Reduced Risk-Taking After Prior Losses in Pathological Gamblers Under Treatment and Healthy Control Group but not in Problem Gamblers

A group of pathological gamblers and a group of problem gamblers (i.e., gamblers at risk of becoming pathological) were compared to healthy controls on their risk-taking propensity after prior losses. Each participant played both the Balloon Analogue Risk Taking task (BART) and a modified version of the same task, where individuals face five repeated predetermined early losses at the onset of the game. No significant difference in risk-taking was found between groups on the standard BART task, while significant differences emerged when comparing behaviors in the two tasks: both pathological gamblers and controls reduced their risk-taking tendency after prior losses in the modified BART compared to the standard BART, whereas problem gamblers showed no reduction in risk-taking after prior losses. We interpret these results as a sign of a reduced sensitivity to negative feedback in problem gamblers which might contribute to explain their loss-chasing tendency.     

The role of education in the reconciliation between female occupation and family responsibilities at mid-life: the Italian case

This study, based on the data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, deals with the labour market participation of mid-aged women and the reconciliation with family responsibilities. The analysis focuses on Italy, a fast ageing country with a very low female occupation rate. By performing a comparison with Sweden and France, we set three European models, different in terms of welfare system and gender roles, against each other. Women’s educational attainment is shown to be the most important factor associated with being in the labour market between 50 and 59 years old in all the countries analysed. Our findings suggest a couple-oriented approach to study women’s balancing of career and family: for married women, husbands’ education plays an ambivalent role concerning women's participation in the labour market, according to its combination with wives’ resources. The depressive effect on female employment of living close to a parent in poor health holds especially in Italy, suggesting the need to invest more on welfare policies in this country.     

A weighted polynomial regression method for local fitting of spatial data

Typically, parametric approaches to spatial problems require restrictive assumptions. On the other hand, in a wide variety of practical situations nonparametric bivariate smoothing techniques has been shown to be successfully employable for estimating small or large scale regularity factors, or even the signal content of spatial data taken as a whole.We propose a weighted local polynomial regression smoother suitable for fitting of spatial data. To account for spatial variability, we both insert a spatial contiguity index in the standard formulation, and construct a spatial-adaptive bandwidth selection rule. Our bandwidth selector depends on the Gearys local indicator of spatial association. As illustrative example, we provide a brief Monte Carlo study case on equally spaced data, the performances of our smoother and the standard polynomial regression procedure are compared.This note, though it is the result of a close collaboration, was specifically elaborated as follows: paragraphs 1 and 2 by T. Sclocco and the remainder by M. Di Marzio. The authors are grateful to the referees for constructive comments and suggestions.     

帝国之梦的幻灭历程——评析英国战后初期的外交政策

第二次世界大城改变了世界的格局,传统的以欧洲为中心的国际关系格局己被美苏两极格局所取代。战争所引起的新势态要求英国的外交政策做出适当的调整。但由于外交政策的连续性,英国政府在战后初期仍竭力维持自己"大英帝国"的地位,这就使得其在处理国际事务时常常感到力不从心。从"三环外交"方针、英国对欧政策和苏伊士危机这三个方面对英国战后初期的外交政策进行评析进而阐述英国帝国之梦的幻灭历程。     

Behavioural Addictions in Adolescents and Young Adults: Results from a Prevalence Study

Our study aims to assess the prevalence of behavioural addictions in an adolescent population, evaluating the effects of gender and age, and to assess the correlations among different behavioural addictions. 2853 high school students were assessed in order to evaluate the prevalence of behavioural addictions such as Pathological Gambling (PG), Compulsive Buying (CB), Exercise Addiction (EA), Internet Addiction (IA), and Work Addiction (WA), in a population of Italian adolescents. The South Oaks Gambling Screen-Revised Adolescent (SOGS-RA), the Compulsive Buying Scale (CBS), the Exercise Addiction Inventory (EAI), the Internet Addiction Test (IAT), and the Work Addiction Risk Test (WART), were compiled anonymously by the students. Overall prevalence was 7.0% for PG, 11.3% for CB, 1.2% for IA, 7.6% for WA, 8.5% for EA. PG and EA were more common among boys, while gender had no effect on the other conditions. CB was more common among younger (<18 years old) students. The scores of all of these scales were significantly correlated. The strong correlation among different addictive behaviours is in line with the hypothesis of a common psychopathological dimension underlying these phenomena. Further studies are needed to assess personality traits and other clinical disorders associated with these problems behaviours.     

On cumulative entropies

In analogy with the cumulative residual entropy recently proposed by Wang et al. [2003a. A new and robust information theoretic measure and its application to image alignment. In: Information Processing in Medical Imaging. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2732, Springer, Heidelberg, pp. 388–400; 2003b. Cumulative residual entropy, a new measure of information and its application to image alignment. In: Proceedings on the Ninth IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV’03), vol. 1, IEEE Computer Society Press, Silver Spring, MD, pp. 548–553], we introduce and study the cumulative entropy, which is a new measure of information alternative to the classical differential entropy. We show that the cumulative entropy of a random lifetime X can be expressed as the expectation of its mean inactivity time evaluated at X. Hence, our measure is particularly suitable to describe the information in problems related to ageing properties of reliability theory based on the past and on the inactivity times. Our results include various bounds to the cumulative entropy, its connection to the proportional reversed hazards model, and the study of its dynamic version that is shown to be increasing if the mean inactivity time is increasing. The empirical cumulative entropy is finally proposed to estimate the new information measure.     

借鉴国外成功经验 探究创建“人文廊坊”的途径及对策

现代化城市的建设越来越注重以人为本、尊重人文的发展理念。＂人文廊坊＂建设目标的提出符合时代潮流且意义深远。分析国外城市在人文建设方面的特点、总结其成功经验,能够在实现途径方面为创建＂人文廊坊＂提供有益参考。     

中国传统的辩证思维方式在博士生创造性思维素质生成中的现代意义

中国传统思维的主导取向是辩证思维。它体现在两方面:一是整体思维;二是对待思维。这种传统思维有助于博士生整合中西两种思维方式,顺应时代发展要求,由此促进创造性思维素质的提高。     

农村老年人精神文化需求调查

目前,我国农村的老年人主要存在三大需求,即养老保障需求、医疗保障需求和精神文化需求。其中精神文化需求处于农村老年人生命需求的最高层次。在实地调查的基础上,对浙江农村老年人的精神文化需求做出较为深入细致的研究分析。从制度安排、社会支持、自身设计和现实基础等四个方面提出具体对策思考与建议。