Social Antecedents of Medical Fraud and Over-Servicing: What Makes A Doctor Criminal?

Medical fraud and overservicing are estimated to cost the Australian community between $130 and $200 million per annum, a figure far greater than the national cost of burglary and almost the same as the total property loss from all conventional crime. An examination of the social antecedents of medical fraud and overservicing suggests that the predisposition of some doctors to engage in these practices occurs because of the following: (1) medical training and professional socialization that orientate student doctors away from altruistic health issues towards narrower self-interested professional concerns; (2) career expectations of a high pattern of material consumption that are often frustrated by an increasingly competitive medical market place; and (3) professional medical organizations that lobby for national health policies which reflect the mercenary self-interest of doctors rather than the health interest of the nation.     

Notebooks,B.F. Skinner A Referenced Index of Entries Relevant to Verbal Behavior

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior -     

A sociolinguistic application of Bakhtin's authoritative and internally persuasive discourse

Through the use of two central Bakhtinian concepts, authoritative and internally persuasive discourse (word), this paper examines the tension between the ideology of linguistic hegemony as a source of power in the Greek public sphere and the condition of language shift faced by the Albanian‐speaking communities of modern Greece. I argue here that a cautious application of these two notions, which are relevant to linguistic ideology, can reveal crucial aspects of two processes: that of subordination to and that of questioning of the dominant linguistic ideology by local Albanian‐speaking communities. Thus, in language shift contexts, it is possible that no simple relations obtain that place social agents in unquestionable and easily predictable positions. Such an approach proves useful for the sociolinguistic study of threatened language communities.     

Quadratic estimators of covariance components in a multivariate mixed linear model

It is known that the Henderson Method III (Biometrics 9:226–252, 1953) is of special interest for the mixed linear models because the estimators of the variance components are unaffected by the parameters of the fixed factor (or factors). This article deals with generalizations and minor extensions of the results obtained for the univariate linear models. A MANOVA mixed model is presented in a convenient form and the covariance components estimators are given on finite dimensional linear spaces. The results use both the usual parametric representations and the coordinate-free approach of Kruskal (Ann Math Statist 39:70–75, 1968) and Eaton (Ann Math Statist 41:528–538, 1970). The normal equations are generalized and it is given a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of quadratic unbiased estimators for covariance components in the considered model.     

Quantifying uncertainty in the biospheric carbon flux for England and Wales

Summary.  A crucial issue in the current global warming debate is the effect of vegetation and soils on carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations in the atmosphere. Vegetation can extract CO₂ through photosynthesis, but respiration, decay of soil organic matter and disturbance effects such as fire return it to the atmosphere. The balance of these processes is the net carbon flux. To estimate the biospheric carbon flux for England and Wales, we address the statistical problem of inference for the sum of multiple outputs from a complex deterministic computer code whose input parameters are uncertain. The code is a process model which simulates the carbon dynamics of vegetation and soils, including the amount of carbon that is stored as a result of photosynthesis and the amount that is returned to the atmosphere through respiration. The aggregation of outputs corresponding to multiple sites and types of vegetation in a region gives an estimate of the total carbon flux for that region over a period of time. Expert prior opinions are elicited for marginal uncertainty about the relevant input parameters and for correlations of inputs between sites. A Gaussian process model is used to build emulators of the multiple code outputs and Bayesian uncertainty analysis is then used to propagate uncertainty in the input parameters through to uncertainty on the aggregated output. Numerical results are presented for England and Wales in the year 2000. It is estimated that vegetation and soils in England and Wales constituted a net sink of 7.55 Mt C (1 Mt C = 10¹² g of carbon) in 2000, with standard deviation 0.56 Mt C resulting from the sources of uncertainty that are considered.     

论奥斯古德对昆明高峣社区的人类学研究

1938年夏天,美国年轻学者科尼利尔斯·奥斯古德为了履行与燕京大学的合作计划,不远万里来到滇池西岸一个名不见经传的小村庄调查.1961年,他开启尘封的笔记本,整理旧资料,补充新文献,完成了<旧中国的农村生活:对云南高峣的社区研究>.70年过去,重温科尼利尔斯·奥斯古德的研究历程,我们仍会从中获得许多有益的启示.