Temporary Work,Underemployment and Workplace Accommodations: Relationship to Well‐being for Workers with Disabilities

This study examines whether employment status and workplace accommodations are associated with perceived well‐being among workers with disabilities. Data from the 2006 Participation and Activity Limitation Survey conducted by Statistics Canada were used to test the relationship between employment status, receipt of workplace accommodations and well‐being. Findings indicated that fully utilized permanent employees showed greater life satisfaction and less perceived disability‐related discrimination than either temporary workers or permanent workers who were underemployed. These findings support the theory that inadequate employment is associated with deleterious effects on employee well‐being due to inferior need fulfilment and reduced social status. Workplace accommodations were associated with higher levels of well‐being for all workers with disabilities and helped to mitigate the negative effects of temporary status and underemployment. These findings supported the theoretical extension of main effect and buffering models of workplace stress to the prediction of perceived workplace discrimination.     

查拉图斯特拉工程与道德的本质——论欧洲基因技术与克隆道德

基因技术增加了人类治愈由于身体和生物学原因所致疾病的可能性,但是并无助于社会心理问题或文化问题的解决,例如人类的道德教化问题.人类的道德行为与创造性是以自由为前提的.没有自由,人就不能进行创造并对自己的行为负责.朝向生物机器人的人的技术化是基因技术的幻象,这种生物机器人将人所处的环境和同伴相分离,因为除非将人杀死,否则人的意志不能被取消.人类求生之意志(生物系统之保存)是人类一切愿望的来源.倘若基因技术不能规定这一意志和人类独立的精神能力,那么通过基因技术实现人类的道德教化也无从设想."新人"在此只能表明生物学意义上的新特质,而不是道德或精神上的新特征.     

Cost analysis between options for the movement of freight

A mathematical model is developed for the comparison of cost by weight for the movement of freight between the Canadian Forces ‘Scheduled Road Freight Service’ and the commercial carriers. The study considers in detail the effect of inflation on the various factors which affect the cost that govern those economic consequences which differ between the two alternatives. An example is included to illustrate the methodology.     

Modeling Two-state Disease Processes with Random Effects

Many chronic medical conditions are manifested by alternating sojourns in symptom-free and symptomatic states. In many cases, in addition to their relapsing and remitting nature, these conditions lead to worsening disease patterns over time and may exhibit seasonal trends. We develop a mixed-effect two-state model for such disease processes in which covariate effects are modeled multiplicatively on transition intensities. The transition intensities, in turn, are functions of three time scales: the semi-Markov scale involving the backward recurrence time for the cyclical component, the Markov scale for the time trend component, and a seasonal time scale. Multiplicative bivariate log-normal random effects are introduced to accommodate heterogeneity in disease activity between subjects and to admit a possible negative correlation between the transition intensities. Maximum likelihood estimation is carried out using Gauss-Hermite integration and a standard Newton-Raphson procedure. Tests of homogeneity are presented based on score statistics. An application of the methodology to data from a multi-center clinical trial of chronic bronchitis is provided for illustrative purposes.     

TESTS FOR SEASONAL DIFFERENCING WITH AN UNKNOWN BREAK-POINT

Some Lagrange multiplier tests for seasonal differencing are proposed; their main objective is to avoid over-differencing due to structural change. The null hypothesis is either the presence of both regular and seasonal unit roots or the presence of a seasonal unit root. Alternative hypotheses allow for stationarity around a possible structural change where the break-point is unknown. The location of the structural change is estimated using the proposed procedures, the asymptotic distribution of the test statistics under the null hypothesis is derived and some useful percentiles are tabulated. An illustrative example based on the Canadian Consumer Price Index is presented.     

Electronics technicians in an industrialising economy: some glimpses on the ‘New Middle Class’

The ‘New Working Class’ theory, popularised in French sociology during the 1960s and 1970s, envisages the advent of a politically inspired class movement that rekindles the vision of a new social order as the technicians rise to become its vanguard. According to writers like Mallet and Touraine, these technical ‘white-collars’ tend to take over from the traditional manual groups in posing as the ‘standard-bearers’ of class-based industrial radicalism and solidarity. This paper proposes to trace the recent vein of discussions on the class implications of occupational and technological transformation from such a neo-Marxian perspective. It also attempts to apply these arguments to interpret the characteristics of a new occupation in Hong Kong – the technicians working in the electronics and related industries, with reference to an empirical study carried out in the early 1980s. ¹ 1 Empirical data for the study were derived chiefly from a survey using a questionnaire schedule to interview a sample of 342 technicians and their managements in thirty-five establishments selected from the related industries of electronics manufacture, tele-communications, television, electronics product trading, computer servicing and data-processing, power plant, the mass-transit underground railway and the civil service. Field work was conducted in the summer of 1980. This research project provided the backbone of the empirical data for the writer's Ph.D. Thesis for the University of London, 1983, entitled ‘Technicians in the Hong Kong electronics and related industries: an emerging occupation?
     

Expectation–maximization algorithm for system-based lifetime data with unknown system structure

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis - In science and engineering, we are often interested in learning about the lifetime characteristics of the system as well as those of the components that made...     

Determinants of Migrant Career Success: A Study of Recent Skilled Migrants in Australia

Australia has been aggressively pursuing skilled migrants to sustain its population and foster economic growth. However, many skilled migrants experience a downward career move upon migration to Australia. Based on a survey of recent skilled migrants, this study investigates how individual (age, years of settlement, qualifications), national/societal (citizenship and settlement), and organization-level (climate of inclusion) factors influence their career success. Overall, we found that: (1) age at migration matters more than length of settlement in predicting skilled migrant career success; (2) citizenship uptake and living in a neighbourhood with a greater number of families from the same country of origin facilitate post-migration career success; and (3) perceptions of one's social/informal networks in the workplace – a dimension of perceived organizational climate of inclusion – also have a positive impact on migrant career outcomes.     

Chinese Singaporean attitudes towards poverty and inequality: A comparative analysis

Ng IYH, Koh G. Chinese Singaporean attitudes towards poverty and inequality: a comparative analysis Based on a survey of 191 Chinese respondents, this article discusses the attitudes of Singaporean Chinese towards poverty, inequality and government intervention. Using the Z‐test for two proportions and cluster analysis, findings were compared with similar studies in the USA and the UK. Chinese Singaporeans were found to be very aware of the growing inequality, but they adopted a narrower definition of poverty than British respondents. This might be the reason why they were more sympathetic towards the poor and supportive of more government anti‐poverty efforts than were American respondents. From the cluster analysis, the Singaporean sample produced a third group who were ‘satisfied but concerned’, on top of the two polar groups, ‘sceptics’ and ‘liberals’, present in the British study. A majority of respondents also supported the view that more should be done to help the poor and were willing to pay more taxes for that purpose.