Polysubstance use patterns in underground rave attenders: a cluster analysis

Drug use in mainstream rave parties has been widely documented in a large number of studies. However, not much is known about drug use in underground raves. The purpose of this study is to find out the polysubstance use patterns at underground raves. Two hundred and fifty-two young people between the ages of 18 and 30 who went to underground raves were interviewed. They were given a questionnaire to collect information on drug use at raves. Ravers used a mean of 4.9 different drugs at the last rave they had been to. Over 75% of them used tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, and amphetamine, and over half also used powder ecstasy. Two differentiated use patterns were found: one pattern concentrated more on the use of stimulants and the other on the use of hallucinogens. Underground ravers have a "standard" sociodemographic profile. The use of drugs is much higher than equivalent age group. Higher drug use prevalence than in mainstream rave parties is also observed. Different patterns of use appear which will be necessary to consider in designing preventions and risk reduction strategies,     

Make,buy or both? R&D strategy selection

The aim of this paper is to increase our knowledge of a firm's innovative behaviour by jointly analysing its internal resources, industry characteristics and appropriability conditions as drivers of its R&D strategy selection: make, buy and make-buy. Based on panel data (1992–2005) covering 1539 Spanish manufacturing firms, results show that firms lacking organisational resources and competing in stable markets prefer the buy strategy. Firms with a high level of technological resources that are immersed in high-tech industries are prone to selecting the make-buy strategy. Internationalised firms with high levels of appropriability prefer the make strategy.     

Perceived Professional Gains of Master's Level Students Following a Person‐of‐the‐Therapist Training Program: A Retrospective Content Analysis

The Person‐of‐the‐Therapist Training (POTT) is a program designed to facilitate clinicians' ability to consciously and purposefully use themselves at the moment of contact with their clients in order to connect, assess, and intervene effectively. This qualitative study explored the experiences of 54 master's‐level students who were enrolled in an accredited marriage and family therapy program in the United States and examined their perceived professional gains following a 9‐month POTT course. Content analysis of trainees' reflections which they wrote at the end of the training revealed 6 primary themes: (a) increased awareness, (b) emotions, (c) improved clinical work, (d) humanity and woundedness, (e) meta‐awareness, and (f) factors that contributed to the learning process. Findings suggest that key outcomes of this training curriculum are congruent with its stated goals. Clinical and training recommendations are additionally provided. Video Abstract     

Support Vector Clustering for Customer Segmentation on Mobile TV Service

This article presents a proposal for customer segmentation through Support Vector Clustering, a technique that has been gaining attention in the academic literature due to the good results usually obtained. An application of this method to a sample from consumers in Brazil about mobile TV service is performed; we compare this approach with the classical hierarchical methods of cluster analysis. It is concluded that this methodology is effective in reducing the heterogeneity often present in customers’ data, improving the cluster segmentation analysis for managers.     

Estimating the asymptotic relative efficiency of weighted rankings

Five tests for the hypothesis of no treatment effects in complete blocks designs are compared with respect to asymptotic relative efficiency: the ordinary two-way analysis of variance, the analysis of variance of ranks (Friedman, 1937), the method of ranking after alignment (Hodges and Lehmann, 1962), and a method of weighted rankings proposed by Quade (1972, 1979). This comparison required devising a procedure for estimating the asymptotic relative efficiencies of test statistics with asymp-totic chi-squared distributions.     

Risk Analysis in Developing Countries1

In summary, risk analysis is not yet well practiced in developing countries, although there are numerous, diverse environmental and other risk-related issues and concerns that need attention. A few initiatives have been taken, but, so far, they have created only relatively small impact in a few areas. Many risk issues may not be addressed, partly as a result of lack of resources and inadequate knowledge by policy makers. Risk analysis is an essential tool for the planning and implementation of development projects. To enhance its use, however, risk analysis approaches and methods must be adapted to developing countries, and this requires research. Unfortunately, funds for research, in general, are hard to find. There are other problems in the implementation of risk analysis. Trained professionals on risk analysis are few. Existing institutions that are tasked with resolving environmental and other risk issues are overburdened. Risk-related data are sorely lacking. Resources are very limited for addressing numerous natural and technological hazards. In most developing countries, political and economic stability is still threatened by both internal and external forces, hence, that is what receives priority attention. Activities like risk analysis, which generally lead to long-term results and benefits, do not get enough interest. In addition, there is still little public awareness of risks even among those who have passed the stage of survival; thus, there is little public concern about them. We cannot afford this lack of concern for long. In the Philippines, the government was the first to recognize after our peaceful revolution in 1986 that “the environmental issues can add fuel to the insurgency; they can also hamper efforts towards national recovery”.⁽⁴⁾ To this point, I have added that risk management (including risk assessment and risk communication), like attainment of peace and freedom, is a social imperative because risk issues affect our health, safety, and both our physical and economic well-being.⁽⁷⁾ Many of such issues in developing countries have not only local, but also global origin and impacts. They thus deserve the interest of each of us.     

On the estimation of a binary response model in a selected population

A generalization of the Probit model is presented, with the extended skew-normal cumulative distribution as a link function, which can be used for modelling a binary response variable in the presence of selectivity bias. The estimate of the parameters via ML is addressed, and inference on the parameters expressing the degree of selection is discussed. The assumption underlying the model is that the selection mechanism influences the unmeasured factors and does not affect the explanatory variables. When this assumption is violated, but other conditional independencies hold, then the model proposed here is derived. In particular, the instrumental variable formula still applies and the model results at the second stage of the estimating procedure.     

A Method for Estimating Time Dependent Intervention Benefits under Arbitrarily Varying Age and Exogenous Components of Hazard

A method for estimating the dependence of intrinsic intervention benefits on time elapsed since the intervention took place is proposed. The method is aimed at intervention programs against diseases where one or all of the following components of hazard intensity may undergo important and unknown variations: 1) the intervention benefits to a subject are a function of the time elapsed since the intervention took place, or since inception for a continuing treatment, 2) the subjects vulnerability is an unknown function of their age, 3) the exogenous or environmental baseline intensity, to which all are assumed subjected, fluctuates arbitrarily with calendar time. During the time span of a study, these variables interact in a complex way, possibly masking the real contribution of the intervention. However, with very general assumptions about how hazard components interact, the cumulative hazards of subpopulations treated at different times in the past are shown to be described mathematically by a convolution of the time elapsed dependent intervention benefit function with the age and calendar time dependent baseline intensity. Starting from the cumulative hazards of untreated and treated subpopulations that had the intervention at different times in the past, a method of deconvolution through regularization is proposed to reconstruct the time elapsed dependence of the intervention benefit function. The regularization technique used is of the penalized least square smoothing type, it is applied to the solution of Volterra integral equations of the first kind under noisy inputs. Simulations, to test for the reconstruction of different modes of time elapsed variation of the intervention benefits, are carried out on realistically noisy data sets taken to be available at a limited number of time points. The stability of the estimated reconstructions, to measurement errors, is examined through repeated simulations with random noise added to inputs. The method is applied to a Brazilian data set where BCG vaccination resulted in a small reduction in the cumulated risk of leprosy infection.     

TOWARD CONSTRUCTING THE THERAPEUTIC SYSTEM*

The authors revise some of the concepts presented in their previous publications (Andolfi & Angelo, 1981; Andolfi, Nicolò-Corigliano & Menghi, 1983) and develop them further in light of their recent clinical experience. They emphasize that the therapist is not an outside neutral observer, but an active participant in the construction of the therapeutic system. The therapist can, at different times, be caring, detached, supportive, or provocative. In the fantasy of his clients he is a person who knows how to enter into a relationship and how to move out. By entering as the third pole in various triangles and activating new dimensions of rapport, he constructs complex relationships within the evolving therapeutic process. The authors also reevaluate the importance of the individual in the family as an agent of change and as a mediator of triangular relational messages.     

Household Consumption Equivalence Scales: Some Estimates from New Zealand Household Expenditure and Income Survey Data

This paper uses data on expenditures and incomes of New Zealand households of different demographic profiles to construct equivalence scales. The scales are useful in estimating the relative levels of spending required by the households to attain a given level of utility. Preference consistent 'complete demand systems' are analyzed to test for the demographic effects on the consumption patterns of households. Equivalence scales for respect to specific items of consumption as well as total consumption are worked out from the observed consumption behaviour of households. The results are largely in line with those found in existing similar studies both in Australia and New Zealand. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt at constructing equivalence scales with New Zealand household budget data in the framework of hypothesized utility maximizing behaviour of households.