Processing Culture: Cognition,Ontology, and the News Media1

This article discusses how people cognitively engage with the contemporary, mainstream, U.S. news in ways that yield ontological services. It treats the news as both a system of signs and a cultural object, and assesses how people mentally intercept, negotiate, and use the news in ways that foster a sense of control and order over an unstable and unpredictable social world (i.e., “ontological security”) ( Giddens, 1991 ). Based on interview data, it argues that through criticisms, consumption orientations, lay theorizing, and “ignorant othering,” all orbiting and drawing from the contemporary, mainstream, U.S. news, people cognitively sift through and simplify a broader frenzied social environment. In so doing, they are able to mentally establish at minimum a sense of rudimentary understanding and at most a sense of trusted certainty of what is real and true of the world outside their immediate social circles.     

A short-term, quasi-experimental evaluation of D.A.R.E.'s revised elementary school curriculum

We present the short-term results of a quasi-experimental evaluation of the revised D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) curriculum. Study outcomes examined were D.A.R.E.'s effects on three substances, namely students' lifetime and 30-day use of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana, as well as their school attendance and academic performance. The study comprised students in 17 urban schools, each of which served as its own control; 5th graders in the 2006-2007 school year constituted the comparison group (n = 1490), and those enrolled as 5th graders in the 2007-2008 school year constituted the intervention group (n= 1450). We found no intervention effect on students' substance use for any of the substance use outcomes assessed. We did find that students were more likely to attend school on days they received D.A.R.E. lessons and that students in the intervention group were more likely to have been suspended. Study findings provide little support for the implementation and dissemination of the revised D.A.R.E. curriculum.     

The Value of Environmental Information without Control of Subsequent Decisions

The standard value of information approach of decision analysis assumes that the individual or agency that collects the information is also in control of the subsequent decisions based on the information. We refer to this situation as the “value of information with control (VOI‐C).” This paradigm leads to powerful results, for example, that the value of information cannot be negative and that it is zero, when the information cannot change subsequent decisions. In many real world situations, however, the agency collecting the information is different from the one that makes the decision on the basis of that information. For example, an environmental research group may contemplate to fund a study that can affect an environmental policy decision that is made by a regulatory organization. In this two‐agency formulation, the information‐acquiring agency has to decide, whether an investment in research is worthwhile, while not being in control of the subsequent decision. We refer to this situation as “value of information without control (VOI‐NC).” In this article, we present a framework for the VOI‐NC and illustrate it with an example of a specific problem of determining the value of a research program on the health effects of power‐frequency electromagnetic fields. We first compare the VOI‐C approach with the VOI‐NC approach. We show that the VOI‐NC can be negative, but that with high‐quality research (low probabilities of errors of type I and II) it is positive. We also demonstrate, both in the example and in more general mathematical terms, that the VOI‐NC for environmental studies breaks down into a sum of the VOI‐NC due to the possible reduction of environmental impacts and the VOI‐NC due to the reduction of policy costs, with each component being positive for low environmental impacts and high‐quality research. Interesting results include that the environmental and cost components of the VOI‐NC move in opposite directions as a function of the probability of environmental impacts and that VOI‐NC can be positive, even though the probability of environmental impacts is zero or one.     

A delayed demand supply chain: Incentives for upstream players

We study a decentralized supply chain where only delayed market demand information is available for making replenishment decisions. The impact of this delay is quantified in a serially linked two-level supply chain where each player exploits the order-up-to replenishment policy. The market demand is assumed to be a first-order autoregressive process. It is shown that the first level of the supply chain benefits from shorter time delays; however, the benefit for the second level is quite minor at best and can sometimes even be (counter-intuitively) detrimental. We conclude that the second level does not have a strong incentive to reduce the time delays in the shared market demand information.     

Modeling Population Immunity to Support Efforts to End the Transmission of Live Polioviruses

Eradication of wild poliovirus (WPV) types 1 and 3, prevention and cessation of circulating vaccine‐derived polioviruses, and achievement and maintenance of a world free of paralytic polio cases requires active risk management by focusing on population immunity and coordinated cessation of oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV). We suggest the need for a complementary and different conceptual approach to achieve eradication compared to the current case‐based approach using surveillance for acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) to identify symptomatic poliovirus infections. Specifically, we describe a modeling approach to characterize overall population immunity to poliovirus transmission. The approach deals with the realities that exposure to live polioviruses (e.g., WPV, OPV) and/or vaccination with inactivated poliovirus vaccine provides protection from paralytic polio (i.e., disease), but does not eliminate the potential for reinfection or asymptomatic participation in poliovirus transmission, which may increase with time because of waning immunity. The AFP surveillance system provides evidence of symptomatic poliovirus infections detected, which indicate immunity gaps after outbreaks occur, and this system represents an appropriate focus for controlling disease outbreaks. We describe a conceptual dynamic model to characterize population immunity to poliovirus transmission that helps identify risks created by immunity gaps before outbreaks occur, which provides an opportunity for national and global policymakers to manage the risk of poliovirus and prevent outbreaks before they occur. We suggest that dynamically modeling risk represents an essential tool as the number of cases approaches zero.     

Review and Assessment of Poliovirus Immunity and Transmission: Synthesis of Knowledge Gaps and Identification of Research Needs

With the intensifying global efforts to eradicate wild polioviruses, policymakers face complex decisions related to achieving eradication and managing posteradication risks. These decisions and the expanding use of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) trigger renewed interest in poliovirus immunity, particularly the role of mucosal immunity in the transmission of polioviruses. Sustained high population immunity to poliovirus transmission represents a key prerequisite to eradication, but poliovirus immunity and transmission remain poorly understood despite decades of studies. In April 2010, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention convened an international group of experts on poliovirus immunology and virology to review the literature relevant for modeling poliovirus transmission, develop a consensus about related uncertainties, and identify research needs. This article synthesizes the quantitative assessments and research needs identified during the process. Limitations in the evidence from oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) challenge studies and other relevant data led to differences in expert assessments, indicating the need for additional data, particularly in several priority areas for research: (1) the ability of IPV‐induced immunity to prevent or reduce excretion and affect transmission, (2) the impact of waning immunity on the probability and extent of poliovirus excretion, (3) the relationship between the concentration of poliovirus excreted and infectiousness to others in different settings, and (4) the relative role of fecal‐oral versus oropharyngeal transmission. This assessment of current knowledge supports the immediate conduct of additional studies to address the gaps.     

Preeradication Vaccine Policy Options for Poliovirus Infection and Disease Control

With the circulation of wild poliovirus (WPV) types 1 and 3 continuing more than a decade after the original goal of eradicating all three types of WPVs by 2000, policymakers consider many immunization options as they strive to stop transmission in the remaining endemic and outbreak areas and prevent reintroductions of live polioviruses into nonendemic areas. While polio vaccination choices may appear simple, our analysis of current options shows remarkable complexity. We offer important context for current and future polio vaccine decisions and policy analyses by developing decision trees that clearly identify potential options currently used by countries as they evaluate national polio vaccine choices. Based on a comprehensive review of the literature we (1) identify the current vaccination options that national health leaders consider for polio vaccination, (2) characterize current practices and factors that appear to influence national and international choices, and (3) assess the evidence of vaccine effectiveness considering sources of variability between countries and uncertainties associated with limitations of the data. With low numbers of cases occurring globally, the management of polio risks might seem like a relatively low priority, but stopping live poliovirus circulation requires making proactive and intentional choices to manage population immunity in the remaining endemic areas and to prevent reestablishment in nonendemic areas. Our analysis shows remarkable variability in the current national polio vaccine product choices and schedules, with combination vaccine options containing inactivated poliovirus vaccine and different formulations of oral poliovirus vaccine making choices increasingly difficult for national health leaders.     

A Note on the Aggregation of Event Probabilities

In this article, multiple forecasts given as probabilities of events are aggregated using two assumptions: calibration and conditional independence. The forecasts are treated as data and the aggregation is based on Bayes's theorem. A measure of discrimination is given and the behavior of the aggregated posterior probability is examined as the number of forecasters grows without bound. The work is motivated by recent research efforts employing large numbers of individual forecasts.     

Multi-site aggregate production planning with multiple objectives: A goal programming approach

This paper addresses the problem of aggregate production planning (APP) for a multinational lingerie company in Hong Kong. The multi-site production planning problem considers the production loading plans among manufacturing factories subject to certain restrictions, such as production import/export quotas imposed by regulatory requirements of different nations, the use of manufacturing factories/locations with regard to customers' preferences, as well as production capacity, workforce level, storage space and resource conditions of the factories. In this paper, a multi-objective model is developed to solve the production planning problems, in which the profit is maximized but production penalties resulting from going over/under quotas and the change in workforce level are minimized. To enhance the practical implications of the proposed model, different managerial production loading plans are evaluated according to changes in future policy and situation. Numerical results demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of the developed model.