HOW ‘NATIVES’ THINK

Marshall Sahlins. How 'natives' think: about Captain Cook, for example (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1995. x, 318pp., maps, table, plates, figures, bibliography, index. $40.95. ISBN 0 226 73368 8.     

AT WAR

Technological supremacy means that the West can avoid getting up close and personal to kill. Our legacies of imperial power ensure that our wars are fought ‘over there’, and men in post-industrial societies are disassociated from the death embracing culture of the warrior. However, in the aftermath of September 11, we have entered a new era of global militarization – the shadowed world of the War on Terror. It confronts us with the historical changes in men's relationship to war, and how masculinity has been shaped by the processes of formalization and informalization. It opens up a new kind of front, with an enemy who is claimed to be everywhere, and a military-market complex that is denationalizing war in its promotion of a neo-liberal imperialism.     

Decomposition of urban atmospheric carbon in Sonoran Desert soils

Urban atmospheres can have high concentrations of particulate organic carbon (oC) but the rate and fate oC deposition in near-urban ecosystems are rarely quantified. We collected atmospheric particulate matter in Phoenix, AZ and applied these samples to Sonoran Desert soils in a series of laboratory incubation experiments. The addition of fine particulate matter (<2.5 μm aerodynamic diameter) increased microbial respiration in soils collected from the interspaces between desert shrubs. The increase in soil respiration was equivalent to 25% to 30% of the added oC. In contrast, we did not detect increases in respiration when coarse particulate matter (>2.5 μm aerodynamic diameter) was added to interspace soils, suggesting that coarse particulate oC is recalcitrant to microbial decomposition. Due to comparatively higher background levels of C mineralization, we rarely detected changes in microbial respiration when fine or coarse particulate oC was added to soils collected beneath shrub canopies. We measured total atmospheric C concentrations within and surrounding Phoenix and, using inferential methods, estimated rates of deposition that ranged from 0.02 to 0.58 mg C m⁻² d⁻¹ for fine particles and from 0 to 6.15 mg C m⁻² d⁻¹ for coarse particles. Results show that fine atmospheric particulate matter deposited at low rates downwind of Phoenix is a labile oC substrate for soil heterotrophs. In contrast, oC deposited at higher rates as coarse particulate matter may accumulate in soils due to slow microbial decomposition rates.     

Prevalence of same‐gender sexual behavior and HIV in a probability household survey in Mexican men

The prevalence of male same‐gender sexual behavior in Mexico City in relation to HIV transmission was studied. A household probability survey of 8,068 adult men was conducted in 1992–93 using the Mexican National Health Survey sampling frame. The response rate was 59%. Differences between respondents and nonrespondents indicated no evidence for significant bias. A random subsample of 1,116 individuals provided serum or saliva for HIV testing. An estimated 2.5% of men practiced same‐gender sex in their lifetime: 2.1% (95% CI: 1.7 ‐ 2.4%) reported bisexual behavior and 0.4% (95% CI: 0.3 ‐ 0.6%) reported exclusively homosexual behavior. Among bisexuals, 70% reported sex only with women in the previous year, 7% reported sex only with men, 13% reported sex with both, and 10% were sexually inactive. A condom was used by 46% in their last homosexual encounter. An estimated 0.1% of married men were homosexually active in the previous year. The HTV prevalence estimate was 0.2% in the sample. The rate was 4% among homosexual/bisexual men and 0.09% in heterosexual men (p < 0.0001). Estimates of homosexual behavior and HTV infection from this population‐based sample are lower than results from nonprobability studies. The low prevalence of condom use anticipates future growth of the epidemic in the homosexual population. Bisexual behavior appeared to be infrequent and transitory, particularly among married men.     

When Getting Something Good is Bad: Even Three‐year‐olds React to Inequality

Fairness is central to morality. Previous research has shown that children begin to understand fairness between the ages of four and six, depending on the context and method used. Within distributive contexts, there is little clear evidence that children have a concept of fairness before the age of five. This research, however, has mostly examined children's explicit verbal responses to questions about unequal distributions—a method that often underestimates children's knowledge. In the current study, we instead examined emotional and behavioral signs that children notice and dislike inequality. We distributed an unequal number of rewards (stickers) among pairs of children (the ages of three to five years) and probed their responses to the inequality. Both implicit and explicit measures revealed that children as young as three years old notice and react negatively to an unfair distribution, particularly when they receive less than their partner. The few age trends that were found involved verbal (explicit) responses, providing evidence that although children do not explicitly talk about fairness until the age of five or six, this talk is an effort to explain emotional reactions that emerged earlier in development.     

FORECASTING VOLATILITY IN THE PRESENCE OF MODEL INSTABILITY

Recent advances in financial econometrics have allowed for the construction of efficient ex post measures of daily volatility. This paper investigates the importance of instability in models of realised volatility and their corresponding forecasts. Testing for model instability is conducted with a subsampling method. We show that removing structurally unstable data of a short duration has a negligible impact on the accuracy of conditional mean forecasts of volatility. In contrast, it does provide a substantial improvement in a model's forecast density of volatility. In addition, the forecasting performance improves, often dramatically, when we evaluate models on structurally stable data.     

新加坡学校教育市场化的政策与实践

1997年，新加坡政府在“思考型学校，学习型国家”理念的指导下，推出了促进学校多样性、自主性和创新性的教育政策。本文第一部分回顾了1997年以来推出的教育政策，强调了这一系列改革如何体现出新加坡教育系统中营销导向的突出特点。第二部分论述如何通过“专长项目计划”这一全国性举措来实现教育的市场化。笔者认为，学校应该首先明确家长和学生的需求，然后再按照能力的不同开发“产品”。     

Is Peer Victimization Associated with Academic Achievement? A Meta‐analytic Review

This paper presents a meta‐analytic review of 33 studies, with a total of 29 552 participants, that examined the concurrent association between peer victimization and academic achievement. The results revealed a small but significant negative correlation between peer victimization and academic achievement under both the random‐effects model (r=?.12, p < .001) and the fixed‐effects model (r=?.10, p < .001). Factors that moderated the strength of this association across studies include the peer victimization informant, the indicator of academic achievement, whether there was shared method variance, and the national setting of the study. An exploratory analysis revealed that the strength of the correlations did not differ for boys and girls. The results help resolve the conflicting findings in the existing literature and suggest the need for further investigation into the association between peer victimization and academic achievement.     

Asking elaborate questions: Focus groups and the management of spontaneity

This paper analyzes question formats in a corpus of German market research focus groups. In particular, it identifies and studies the use of 'elaborate questions' (questions which include a range of reformulations and rewordings). The analysis highlights three functions of such questions in focus groups: (a) they are used to guide participants and head off trouble where the question type is 'non-mundane'; (b) they help secure participation by providing an array of alternative items to respond to; (c) they guide participants to produce a range of opinion relevant responses. More generally, they help manage a dilemma between the requirement that the talk should be both highly focused on predefined topics and issues, and at the same time spontaneous and conversational. The analysis provides a range of interactional evidence for the pragmatic role of these formats.