A Didactic Approach Emphasising the Social Habitat as an Attempt to Meet Growing Social Disintegration: teaching in classes with youth of conspicuous behaviour using aesthetic and cultural means of communication

The life conflicts of pupils with behavioural disorders can be examined through their pictures. Conclusions can be drawn not only with regards to the psychological effects of art therapy, but also regarding a didactic orientated at life-circumstances. The pictures drawn by these pupils can give impulses for further aesthetic processes and become the basis for reflection and changes in behaviour. Environment-orientated didactics open the way to an active, but symbolic confrontation with manifest social conflicts. Teachers have to open their classrooms to the actual subcultural subjects and practices of their pupils. The pursuit of existential problems and the effort to find solutions can prepare the ground for new factual learning. In reference to social-philosophic theories, the culture-critical contents of these pictures should also be questioned. The images produced at the edge of society very often are pictures of a torn world.     

Honesty in intra-organizational reporting

In this experimental study we analyze the trade-off between the subjects’ preference for wealth on the one hand and their preference for honesty on the other hand. The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of communication medium on reporting behavior. We want to know whether situational cues, such as the communication method—digital (via computer) vs. hard-copy (via paper and pencil) matter, while considering deception. Furthermore, we are interested in the relationship between the social value orientation (SVO) and the reporting behavior. While the experimental evidence shows that participants in both treatments have a preference for truthful reporting and they avoid major lies, there are also remarkable differences between the treatments which we attribute to the reporting medium: computer treatment CT versus paper-and-pencil treatment PPT. Agents are willing to report more honestly via a hard-copy medium than via a digital medium. It seems like participants perceive the digital report more confidential and anonymous than the hard-copy report, and that is why they tend to misrepresent in the CT rather than in the PPT. Further, we found that the SVO influences reporting behavior.     

Assessment of Inhalation Exposures and Potential Health Risks to the General Population that Resulted from the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers

In the days following the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers on September 11, 2001 (9/11), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiated numerous air monitoring activities to better understand the ongoing impact of emissions from that disaster. Using these data, EPA conducted an inhalation exposure and human health risk assessment to the general population. This assessment does not address exposures and potential impacts that could have occurred to rescue workers, firefighters, and other site workers, nor does it address exposures that could have occurred in the indoor environment. Contaminants evaluated include particulate matter (PM), metals, polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, asbestos, volatile organic compounds, particle-bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, silica, and synthetic vitreous fibers (SVFs). This evaluation yielded three principal findings. (1) Persons exposed to extremely high levels of ambient PM and its components, SVFs, and other contaminants during the collapse of the WTC towers, and for several hours afterward, were likely to be at risk for acute and potentially chronic respiratory effects. (2) Available data suggest that contaminant concentrations within and near ground zero (GZ) remained significantly elevated above background levels for a few days after 9/11. Because only limited data on these critical few days were available, exposures and potential health impacts could not be evaluated with certainty for this time period. (3) Except for inhalation exposures that may have occurred on 9/11 and a few days afterward, the ambient air concentration data suggest that persons in the general population were unlikely to suffer short-term or long-term adverse health effects caused by inhalation exposures. While this analysis by EPA evaluated the potential for health impacts based on measured air concentrations, epidemiological studies conducted by organizations other than EPA have attempted to identify actual impacts. Such studies have identified respiratory effects in worker and general populations, and developmental effects in newborns whose mothers were near GZ on 9/11 or shortly thereafter. While researchers are not able to identify specific times and even exactly which contaminants are the cause of these effects, they have nonetheless concluded that exposure to WTC contaminants (and/or maternal stress, in the case of developmental effects) resulted in these effects, and have identified the time period including 9/11 itself and the days and few weeks afterward as a period of most concern based on high concentrations of key pollutants in the air and dust.     

Arbeitsmarkt und Statistik: Chancen und Herausforderungen für die empirische Arbeitsmarktforschung

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Monitoring correlated processes with binomial marginals

Few approaches for monitoring autocorrelated attribute data have been proposed in the literature. If the marginal process distribution is binomial, then the binomial AR(1) model as a realistic and well-interpretable process model may be adequate. Based on known and newly derived statistical properties of this model, we shall develop approaches to monitor a binomial AR(1) process, and investigate their performance in a simulation study. A case study demonstrates the applicability of the binomial AR(1) model and of the proposed control charts to problems from statistical process control.     

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Ohne Zusammenfassung