Perceptions of Nuclear and Other Risks in Japan and the United States

As part of a study of nuclear power development in Japan and the United States, surveys of perceptions of risk toward 30 activities, substances, and technologies have been carried out in the Pacific Northwest and Tokyo, Japan. The results show that people in both countries have the highest level of dread toward nuclear waste disposal, nuclear accidents, and nuclear war, greater even than their dread of crime and AIDS. In addition to comparisons of dread, the paper also discusses similarities and differences between Japanese and American responses for other dimensions of risk perception.     

The Living Gesture and the Signifying Moment

Drawing from Peircean semiotics, from the Greek conception of phronesis, and from considerations of bodily awareness as a basis of reasonableness, I attempt to show how the living gesture touches our deepest signifying nature, the self, and public life. Gestural bodily awareness, more than knowledge, connects us with the very conditions out of which the human body evolved into its present condition and remains a vital resource in the face of a devitalizing, rationalistic consumption culture. It may be precisely these deep‐rooted abilities for what I term “self‐originated experience” that can ultimately offset automatism.     

Estimation of non-parametric regression in the analysis of the anti-inflammatory activity of diverse extracts of Sideritis foetens

SUMMARY A procedure to choose the best non-parametric estimator from among all nonparametric methods to fit regression curves is described. The methodology that is proposed prevents a lack of fit at the edges of the regression curve. The method is summed up in a few steps to facilitate its application by researchers. The procedure is applied to the determination of various curves that explain the anti-inflammatory activity of diverse extracts of Sideritis foetens and phenylbutazone against the time elapsed from the application of the agent which provokes the inflammation. Discussion shows that it is possible to obtain valid conclusions about the effects of the different products and to establish comparisons between them. Such conclusions are not possible when starting from the classical statistics methods usually employed in pharmacology.     

Re-examining informative prior elicitation through the lens of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods

Summary.  In recent years, advances in Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques have had a major influence on the practice of Bayesian statistics. An interesting but hitherto largely underexplored corollary of this fact is that Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques make it practical to consider broader classes of informative priors than have been used previously. Conjugate priors, long the workhorse of classic methods for eliciting informative priors, have their roots in a time when modern computational methods were unavailable. In the current environment more attractive alternatives are practicable. A reappraisal of these classic approaches is undertaken, and principles for generating modern elicitation methods are described. A new prior elicitation methodology in accord with these principles is then presented.     

Desired Risk: Broadening the Social Amplification of Risk Framework1

Recently Kasperson et al.⁽⁶⁾ have proposed a conceptual framework, “The Social Amplification of Risk,” as a beginning step in developing a comprehensive theory of public experience of risk. A central goal of their effort is to systematically link technical assessments of risk with the growing findings from social scientific research. A key and growing domain of public risk experience is “desired” risk, but this is virtually neglected in the framework. This paper evaluates the scope of the “Social Amplification of Risk Framework,” asking whether it is applicable to desired risks, such as risk recreation (hang gliding, mountain climbing, and so forth). The analysis is supportive of the framework's applicability to the domain of desired risk.     

An Integrated Approach for Assessing the Impact of Large-Scale Future Floods on a Highway Transport System

The negative impact of climate change continues to escalate flood risk. Floods directly and indirectly damage highway systems and disturb the socioeconomic order. In this study, we propose an integrated approach to quantitatively assess how floods impact the functioning of a highway system. The approach has three parts: (1) a multi-agent simulation model to represent traffic, heterogeneous user demand, and route choice in a highway network; (2) a flood simulator using future runoff scenarios generated from five global climate models, three representative concentration pathways (RCPs), and the CaMa-Flood model; and (3) an impact analyzer, which superimposes the simulated floods on the highway traffic simulation system, and quantifies the flood impact on a highway system based on car following model. This approach is illustrated with a case study of the Chinese highway network. The results show that (i) for different global climate models, the associated flood damage to a highway system is not linearly correlated with the forcing levels of RCPs, or with future years; (ii) floods in different years have variable impacts on regional connectivity; and (iii) extreme flood impacts can cause huge damages in highway networks; that is, in 2030, the estimated 84.5% of routes between provinces cannot be completed when the highway system is disturbed by a future major flood. These results have critical implications for transport sector policies and can be used to guide highway design and infrastructure protection. The approach can be extended to analyze other networks with spatial vulnerability, and it is an effective quantitative tool for reducing systemic disaster risk.     

Intuition in Management Research: A Historical Review

In this historical review we chart the progress of intuition research over the past eight decades. We highlight the distinction between intuition research in management and intuition research in base disciplines and related fields, and offer a critical commentary on the ways in which the dynamic between these two historical threads has affected progress in the study of intuition in organizations. We conclude by identifying several promising new directions for intuition research, and offer a number of recommendations to intuition researchers in management which may help in taking this topic forward in ways that do not recapitulate previous errors, diversions or digressions.     

Sins of the parents: Self-control as a buffer between supervisors' previous experience of family undermining and subordinates' perceptions of abusive supervision

Drawing upon social learning theory, the intergenerational transmission of violence hypothesis, and research on self-control, we develop a model of the relationships among previous experiences of family undermining, self-control, and abusive supervision. We tested the model with data obtained from supervisor–employee matched pairs in Study 1 and matched triads in Study 2. Results revealed that: 1) supervisors who experienced higher levels of family undermining (whether reported by the immediate supervisor or a sibling) during childhood are more likely to engage in abusive supervisory behaviors as adults; and 2) this relationship is moderated such that it is stronger for supervisors with low self-control. Overall, our results highlight the role of self-control in mitigating the impact of supervisors' previous experiences of family undermining on subordinate perceptions of abusive supervision, even after controlling for previously established antecedents.