The ten commandments of writing

Whatever our areas and methods, social scientists share a common problem: how to write so as to foster communication. I present a set of propositions to lighten and brighten sociological writing. Sociologists ought not be afraid of using these tropes and techniques of literary writers. Each sociologist must develop a personal style that sparks an audience. Yet, this poses a challenge for those not trained. Writing is a craft that must be developed. As Wyndham Lewis noted: “It is dangerous to live, but to write is much more so.” He is the author ofTalking Sociology. Presented to the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, August 1987, Chicago, Illnois.     

韩东和Alan的故事--菜鸟与加拿大留学信息港的诞生

2001年5月份,韩东从多伦多大学计算机系毕业后没多久,便找到了一份工作,在一家金融软件公司里做软件工程师,主要从事软件的维护与开发.经过3年的考验,他在这个公司立住了脚跟.就在IT业不景气,公司裁员,而老板却打算给他加工资的时候,他和另一位华人同事Alan却提出了辞职,似乎轻而易举地丢掉了这份年薪在6万元以上的工作.两人决定创办一家加拿大留学网站.     

Moving the participation agenda forward

This article sets the scene for the other papers in this Special Issue on children's and young people's participation, by outlining the nature of the ESRC Seminar Series from which all are derived and by developing the main themes discussed at the seminars. The focus of this Issue is participation by children and young people as this relates to differing notions of social exclusion and inclusion. This article critically examines participation in the contexts of policy, practice, research and theory. In many respects the environments in each of these domains is supportive of increased participation, yet there is also much evidence of limited impact by recent participative measures and of disillusionment by many young people who have been engaged in consultation and decision‐making. A way forward is suggested, which entails collaboration among all the key stakeholders including children and young people, connects participatory and social inclusion aims and mechanisms, and is committed to achieving tangible outcomes based on the wishes of children and young people.     

Longitudinal non-euclidean networks: Applying Galileo

This article discusses the theoretical utility of using a non-Euclidean spatial manifold when describing social networks. It proposes that a variant of metric MDS, the Galileo System, can be particularly useful in analyzing social networks and their changes over time, partially because it does not impose Euclidean assumptions on the data. Two sets of longitudinal network data are examined with Galileo. One is the American air traffic network from 1968–1981. The other is ten groups engaged in a computer conference over a 24 month period. In both cases, the results indicate that a Riemannian spatial manifold is required to describe the network structure. Consistent theoretically valid results based upon the non-Euclidean components of spatial manifold are obtained. Further, they could be readily explained by exogenous factors. The implications of these results for network analysis are discussed.     

The Spread of a PCB Spill on a Soil Surface

Determining the fate of an oil spill on soil is often the first step in analyzing the risks of human exposure to hazardous viscous liquids such as PCBs. The special surface properties of rigidity and porosity are not among the boundary conditions in previous analyses of spills on water. The present work solves the expressions of mass and momentum conservation using a perturbation approach. Using the example of an Aroclor 1254 spill to illustrate the approach, we find that the radius at the halt of spreading is roughly proportional to spill volume for large spills. Spreading halts when the infiltration equals the spill volume. The radial distribution of infiltration decreases gradually from its central maximum, but falls suddenly to zero approaching the outer edge. Sample results are plotted for Aroclor 1254 spills from 4 to 21 liters in volume.     

Spatio-temporal change-point modeling

There is by now a substantial literature on spatio-temporal modeling. However, to date, there exists essentially no literature which addresses the issue of process change from a certain time. In fact, if we look at change points for purely time series data, the customary form is to propose a model involving a mean or level shift. We see little attempting to capture a change in association structure. Part of the concern is how to specify flexible ways to bridge the association across the time point and still ensure that a proper joint distribution has been defined for all of the data. Introducing a spatial component evidently adds further complication. We want to allow for a change-point reflecting change in both temporal and spatial association. In this paper we propose a constructive, flexible model formulation through additive specifications. We also demonstrate how computational concerns benefit from the availability of temporal order. Finally, we illustrate with several simulated datasets to examine the capability of the model to detect different types of structural changes.