Improved Transferability of Data‐Driven Damage Models Through Sample Selection Bias Correction

Damage models for natural hazards are used for decision making on reducing and transferring risk. The damage estimates from these models depend on many variables and their complex sometimes nonlinear relationships with the damage. In recent years, data‐driven modeling techniques have been used to capture those relationships. The available data to build such models are often limited. Therefore, in practice it is usually necessary to transfer models to a different context. In this article, we show that this implies the samples used to build the model are often not fully representative for the situation where they need to be applied on, which leads to a “sample selection bias.” In this article, we enhance data‐driven damage models by applying methods, not previously applied to damage modeling, to correct for this bias before the machine learning (ML) models are trained. We demonstrate this with case studies on flooding in Europe, and typhoon wind damage in the Philippines. Two sample selection bias correction methods from the ML literature are applied and one of these methods is also adjusted to our problem. These three methods are combined with stochastic generation of synthetic damage data. We demonstrate that for both case studies, the sample selection bias correction techniques reduce model errors, especially for the mean bias error this reduction can be larger than 30%. The novel combination with stochastic data generation seems to enhance these techniques. This shows that sample selection bias correction methods are beneficial for damage model transfer.     

论"通知—删除"规则的性质——以平台自治为视角

"通知—删除"规则的法律条文并没有赋予平台自治的空间,但是平台自治的需求已经"凸显".免责条款理论表面上能保障平台自治,但是并不符合我国的实际.归责条款理论是我国的通说,其扼杀了平台自治的空间,司法实践对此虽有调和,但是难以济事.我国的"通知—删除"规则系特定的历史背景下的产物,其在性质上仅仅是行为标准.在侵权行为的认定上,违反"通知—删除"规则的情形并非侵权的充分条件.事实上,这一行为标准的违反在侵权法上的意义仅仅作为主观过错的证据,电商平台可以反证其不具有过错.司法实践中亦有区别对待"通知—删除"规则的违反和侵权之认定的做法.明晰此点方可保障平台自治,同时亦实现电商平台对用户监管之目的.     

Multiple event times in the presence of informative censoring: modeling and analysis by copulas

Motivated by a breast cancer research program, this paper is concerned with the joint survivor function of multiple event times when their observations are subject to informative censoring caused by a terminating event. We formulate the correlation of the multiple event times together with the time to the terminating event by an Archimedean copula to account for the informative censoring. Adapting the widely used two-stage procedure under a copula model, we propose an easy-to-implement pseudo-likelihood based procedure for estimating the model parameters. The approach yields a new estimator for the marginal distribution of a single event time with semicompeting-risks data. We conduct both asymptotics and simulation studies to examine the proposed approach in consistency, efficiency, and robustness. Data from the breast cancer program are employed to illustrate this research.

     

Constructing Trustworthy Historical Narratives: Criteria,Principles and Techniques

Organizational scholars increasingly recognize the value of employing historical research. Yet the fields of history and organization studies struggle to reconcile. In this paper, the authors contend that a closer connection between these two fields is possible if organizational historians bring their role in the construction of historical narratives to the fore and open up their research decisions for discussion. They provide guidelines to support this endeavor, drawing on four criteria that are prevalent within interpretive organization studies for developing the trustworthiness of research: credibility; confirmability; dependability; and transferability. In contrast to the traditional use of trustworthiness criteria to evaluate the quality of research, the authors advance the criteria to encourage historians to generate more transparent narratives. Such transparency allows others to comprehend and comment on the construction of narratives, thereby building trust and understanding. Each criterion is converted into a set of guiding principles to enhance the trustworthiness of historical research, pairing each principle with a practical technique gleaned from a range of disciplines within the social sciences to provide practical guidance.     

论普里什文哲理散文中的生态文学思想与猎人情结

普里什文哲理散文中所具有的预言式生态思想与环保理念备受当代“生态文学”理论家的青睐。但他热衷描写狩猎场景的猎人情结却又遭到新世纪中“生态伦理”理论的诟病。其实从文本的本体性观念来理解，普里什文的诗性自然情怀、生态观念与他的猎人情结并非只有冲突的一面，他所表达出的是人对大自然万物之本能与道义之间的尺度衡量，而这种衡量也可反观当代人与自然万物之间的关系的现状，实际上表达出一种更为深刻的天人关系的批判性。     

Has Opposition to Immigration Increased in the United States after the Economic Crisis? An Experimental Approach

We employ two population‐level experiments to accurately measure opposition to immigration before and after the economic crisis of 2008. Our design explicitly addresses social desirability bias, which is the tendency to give responses that are seen favorably by others and can lead to substantial underreporting of opposition to immigration. We find that overt opposition to immigration, expressed as support for a closed border, increases slightly after the crisis. However, once we account for social desirability bias, no significant increase remains. We conclude that the observed increase in anti‐immigration sentiment in the post‐crisis United States is attributable to greater expression of opposition rather than any underlying change in attitudes.     

Cross‐Sectional Psychological and Demographic Associations of Zika Knowledge and Conspiracy Beliefs Before and After Local Zika Transmission

Perceptions of infectious diseases are important predictors of whether people engage in disease‐specific preventive behaviors. Having accurate beliefs about a given infectious disease has been found to be a necessary condition for engaging in appropriate preventive behaviors during an infectious disease outbreak, while endorsing conspiracy beliefs can inhibit preventive behaviors. Despite their seemingly opposing natures, knowledge and conspiracy beliefs may share some of the same psychological motivations, including a relationship with perceived risk and self‐efficacy (i.e., control). The 2015–2016 Zika epidemic provided an opportunity to explore this. The current research provides some exploratory tests of this topic derived from two studies with similar measures, but different primary outcomes: one study that included knowledge of Zika as a key outcome and one that included conspiracy beliefs about Zika as a key outcome. Both studies involved cross‐sectional data collections that occurred during the same two periods of the Zika outbreak: one data collection prior to the first cases of local Zika transmission in the United States (March–May 2016) and one just after the first cases of local transmission (July–August). Using ordinal logistic and linear regression analyses of data from two time points in both studies, the authors show an increase in relationship strength between greater perceived risk and self‐efficacy with both increased knowledge and increased conspiracy beliefs after local Zika transmission in the United States. Although these results highlight that similar psychological motivations may lead to Zika knowledge and conspiracy beliefs, there was a divergence in demographic association.