Social,Relational and Network Determinants of Unprotected Anal Sex and HIV Testing Among Men Who Have Sex with Men in Beirut,Lebanon

Objectives: We examined the social, relational and network determinants of condom use and HIV testing among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Beirut. Methods: Two-hundred thirteen men were recruited via respondent driven sampling and administered a survey. Results: Sixty-four percent reported unprotected anal intercourse (UAI), including 23% who had UAI with unknown HIV status partners (UAIU); 62% of participants had tested for HIV. In multivariate analysis, being in a relationship was associated with UAI and HIV testing; lower condom self-efficacy was associated with UAIU and HIV testing; gay discrimination was associated with UAIU; MSM disclosure was associated with UAI, UAIU and HIV testing; and network centralization was associated with HIV testing. Conclusions: Multi-level social factors influence sexual health in MSM.     

Measuring community mobilization in the Seattle Minority Youth Health Project.

This article assesses the validity and reliability of the approach used to measure community mobilization in the Seattle Minority Youth Health Project (MY Health), a neighborhood-based program to prevent drug use, violence, teen pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Two constructs were measured: neighborhood cooperation in solving problems, and sense of pride and identification with the neighborhood. The convergent validity of the measurement approach was assessed by comparing several independent measures of community mobilization generated from surveys of key neighborhood leaders, youth, and parents. For the neighborhood cooperation construct, correlations were uniformly positive across measures from different surveys and statistically significant about a quarter of the time. The correlations for the neighborhood pride construct were weaker and generally not statistically significant. Interrater reliability was low for all of the surveys, possibly reflecting varying ideas about what community mobilization meant among survey respondents.     

An Expert-Based Framework for Probabilistic National Population Projections: The Example of Austria

The traditional way of dealing with uncertainty in population projections through high and low variants is unsatisfactory because it remains unclear what range of uncertainty these alternative paths are assumed to cover. But probabilistic approaches have not yet found their way into official population projections. This paper proposes an expert-based probabilistic approach that seems to meet important criteria for successful application to national and international projections: 1) it provides significant advantages to current practice, 2) it presents an evolution of current practice rather than a discontinuity, 3) it is scientifically sound, and 4) it is applicable to all countries.In a recent Nature article (Lutz et al., 1997) this method was applied to 13 world regions. This paper discusses the applicability to national projections by directly taking the alternative assumptions defined by the Austrian Statistical Office. Sensitivity analyses that resolve some methodological questions about the approach are also presented.     

The Production of Several Items in a Single Facility with Linearly Changing Demand Rates

In this paper we extend the ELSP model to allow for linearly changing demand rates over a fixed planning horizon. This extension of the ELSP research provides a model that can be used in coordinating the production and marketing planning activities in a firm. The model allows the user to evaluate the impact of changes in product demand on production costs and customer service. We solve the model using a standard nonlinear programming package (MINOS) and show through examples based on actual production data how the model can be used to support coordinated production and marketing planning.     

Comparing relative effects of education and economic resources on infant mortality in developing countries

Research on the social determinants of health has often considered education and economic resources as separate indicators of socioeconomic status. From a policy perspective, however, it is important to understand the relative strength of the effect of these social factors on health outcomes, particularly in developing countries. It is also important to examine not only the impact of education and economic resources of individuals, but also whether community and country levels of these factors affect health outcomes. This analysis uses multilevel regression models to assess the relative effects of education and economic resources on infant mortality at the family, community, and country level using data from demographic and Health Surveys in 43 low-and lower-middle-income countries. We find strong effects for both per capita gross national income and completed secondary education at the country level, but a greater impact of education within families and communities.     

Die symbolische Macht der Individualisierung und der Kampf um die Kritik

In the article we highlight an aspect of the crisis of criticism which we call ??speechlessness of criticism??. The heterogeneous criticism cannot be bundled up to a critical story any more. A common language with explicatory pictures and grammars is missing. Two explanations are offered for the ??speechlessness?? of criticism: the changes of the normative power of justification orders and the individualisation process. Both developments are a symbolic power which can explain the speechlessness of the criticism of capitalism at least partially. After the sketch of the symbolic power of the legitimation order of project and individualisation, starting points for a renaissance of criticism are analysed. Finally we explore the relevance of a reflexive combination of critical sociology and sociology of criticism for the concept of a critical sociology of criticism.     

Robust variable selection with application to quality of life research

A large database containing socioeconomic data from 60 communities in Austria and Germany has been built, stemming from 18,000 citizens’ responses to a survey, together with data from official statistical institutes about these communities. This paper describes a procedure for extracting a small set of explanatory variables to explain response variables such as the cognition of quality of life. For better interpretability, the set of explanatory variables needs to be very small and the dependencies among the selected variables need to be low. Due to possible inhomogeneities within the data set, it is further required that the solution is robust to outliers and deviating points. In order to achieve these goals, a robust model selection method, combined with a strategy to reduce the number of selected predictor variables to a necessary minimum, is developed. In addition, this context-sensitive method is applied to obtain responsible factors describing quality of life in communities.     

Activation,Public Employment Services and their Clients: The Role of Social Class in a Continental Welfare State

This article fills a gap in the existing literature by investigating how public employment service (PES) staff actually deal with their clients under a continental regime of activation. The results reported here are based on interviews both with PES staff and their unemployed clients in Germany. We argue that due to its Bismarckian origins as an insurance‐based system of ‘unemployment protection’, Germany's system of unemployment compensation is attractive not only for the marginalized, but also for core workers. As a result, PES staff deal with clients from very heterogeneous class backgrounds. We demonstrate that social class is a significant factor in client outcomes, and that earlier research has perhaps overemphasized the role of frontline staff as ‘street‐level bureaucrats’. While staff do have considerable power, the result of the encounters between the administration and clients also depends on the capabilities of the clients, which, in turn, are strongly related to social class.     

On- and offline detection of structural breaks in thermal spraying processes

We investigate and develop methods for structural break detection, considering time series from thermal spraying process monitoring. Since engineers induce technical malfunctions during the processes, the time series exhibit structural breaks at known time points, giving us valuable information to conduct the investigations. First, we consider a recently developed robust online (also real-time) filtering (i.e. smoothing) procedure that comprises a test for local linearity. This test rejects when jumps and trend changes are present, so that it can also be useful to detect such structural breaks online. Second, based on the filtering procedure we develop a robust method for the online detection of ongoing trends. We investigate these two methods as to the online detection of structural breaks by simulations and applications to the time series from the manipulated spraying processes. Third, we consider a recently developed fluctuation test for constant variances that can be applied offline, i.e. after the whole time series has been observed, to control the spraying results. Since this test is not reliable when jumps are present in the time series, we suggest data transformation based on filtering and demonstrate that this transformation makes the test applicable.