Mandatory occupational welfare: Severance pay as an unemployment compensation instrument

This study focuses on the conceptual and empirical development of severance pay (SP)/redundancy pay schemes established through centralized collective agreements (in Nordic countries) and legislation for unemployment compensation. It argues that these “mandatory” occupational welfare benefits have been neglected in social policy debates due to the ambiguity in their conceptualization, overemphasis on their cost implications, and the nonrecognition of their redistributive effects. The study offers quantitative indicators to analyse SPsapos; redistributive structure (coverage, generosity, and benefit equality) during the Global Recession in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, and Sweden. The findings demonstrate that SP schemes possess distinctive elements in Southern European, Continental European, Anglo-Saxon, and Nordic clusters. The indicators are also used to analyse the interplay between these schemes and unemployment insurance/assistance in these clusters.     

Estimation of sex‐specific survival with uncertainty in sex assessment

In monomorphic species, determination of sex from behavior is prone to errors. The authors develop capture‐recapture survival models that account for uncertainty in the assessment of sex. They examine parameter redundancy for four basic models with constant or time‐dependent survival and encounter probabilities. They further develop a more refined and more appropriate model for an Audouin's gull data set where four distinct behavioral clues have been used. They examine how useful it is to incorporate the least reliable of the clues and the genetic determination of sex available for only a handful of individuals. They finally discuss the implications of their findings for the design of field studies.     

SOME RESULTS ON REVERSED HAZARD RATE ORDERING

Recently, the reversed hazard rate (RHR) function, defined as the ratio of the density to the distribution function, has become a topic of interest having applications in actuarial sciences, forensic studies and similar other fields. Here we establish results with respect to RHR ordering between the exponentiated random variables. We also address the ordering results between component redundancy and system redundancy. Both the cases of matching spares and non-matching spares are discussed. In case of matching spares, a sufficient condition has been given for component redundancy to be superior to the system redundancy with respect to the reversed hazard rate ordering for any coherent system.     

Construct redundancy in leader behaviors: A review and agenda for the future

Leadership remains a popular and heavily researched area in the social sciences. Such popularity has led to a proliferation of new constructs within the leadership domain. Here, we argue that such construct proliferation without pruning is unhealthy and violates the principle of parsimony. Our purpose was to examine construct redundancy via a comprehensive review of task-oriented, relational, passive, and inspirational leader behaviors as well as values-based and moral leadership behaviors. Our findings, as indexed via meta-analytic correlations, reveal that construct redundancy remains problematic for the leadership literature. In addition, many of the values-based and moral behavior models correlated heavily with constructs traditionally examined as outcome variables (e.g., trust, LMX, justice). Implications for future research are discussed in regards to construct redundancy and how to avoid endogeneity bias in primary studies in the leadership literature.     

遗传规划研究与应用中的若干问题

简要介绍了遗传规划的基本内容,结合具体例子论述了遗传规划成功应用的实际领域的特征,指出研究与应用遗传规划时常见的两个问题,并从理论上给出了相应的对策,以期提高遗传规划的效率     

翻译与信息控制

要保证译文的质量,就必须对翻译过程中的信息进行有效的控制。从语篇、语境层面对信息进行宏观上的控制,并对冗余信息和缺省信息进行微观上的删减增补,能有效地进行信息控制。     

A simulated annealing algorithm for system cost minimization subject to reliability constraints

A simulated annealing algorithm is presented that finds the minimum cost redundancy allocation subject to meeting a minimal reliability requirement for a coherent system of components. It is assumed that components are independent of one another, and that the form of the nominal system reliability function is available for input to the algorithm     

Variable selection and interpretation in canonical correlation analysis

The canonical variates in canonical correlation analysis are often interpreted by looking at the weights or loadings of the variables in each canonical variate and effectively ignoring those variables whose weights or loadings are small. It is shown that such a procedure can be misleading. The related problem of selecting a subset of the original variables which preserves the information in the most important canonical variates is also examined. Because of different possible definitions of ‘the information in canonical variates’, any such subset selection needs very careful consideration.     

Dynamic changes in numerical acuity in 4-month-old infants

Preverbal infants represent the approximate numerosity of visual and auditory arrays: By 6 months old, they reliably discriminate eight dots or tones from 16 (a 1:2 ratio), but not eight from 12 (a 2:3 ratio). The precision of this approximate number sense improves gradually over childhood and into adulthood. However, less is known about numerical abilities in younger infants, and in particular, whether there is developmental change in the number sense in the first half year of life. Here, in four experiments, we measured numerical precision in 4-month-old infants (N = 128) using a visual habituation task comparable to that in studies of older infants. We found that 4-month-olds exhibited poorer numerical discrimination than the 6-month-olds tested in previous studies, dishabituating to a 1:4 change in numerical ratio, but not a 1:3 change. Like older infants, 4-month-olds’ numerical precision improved when they were provided with redundant visual and auditory input; when both visual and auditory information were present, 4-month-olds discriminated a 1:3 but not a 1:2 ratio. These results suggest that Approximate Number System precision develops in early infancy and may be sensitive to intersensory redundancy as early as four months of age.