Determining Uses and Gratifications for the Internet

Uses and gratifications (U&G) is a media use paradigm from mass communications research that guides the assessment of consumer motivations for media usage and access. It has been used previously in research and decision making related to the promotion of emerging radio and television media. Recent adaptations of U&G research to the Internet are incomplete and have not identified important new Internet‐specific gratifications. This paper empirically derives dimensions of consumer Internet use and usage gratifications among customers of a prominent Internet Service Provider (ISP). Results describe three key dimensions related to consumer use of the Internet, including process and content gratifications as previously found in studies of television, as well as an entirely new social gratification that is unique to Internet use. All three dimensions of gratification are relevant to managing the Internet as a commercial medium, and measures developed from the gratification profiles identified here can serve as trait‐valid scales in future Internet and e‐commerce research.     

南方三岁以下幼儿汉语声调习得研究

基于一名长沙汉语幼儿的长期跟踪研究,旨在探讨南方三岁以下汉语幼儿何时掌握汉语四声调,其声调习得顺序以及声调发展的过程。结果表明：尽管该幼儿在两岁时区分汉语阳平和上声时存在部分困难,但她已经基本掌握了汉语四个声调,可较为准确地进行产出。随着年龄的增长,与母语接触相应增多,该幼儿产出的声调特征不断向母语靠近,体现了母语的影响。研究结果支持了早期交互假设,不支持独立假设。     

Agency and clientship in public encounters: co‐constructing ‘neediness’ and ‘worthiness’ in shelter placement meetings

This article seeks to develop our understanding of the agency of vulnerable groups who at first sight may not seem to have much agency in their lives. It explores the co‐constructed nature of agency in three Danish homeless shelters. Unlike earlier interview‐based studies, our research is based on naturalistic data drawn from 23 video‐recorded placement meetings. Using concepts from Goffman, we examine how versions of the neediness and worthiness of homeless people are negotiated verbally and bodily between staff and clients. We find that homeless people have to juggle two partly contradictory roles when they are given or take the roles of either a (active) citizen or a (passive) client. Clientship is actively negotiated by both parties and demonstrates the agency of homeless people: they can collaborate with (as clients) or challenge (as citizens) the staff’s attempts to formulate solutions to their troubles. We further examine how the professional ideology of client centredness affects the meeting between the two parties. However, we show that, like any discourse, client centredness has no intrinsic meaning and is played out by actors in very different ways. In work with the homeless, the discourse of client centredness is related to discourses of ‘neediness’, ‘worthiness’ and ‘value for money’ that define agency in different ways and make three different client positions available: the resolute client, the acquiescent client and the passive client.     

Testing interaction in some predator–prey populations

This paper deals with a testing problem for each of the interaction parameters of the Lotka–Volterra ordinary differential equations system~(ODE). In short, when the rates of birth and death are fixed, we would like to test if each interaction parameter is higher or lower than a fixed reference rate. We choose a statistical model where the actual population sizes are modelled as random perturbations of the solutions to this ODE. By assuming that the random perturbations follow correlated Ornstein–Uhlenbeck processes, we propose the uniformly most powerful test concerning each interaction parameter of the ODE and, we establish the asymptotic properties of the test. Further, we illustrate the suggested test on the Canadian mink–muskrat data set. This research has received the financial support from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and Institut des Sciences Mathématiques.     

董仲舒天人感应论的真理性

董仲舒哲学在 2 0世纪一直受到许多人的批判。董仲舒被认为是中国哲学史上的反面人物 ,是错误的也是唯心主义的思想家。本文从汉代的现实出发对董仲舒的思想进行详细分析 ,认为他的天人感应论是理论形式 ,实质内容却是针对现实的。屈民而伸君 ,是为了巩固统一的政权 ;屈君而伸天 ,是为了限制皇帝的权力。以历史唯物义观点来分析董仲舒的天人感应论 ,在汉代还是有一定的真理性 ,才会被当时的许多人认为是真理的     

Does unemployment increase suicide rates? The OECD panel evidence

Previous studies of whether unemployment increases suicide rates give mixed results. None of them controlled for an interaction between unemployment and income. This paper tests the hypothesis whether the relationship between unemployment rates and suicide rates vary according to the level of real per capita GDP. We use the cross-country panel fixed effects approach to exclude cross-sectional variations but exploit time-series ones. We support that higher income is associated with higher suicide rates. In particular, the evidence shows that the implied effect of unemployment on suicide rates is positive for countries with higher income. Actually, for countries with lower-income levels, there is a negative impact of unemployment on suicides.     

Expanded answers to bureaucratic questions: Negotiating access to public healthcare

This article analyzes expanded responses to statistical‐epidemiological questions at a mental health outpatient service at a public hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Bureaucratic questioning is a highly routine activity which supplies information to the biopolitical apparatus of the modern State. We understand that expanded answers are meaningful actions which not only serve individual, local tactics (such as raising personal concerns), but also index higher contextual levels. In this sense, resisting the constraints of a question may also imply resisting State‐defined policies of biopolitical classification and exclusion. We examine, from a discursive interactional point of view, 41 admission interviews held at the outpatient mental health care service. We observe four types of expanded answers which: (a) display competence in bureaucratic discourse; (b) move from the sphere of the public to the private; (c) deal with potential face‐threats; and (d) pre‐empt rejection. Although the former is actually an optimized way of collaboration with the biopolitical order, the latter three types can be seen as actions of resistance to classification, not only symbolically but also in material terms: resisting statistical criteria of exclusion allows clients to negotiate access to mental healthcare.     

语用能力与科学教育之和谐互动论——从马建忠的“规矩说”到孙中山的“津梁说”

马建忠、孙中山、蔡元培等名家都有丰富的言语作品存世,都有很强的语用能力,都有关于语言及其运用的学说思想,且都力倡科学教育并身体力行。作为某种意义上的元语言和对象语言,马建忠的"规矩说"、蔡元培的"媒介说"、孙中山的"津梁说",形成于1898年至1919年中国近现代社会历史转型的重要时期,在时间上大致顺接,在内容上互有牵连,分别着眼于语言及其运用的功能目的、关系、结果目标等方面,凸显了相关学说的科学精神、科学方法论和科学认知论意义,强化了语用过程的主体间性,表明并印证了语用能力与科学教育之和谐互动。语用能力与科学教育之和谐互动有助于民族复兴和国家富强。     

环境互动论——一种基于人行为的路径选择

人的发展和成熟,从来都是在内部环境与外部环境的互动中完成的。人自身的内部心理环境构成了人适应自然环境和社会环境的基础,而人适应环境的过程即是基于外部环境变迁造成的被动选择。从欧洲主权债务危机后欧洲民众的表现,到世界范围内新兴经济体面临的"通胀压力",其实质上已经超越了单边环境互动的过程。正是基于这样一种路径选择,危机中人的行为适应性,以及危机后人的行为选择性,成为环境变迁中必须持续关注的问题。     

从《汉书》看王莽的历史思想

《汉书》是我们所能看到的关于王莽的第一手资料,本文主要依据《汉书.王莽传》中的王莽的所作所为,结合时代背景总结出王莽具有根深蒂固的复古思想、＂十四代一循环＂的思想、大一统关照下的夷夏之辨以及天人感应的历史思想。种种迹象表明,王莽不仅仅把这些思想当作其谋权篡位的工具,更是他真心实意的信奉它们并将其作为执政的信条,而这些历史观不仅为王莽所独有,这也是其生活的西汉末期的时代背景,同时有着深刻的历史渊源以及深远的历史影响。