Review of the use of context in statistical image analysis

SUMMARY This paper is a review of the use of contextual information in statistical image analysis. After defining what we mean by 'context', we describe the Bayesian approach to high-level image analysis using deformable templates. We describe important aspects of work on character recognition and syntactic pattern recognition; in particular, aspects of the work which are relevant to scene understanding. We conclude with a review of some work on knowledge-based systems which use context to aid object recognition.     

National programmes to promote youth training

The importance of education and training to this country's national performance is increasingly recognized. The introduction of the Youth Training Scheme, offering a year's workbased foundation training to 16- and 17-year-old entrants to the labour market, marks a major advance on Britain's poor record in this field. This article describes the Scheme's aims and mode of operation, traces its long gestation and reviews the progress during its first year. It relates the Scheme to wider national objectives for the development of training and to complementary initiatives in education, and discusses how it might be evaluated.     

Child sexual abuse prevention: does it work?

Child sexual abuse prevention programs designed to teach children ways to recognize, resist, and report sexual abuse have proliferated in the past five years. The authors evaluate one such program to find out what children know before instruction, if they learn how to prevent sexual abuse, and how they and their parents and professionals who work with children react to such a program.     

Developments in sample survey theory: An appraisal

Recent developments in sample survey theory include the following topics: foundational aspects of inference, resampling methods for variance and confidence interval estimation, imputation for nonresponse and analysis of complex survey data. An overview and appraisal of some of these developments are presented.     

Women's paid work and the timing of births

It has been suggested that work-motivated women may shorten their birth intervals to allow a faster return to the workforce. This paper: (i) considers the circumstances under which such contraction would be expected; (ii) argues that British conditions in the 1940s to 1970s were favourable to the adoption of this strategy, among others; (iii) discusses some methodological issues arising in the empirical treatment of the question; and (iv) presents the results of analyses of work and maternity history information, which suggest that during the post-war period, labour-force participation was associated with both a contraction and a lengthening of birth intervals.     

The Decline of Deference: The Political Context of Risk Communication

Risk communication is seen as an important adjunct to the process of siting locally noxious facilities. To understand how risk communication might function in such a process, one needs to understand the political context that gives rise to public opposition to such facilities in the first place. This analysis draws on a variety of data to describe the decline of deference, a situation in which a hostile and alienated public is mobilized primarily through ad hoc voluntary organizations, and is increasingly reluctant to defer important decisions to institutional elites. Risk communication programs must be designed to offset the trends that result in the decline of deference. This conclusion differs markedly from the conventional wisdom that risk communication is merely a device for providing information to citizens so sthat they may make more rational decisions.