Medicine on the line? Computer‐mediated social support and advice for people with diabetes

The advent of thousands of Usenet groups on the Internet, covering a vast range of medical and welfare issues and ostensibly devoted to the mutual social support of participating members, has raised the potential for the development of new forms of 'virtual' health care. This article critically analyses the use by people with diabetes of one such Usenet group. It seeks to establish, first, the extent to which such a site provides some demonstrable measure of social support to its participants. This is approached by undertaking a structural analysis of the site to identify the extent of usage, and the nature of supporting interventions using a fivefold classification (instrumental, informational, esteem and social companionship and other). Second, the article attempts to identify any disparity between the lay health-knowledge in evidence and biomedical opinions proffered by the use of a panel of consultant diabetiologists. The results of the analysis suggest that the diabetes newsgroup provides an example of an active forum for largely well-informed participants who routinely use the media as an aid to the reflexive management of their medical condition. It also raises the prospect of a renegotiated relationship between medical knowledge and lay experience based upon shared learning     

Goal Ambiguity and Organizational Performance in U.S. Federal Agencies

In spite of numerous observations that government organizationshave high levels of organizational goal ambiguity that exertmajor influences on their other characteristics, few researchershave measured goal ambiguity and tested these frequent assertions.In previous research, we developed measures of four dimensionsof goal ambiguity: mission comprehension ambiguity, directivegoal ambiguity, evaluative goal ambiguity, and priority goalambiguity. Confirming hypotheses developed from the literatureon public organizations, the latter three variables showed relationsto such organizational characteristics as organizational age,financial publicness (proportion of funding from governmentallocations), and regulatory status. This article reports asecond analytical step of examining the relations between thegoal ambiguity dimensions and indicators of organizational performancebased on responses to the 2000 National Partnership for ReinventingGovernment Survey of federal employees. The performance variablesincluded managerial effectiveness, customer service orientation,productivity, and work quality. Regression analyses with numerouscontrol variables found that directive, evaluative, and prioritygoal ambiguity related negatively to managerial effectiveness.All four performance indicators showed significant negativerelationships with evaluative goal ambiguity and directive goalambiguity. The results provide further evidence of the viabilityof the new measures of goal ambiguity, support theory-basedbut previously untested hypotheses, and further indicate thefeasibility and value of analyzing goal ambiguity of governmentorganizations.     

A LOTTO SYSTEMS PROBLEM

A Lotto Systems bet allows the player to nominate n numbers from which (s)he believes the winning six numbers will be drawn, and to bet on all combinations of six of these n numbers. Assume that the winning six numbers come from the nominated n. How many combinations must be entered to guarantee that one combination will include at least five of the winning six numbers? The problem is generalized in this paper, and the method of simulated annealing is used to find solutions for various situations. The case where two supplementary numbers are drawn after the initial six winning numbers is also considered.     

Drug testing laws and employment injuries

Employer use of employee drugscreening procedures is widespread in the U.S. A state-by-state analysis of statutory law applicable to the drug testing issue is combined with state and industry data to isolate how drug testing laws affect workplace injury rates. Based on our data, injury rates are not statistically related to the state’s legal environment.     

The Boston Area Diary Study and the Moral Citizenship of Care

This paper describes the theoretical foundations, empirical findings, and practical and philosophical implications of the Boston Area Diary Study (BADS), a study of the caring behavior of 44 participants over one calendar year. In particular, the paper presents an identification theory of care and discusses how it shaped the conceptualization, collection, and analysis of the data in a year-long diary study of daily voluntary assistance. The findings from the BADS (1) theoretically confirm the identification theory of care; (2) methodologically capture how individuals perceive and carry out caring behavior as a unity; and (3rpar; empirically document the existence of a moral citizenship in America that is substantially more vigorous than is implied by the usual indicators of civic and political citizenship.     

Enabling a Powerful Marine and Offshore Decision-Support Solution Through Bayesian Network Technique

A powerful practical solution is by far the most desired output when making decisions under the realm of uncertainty on any safety-critical marine or offshore units and their systems. With data and information typically being obtained incrementally, adopting Bayesian network (BN) is shown to realistically deal with the random uncertainties while at the same time making risk assessments easier to build and to check. A well-matched methodology is proposed to formalize the reasoning in which the focal mechanism of inference processing relies on the sound Bayes's rule/theorem that permits the logic. Expanding one or more influencing nodal parameters with decision and utility node(s) also yields an influence diagram (ID). BN and ID feasibility is shown in a marine evacuation scenario and that of authorized vessels to floating, production, storage, and offloading collision, developed via a commercial computer tool. Sensitivity analysis and validation of the produced results are also presented.     

Log-linear modelling of data from matched case-control studies

A log-linear modelling approach is proposed for dealing with polytomous, unordered exposure variables in case-control epidemiological studies with matched pairs. Hypotheses concerning epidemiological parameters are shown to be expressable in terms of log-linear models for the expected frequencies of the case-by-control square concordance table representation of the matched data; relevant maximum likelihood estimates and goodness-of-fit statistics are presented. Possible extensions to account for ordered categorical risk factors and multiple controls are illustrated, and comparisons with previous work are discussed. Finally, the possibility of implementing the proposed method with GLIM is illustrated within the context of a data set already analyzed by other authors.     

Sources of family violence

This paper suggests a direction for the exploration of the causes of family violence. Explanatory models of family violence were considered in this regard, with the recommendation that a multi-determined model should be considered to ensure the most accurate explanation. We suggest that family violence will be best understood and prevented or alleviated, if a model is used that considers the interaction of structural violence and the personality features of all the family members.