The role of urban indicators in city management: a proposal for Croatian cities

Cities are dynamic economic and social structures that play a dominant role in both national and international economies. They are centers of population, production, consumption, and development. Cities utilize all advantages of economy of scale, proximity, and concentration. On the other hand, they produce high environmental pressures and diminish thereby the quality of life for urban residents. Indicators (environmental, economic, and governance and management) are seen as a tool that would help policy-makers in formulating urban policy that would lead cities towards sustainability and provide assistance for monitoring their development and municipal performance. The aim of this paper is to consider the role that urban indicators can play in city management. We present basic features of urban indicators that will determine their usefulness in urban management. This paper provides the framework to include environmental and economic indicators, as well as governance and management indicators, in successful urban management.     

On the consistency of MLE in finite mixture models of exponential families

Finite mixtures of densities from an exponential family are frequently used in the statistical analysis of data. Modelling by finite mixtures of densities from different exponential families provide more flexibility in the fittings, and get better results. However, in mixture problems, the log-likelihood function very often does not have an upper bound and therefore a global maximum does not always exist. Redner and Walker (1984. Mixture densities, maximum likelihood and the EM algorithm. SIAM Rev. 26, 195–239) provide conditions to assure the existence, consistency and asymptotic normality of the maximum likelihood estimator.     

Various Approaches for Predicting Land Cover in Mountain Areas

Using former maps, geographers intend to study the evolution of the land cover in order to have a prospective approach on the future landscape; predictions of the future land cover, by the use of older maps and environmental variables, are usually done through the GIS (Geographic Information System). We propose here to confront this classical geographical approach with statistical approaches: a linear parametric model (polychotomous regression modeling) and a nonparametric one (multilayer perceptron). These methodologies have been tested on two real areas on which the land cover is known at various dates; this allows us to emphasize the benefit of these two statistical approaches compared to GIS and to discuss the way GIS could be improved by the use of statistical models.     

Modeling attendance at Spanish professional football league

Prediction of demand for professional sports is increasingly drawing the attention of economists. We apply linear mixed models for modeling attendance figures at Spanish professional football. We investigate economic variables, such as the price of the tickets or the size of the market, and sporting variables, such as the quality of a team or the level of competition within the league, as potential predictors of attendance. It turns out that a model with temporally correlated random team effects provides good forecasts of attendance at a time horizon of two seasons. Results from this model agree with economic theory.     

Evaluation of what parents know about their children's drug use and how they perceive the most common family risk factors

Research on family risk factors for addictive behaviors in young people has not paid a great deal of attention to parents' knowledge of their children's addictive behaviors and of the family risk factors that affect such behaviors. The aim of this work is to compare knowledge about these two aspects in two groups of parents that differ regarding their children's declared drug use. The research was carried out with a sample of 309 schoolchildren and their families, divided into two groups: one of 154 families with children defined as non-Drug Users and another of 155 families with children defined as Drug Users. The results show that parents with children who consume drugs tend to strongly underestimate their children's use. Moreover, they overestimate the control they exercise over them and appear to be more familiarized with the use of drugs, if we compare them with parents of non-Drug Users. It is suggested that these results may be relevant for the planning of strategies that increase motivation in families with drug-risk children to participate in prevention programs.     

Tattoos can harm perceptions: a study and suggestions

OBJECTIVE: Health researchers have claimed that perceptions toward a person with a tattoo are more negative than are perceptions toward nontattooed persons. However, support for this has been obtained almost completely by nonexperimental research. PARTICIPANTS: In 2 experiments with 158 community college student participants, the authors found that tattoos harmed perceptions. METHODS: Students viewed a photograph of a female model with and without a visible tattoo, and rated her on 13 personal characteristics. RESULTS: In Experiment 1, ratings of a model with a dragon tattoo were significantly more negative (p < .05) on 5 of the 13 personal characteristics than were ratings of the same model shown without the tattoo. In Experiment 2, which included different participants, a different model, and a different tattoo, the authors found that a dolphin tattoo led to more negative ratings on 2 of the 13 characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: The authors discuss possible impacts of tattoos on person perception as well as implications of the results for college student healthcare providers.     

Event-driven production scheduling in SME

One common problem among Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) is to don’t have at disposal formal and simple approaches for production scheduling, especially in case of an event that introduces the requirement of a re-planning. The paper approaches this kind of event-driven re-scheduling problems at the arrival of a new order, when some jobs are under processing, some operation have already finished and other jobs are waiting to be loaded on a machine. For a simple application in a SME, to the operations already started and completed for a job a processing time equal to zero is assigned; the operations already started but not yet completed are interrupted and considered as operations that must be executed for the remaining part of their processing time; all the other jobs are considered for the event-driven job-shop re-scheduling problem. A validation of the procedure in a realistic application is presented.     

Zygmunt Bauman und die Geschlechterforschung: Eine viel versprechende Liaison?

Bauman’s work plays an important role in post-modern and post-modernist sociology. However, his work has been barely discussed within feminist and gender theory. In my article, I offer a critical reading of Bauman’s work in the light of recent feminist debates concerning theories of subjectivation and discourse (esp. by Butler and Braidotti). This reading shows that, while Bauman’s notion of postmodernity as social diagnosis is much less subtle than gender theory has proven to be, his work on postmodernism is indeed quite along the lines of post-structuralist and post-modern feminist theory.