Assassination and leadership: Traditional approaches and historiometric methods

Research on the assassinations and attempted assassinations of leaders seems warranted, as leaders and their interactions with extreme followers (e.g., fanatics) and non-followers (e.g., assassins) can have tremendous consequences not only for the leaders but also their larger collectives (e.g., nations, social movements). Based on the traditional and established leadership approaches of power orientation and outstanding leadership, we explored whether particular types of leaders were more likely victims of assassinations and targets of assassination attempts. Using historiometric methods, we found that socialized as well as pragmatic and ideological leaders were the most frequent victims of assassinations; but personalized as well as pragmatic and ideological leaders were the most frequent targets of assassination attempts; and for U.S. Presidents, socialized charismatics were the most frequent victims of assassinations and targets of assassination attempts. Results regarding leader paranoia, regions of the world, and assassins operating alone or as a group in relation to assassinations and leadership approaches also are presented. Implications of these findings for future leadership research involving leaders and their extreme followers, non-followers, and larger collectives are discussed.     

Development and Application of a Stochastic Epidemic Model for the Transmission of Salmonella Typhimurium at the Farm Level of the Pork Production Chain

In previous work a deterministic model for the compartment level was built, taking into account the two different syndromes with which  Salmonella  Typhimurium appears at pig farms. Based on this model, a stochastic one was built in this work that simulated different compartmental sizes, taking into account compartments of 200 to 400 pigs. Multiple scenarios of starting conditions of infection (SCI) ranging from 0.25 to 100% were tested for each population size. The effect of each of these two factors on the probability of disease extinctions and the prevalence of each of the classes of the model and the risk groups of pigs were estimated. The results showed that the compartment population had an inverse effect on the probability of disease extinction. On the other hand, low SCI resulted in high levels of early extinctions reaching 45%, while higher SCI led to high levels of late extinctions. Early extinctions resulted in the absence of the pathogen from the compartment, while late extinctions did not assure it. This effect shows that reducing the population of the compartment combined with appropriate cleaning and good farming practices could have a positive effect in the reduction of the risk of introducing  S.  Typhimurium into the slaughtering procedure. On the other hand, the profile of seroprevalence at slaughter age allows for risk characterization of the farm, given the relative stability and the small variation for higher SCI.     

A Time‐Dependent Risk Assessment for Broken Compact Fluorescent Lamps

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ambient air quality guidelines are meant to limit long‐term exposures of toxins to safe levels. Unfortunately, there is little guidance for what constitutes a safe level from a one‐time (or very infrequent) short exposure(s). In the case of mercury, a review of the derivation of the EPA ambient air quality standard shows that it implicitly assumes a tissue burden model. The time dependence of the tissue burden is commonly described in terms of a half‐life, a modeling assumption that presumes that the decline in the tissue burden after a single exposure can be approximately described as an exponential decay. In this article, we use a simple exponential tissue burden model to derive a time‐dependent no observable adverse effect level (NOAEL) for mercury concentrations in air. The model predicts that tissue body burden will asymptotically approach the EPA air quality level for long exposure times, and reach workplace standard levels for exposures of a few hours. The model was used along with data on mercury levels from experimental work done by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to evaluate the risks from a broken compact fluorescent lamp in a residential setting. Mercury levels approached the NOAEL only when the debris was left in an almost sealed room. Normal common‐sense cleaning measures: removal of debris to an outside area, and ventilation of the room for several minutes, reduced exposures to less than 1% of the NOAEL.     

Online bin packing of fragile objects with application in cellular networks

We study a specific bin packing problem which arises from the channel assignment problems in cellular networks. In cellular communications, frequency channels are some limited resource which may need to share by various users. However, in order to avoid signal interference among users, a user needs to specify to share the channel with at most how many other users, depending on the user’s application. Under this setting, the problem of minimizing the total channels used to support all users can be modeled as a specific bin packing problem as follows: Given a set of items, each with two attributes, weight and fragility. We need to pack the items into bins such that, for each bin, the sum of weight in the bin must be at most the smallest fragility of all the items packed into the bin. The goal is to minimize the total number of bins (i.e., the channels in the cellular network) used. We consider the on-line version of this problem, where items arrive one by one. The next item arrives only after the current item has been packed, and the decision cannot be changed. We show that the asymptotic competitive ratio is at least 2. We also consider the case where the ratio of maximum fragility and minimum fragility is bounded by a constant. In this case, we present a class of online algorithms with asymptotic competitive ratio at most of 1/4+3r/2, for any r>1. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in Proc. of Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (WINE’05, pp. 564–573). The research of W.-T.C. was supported in part by Hong Kong RGC grant HKU5172/03E. The research of F.Y.-L.C. was supported in part by Hong Kong RGC Grant HKU7142/03E. The research of D.Y. was supported by NSFC (10601048). The research of G.Z. was supported in part by NSFC (60573020).     

Family Phone Therapy in University Counseling and Psychological Service Centers: A Family Systems Approach

Abstract

This paper offers family phone therapy as a method for student mental health practitioners to overcome the obstacle of geographic distance between students and their families when family therapy is the treatment of choice. The issues of confidentiality, triangulation, diversionary conversation, and mixed communication, which present unique concerns when engaging in family phone therapy, are introduced and strategies to deal with them are discussed. A case example is presented to demonstrate the utility of family phone therapy in dealing with problems that students who use university mental health services can typically experience. Finally, implications of dealing with students' developmental tasks from an individual or family systems perspective are discussed.     

Social movement as civic education: communication activities and understanding of civil disobedience in the Umbrella Movement

Occupy Central, which would later evolve into the Umbrella Movement, was conceived as a civil disobedience campaign when it was first proposed in early 2013. Although the history of civil disobedience in Hong Kong arguably spans decades, the concept was seldom discussed in the public arena, and the practice was not well established in the society's repertoire of contentious actions. The years 2013 and 2014 thus constituted a “critical discourse moment” in which the concept of civil disobedience was intensively discussed and debated. This study seeks to determine whether the Occupy Central campaign and the Umbrella Movement had an educational function that led to increased levels of the public's understanding of civil disobedience. The analysis of the responses to two surveys conducted in September 2013 and October 2014 showed that the public's understanding of civil disobedience increased substantially over the year. After the Umbrella Movement started, attitudinal support for and actual participation in the movement, the political use of social media, and discussions with disagreeing others significantly predicted the understanding of civil disobedience. The theoretical and social implications of the findings are discussed.     

Why planners don't

This paper deals with a study which the authors undertook of the planning function in five major U.S. corporations. None of the five engaged in true strategic planning. The authors advance explanations for this relatively low level of planning activity, based on the environmental, organizational, and managerial characteristics of the firms. The authors urge the rapid development of a more sophisticated contingency theory of corporate planning to facilitate practice, teaching, and research.