Threshold decisions: how social workers prioritize referrals of child concern

This paper examines local authority social workers' decision‐making when considering referrals of children, where the concerns are on the margin of child protection procedures. In doing so, it describes the findings of a qualitative research study undertaken in the policy context of attempts to ‘refocus’ social work practice in the late 1990s and early twenty‐first century. Data collection involved interviews with social workers and parents in 23 cases. Conclusions are that referrals were evaluated on the basis of five key factors, specificity, severity, risk, parental accountability and corroboration, the use of which determined whether an initial assessment or an investigation of alleged abuse took place. The analysis builds on previous work in the child protection field, but demonstrates how the application of these factors differs between cases of child concern and cases of child protection. Policy implications concern the complexity of decision‐making in the uncertain context of limited referral information and it is proposed that the simplistic notion of a continuum of abuse is now outdated. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Physiologically Based Liver Modeling and Risk Assessment

Because of the inherent complexity of biological systems, there is often a choice between a number of apparently equally applicable physiologically based models to describe uptake and metabolism processes in toxicology or risk assessment. These models may fit the particular data sets of interest equally well, but may give quite different parameter estimates or predictions under different (extrapolated) conditions. Such competing models can be discriminated by a number of methods, including potential refutation by means of strategic experiments, and their ability to suitably incorporate all relevant physiological processes. For illustration, three currently used models for steady-state hepatic elimination--the venous equilibration model, the parallel tube model, and the distributed sinusoidal perfusion model--are reviewed and compared with particular reference to their application in the area of risk assessment. The ability of each of the models to describe and incorporate such physiological processes as protein binding, precursor-metabolite relations and hepatic zones of elimination, capillary recruitment, capillary heterogeneity, and intrahepatic shunting is discussed. Differences between the models in hepatic parameter estimation, extrapolation to different conditions, and interspecies scaling are discussed, and criteria for choosing one model over the others are presented. In this case, the distributed model provides the most general framework for describing physiological processes taking place in the liver, and has so far not been experimentally refuted, as have the other two models. These simpler models may, however, provide useful bounds on parameter estimates and on extrapolations and risk assessments.     

人才测评及其功能和发展

人才测评的发展是经济建设和社会发展的必然要求 ,为此本文讨论了人才测评的功能、特性以及今后的发展方向 ,明确了人才测评在整体性人力资源开发和管理中的重要意义     

网络文学与文学本质

网络文学的出现再次激起我们对“文学本质”的追问。网络文学文本的生存形式从一个全新的层面给我们提供了一个较全面关照和认识文学 (及其传统 )的视角 ,只有以开放的心态和宽容的态度面对文学现实本身 ,我们才能更清楚地看清文学自身的逻辑 ,从而更接近和理解文学的本质。     

Ranking Nuclear and Radiological Terrorism Scenarios: The Italian Case

A quantitative criterion for ranking the different scenarios of nuclear and radiological terrorism has been developed. The aim of the model is not to predict terroristic events but only to indicate which scenario has the higher utility from the point of view of a terroristic organization in terms of balance between factors favoring and discouraging the attack, respectively. All these factors were quantified according to a scoring system that takes into account the logarithmic relationship between perceptions and stimuli. The criterion was applied to several scenarios, each of which was modeled in a simple but not trivial way in order to estimate the expected damage in terms of probable life losses from both radiative and nonradiative effects. The outcome from the ranking method indicates that the attractive scenario appears to be the detonation of a low yield improvised nuclear device in the metropolitan area of a major city.     

PSC朗读评分中的语音缺陷问题

在2002年12月《普通话水平测试大纲》修订工作征求意见稿中,我们发现它增加了对短文朗读中语音缺陷扣分的规定。短文朗读中的"语音缺陷"在《普通话水平测试大纲》现行评分标准中一直处于被忽视的地位。笔者同意征求意见稿的观点,对短文朗读中存在的"语音缺陷"应该扣分。短文朗读中存在的"语音缺陷"不能归入语音错误,也不能把它们划入"方言语调"的范围,应该把它们并入"方言色彩"的测试中。为此,笔者提出了短文朗读里语音缺陷的评分办法。     

浅析格式合同及其解释、效力

随着市场经济的发展 ,格式合同应用越来越普遍 ,随之带来的是法律对其规定的日益完善。文章通过对格式合同历史发展过程的简要分析 ,阐述了对格式合同的解释存在歧义时 ,应作不利于提供格式合同一方的解释 ,格式合同的条款无效的效力也限于提供合同的一方 ,另一方不承担相应的无效责任     

民法本位研究述论

民法本位是民法的根本指归。近现代民法本位未变,即都是权利本位、个人本位。个人本位比权利本位更为本原,称其为民为本位,则更确切。可在广义社会法下的经济法等和其它行政法中确定社会本位乃至国家本位。民法本位是民法的出发点,民法价值是民法的归结点,均蕴含并体现在民法基本原则中。     

伦理规范与道德价值

伦理学力图从生活的层面来揭示生活的目的、生活的价值和生活的意义。因此，伦理学不是一种伦理观点，不是从伦理的角度去看问题，而要从道德的角度去看问题，从生活中揭示价值。人的概念必须从人道目的论来约定和定义。人需要按照人性的规律去生活，而不是按照规范去生活，只有这样才能彰显人的价值和生活意义。     

Bootstrap Estimation of Benchmark Doses and Confidence Limits with Clustered Quantal Data

The benchmark dose (BMD) is an exposure level that would induce a small risk increase (BMR level) above the background. The BMD approach to deriving a reference dose for risk assessment of noncancer effects is advantageous in that the estimate of BMD is not restricted to experimental doses and utilizes most available dose-response information. To quantify statistical uncertainty of a BMD estimate, we often calculate and report its lower confidence limit (i.e., BMDL), and may even consider it as a more conservative alternative to BMD itself. Computation of BMDL may involve normal confidence limits to BMD in conjunction with the delta method. Therefore, factors, such as small sample size and nonlinearity in model parameters, can affect the performance of the delta method BMDL, and alternative methods are useful. In this article, we propose a bootstrap method to estimate BMDL utilizing a scheme that consists of a resampling of residuals after model fitting and a one-step formula for parameter estimation. We illustrate the method with clustered binary data from developmental toxicity experiments. Our analysis shows that with moderately elevated dose-response data, the distribution of BMD estimator tends to be left-skewed and bootstrap BMDL s are smaller than the delta method BMDL s on average, hence quantifying risk more conservatively. Statistically, the bootstrap BMDL quantifies the uncertainty of the true BMD more honestly than the delta method BMDL as its coverage probability is closer to the nominal level than that of delta method BMDL. We find that BMD and BMDL estimates are generally insensitive to model choices provided that the models fit the data comparably well near the region of BMD. Our analysis also suggests that, in the presence of a significant and moderately strong dose-response relationship, the developmental toxicity experiments under the standard protocol support dose-response assessment at 5% BMR for BMD and 95% confidence level for BMDL.