The impact of emigration on national development in the Arab region: the case of the Yemen Arab Republic

"The focus of this article is the impact of emigration on national development in labor sending countries experiencing wide-scale emigration, the main contention being that, due to the characteristics of contemporary labor movements among Arab countries, there obtains a contradiction between short term benefits and long term adverse effects. The article briefly defines development, then presents empirical evidence from the Yemen Arab Republic of the negative impact of labor emigration."     

An innovative approach to selecting an executive director

As a guide for how to select a new executive director, a family agency adopted the search committee process from higher education. The approach included clarifying agency goals and the director's qualifications, a board-staff screening, and interviews held jointly with public representatives before final board selection.     

On the limiting properties of social indicators

Characteristics of the population and economic measures that constitute traditional social indicators are compared with more recent “quality of life” measures to demonstrate that social indicators are always value statements at the policy level. The possibility of alternative perspectives is illustrated. It is suggested that an awareness of the assumptions implicit in any given indicator is as important as the data they provide.     

PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERMINANTS OF BOUNDED RATIONALITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR DECISION-MAKING STRATEGIES

In this paper the implications of cognitive strain for decision-making effectiveness are explored. Literature concerning the psychological processes of decisionmakers which underlie the operation of cognitive strain and which predispose them to the effects of cognitive strain, is reviewed. Next, the impact of cognitive strain on narrowly constraining or “bounding” rational decision-making is examined, and the choice strategies of satisficing and incrementalizing are criticized as failing to broaden the bounds of rational decision-making. Finally, elements of an eclectic choice strategy designed to assist decision-makers handle the informational demands of complex decision problems are discussed.     

马克思、恩格斯和列宁的正义观(下)

凯·尼尔森是分析学派马克思主义的成员之一,也是西方"左翼"平等主义的主要代表。这篇文章是他的专著《马克思主义与道德观:道德,意识形态和历史唯物主义》中第四章的节选。这篇文章紧扣马克思主义原著,以《哥达纲领批判》为基点,从马克思主义发展史的角度,梳理和阐释了马克思、恩格斯、列宁的正义观,不失为当代国外马克思主义领域一篇较为本真的阐发马克思主义正义观的力作。这篇文章有助于国内学者深化理解马克思主义经典作家的政治哲学思想,也有助于我们了解和学习西方马克思主义理论家的文本解读方法和思路,对于我们构建中国特色社会主义正义理论具有理论借鉴意义。     

Designing and integrating composite networks for monitoring multivariate gaussian pollution fields

Networks of ambient monitoring stations are used to monitor environmental pollution fields such as those for acid rain and air pollution. Such stations provide regular measurements of pollutant concentrations. The networks are established for a variety of purposes at various times so often several stations measuring different subsets of pollutant concentrations can be found in compact geographical regions. The problem of statistically combining these disparate information sources into a single 'network' then arises. Capitalizing on the efficiencies so achieved can then lead to the secondary problem of extending this network. The subject of this paper is a set of 31 air pollution monitoring stations in southern Ontario. Each of these regularly measures a particular subset of ionic sulphate, sulphite, nitrite and ozone. However, this subset varies from station to station. For example only two stations measure all four. Some measure just one. We describe a Bayesian framework for integrating the measurements of these stations to yield a spatial predictive distribution for unmonitored sites and unmeasured concentrations at existing stations. Furthermore we show how this network can be extended by using an entropy maximization criterion. The methods assume that the multivariate response field being measured has a joint Gaussian distribution conditional on its mean and covariance function. A conjugate prior is used for these parameters, some of its hyperparameters being fitted empirically.