Uncertainty Analysis for Computer Model Projections of Hurricane Losses

Projecting losses associated with hurricanes is a complex and difficult undertaking that is wrought with uncertainties. Hurricane Charley, which struck southwest Florida on August 13, 2004, illustrates the uncertainty of forecasting damages from these storms. Due to shifts in the track and the rapid intensification of the storm, real-time estimates grew from 2 to 3 billion dollars in losses late on August 12 to a peak of 50 billion dollars for a brief time as the storm appeared to be headed for the Tampa Bay area. The storm hit the resort areas of Charlotte Harbor near Punta Gorda and then went on to Orlando in the central part of the state, with early poststorm estimates converging on a damage estimate in the 28 to 31 billion dollars range. Comparable damage to central Florida had not been seen since Hurricane Donna in 1960. The Florida Commission on Hurricane Loss Projection Methodology (FCHLPM) has recognized the role of computer models in projecting losses from hurricanes. The FCHLPM established a professional team to perform onsite (confidential) audits of computer models developed by several different companies in the United States that seek to have their models approved for use in insurance rate filings in Florida. The team's members represent the fields of actuarial science, computer science, meteorology, statistics, and wind and structural engineering. An important part of the auditing process requires uncertainty and sensitivity analyses to be performed with the applicant's proprietary model. To influence future such analyses, an uncertainty and sensitivity analysis has been completed for loss projections arising from use of a Holland B parameter hurricane wind field model. Uncertainty analysis quantifies the expected percentage reduction in the uncertainty of wind speed and loss that is attributable to each of the input variables.     

WHOSE GAY COMMUNITY? SOCIAL CLASS,SEXUAL SELF‐EXPRESSION,AND GAY COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

The visible and political gay community has been characterized as an increasingly middle-class, white institution. It is hypothesized that this middle-class nature requires economic and psychosocial resources that are not available to the working class and, thus, may limit the expression of sexual orientation for the working class. An analysis of data from the multicity Urban Men's Health Study supports this hypothesis. Nine of 14 hypothesized effects are statistically significant and indicate that working-class men who are homosexually active are less likely to describe themselves as gay, are more likely to have heterosexual experience, and are less likely to be involved in the gay community. Thus, it is important to incorporate class differences when addressing the social and the political dynamics of sexual orientation.     

Population Policy in Early Victorian England

This paper argues that the generally-held belief that there was no population policy in Great Britain during its fertility transition is incorrect. There were, in fact, clear and implicit and explicit policies in place by the early 19th Century which aimed at reducing population growth. These were negative, involving elimination of family allowances (the famous Poor Laws), and also positive, through subsidised emigration and ``transportation' of felons to the colonies. Moreover, a changed ``ideation' on the part of the nation's political, intellectual and spiritual leaders, changed norms about marriage and child-bearing, raising sharply the perceived economic and psychic cost of children. Lacking acceptable means to control pregnancies, many working class women resorted to abortion, infanticide and child abandonment to reduce their family size. The policy's actual impact on overall fertility is uncertain but it did constitute a deliberate attempt by society to affect demographic behaviour and outcomes.     

Stress at work and psychological and immunological parameters in a group of Norwegian female bank employees

This study concerned the immunological correlates of stress and work. Self reported stress, emotional state, ego-strength, and defensiveness were examined in relation to measures of cellular immunity (T-cell response to Con A and number of T4 and T8 cells) and humoral immunity (concentrations of immunoglobulins and complement components in plasma) in a group of 96 Norwegian female bank employees. The analyses showed that workload, the stress factor with the highest group mean, was associated with number of T-cells, while strain due to body posture during work was related to concentrations of IgM and C3. Further, depression was significantly correlated with IgM concentration and T-cell number, and anxiety with C3 concentration. T-cell activity was the immunological parameter most consistently associated with psychological well-being, showing positive correlations with defensiveness and ego-strength and negative correlations with anxiety and depression. In conclusion, T-cell number and concentrations of IgM and C3 were sensitive to both work-related stress experience and emotional distress. Coping abilities, indicated by the MMPI Ego-strength scale and emotional distress, were reflected in T-cell activity; insufficient coping was associated with low T-cell activity.     

Practice and Research in Career Counseling and Development—2001

This article is a summary of the literature published in 2001 related to career counseling and career development. The review is designed to provide information to both career practitioners and researchers, with the focus on integration of practice and research. This summary of literature is organized around 5 primary areas: (a) career development, (b) career and vocational theories, (c) career interventions, (d) career assessment, and (e) professional issues. Within the framework of this review, attention is also given to contextual factors including gender, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, and nationality.     

Becoming American/Becoming New Yorkers: Immigrant Incorporation in a Majority Minority City1

Many observers have noted that immigrants to the United States are highly concentrated in the largest metropolitan areas of a relatively few states. Though immigrants diffused into many places that had previously seen relatively few immigrants during the 1990s, as of the 2000 census, 77 percent of the nation's 31.1 million foreign born residents still lived in six states — California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois. According to the 2000 census, the two largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles and New York, accounted for one third of all immigrants ( http://www.census.gov/Press‐Release/www/2002/demoprofiles.html ). While immigrants moved into many new areas during the 1990s, making the challenge of incorporating their children a national issue, their concentration in our largest cities remained pronounced.     

On Masking and Revealing the Culture of the Cross-Culturalist

There is a gulf between the analytic and experiential aspects of cross-culturalists' functioning that is reflected in the split between explicit scientific rules for studying the culture of others, while following an informal oral tradition for considering our own cultural makeup. This article discusses both a possible strategy for correcting this situation and the barriers that are likely to prevent such a correction. Structured cultural self-study procedures are presented as a possible resource in the continuing development of graduate students and professionals, and these have already proven highly effective in teaching cross-cultural psychology to undergraduates. Fostering commitments to standardized self-study and to applications of experiential learning is currently not likely to flourish due to complex academic and epistemic traditions, discussed as six cultural self-masking factors. A specific self-study protocol is offered to provide a beginning point for generating improved reflexive methods and for individual trial use. Through disciplined reflexivity, benefits might emerge in the form of better bias control in research, enhanced external validity, and a new theory about the interplay of investigators' self-knowledge and the conduct of cross-cultural research.     

Toward the development of an adolescent gambling problem severity scale

The development and initial psychometric properties of an adolescent gambling problem severity measure are described. The scale, based on a revision of the South Oaks Gambling Screen (Lesieur & Blume, 1987), was administered to 1,101 older (ages 15 to 18) Minnesota adolescents as part of a state-wide gambling survey. Study results indicated that the scale had moderate internal consistency reliability and was significantly related to alternate measures of problem severity for male subjects. Because the rate and severity of gambling among females was very low, the psychometric adequacy of the scale for females is not known at this time. The implications of study findings to the conceptual understanding of adolescent gambling problem severity as well as study limitations and future research needs, are discussed.Support for the study was provided by the Minnesota Department of Human Services and the Center for Addiction Studies, University of Minnesota, Duluth. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance from Robert Blum, Linda Harris, Durand Jacobs, J. Laundergan, Alan Mathiason, Brenda Miller, James Schaefer, school officials from the participating high schools, and interviewers who assisted with the telephone survey.