ANALYSIS OF A PH.D. PROGRAM VIA GERT MODELING AND SIMULATION

This paper presents a model developed for the planning and control of a Ph.D. program in business administration at a major southeastern university. The technique employed was network simulation (GERT-type) which was selected for its capability to incorporate the stochastic nature of the system into the model. Included in the model are all the sequential steps of the Ph.D. program, such as course work, written preliminary exams, oral exams, dissertation and oral defense, as well as the various probabilistic outcomes and feedback loops of the process. The simulation output yields statistical estimates on program duration and probabilities of various outcomes. The model and simulation results can be used by both university administrators and Ph.D. candidates for planning purposes. The model is flexible in that it can be altered to reflect the unique features of Ph.D. programs of most schools.     

Heterosexism,racism, and mental illness discrimination: Experiences of people with mental health conditions and their families

Experiencing discrimination related to race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or having a mental health condition is associated with negative outcomes. Research comparing types of discrimination or considering intersectionalities is lacking. This study reports findings from interviews with people with mental illnesses (PWMI) or family members of PWMI; all study participants also are of color and/or lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Findings include the following: participants experienced multiple forms of discrimination, mental illness discrimination shares characteristics with racism and heterosexism, and heterosexuals and people of color reported more mental illness discrimination than their counterparts. Implications for change advocates, mental health providers, and researchers are offered.     

Exploring racism inside and outside the mathematics classroom in two different contexts: Colombia and USA

We give attention to the racial contexts of mathematics education in Colombia and the USA. We discuss the particularities of these contexts but also explore the how in both contexts Blackness and Black people are relegated to the lower rungs of the social order. In offering this comparative analysis, we call for expanded research on race, racism, and mathematics education in global contexts.     

Psychosocial risks: acting upon the organisation by ergonomic intervention

In this paper we discuss the possibilities of acting on psychosocial risk (PSR) factors by modifying the way in which an organisation operates. On the basis of an ergonomic intervention in an insurance company, we were able to show that the health problems observed by the operators were mainly the result of their inability to produce work of quality. Next, our analyses revealed the links between poor perceived quality, production difficulties and the rigidity of the organisational structure. After setting up working groups to deal with production difficulties, we were able to identify and test an organisational form that was better adapted to managing day-to-day production constraints and which was ultimately better able to be attentive to individual difficulties which had given rise, in the long term, to intrapsychic conflicts.     

Re‐Forming the School: Taking Swedish Lessons

In the context of government decentralisation and integration of services, over the last 15 years Sweden has been developing an all‐day school based on inter‐professional teamworking and adopting a holistic approach to working with children. The article describes these recent educational reforms in Sweden, which have sought to re‐structure the school and develop new ways of working, offers some evaluative comments on this process and considers possible implications of these reforms for other countries. It compares Swedish school reforms with recent English policy developments intended to make ‘extended schools’ a universal provision by 2010.     

Rules Trump Desires in Preschoolers’ Predictions of Group Behavior

The objective of this article is to investigate the way children weigh conventional rules against desires when considering how a group will behave. To do so, two experiments involving a prediction task in which desires were pitted against conventional rules were presented to three‐ to five‐year‐old children. In Experiment 1, four scenarios were established as classroom scenes in which either one protagonist or three protagonists had a desire that went against an explicit conventional rule. In the individual control condition, the choices linked to the rules were at chance whereas, in the group condition, the participants predicted that all the protagonists would end up following the rule. Given that both conditions in Experiment 1 implied four rule followers in the design, Experiment 2 staged not three but seven potential rule transgressors to see whether the desire of the majority might undermine the rule. Results showed no majority effect: participants expected protagonists to act counter to their desire and to follow the rule. Such results suggest that children as young as three‐year‐old favor rules over desires when they have to predict the behavior of a group, whether it be the majority or not. Possible implications of these intriguing findings are discussed.     

The Asbestos Case: A Comment on the Appointment and Use of Nonpartisan Experts in World Trade Organization Dispute Resolution Involving Health Risk

The World Trade Organization is currently evolving its approach to incorporating scientific and technological evidence into its dispute-resolution process. In European Communities-Measures Affecting Asbestos and Asbestos-Containing Products, the Panel was faced with a large amount of complex and conflicting scientific evidence presented by the partisan experts. The Asbestos Panel's solution was to appoint independent, nonpartisan experts to help it understand and evaluate the scientific evidence. While this was far better than trying to unravel the conflicting scientific evidence on its own, two aspects of the Panel's adopted procedure merit scrutiny. First, the expert-selection process used by the Panel may not assure that the collective expertise of the appointed experts is broad enough when the dispute involves multidisciplinary scientific issues. Second, the process adopted by the Panel for consulting the appointed experts-which involved individual consultation rather than a consensus process-may leave a panel with a distorted or confused picture of the science. A consensus approach is the best means of obtaining scientific advice from appointed experts; it is most calculated to provide a clear and accurate report of the scientific information needed by a panel to make a fair and informed decision on the dispute before it. The underlying principle of world trade agreements is that it is beneficial to all of us to have free trade. Among other things, this requires an effective means of resolving disputes, and increasingly that includes disputes involving complex scientific and technological issues. This can be achieved only if the parties have confidence that their disputes will be decided in a fair and informed manner, based on the best science available. To achieve this goal, we suggest that future WTO panels depart in certain respects from the procedures utilized by the Asbestos Panel.     

Derivation of a biological quality index for river sites: Comparison of the observed with the expected fauna

A method for the national assessment of the biological quality of river sites is developed. Multivariate discrimination, based on site environmental characteristics, is used on a biological classification of reference sites to derive a procedure to predict the fauna to be expected in the absence of environmental stress. Various quality indices, based on a comparison of the observed with the expected fauna, are proposed. The sizes of the various sources of error and variation, and their effects on the rates of misclassification to quality bands, are examined.