从生成史略论《水浒传》的主题

本文从《水浒传》生成史的角度,将《水浒传》的成书和作品主题的嬗变联系起来,论证梁山故事在流传过程中不断出现的传奇色彩和归正倾向。它是封建社会全社会被压迫者与有志之士的反抗与追求的“交响曲”,是对封建社会后期现实的一种“全景式的综合反映”。     

Managing Uncertainty through Profit Sharing Contracts from Medieval Italy to Silicon Valley

Organizational innovation is essential to economic development. But, the way successful societies have organized new ventures has been remarkably similar in both past and present. The commenda organizations of medieval Italy shared many characteristics with modern startups that are financed by venture capital. Profit share contracts; limited liability and periodic reevaluations are cases in point. Agency contracts in both types of ventures are designed to absorb the high uncertainty inherent to these enterprises through risk sharing. Uncertainty prohibits a unique ex ante ranking order of investment projects and prompts investors to look for hidden human capital. Equity finance is better equipped to even out unexpected losses and gains that are inherent to uncertainty than debt finance.     

语言多属性决策的目标规划模型

研究了只有部分属性权重信息、属性值以语言变量或不确定语言变量形式给出且决策者对方案有偏好信息的语言多属性决策问题.给出了语言变量和不确定语言变量的运算法则,以及不确定语言变量之间比较的可能度公式,定义了语言变量的偏离度概念.在属性值以1)语言变量和2)不确定语言变量,这两种形式给出的情形下,分别建立了一个基于偏离度的目标规划模型,并通过求解这两种模型分别获得相应的属性权重.然后对于情形1),利用语言加权平均(LWA)算子,对语言决策信息进行加权集成,继而对方案进行排序和择优;对于情形2),利用不确定语言加权平均(ULWA)算子,对不确定语言决策信息进行加权集成,并利用可能度公式构造可能度矩阵(互补判断矩阵),继而利用互补判断矩阵排序公式对决策方案进行排序和择优.最后进行了实例分析.     

Persuasion: An experimental study of team decision making

This paper studies persuasion within teams and investigates why teams commonly take, by some measures, better decisions than individuals. The analysis is based on data from electronic communication within teams of two players. Thanks to the experimental design, changes of an individual’s decision can be attributed to the content of the team partner’s message. The results for knowledge-related and strategic problems show that individuals’ decisions change upon receiving more informative and sophisticated arguments and remain the same otherwise. This individual behavior is an essential part of the information aggregation in teams and can explain the advantage of teams in decision making and in games.     

Mixed integer (0–1) fractional programming for decision support in paper production industry

This paper presents an effective and efficient method for solving a special class of mixed integer fractional programming (FP) problems. We take a classical reformulation approach for continuous FP as a starting point and extend it for solving a more general class of mixed integer (0–1) fractional programming problems.To stress the practical relevance of the research we focus on a real-life application in paper production industry. The constantly advancing physical knowledge of large scale pulp and paper production did have a substantial impact on an existing DSS in which mixed integer (0–1) fractional programming is introduced. We show that the motivation to solve a real-life fractional programming problem can provide the basis for a new approach in a new context that has an added value of its own, even outside the given application area. We describe the main characteristics of the DSS, the necessity to develop a non-iterative solution procedure and demonstrate both the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach from practical data sets.     

Children in immediate danger: Emergency removals in Finnish and Irish child protection

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of front‐line practices regarding emergency removals in Finnish and Irish child protection. It examines how the responses to children's immediate danger are framed by legislation and how front‐line practitioners assess the child's situation and make emergency placement decisions. The data consist of interviews with 16 Irish and 33 Finnish social workers. These child welfare protection systems respond differently to a task that appears to be similar. The Irish team‐based practice rests on the social workers' shared assessment of the child's needs, and the formal decision is made by the courts (or police officers at night‐time); and the Finnish practice involves only one single social worker who makes both the assessment and the removal decision. The Irish system is tightly time regulated, whereas the Finnish system provides a more flexible time frame. Both approaches put a lot of stress on social workers' practice, which also includes creative workarounds (e.g., “planned emergency removals” in Finland). Future research will need to explore these features from the point of view of a child's right to protection.     

Incorporating balance concerns in resource allocation decisions: A bi-criteria modelling approach

We consider resource allocation problems where inputs are allocated to different entities such as activities, projects or departments. In such problems a common goal is achieving a desired balance in the allocation over different categories of the entities. We propose a bi-criteria framework for trading balance off against efficiency. We define and categorise indicators based on balance distribution and propose formulations and solution algorithms which provide insight into the balance-efficiency tradeoff. We illustrate our models by applying them to the data of a portfolio selection problem faced by a science funding agency and to randomly generated large-sized problem instances to demonstrate computational feasibility.     

Perceptions of Randomized Security Schedules

Security of infrastructure is a major concern. Traditional security schedules are unable to provide omnipresent coverage; consequently, adversaries can exploit predictable vulnerabilities to their advantage. Randomized security schedules, which randomly deploy security measures, overcome these limitations, but public perceptions of such schedules have not been examined. In this experiment, participants were asked to make a choice between attending a venue that employed a traditional (i.e., search everyone) or a random (i.e., a probability of being searched) security schedule. The absolute probability of detecting contraband was manipulated (i.e., 1/10, 1/4, 1/2) but equivalent between the two schedule types. In general, participants were indifferent to either security schedule, regardless of the probability of detection. The randomized schedule was deemed more convenient, but the traditional schedule was considered fairer and safer. There were no differences between traditional and random schedule in terms of perceived effectiveness or deterrence. Policy implications for the implementation and utilization of randomized schedules are discussed.     

Soft Classification Trees

An extension of soft classification trees to multinomial outcomes is presented. Estimates of the method's predictive accuracy, as well as average tree size and tree depths, are systematically compared to those of the conventional Classification and Regression Tree (CART) approach by the means of simulations. A similar comparison is performed on real datasets. Results point to an advantage in favor of the soft tree.     

Decision‐Making in Paediatric Rehabilitation: Exploring Professionals' and Children's Views on Decision‐Making Involvement

The article explores the distinction that professionals make between difficult and less difficult decisions in paediatric rehabilitation interventions. This distinction is explored by looking at the involvement of two children in decisions regarding paediatric rehabilitation interventions. The article argues for a clinical practice where children's experiences are extensively used to improve practice and to accommodate the child's right to participate in medical decisions concerning their own body and life. The different ways the children and the professional describe their experiences provide an avenue for a discussion on how medical reasoning can curtail children's involvement in decisions.