Statistical methods for noisy images with discontinuities

In this paper, we describe a new statistical method for images which contain discontinuities. The method tries to improve the quality of a 'measured' image, which is degraded by the presence of random distortions. This is achieved by using knowledge about the degradation process and a priori information about the main characteristics of the underlying ideal image. Specifically, the method uses information about the discontinuity patterns in small areas of the 'true' image. Some auxiliary labels 'explicitly' describe the location of discontinuities in the true image. A Bayesian model for the image grey levels and the discontinuity labels is built. The maximum a posteriori estimator is considered. The iterated conditional modes algorithm is used to find a (local) maximum of the posterior distribution. The proposed method has been successfully applied to both artificial and real magnetic resonance images. A comparison of the results with those obtained from three other known methods also has been performed. Finally, the connection between Bayesian 'explicity and 'implicit' models is studied. In implicit modelling, there is no use of any set of labels explicitly describing the location of discontinuities. For these models, we derive some constraints of the function by which the presence of the discontinuities is taken into account.     

Toward a Class-Cultural Theory of Social Movements: Reinterpreting New Social Movements

This paper examines the relationship between social class and social mobilization through reviewing the case of new social movements. The middle-class membership of new social movements is well documented but poorly explained by current New Class, New Social Movement, and Cultural Shift theories. These theories fail to recognize the interdependence between interests, values, and expressed ideas. Class culture provides an alternative framework for interpreting the complex relationships between class interests and consciousness in these movements. Through a comparison of working- and middle-class cultures, it is proposed that social class orders consciousness and shapes the interpretation of interests. Class cultures produce distinct class forms of political and organizational behavior while not defining any particular content of movement issues or politics. In particular, the middle-class membership of new social movements is explained by the cultural form of these movements which is distinctly middle class.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Doherty, W. J. (1995). Soul searching: Why psychotherapy must promote moral responsibility .
PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: McGoldrick, M. (1995). You can go home again Reconnecting with your family .
PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Chamberlain, P. (1994). Family connections: A treatment foster care model for adolescents with delinquency .
PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Emery, R. E. (1994). Renegotiating family relationships: Divorce, child custody, and mediation .
PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Worden, M. (1994). Family therapy basics .
PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Stahl, P. M. (1994). Conducting child custody evaluations: A comprehensive guide .
PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Karpel, M. A. (1994). Evaluating couples: A handbook for practitioners .
PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Johnson, S. M., & Greenberg, L. S. (1994). The heart of the matter: Perspectives on emotion in marital therapy .
GENERAL INTEREST BOOKS: Wallerstein, J. S., & Blakeslee, S. (1995). The good marriage: How and why love lasts .
GENERAL INTEREST BOOKS: Straus, M. (1994). Beating the devil out of them: Corporal punishment in American families .
SELF-HELP BOOKS: Kelley, P. (1995). Developing healthy stepfamilies .
SELF-HELP BOOKS: Mueser, K., & Gingerich, S. (1994). Coping with schizophrenia: A guide for families .
SELF-HELP BOOKS: Grant, G. G. (1995). The best kind of loving: A black woman's guide to finding intimacy .
VIDEOTAPE REVIEW: Couples Skills: Making Your Relationship Work . (1995). (Videotape based on the book of the same name.)     

Coincidence,Happenstance, Serendipity,Fate, or the Hand of God: Case Studies in Synchronicity

Many counselors are aware that synchronicity—unpredictable instances of meaningful coincidence—can play a significant role in career opportunities, yet the phenomenon of synchronicity in the career literature is underrepresented. The purpose of this article is to discuss the occurrence of synchronicity in the career development process. A philosophical context is presented and provides a framework for understanding synchronicity. Through the presentation of 3 case studies, synchronistic themes are explored. Using various career counseling processes, each client developed an authentic identity and found meaningful work through an experience with synchronicity. Implications for counselors are discussed.     

Families who foster children with HIV: A pilot study

This is a study to examine the characteristics of families providing foster care for children with HIV. The paper discussed the special problems of children with AIDS. In addition HIV foster families were compared with other foster families to determine if there were any differences. Implications for recruiting foster families for children with HIV are discussed.     

Interspecific Scaling of Toxicity Data

This paper reexamines the scaling approaches used in cancer risk assessment and proposes a more precise body weight scaling factor. Two approaches are conventionally used in scaling exposure and dose from experimental animals to man: body weight scaling (used by FDA) and surface area scaling (BW0.67--used by EPA). This paper reanalyzes the Freireich et al. (1966) study of the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) of 14 anticancer agents in mice, rats, dogs, monkeys, and humans, the dataset most commonly cited as justification for surface area extrapolation. This examination was augmented with an analysis of a similar dataset by Schein et al. (1970) of the MTD of 13 additional chemotherapy agents. The reanalysis shows that BW0.75 is a more appropriate scaling factor for the 27 direct-acting compounds in this dataset.     

WHY DO FIRMS CONTRIVE SHORTAGES? THE ECONOMICS OF INTENTIONAL MISPRICING

Given buyers' product-specific information capital, firms may increase long-run profits by "under-pricing" (rationing) rather than clearing markets when demands or costs rise transitorily. To minimize resulting shortages' costs, sellers predictably would distinguish among customer groups, managing any queues of disappointed loyal buyers that materialized (but largely ignoring transitory buyer queues), and would discourage resale. Unlike other shortage models, short-run excess demand necessarily implies neither buyers who prefer consuming in groups, nor waiting costs that are negligible. Any sense of "unfair" price increases would arise endogenously from sellers'failures to value appropriately customers' otherwise prudent informational investments.     

Reason and reparation

Conclusion Critical theory is critical because it reflects on the circumstances of its own existence. It is critical too because it takes utopia seriously, which means, in part, never short-circuiting the distance between reality and Utopia. Reparative reason, it has been argued, is no substitute for this philosophical project, but a source of support for it, one better suited to the concerns of the Frankfurt School than eros. What both reparative reason and the reparative impulse require is guidance as to the most deserving objects of our care and concern. Critical theory can provide this guidance.At least two objections to this reformulation of critical theory in light of Klein's insights into love, hate, and reparation are possible. The first would argue that reparation remains insufficiently relational, still selfish, more concerned with the satisfaction of the one who makes reparation than its object. The second objection is almost the opposite of the first, that reparation lacks what makes eros such a powerful oppositional force: not merely its selfish, demanding character, but its teleological orientation. Freed of the distorting effects of social domination, eros requires no guidance. By its very nature it seeks out the truly beautiful and good, much as Plato argued in the Symposium and Phaedrus. Such objections are, I believe, quite mistaken. They do not, however, lack insight into the issues involved.Regarding the first objection, Klein argues that we seek to make reparation out of genuine concern for the object. Reparation is truly an object-related passion, motivated by our relationship to the object, our love for it. Reparation may reduce guilt and anxiety, but this is an effect, not a cause. But, if reparation puts the object first, there is nonetheless an individualistic cast to the Kleinian account missing in Benjamin and Chodorow. For Klein, we care for others not because they are part of us, but because they are different, and we are concerned about them. In a certain limited sense the other remains an object, not in Freud's sense of an object of our drives, whose humanity is unimportant, but as a person who is distinct and separate from ourselves. This does not make reparation selfish. It does make it an expression of individuality, not its denial or transcendence.Regarding the second objection, it is true that reparation is not as autonomous as eros, and perhaps not as inherently oppositional either. But, neither is it as subject to corruption as eros (repressive desublimation), for reparation harnesses not the desire for pleasure, but guilt over the harm we have done to others. But, perhaps it was a mistake all along to try to found critical theory in eros, as though biology (Marcuse calls eros a biological basis for socialism) could take the place of critical consciousness, social opposition, or a revolutionary class. Insofar as it finds a material basis for hope for a better world in apparently transhistorical human attributes (albeit attributes that exist only within particular histories), reparation supports the Utopian project of the Frankfurt School. Reparation is, however, no deus ex machina. Historically situated human beings will have to confront the tragedy of human history on their own, a tragedy that stems, ultimately, from the way in which our fear and aggression constitute a world that requires so much reparation. It is, of course, this insight that keeps reparation from short-circuiting the path to utopia. For not only does reparation not exist apart from particular histories, but it does not exist independently of the hatred and aggression that bring it into being.