Expected sample moments of concomitants of selected order statistics

In this paper, the task of determining expected values of sample moments, where the sample members have been selected based on noisy information, is considered. This task is a recurring problem in the theory of evolution strategies. Exact expressions for expected values of sums of products of concomitants of selected order statistics are derived. Then, using Edgeworth and Cornish-Fisher approximations, explicit results that depend on coefficients that can be determined numerically are obtained. While the results are exact only for normal populations, it is shown experimentally that including skewness and kurtosis in the calculations can yield greatly improved results for other distributions.     

Married women's retirement behavior

In this paper we examine the economic and family determinants of married women's retirement behavior. A life cycle model of wives' retirement decisions is tested empirically using data on working married women from the Longitudinal Retirement History Survey. This exploratory analysis indicates that family considerations are more important in wives' retirement decisions than own economic opportunities. These findings contrast with those obtained previously for male workers and if substantiated by other research could have important implications for policy questions regarding pension and Social Security reform.This research was funded by the 1986–7 Small Grants Program sponsored by the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Institute for Research on Poverty, the Cornell Institute of Social and Economic Research, and the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Excellent programming assistance was provided by Vivian Fields. We are grateful to Glen Cain and two anonymous referees for useful comments. Any opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not those of the above-named persons or institutions.     

Going to Pieces: Paul Monette and the Fragments of the Tribe

Author of the highly acclaimed Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (1988) and winner of the 1992 National Book Award for his autobiography Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, Paul Monette died of complications from AIDS in Los Angeles on February 12, 1995. His most recent work, Last Watch of the Night: Essays Too Personal and Otherwise (1994), is his third volume in a trilogy of autobiographical writing on growing up gay, coming-out, and living with AIDS. A graduate of Phillips Academy and Yale University, Monette received a number of awards for his writing and his work as an outspoken voice in the battle against AIDS, including the National Book Award, three Lambda Literary awards, the PEN Center West Freedom to Write Award, and three honorary doctorate degrees, from Wesleyan University, the City University of New York, and the State University of New York at Oswego. A memorial service was held for Monette on Sunday, February 19, 1995, at the Directors Guild of America on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Paul Monette was 49.     

Toward a Copernican revolution in our thinking about life's beginning and life's end

This article attempts to narrow the range of moral disagreement surrounding the issue of abortion by exploring current assumptions and comparing thinking about abortion with our thinking about death. Focusing the abortion debate on questions such as when life begins or whether the fetus is a person has thrust us into scientific uncertainty and definitional disputes. It is suggested that the focus of the debate should be shifted to the issue of whether the fetus merits our protection. Moral judgements regarding personhood represent a complex balancing that involves weighing our interests in protecting an entity against the loss to our liberty implied by such protection. This approach requires a Copernican revolution in our thinking about abortion, in which 3 major factors--the nature of the entity, the impact of its mistreatment on our broadest human interests, and the specific implications of its protection for our liberty--are considered in a relational whole. Similarly, the continuum in the dying process requires us to determine which aspect of human death will be recognized as morally significant. Since determinations with regard to life and death are arbitrary, societies must select their own moral values and take responsibility for collective moral decisions. It is concluded that the US Supreme Court decision that allows free access to abortion in the 1st trimester, imposes a requirement of medical supervision in the 2nd, and prohibits abortion in most cases in the 3rd trimester represents a reasonable response to the moral issues at stake.     

Sensitivity of the Optimum to Perturbations of the Profit or Weight of an Item in the Binary Knapsack Problem

In the binary single constraint Knapsack Problem, denoted KP, we are given a knapsack of fixed capacity c and a set of n items. Each item j, j = 1,...,n, has an associated size or weight w_j and a profit p_j. The goal is to determine whether or not item j, j = 1,...,n, should be included in the knapsack. The objective is to maximize the total profit without exceeding the capacity c of the knapsack. In this paper, we study the sensitivity of the optimum of the KP to perturbations of either the profit or the weight of an item. We give approximate and exact interval limits for both cases (profit and weight) and propose several polynomial time algorithms able to reach these interval limits. The performance of the proposed algorithms are evaluated on a large number of problem instances.     

Buchbesprechungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Dual Career Couples als eine Variante von Work-Life-Integration

Dual Career Couples as a form of work-life-integrationThe author discusses the situation of dual career couples, when both are university graduates following an own career. Basing on a respective publication she delineates the current, mostly American research and reports on several German research projects, which endeavour to analyse the relation between gender and inequality in dual career couples.     

Von der Supervision zur Mediation und zurück

From supervision to mediation and vice versaMediation in organizations becomes more and more important because of increasing conflicts. The question is, which competencies of the counsellor are necessary, and above all, whether mediation is a particular method. The author explains the method of mediation and illustrates his concept of “patchwork-mediation”. This procedure allows to build a bridge between supervision and mediation.     

Ebert. Wolfgang (2001): Systemtheorien in der Supervision — Bestandsaufnahme und Perspektiven

Ohne Zusammenfassung