Modeling heteroscedastic age-period-cohort cancer data

The extent to which cancer will be a burden on the Canadian health-care system will be determined by future cancer rates and future population levels in the high-risk age groups. Parametric models of incidence and mortality rates for various cancers may be used to obtain medium-term forecasts of rates, which then can be used in conjunction with population projections to obtain forecasts of total incidence and mortality. Age-period-cohort cancer data often exhibit marked heteroscedasticity, which complicates the modeling of the data. Methods to allow for the effects of this heteroscedasticity on residual processes are developed and discussed in the context of modeling Canadian female breast-cancer incidence data.     

Order consolidation for hierarchical product lines

We consider the batch production of hierarchical product lines in raw material industry where the whole or parts of multiple customer orders may be consolidated and processed in the same batch if their product specifications are compatible. The objective of the problem is to find maximum possible number of batches completely filled up to their capacity. The compatibility relationship among product specifications is represented by a graph called the compatibility graph. If the compatibility graph is an arbitrary graph, the problem is proven to be NP-hard and belongs to Max SNP-hard class. We develop an optimum algorithm for an important subclass of the problem where the graph is a quasi-threshold graph which in fact is the case for producing hierarchical product lines that are often found in raw materials industry.     

Who is Appointed to What Position? The Politics of Appointment in Quangos of Korea

This study identifies the determinants of appointment of executives in quangos. Using data from 85 quangos in Korea over 15 years between 1993 and 2007, we investigate the degree to which various characteristics of organizational actors affect the choice of executives. Three organizational actors include presidents, sponsoring government departments, and the concerned quangos. Although results vary by executive position, the findings of the empirical analysis with multinomial probit and generalized linear mixed models support the idea that the appointment of quango executives is not the result of presidential choice but that of the interactions among the key organizational actors, with different incentives and resources, on the appointment. Compared to former bureaucrats, presidential allies are more likely to be appointed when presidents have more political support from the National Assembly and it is easier for insiders to be promoted as executives from larger and older quangos with clear legal origins.     

转轨经济的表现和挑战

20世纪 80年代末期 ,前苏联政治和经济体系的崩溃最终演变成一场大幅度经济滑坡 ,随之而来的是从中央计划经济到市场经济的转轨遭遇重重困难。转轨经济体的表现辜负了人们的期望 ,原因在于 :与转轨相关的经济问题被大大低估 ;政策制定者作出的决策充满疑问。然而 ,即便如此 ,转轨经济体在许多方面仍取得了进步。本文将对转轨国家在转轨头 1 2年实行的战略和结果进行评价 ,概述它们面临的主要挑战。在举例时 ,主要关注 5个中欧国家———捷克、匈牙利、波兰、斯洛伐克、斯洛文尼亚———以及俄罗斯的经历 ,同时参考其他三组国家的状况 ,它们…     

Employee privacy and the “theory of the firm”

Bruce Kobayashi and Larry Ribstein apply the “theory of the firm” to worker privacy with specific application to the employer’s ability to monitor employee performance and behavior. They take the theory to drive toward a much reduced role for law in favor of regulation by contract. This essay unpacks their theory. It faults the theory for its failure to come to grips with the possibility of monopsony in the labor market, its failure to appreciate the “public goods” nature of privacy policies and the related assumption that the employer’s ability to adopt and apply privacyinvasive policies is invariably a product of a consensual armslength bargain. This essay is revised and expanded from the author’s Introduction to the 2003 Supplement to Matthew Finkin, Privacy in Employment Law (2d ed. 2003) 2003 Supplement.     

Aetiology of anorexia nervosa in Hong Kong: a social work qualitative inquiry

This paper reports the results of a qualitative inquiry into the aetiology of anorexia nervosa in Hong Kong. These results are part of our main research project about family treatment and families with a daughter suffering from anorexia nervosa. This present qualitative study adopts a multiple case study approach (n = 8) and employs a multiple‐source data collection method, involving pre‐ and post‐family treatment interviews, clinical observations of the participants during the treatment sessions and home visits, as well as detailed field notes. The findings indicate that there are biological, psychological, socio‐cultural and familial interpretations of the aetiology of anorexia nervosa. This study challenges the dominant discourse on anorexia nervosa in Hong Kong, which states that the root of the disease lies in a desire for slenderness and beauty, and suggests instead that the aetiology of anorexia nervosa can be discovered only if approached from the systems level. Implications for social work practice are highlighted.     

Interdisciplinary research at the Urban–Rural interface: The West ga project

As human populations increase, ecological and social issues become inextricably linked to a greater degree. Solutions to complex social–ecological problems can only be derived through the use of integrated research that can account for the interplay of many factors across traditional discipline lines. We are using such an integrated research to clarify relationships among socioeconomic drivers, ecological effects, and social and policy feedbacks associated with urban development of forested landscapes. Our approach is goal oriented and interdisciplinary in nature and involves a team composed of ecologists, anthropologists, and economists who exchange ideas and information across disciplinary lines. The team and approach has evolved through many of the barriers to interdisciplinary research that have been identified by other authors. Our goal is to develop a predictive capability in order to anticipate ecological and social implications of urban development on natural resources in the southeastern United States. Our integrated model and subsequent papers in this special issue are presented.     

Penalized likelihood regression: General formulation and efficient approximation

The authors consider a formulation of penalized likelihood regression that is sufficiently general to cover canonical and noncanonical links for exponential families as well as accelerated life models with censored survival data. They present an asymptotic analysis of convergence rates to justify a simple approach to the lower‐dimensional approximation of the estimates. Such an approximation allows for much faster numerical calculation, paving the way to the development of algorithms that scale well with large data sets.