Role as Resource for Action in Public Service

In this chapter we offer a conceptual framework for the understanding of public service that allows for the incorporation of sociological themes of organizational structure and institutional power. We build on sociological conceptualizations of the self found in role identity theory, using examples from research on health care workers to show how role identities and organizational structures can both limit and enhance the likelihood of principled dissent. Finally, we extend our theoretical framework to better understand how community service is employed to address the structural sources of social problems.     

A descriptive model of electricity consumption

The purpose of the model is to give corporate planning personnel, particularly ratemakers, or marketing people, a tool to evaluate quickly how many customers are included in a definite block of energy consumption within some limits of power demand. This will allow them to evaluate the number of customers that will be affected by any proposed rate schedules and, then, to evaluate the resulting effects on utility's revenue. Moreover, this model can, in any time, become a part of a larger model that could be used for financial planning, market analysis, or any other econometric model.     

Road trafficking description and short term travel time forecasting,with a classification method

The purpose of this work is, on the one hand, to study how to forecast road trafficking on highway networks and, on the other hand, to describe future traffic events. Here, road trafficking is measured by vehicle velocities. The authors propose two methodologies. The first is based on an empirical classification method, and the second on a probability mixture model. They use an SAEM‐type algorithm (a stochastic approximation of the EM algorithm) to select the densities of the mixture model. Then, they test the validity of their methodologies by forecasting short term travel times.     

Development,a Question of Opportunity? A Critique of the 2006 World Development Report: Equity and Development

The World Bank's World Development Report 2006 addresses equity and development, defining equity as respect for equal opportunities combined with the avoidance of absolute deprivation. Equity has up to now remained a marginal issue in development economics. This detailed analysis endeavours to place the subject within the context of the evolution of World Bank thinking and policies. The wealth of the concept is illustrated, the downside being the difficulty in defining it accurately. We also emphasise the gap between the prospects opened up by such an enlargement of development goals and the report's policy recommendations, which are generally merely an extension of the World Bank's traditional analyses.     

The mystery of the missing middle-tenants: The “negative” case of fixed-term leasing and agricultural investment in fifteenth-century Tuscany

Theory and Society -     

On a new goodness‐of‐fit process for families of copulas

A goodness‐of‐fit procedure is proposed for parametric families of copulas. The new test statistics are functionals of an empirical process based on the theoretical and sample versions of Spearman's dependence function. Conditions under which this empirical process converges weakly are seen to hold for many families including the Gaussian, Frank, and generalized Farlie–Gumbel–Morgenstern systems of distributions, as well as the models with singular components described by Durante [Durante ( 2007 ) Comptes Rendus Mathématique. Académie des Sciences. Paris, 344, 195–198]. Thanks to a parametric bootstrap method that allows to compute valid P‐values, it is shown empirically that tests based on Cramér–von Mises distances keep their size under the null hypothesis. Simulations attesting the power of the newly proposed tests, comparisons with competing procedures and complete analyses of real hydrological and financial data sets are presented. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 37: 80‐101; 2009 © 2009 Statistical Society of Canada     

Design professionals and the built environment: encountering boundaries 20 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act

This article posits that although it has been 20 years since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a continuing tension remains between truly understanding and protecting the rights of people with disabilities and eliminating discrimination via the design of the built environment. Focus group and interview findings document the expressed and contradictory attitudes of practicing interior designers. This article demonstrates that although interior designers apply ADA design and construction guidelines as required by US laws and generally concede its universal benefits, the majority have not adopted the underlying spirit of the landmark civil rights law. Since interior designers ignore the essence of the ADA, the large scale use of non-discriminatory practices in the design of the built environment has progressed little during these two decades.