Leader–follower equilibria to examine investment decisions in grid resilience-enhancing measures

Large-area, long-duration power outages are increasingly common in the United States, and cost the economy billions of dollars each year. Building a strategy to enhance grid resilience requires an understanding of the optimal mix of preventive and corrective actions, the inefficiencies that arise when self-interested parties make resilience investment decisions, and the conditions under which regulators may facilitate the realization of efficient market outcomes. We develop a bi-level model to examine the mix of preventive and corrective measures that enhances grid resilience to a severe storm. The model represents a Stackelberg game between a regulated utility (leader) that may harden distribution feeders before a long-duration outage and/or deploy restoration crews after the disruption, and utility customers with varying preferences for reliable power (followers) who may invest in backup generators. We show that the regulator's denial of cost recovery for the utility's preventive expenditures, coupled with the misalignment between private objectives and social welfare maximization, yields significant inefficiencies in the resilience investment mix. Allowing cost recovery for a higher share of the utility's capital expenditures in preventive measures, extending the time horizon associated with damage cost recovery, and adopting a storm restoration compensation mechanism shift the realized market outcome toward the efficient solution. If about one-fifth of preventive resilience investments is approved by regulators, requiring utilities to pay a compensation of $365 per customer for a 3-day outage (about seven times the level of compensation currently offered by US utilities) provides significant incentives toward more efficient preventive resilience investments.     

Research on Health Status and Health Care of the Elderly in China

The issue of health status and care for the elderly in urban and rural areas is becoming increasingly serious in the rapid context of population aging in China.The paper analyzed the health status of urban and rural elderly in China in the two-week morbidity rate,prevalence rate of chronic diseases, disability status,self-rated health and healthy life expectancy of the elderly using the data from the 2006 Sampling Survey on the Status of Urban/ Rural Aged Population in China,the Fourth National Health Service Survey and the 2006 Second China National Sample Survey on Disability,to explore the current provision of sources of care for the elderly and try to make some policy recommendations about to improve the health and care for the elderly population facing the crisis of population aging.     

Internet Communication Versus Face-to-face Interaction in Quality of Life

This study seeks to understand the role of the Internet in quality of life (QoL). Specifically, it examines the question of whether Internet communication serves, like face-to-face interactions, to enhance quality of life. It is hypothesized that the use of the Internet for interpersonal communication can improve quality of life among Internet users, just like face-to-face communication in everyday life. Sample survey data were collected in four Chinese cities, namely Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing, and Wuhan, to serve as replicates to test the hypothesis. The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) of Diener (1984) was used to measure quality of life in the four cities. It was found that contrary to our expectation, Internet communication cannot predict quality of life while face-to-face communication with friends and family members can. The result was the same across the four Chinese cities. Possible reasons for this finding are examined and discussed.     

Systems,features, figures: Approaches to language and class vs. language and race

This paper contrasts different approaches taken in research on language and race vs. language and class. It looks at the timescales, units of analysis, and phenomena that have drawn scholars’ attention, and considers how each subfield approaches the study of language and inequality. ??? ??? ???? ??, ??? ???? ??? ? ???? ??? ??? ??? ???? ??·?? ??. ??? ??????? ??? ???? ????, ???? ??? ???? ? ?? ??? ???? ???? ??? ??? ???? ??? ?? ??? ????? ??? ???? ? ??? ????.     

Research in economics and management in France: A bibliometric study using the h-index

This paper presents an application of new measures of research excellence, namely Hirsch's index (2005) and derived indexes. It gives a ranking of French departments of Economics, departments of Management and Business schools based on the quality of the academic environment offered by these institutions using these measures. It argues that, since the bulk of the research is done by a very small number of researchers, a greater concentration of the best researchers seems necessary for France to achieve international visibility in Economics and Management.     

Are children in foster care in better psychological health than children in institutions? What factors influence the outcome?

The aim of this study was to compare the psychological health of children in foster care with that of children in institutional care. Social workers were asked to assess the psychological health of the children as well as several other criteria on the basis of an analysis grid. Our sample consisted of 568 children placed in foster care and 661 children placed in institutions. Our results show that children in care who lived longer with their birth parents have a lower psychological health. Furthermore, the psychological health of children in residential care is lower than children placed in foster families. As children in institution are placed later than children in foster families, this may partially explain the lower psychological health of children in residential care. As a result, children in residential care have experienced more abuse and neglect and witnessed more domestic violence than children in foster care. In addition, children in residential care have more poor-quality contacts with their birth parents than children in foster family. These contacts negatively influence their psychological health. Finally, the factor that most influences the psychological health of children in care is the quality of the relationship with the people who care for them on a daily basis. Again, children placed in foster families have better-quality relationships with their foster families than children placed in institutions.     

On some moving-average processes with exponentially distributed innovations

Summary In this paper we discusse the stationary sequence of random variables which are formed from an independent identically distributed sequence, according to the moving-average model of ordern. Some properties of the process are considered. The joint bivariate exponential distribution is given, as well as the distribution of the sum.     

也论广告英语

英语作为一种国际语言广泛使用，英文广告在当今商品社会中随处可见，对人们的生活产生了一定影响。收集整理部分国外英文广告，并进而讨论广告英语的一些特点，对广告英语的了解和研究有一定帮助作用。     

ON THE ANALYSIS AND APPLICATION OF MEASURES OF LINKAGE DISEQUILIBRIUM

The maximum likelihood, jackknife and bootstrap estimators of linkage disequilibrium, a measure of association in population genetics, are derived and compared. It is found that for point estimation, the resampling methods generate almost identical mean square errors. The maximum likelihood estimator could have bigger or smaller mean square errors depending on the parameters of the underlying population. However the bootstrap confidence interval is superior to the other two as the length of the intervals is shorter or the probability that the 95% confidence intervals include the true parameter is closer to 0.95. Although the standardised measure of linkage disequilibrium has a range from -1 to 1 regardless of marginal frequencies, it is shown that the distribution of this standardised measure is still not allele frequency independent under the multinomial sampling scheme.