Modeling a low-carbon garment supply chain

This article attempts to introduce indirect carbon emission and trade-credit concept in a network optimisation model for sustainable supply chain. The proposed model optimises total cost, total direct carbon emission, total indirect emission in the form of embodied carbon footprint of the raw material and total trade-credit amount over the purchased item in a supply chain. The model calculates the total cost by considering purchasing cost, logistics cost, handling cost and manufacturing cost. It attempts to measure the direct emission involved in manufacturing and logistics operations. The model has the capability to consider dissimilar trucks used for transportation according to their operating cost and carbon emission. Multi-objective goal programming is applied to deal with four objectives to find a tradeoff among these objectives. The result suggests that managers should capture the direct as well as the indirect emission which helps in arriving at appropriate strategy for a sustainable supply chain. The effectiveness of the proposed model is demonstrated through a case of a garment supply chain. This model also supports in deciding appropriate goal for carbon emission, supply chain costs, etc.     

Joint modelling of event counts and survival times

Summary.  In studies of recurrent events, such as epileptic seizures, there can be a large amount of information about a cohort over a period of time, but current methods for these data are often unable to utilize all of the available information. The paper considers data which include post-treatment survival times for individuals experiencing recurring events, as well as a measure of the base-line event rate, in the form of a pre-randomization event count. Standard survival analysis may treat this pre-randomization count as a covariate, but the paper proposes a parametric joint model based on an underlying Poisson process, which will give a more precise estimate of the treatment effect.     

A theoretically-consistent empirical model of non-expected utility: An application to nuclear-waste transport

Few theoretically-consistent empirical models addressing the relationship between ambiguity, risk, and preferences for health and safety exist. To fill this gap, we propose a theoretical non-expected-utility model (NEUM) that is relatively easy to estimate using an interval-data model. The NEUM we develop hinges upon two sources of variability, one over risk and the other over ambiguity about the risk. Using data from a survey of Nevada residents concerning risks from nuclear-waste transport, we provide individual-specific welfare estimate for a risk increase. Our findings suggest that negative externalities from nuclear-waste transport perceived risks and ambiguity may be substantial. JEL Codes D81 · D62 · Q53 · Q51     

Anticipating the social consequences of AIDS: A position paper

Even conservative estimates of the future course of AIDS epidemic make clear that only a small fraction of people who ultimately will experience AIDS symptoms now have them and that the spread of the virus will continue for some time to come. This article focuses on the social consequences of the AIDS epidemic, some of which are beginning to be felt. I argue that sociologists have an important contribution to make anticipating the long range social consequences of AIDS. Intelligent planning is impossible without a reduction of uncertainty in what the future might hold. He currently is chair of the Methodology section of the American Sociological Association and vice-chair of the Board of the Directors of the Social Science Research Council. with research interests in gender, kinship, and biosocial science. Her concern for the AIDS epidemic flows from its being a major focus in an interdisciplinary course on human sexuality that she teaches. For the past two years at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, she has coordinated AIDS prevention programs for women and supervised the development of educational materials. For the past three years she has been actively involved in AIDS-related research.     

Mentoring or Monitoring: Formulating a Balance in Systemic Supervision

Contemporary supervision practice has increasingly involved tasks previously associated with line management; this has been uncomfortable and unresolved for both supervisors and supervisees. Context, individual preference and circumstance can drive the relationship more into surveillance or more into support, and each will have important implications for practice. This article argues for a balance between monitoring and mentoring, both are crucial for effective supervision to occur. Supervisors need to know the boundaries of their delegated task, given that supervision can be the intervention of choice for any number of organizational difficulties. However they also need to integrate the leadership and critical appraisal tasks required, commencing supervision relationships with these components being transparent and clear, such that all participants can meet their obligations to practice competently, ethically and in the clients' interests. The systemic model provides an effective framework to conceptualise and intervene in relation to the various stakeholders, relationships, service systems and political context in which arrangements for supervision are negotiated.     

Critical Commentary: Process and outcomes: the 2001 ESRC recognition exercise

This article summarises the processes through which British social work postgraduate university training outlets applied to the Economic and Social Research Council for recognition in 2001–2002. The exercise raised issues of training diversity; inter-disciplinary vs. single discipline social work research training; the balance between training in methodology and in substantive topics; the relationship between training and research; and a number of questions about equity and due process.     

French Connections: The Three Musketeers Motif in Andrei Bitov’s Pushkinskii dom

Abstract

The present study revisits the well-known question of the development ъ > o in Balkan Slavic (Bulgarian, Macedonian, Torlak) in the light of advances in research achieved over recent decades in a variety of fields (dialectology, historical phonology, Old Church Slavonic, epigraphy). The paper 1) presents a synthesis of the evidence for ъ > o in modern Balkan Slavic (sec. II) and the earliest attestations (sec. III), 2) provides a critical analysis of the different theories which attempt to explain the existence of systems with split distribution, where ъ > o in affixes, but ъ is retained in root syllables (sec. IV), 3) proposes historical connections between the isoglosses for ъ > o and those of a range of other phenomena (phonological, lexical, accentual) (sec. III, V).     

Is Social Work Research Distinctive?

What makes social work research distinctive? And how is our answer linked to how we do social work research? Drawing on UK research council statements about social work research as a starting point, I argue that it makes some degree of sense to ask what is distinctive about social work research. But the more significant question is what might make social work research distinctively good? I suggest six benchmarks. These address the case for methodological excellence; inquiry marked by rigour, range, variety, depth and progression; active conversation with the social science community; consistency with broader social work purposes; attention to aspects of the research enterprise that are close to social work; and taking seriously aspects of the research mission that seem on the face of it far from social work. However, social work and social work research will be the poorer if we over‐emphasize the distinctives at the expense of commonalities in fostering and assessing best practice and best purpose.     

Measuring the Quality of Peer-Reviewed Publications in Social Work: Impact Factors—Liberation or Liability?

Systems for measuring the quality of publications in peer-reviewed academic journals have achieved importance in the ‘audit culture’ to which academia worldwide has become increasingly subjected. In the United Kingdom this debate has focused on government proposals to give greater emphasis to bibliometrics (counts of journal articles and their citations) as a measurement of research quality, in respect of publications in the emergent Research Excellence Framework (REF) which is set to replace the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). This approach impacts on social work educators who are the main producers of papers published in peer-reviewed academic journals. It affects their publishing behaviour by pressurising them to publish their work in journals that are regarded as being prestigious, for which ‘high impact factor’ journals as determined by Thomson Reuters—a private commercial information management enterprise with headquarters in the United States—has become a proxy for quality. In this paper the authors describe and critique the Thomson Reuters system as it applies to social work and propose an alternate fair, inclusive and transparent system for assessing the quality of publications based on peer evaluation and incorporating an ethical approach consistent with the discipline's professional values.