Given the psychometric properties of this short version, it can be concluded that the FDAS–SF can be used in the Chilean context to evaluate the adjustment to divorce and separation.     

Adult height and childhood disease

Taller populations are typically richer populations, and taller individuals live longer and earn more. In consequence, adult height has recently become a focus in understanding the relationship between health and wealth. We investigate the childhood determinants of population adult height, focusing on the respective roles of income and of disease. Across a range of European countries and the United States, we find a strong inverse relationship between postneonatal (ages 1 month to 1 year) mortality, interpreted as a measure of the disease and nutritional burden in childhood, and the mean height of those children as adults. Consistent with these findings, we develop a model of selection and stunting in which the early-life burden of undernutrition and disease not only is responsible for mortality in childhood but also leaves a residue of long-term health risks for survivors, risks that express themselves in adult height and in late-life disease. The model predicts that at sufficiently high mortality levels, selection can dominate scarring, leaving a taller population of survivors. We find evidence of this effect in the poorest and highest-mortality countries of the world, supplementing recent findings on the effects of the Great Chinese Famine.     

Building a new international is necessary and urgent

ABSTRACT

Samir Amin was one of the most creative Marxists, but also an orthodox, as his appeal for a new international proves, consistent with his defense of the socialist revolution against a decaying capitalist system, which threatens with the extinction of human civilization. However, in a contradictory way, if in the past the material conditions did not exist, they exist today, materializing in a distorted manner by capitalism, the organization of a revolutionary international leadership has never been so non-existent. This article begins by demonstrating the systemic conditions that require the proletariat to build a new International, the reasons for the current difficulty in achieving it; and, from the analysis of the most successful experience to date, the Third International, lessons are drawn for a future Fifth International.     

Social work education in Spain: evaluation and challenges for a new generation of social workers

ABSTRACT

The European social integration model was built on two main pillars: employment and access to the welfare state. European social work education was mainly oriented to training professionals in order to promote this inclusion through case management and the provision of benefits. This influence was very intense in the curricular content of Spanish social work programs. The new social risks and the European convergence in higher education have promoted curricular changes, but is it enough?. This paper aims to identify the content and limits of current social work education in Spain. To this end, a comparative analysis of social work education in public universities of Spain was performed. This information has been contrasted with professionals, teachers and social work students. The results evidence the gap of these contents with the real professional needs. This paper proposes several alternatives and approaches in new intergenerational methodologies and technological tools to train a new generation of social workers     

An analytical management framework for new product development processes featuring uncertain iterations

This paper presents an analytical framework for effective management of projects with uncertain iterations. The framework is based upon: (1) the combination of two complementary techniques, one focused on improving iterative process architectures, the Design Structure Matrix, and one focused on predicting project performance, the Graphical Evaluation Review Technique; and (2) the introduction of an activity set-based criticality measure. The intent of the framework is to help project managers and researchers identify and evaluate alternative process architectures, in order to help them determine the alternative which best balances risk and other project performance parameters, as illustrated through an example application.     

Optimal unconditional critical regions for 2 2 2 multinomial trials

Analysing a 2 2 2 table is one of the most frequent problems in applied research (particularly in epidemiology). When the table arises from a 2 2 2 multinomial trial (or the case of double dichotomy), the appropriate test for independence is an unconditional one, like those of Barnard (1947), which, although they date from a long time ago, have not been developed (because of computational problems) until the last ten years. Among the different possible versions, the optimal (Martín Andrés & Tapia Garcia, 1999) is Barnard's original one, but the calculation time (even today) is excessive. This paper offers critical region tables for that version, which behave well compared to those of Shuster (1992). The tables are of particular use for researchers wishing to obtain significant results for very small sample sizes (N h 50).     

An echelon inventory-based single-stage cost function for a two-station tandem system

We propose an alternative cost-accounting function for inventory control problems on a make-to-stock setting. Our proposal is based on observing that the traditional holding and backlog parameters introduce some odd short term distortions on the inventory state space. Our single-stage cost function accounts for echelon inventories and possesses a pair of cost parameters for each echelon inventory variable, depending on whether it is positive or negative. With the modified cost-accounting function, we study a twostation tandem system producing a single product, and investigate how it compares with the performances obtained with the usual single-stage cost function. The results available so far show that the optimal policies approach a multi-echelon base stock structure for each machine. Also, the service levels achieved are better under the modified function without increasing the levels of finished goods inventory.