The volatility of the socially optimal level of investment

In this paper, an annual series for the socially optimal level of investment from 1960–1961 to 1993–1994 for Australia is derived from a vintage production function and compared to the actual series for investment over the same period. The vintage production function can be expected to yield a smoother socially optimal investment series than that derived from a nonvintage, homogenous capital production function. Even so, the resulting series for socially optimal investment is much more volatile than the series for actual investment. Several alternative assumptions are tried in an attempt to further smooth the socially optimal investment series. These include smoothing the assumed values of the exogenous variables, modelling adjustment costs and delivery lags, and changing the form of the production function. While these approaches do succeed in smoothing the investment series, in order for the socially optimal investment series to be as smooth as the actual series the assumed values of the parameters must be quite unrealistic. In the conclusion, we suggest that, in the future research on the socially optimal level of investment, the role of liquidity constraints and of irreversible investment should be investigated.     

Measuring the Effect of Sexual Health Education Training in Professionals: Structure of the Sexual Health Education for Professionals Scale (SHEPS) Among Marriage and Family Therapy Graduate Students

Marriage and family therapists and sexual health therapists are likely to receive training in graduate school that prepares them to encounter sexual concerns among clients, but there are few standard ways to assess the efficacy of this training. The Sexual Health Education for Professionals Scale (SHEPS) was developed to address this deficit. In this preliminary study, 163 marriage and family therapy graduate students completed the SHEPS prior to starting a graduate course in assessing and treating sexual concerns. Exploratory factor analyses indicate that the SHEPS subscales have good psychometric properties. The Skills and Knowledge subscales have factors labeled Typical Clients, Special Clients, Conservative Clients, and Ethically Complicated Clients. The Attitudes subscale had factors called General Sexual Attitudes, Valuing Sexual Health Training, Open to Providing Sexual Help, and Conservatism. This new instrument may be used to assess education and training of sexual health and marriage and family therapists. Larger sample sizes and longitudinal studies are needed in future.     

Predicting treatment efficacy via quantitative magnetic resonance imaging: a Bayesian joint model

The prognosis for patients with high grade gliomas is poor, with a median survival of 1 year. Treatment efficacy assessment is typically unavailable until 5-6 months post diagnosis. Investigators hypothesize that quantitative magnetic resonance imaging can assess treatment efficacy 3 weeks after therapy starts, thereby allowing salvage treatments to begin earlier. The purpose of this work is to build a predictive model of treatment efficacy by using quantitative magnetic resonance imaging data and to assess its performance. The outcome is 1-year survival status. We propose a joint, two-stage Bayesian model. In stage I, we smooth the image data with a multivariate spatiotemporal pairwise difference prior. We propose four summary statistics that are functionals of posterior parameters from the first-stage model. In stage II, these statistics enter a generalized non-linear model as predictors of survival status. We use the probit link and a multivariate adaptive regression spline basis. Gibbs sampling and reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo methods are applied iteratively between the two stages to estimate the posterior distribution. Through both simulation studies and model performance comparisons we find that we can achieve higher overall correct classification rates by accounting for the spatiotemporal correlation in the images and by allowing for a more complex and flexible decision boundary provided by the generalized non-linear model.     

Attachment, Parent–Child Discourse and Theory-of-Mind Development

This study investigated the relations among attachment, mother–child discourse, and theory of mind in a sample of 76 four‐year‐old children (mean age = 4.48 years; 36 boys). Mother–child conversations about a past event were coded for maternal use of elaborative discourse and mothers' references to mental states. Mothers completed the attachment q‐sort and children completed four false‐belief tasks. Results revealed that maternal conversational elaboration was a significant predictor of children's theory‐of‐mind performance, whereas maternal mental state references and attachment security were not. The findings provide further evidence for the importance of discourse in children's theory‐of‐mind development.     

Reducing Palilalia by Presenting Tact Corrections to Young Children with Autism

Palilalia, the delayed repetition of words or phrases, occurs frequently among individuals with autism and developmental disabilities. The current study used a combined multiple baseline and reversal design to investigate the effectiveness of presenting tacts as corrections for palilalia. During baseline, five preschoolers with autism emitted high rates of palilalia and low rates of mands and tacts during play and instructional activities. During treatment, when experimenters presented opportunities to echoically tact actions and objects following the emission of palilalia, its frequency decreased to low and stable levels and mands and tacts increased. Functional relationships between the tact corrections and emissions of palilalia, mands, and tacts were established during reversals to baseline and treatment conditions. Similar trends in responding were found for frequency of palilalia, mands, and tacts in non-treatment settings.     

Market Segmentation in Scientific Publications: Research Patterns in American vs European Management Journals1

Ideal science should conform to certain criteria or goals, among them the goals of universalism and commonality. Realization of these goals may be limited, however, through the dividing up of researchers in terms of geographical borders. In this study the general hypothesis is tested that there is a segmentation of the society of management researchers into a North American (US) and a European (E) segment, a segmentation which is furthered by differences in incentive schemes and in paradigms. Four leading management journals from North America and from Europe, respectively, and the 242 articles they contained published in 1993 were selected to represent the different geographical segments. The results provide: support for the existence of two such segments; support for differences in incentive schemes influencing the articles; support for their being paradigm differences between the two segments; and support for a paradigm effect being stronger in US-journals than in E-journals, US-authors are more willing, however, to conform to the E-paradigm than vice versa. We argue for methodological pragmatism in order to reduce the presumed counter-productive effects of paradigmatic rigidity.     

Automated manufacturing—Why is it taking so long?

There are strong forces directed towards automated manufacturing with great potential for increases in productivity and efficiency. However, despite these forces, there are barriers preventing the rapid adoption of the new technologies. The author analyses these factors in relation to a study which aimed to identify market opportunities over the next decade in relation to the developments in microtechnology.