Safety Risk Analysis of an Innovative Environmental Technology

The authors describe a decision and risk analysis performed for the cleanup of a large Department of Energy mixed-waste subsurface disposal area governed by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). In a previous study, the authors worked with the site decision makers, state regulators, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional regulators to develop a CERCLA-based multiobjective decision analysis value model and used the model to perform a screening analysis of 28 remedial alternatives. The analysis results identified an innovative technology, in situ vitrification, with high effectiveness versus cost. Since this technology had not been used on this scale before, the major uncertainties were contaminant migration and pressure buildup. Pressure buildup was a safety concern due to the potential risks to worker safety. With the help of environmental technology experts remedial alternative changes were identified to mitigate the concerns about contaminant migration and pressure buildup. The analysis results showed that the probability of an event with a risk to worker safety had been significantly reduced. Based on these results, site decision makers have refocused their test program to examine in situ vitrification and have continued the use of the CERCLA-based decision analysis methodology to analyze remedial alternatives.     

The Effects of a Stimulus-Stimulus Pairing Procedure on the Vocal Behavior of Children Diagnosed with Autism

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Recent research suggests that the sound produced by a child’s vocalization can become a conditioned reinforcer via the temporal pairing of an...     

The Abative Effect: A New Term to Describe the Action of Antecedents that Reduce Operant Responding

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Behavior-analytic terminology concerning the so-called inhibitory effect of operant antecedents lacks precision. The present paper describes the problem with...     

Estimating Increment-Decrement Life Tables with Multiple Covariates from Panel Data: The Case of Active Life Expectancy*

A fundamental limitation of current multistate life table methodology-evident in recent estimates of active life expectancy for the elderly-is the inability to estimate tables from data on small longitudinal panels in the presence of multiple covariates (such as sex, race, and socioeconomic status). This paper presents an approach to such an estimation based on an isomorphism between the structure of the stochastic model underlying a conventional specification of the increment-decrement life table and that of Markov panel regression models for simple state spaces. We argue that Markov panel regression procedures can be used to provide smoothed or graduated group-specific estimates of transition probabilities that are more stable across short age intervals than those computed directly from sample data. We then join these estimates with increment-decrement life table methods to compute group-specific total, active, and dependent life expectancy estimates. To illustrate the methods, we describe an empirical application to the estimation of such life expectancies specific to sex, race, and education (years of school completed) for a longitudinal panel of elderly persons. We find that education extends both total life expectancy and active life expectancy. Education thus may serve as a powerful social protective mechanism delaying the onset of health problems at older ages.     

Population control and politics

At all times and places population and resources must be kept in balance with each other if a high, or at least acceptable, quality of life is to be maintained. Evidence is presented that thinkers and men and women of affairs have been aware of these necessities from time immemorial and that the ancients invented most of the basic concepts of modern population ecology, at leastin embryo. This task is a problem of social control, the central process in all societies. If society's controllers and their institutions are aware, intelligent, flexible, and suitably motivated, there is no reason why most problems of population, development, and pollution should not be solved and then kept permanently in check. This must involve politics, there is no way out. As Aristotle pointed out, "Man is a political animal," and it is only through politicking that we can set up, maintain, change, and generally operate our social control systems. Deeply dysfunctional attitudes towards freedom and control—especially population control—are described and analysedvia a ten-stage argument, and helpful proposals put forward. The function which scientists in general and social scientists in particular can perform in helping human-kind to solve its complex and manifold problems is heavily stressed. Scientists in general should not become politicians, but politicians in general should become numerate and "ecolate"—to quote Garrett Hardin, and start to think more deeply and longer-term. To focus practical thinking the concepts "survival-theory" and the "principle of minimum innovation" are set forth and a final plea made for the necessity and therefore moral legitimacy of controlling numbers as well as resources. If population control seems slow in returning—it used to be the norm—recent events in Eastern Europe give good grounds for optimism about the fluidity of both human values and political institutions.     

Relative Risk Aversion: What Do We Know?

The relative risk aversion measure that represents the risk preferences of a decision maker depends on the outcome variable that is used as the argument of the utility function, and on the way that outcome variable is defined or measured. In addition, the relationship between any two such relative risk aversion measures is determined by the relationship between the corresponding outcome variables. These well-known facts are used to adjust several reported estimates of relative risk aversion so that those estimates can be directly compared with one another. After adjustment, the significant variation in the reported relative risk aversion measures for representative decision makers is substantially reduced. JEL Classification: D81     

Integrated Social Accounting for Nonprofits: A Case from Canada

Whereas social accounting has been strong in its critique of conventional accounting, to date it has not been as effective in developing accounting frameworks consistent with its principles. This is particularly true for nonprofit organizations. The costs of nonprofits can be easily measured; however, not captured by conventional accounting is the value of their nonmonetized resources such as volunteers. This paper argues that social accounting for nonprofits would benefit by creating accounting statements that combine the economic and social impact of an organization (referred to as an integrated approach). After discussing some historic examples of integrated social accounting, the paper presents a Canadian case study in which the value added by volunteers of a nonprofit organization is combined with its financial statements in an Expanded Value Added Statement. By combining social and economic information, a very different performance story of the organization emerges.