Protecting the paediatrician: responding to recrimination

Doctors involved in child abuse proceedings may be subjected to much blame and pressure because of their role as ‘messenger’. They frequently need assistance with complaints procedures, disciplinary proceedings, public inquiries, litigation, media problems and other threats to their professional integrity and reputation. The medical model of support which may be offered by the defence organizations has much to commend it to other workers in the field. The author is a medico-legal adviser at the Medical Defence Union, and was extensively involved in assisting doctors at the Cleveland and Orkney Inquiries. From this privileged position he surveys the various procedures which may be used by parents and others to challenge paediatricians, and sets out possible ways in which practical support may be given.     

The Media Abuse of Children. Jake's Progress from Demonic Icon to Restored Childhood Innocent

While scholarly analysis of child protection and the media has grown substantially during the 1990s (Aldridge, 1994; Franklin and Parton, 1991; Kitzinger and Skidmore, 1995), studies have ignored a crucial dimension which forms the focus for discussion here. We wish to suggest that media reporting of children and child abuse may itself constitute an abusive activity. Media presentations of children and childhood, since press coverage of the Bulger case in 1993, have assumed a distinctive and sinister guise which, we argue, fundamentally revises the previously held perception of children and childhood. We suggest that this new understanding of childhood is damaging to children and, because of the impact of such media presentations on the public mood and policy climate, harms their interests. The discussion is in three parts. First, newspaper reporting of the Bulger case is analysed to reveal how coverage challenged the idea of childhood as a period of innocence and replaced it with a perception of childhood as essentially ‘evil’. Second, the characterization of Jake, the central figure in Alan Bleasdale's recent television dramaJake's Progress, is analysed to serve as an illustrative exemplar of this new construction of childhood. Finally, we consider the possible messages conveyed by such presentations to perpetrators and victims of abuse.     

中国企业集团规模与效益关系探析

本文阐述了中国企业集团规模发展的特点和尚存在的主要问题,提出了优化企业集团规模与效益关系的实施对策。包括：确立规模扩张应以提高效益为目标的发展观、科学合理确定企业集团的适度规模、增强集团核心企业的竞争实力、集团企业应重点走专业化道路、通过联合与重组扩大企业集团的单体规模、注重发挥企业集团的聚集效率、构建有利于企业集团规模经济发展的外部环境。     

关于中国隐性养老金债务问题研究

隐性养老金债务(IPD)是中国养老金体系面临的主要问题。中国IPD来源于两个规定受益的养老金计划:现收现付制(PAYG)的社会统筹帐户和基金制(FUND)的个人帐户。受诸因素的综合影响,中国IPD规模达到5.5~9万亿;同时由于IPD属于政府、企业及个人的共同责任,故解决中国IDP问题是一项牵扯面广、持续时间长的系统工程,可采取削减规模、调整财政支出结构、资产债务互换、开征专项税、发行特种债券、建立储备基金、调整人口结构等多种经济和社会措施。     

On hysteretic vector autoregressive model with applications

This paper proposes a new hysteretic vector autoregressive (HVAR) model in which the regime switching may be delayed when the hysteresis variable lies in a hysteresis zone. We integrate an adapted multivariate Student-t distribution from amending the scale mixtures of normal distributions. This HVAR model allows for a higher degree of flexibility in the degrees of freedom for each time series. We use the proposed model to test for a causal relationship between any two target time series. Using posterior odds ratios, we overcome the limitations of the classical approach to multiple testing. Both simulated and real examples herein help illustrate the suggested methods. We apply the proposed HVAR model to investigate the causal relationship between the quarterly growth rates of gross domestic product of United Kingdom and United States. Moreover, we check the pairwise lagged dependence of daily PM2.5 levels in three districts of Taipei.     

Accurate computation of single and product moments of order statistics under progressive censoring

An accurate procedure is proposed to calculate approximate moments of progressive order statistics in the context of statistical inference for lifetime models. The study analyses the performance of power series expansion to approximate the moments for location and scale distributions with high precision and smaller deviations with respect to the exact values. A comparative analysis between exact and approximate methods is shown using some tables and figures. The different approximations are applied in two situations. First, we consider the problem of computing the large sample variance–covariance matrix of maximum likelihood estimators. We also use the approximations to obtain progressively censored sampling plans for log-normal distributed data. These problems illustrate that the presented procedure is highly useful to compute the moments with precision for numerous censoring patterns and, in many cases, is the only valid method because the exact calculation may not be applicable.