The evaluation of DNA evidence in pedigrees requiring population inference

Summary. The evaluation of nuclear DNA evidence for identification purposes is performed here taking account of the uncertainty about population parameters. Graphical models are used to detail the hypotheses being debated in a trial with the aim of obtaining a directed acyclic graph. Graphs also clarify the set of evidence that contributes to population inferences and they also describe the conditional independence structure of DNA evidence. Numerical illustrations are provided by re-examining three case-studies taken from the literature. Our calculations of the weight of evidence differ from those given by the authors of case-studies in that they reveal more conservative values.     

学术腐败的现状及根源

学术腐败犹如一股瘟疫一样在科技和学术领域蔓延开来 ,严重地玷污了学术环境 ,腐蚀了学术队伍的肌体 ,误导学子的学业 ,阻碍了学术大师的产生 ,遏制了创新能力的提高 ,已成为全社会关注的热点问题。其产生的根源是管理手段单一、体制不健全、道德危机以及社会性诱因。     

Scaling up CBOs for second‐order devolution in welfare reform

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 created a paradigm shift in the financing, organization, and delivery of welfare programs in the United States. The act shifted revenue and authority to states, giving them great discretion to determine the specifics of their programs. First‐order devolution, combined with time limits and work requirements, set in motion a chain of events that moved Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) recipients into the labor force and off state welfare rolls. Second‐order devolution shifted revenue and authority to community‐based organizations (CBOs) to help former recipients remain employed, advance to higher paying jobs, and move their families toward economic self‐sufficiency. Early findings from project innovations in Texas and other states raise doubts about the capacity of these organizations to achieve these goals. State funders will need to provide ongoing technical assistance and support to “scale up” the capacity of CBOs to plan, implement, and manage local innovations in welfare reform.     

人文主义文学与理性自觉

近代理性精神是从文艺复兴时期人们从宗教禁欲主义思想禁锢中解放出来,开始以人权对抗神权时萌芽的。随着新兴的资产阶级的成长和发展,这种理性精神也在逐渐地从自发走向自觉。但它从产生时起就具有自身的悖论:第一,它是伴随着人性的发现而产生,因而就不可避免和人的自然情欲相连;第二,它表现出了对于知识的过分信赖,进而演化成技术理性统治一切、抹杀了人的完整统一性;第三,它带来了个性主体的过分膨胀。     

An alternative to model selection in ordinary regression

The weaknesses of established model selection procedures based on hypothesis testing and similar criteria are discussed and an alternative based on synthetic (composite) estimation is proposed. It is developed for the problem of prediction in ordinary regression and its properties are explored by simulations for the simple regression. Extensions to a general setting are described and an example with multiple regression is analysed. Arguments are presented against using a selected model for any inferences.     

Successful collaboration between the nonprofit and public sectors

Public and private funding sources often require nonprofit organizations to provide evidence of partnership with a governmental entity before financing a project. However, the circumstances under which working partnerships between the nonprofit and public sectors are forged and sustained have not been fully studied. This article presents the findings of a case study of land trusts and local governments and identifies conditions that foster successful collaboration. Social factors such as experience on the part of key personnel in working with the opposite entity and genuine affection for each other are more important than economic benefits. This suggests that a nonprofit agency interested in creating a viable partnership to improve a project should give careful consideration to assigning staff.     

The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access

The research access/impact problem arises because journal articles are not accessible to all of their would-be users; hence, they are losing potential research impact. The solution is to make all articles Open Access (OA; i.e., accessible online, free for all). OA articles have significantly higher citation impact than non-OA articles. There are two roads to OA: the “golden” road (publish your article in an OA journal) and the “green” road (publish your article in a non-OA journal but also self-archive it in an OA archive). Only 5% of journals are gold, but over 90% are already green (i.e., they have given their authors the green light to self-archive); yet only about 10–20% of articles have been self-archived. To reach 100% OA, self-archiving needs to be mandated by researchers' employers and funders, as the United Kingdom and the United States have recently recommended, and universities need to implement that mandate.     

Goodness‐of‐fit methods for matched case‐control studies

The authors propose graphical and numerical methods for checking the adequacy of the logistic regression model for matched case‐control data. Their approach is based on the cumulative sum of residuals over the covariate or linear predictor. Under the assumed model, the cumulative residual process converges weakly to a centered Gaussian limit whose distribution can be approximated via computer simulation. The observed cumulative residual pattern can then be compared both visually and analytically to a certain number of simulated realizations of the approximate limiting process under the null hypothesis. The proposed techniques allow one to check the functional form of each covariate, the logistic link function as well as the overall model adequacy. The authors assess the performance of the proposed methods through simulation studies and illustrate them using data from a cardiovascular study.     

对高校就业工作的思考

随着我国高等教育从精英型向大众化时代的发展,高校就业工作已受到学校的高度重视,但由于历史的原因我国高校就业工作起步较晚,因此对这项工作的内容和要求还缺乏统一的认识,本文根据我国高校的实际在这方面进行了初步探讨,以期对这项工作提供参考。     

Loss functions for estimation of extrema with an application to disease mapping

It is often of interest to find the maximum or near maxima among a set of vector‐valued parameters in a statistical model; in the case of disease mapping, for example, these correspond to relative‐risk “hotspots” where public‐health intervention may be needed. The general problem is one of estimating nonlinear functions of the ensemble of relative risks, but biased estimates result if posterior means are simply substituted into these nonlinear functions. The authors obtain better estimates of extrema from a new, weighted ranks squared error loss function. The derivation of these Bayes estimators assumes a hidden‐Markov random‐field model for relative risks, and their behaviour is illustrated with real and simulated data.