A Tiered Framework for Risk‐Relevant Characterization and Ranking of Chemical Exposures: Applications to the National Children's Study (NCS)

A challenge for large‐scale environmental health investigations such as the National Children's Study (NCS), is characterizing exposures to multiple, co‐occurring chemical agents with varying spatiotemporal concentrations and consequences modulated by biochemical, physiological, behavioral, socioeconomic, and environmental factors. Such investigations can benefit from systematic retrieval, analysis, and integration of diverse extant information on both contaminant patterns and exposure‐relevant factors. This requires development, evaluation, and deployment of informatics methods that support flexible access and analysis of multiattribute data across multiple spatiotemporal scales. A new “Tiered Exposure Ranking” (TiER) framework, developed to support various aspects of risk‐relevant exposure characterization, is described here, with examples demonstrating its application to the NCS. TiER utilizes advances in informatics computational methods, extant database content and availability, and integrative environmental/exposure/biological modeling to support both “discovery‐driven” and “hypothesis‐driven” analyses. “Tier 1” applications focus on “exposomic” pattern recognition for extracting information from multidimensional data sets, whereas second and higher tier applications utilize mechanistic models to develop risk‐relevant exposure metrics for populations and individuals. In this article, “tier 1” applications of TiER explore identification of potentially causative associations among risk factors, for prioritizing further studies, by considering publicly available demographic/socioeconomic, behavioral, and environmental data in relation to two health endpoints (preterm birth and low birth weight). A “tier 2” application develops estimates of pollutant mixture inhalation exposure indices for NCS counties, formulated to support risk characterization for these endpoints. Applications of TiER demonstrate the feasibility of developing risk‐relevant exposure characterizations for pollutants using extant environmental and demographic/socioeconomic data.     

COWORDS: a probabilistic model for multiple word clouds

Word clouds constitute one of the most popular statistical tools for the visual analysis of text documents because they provide users with a quick and intuitive understanding of the content. Despite their popularity for visualizing single documents, word clouds are not appropriate to compare different text documents. Independently generating word clouds for each document leads to configurations where the same word is typically located in widely different positions. This makes it very difficult to compare two or more word clouds. This paper introduces COWORDS, a new stochastic algorithm to create multiple word clouds, including one for each document. The shared words in multiple documents are placed in the same position in all clouds. Similar documents produce similar and compact clouds, making it easier to simultaneously compare and interpret several word clouds. The algorithm is based on a probability distribution in which the most probable configurations are those with a desirable visual aspect, such as a low value for the total distance between the words in all clouds. The algorithm output is a set of word clouds that are randomly selected from this probability distribution. The selection procedure uses a Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation method. We present several examples that illustrate the performance and visual results that can be obtained by our algorithm.     

Risk Perception and Information Processing: The Development and Validation of a Questionnaire to Assess Self‐Reported Information Processing

The role of information processing in understanding people's responses to risk information has recently received substantial attention. One limitation of this research concerns the unavailability of a validated questionnaire of information processing. This article presents two studies in which we describe the development and validation of the Information‐Processing Questionnaire to meet that need. Study 1 describes the development and initial validation of the questionnaire. Participants were randomized to either a systematic processing or a heuristic processing condition after which they completed a manipulation check and the initial 15‐item questionnaire and again two weeks later. The questionnaire was subjected to factor reliability and validity analyses on both measurement times for purposes of cross‐validation of the results. A two‐factor solution was observed representing a systematic processing and a heuristic processing subscale. The resulting scale showed good reliability and validity, with the systematic condition scoring significantly higher on the systematic subscale and the heuristic processing condition significantly higher on the heuristic subscale. Study 2 sought to further validate the questionnaire in a field study. Results of the second study corresponded with those of Study 1 and provided further evidence of the validity of the Information‐Processing Questionnaire. The availability of this information‐processing scale will be a valuable asset for future research and may provide researchers with new research opportunities.     

The effect of cognitive diversity on the illusion of control bias in strategic decisions: An experimental investigation

By integrating cognitive diversity into debiasing literature, this paper contributes towards opening the black box of executive judgment. Based on information processing theory we investigate the role of cognitive diversity in strategic decision making. We apply a vignette-based experimental research design to examine the effect of cognitive diversity in teams on decision maker's illusion of control. The results of these experiments provide evidence for a positive influence of high cognitive diversity for debiasing judgment while similarly indicating no such effect for groups with low cognitive diversity. These findings suggest that group composition aspects can play an important role for improving judgment in decision making teams and open promising new avenues for studying debiasing in behavioral strategy research.     

Theme and Variations——Based on the Structural Analysis of the Evolution of China＇s Youth Values in 20 Years

社会结构的变迁，必然导致人的文化价值观念结构的变迁。初创于20世纪90年代中国社会主义市场经济，带来中国社会结构的巨大变动，同时也是青年价值观变化最快、最深刻的时段。该文聚焦于“后一代”青年特性融入社会结构变迁这一背景，分析其时代特性以及社会结构的嵌入性。近20年来，青年在接受社会文化和价值观影响的同时，也在不断地挑战主流文化及其价值观，创造其新的文化和价值观。因此，主导价值观被青年所认同与接受的同时，也将更多吸纳青年价值观中具有活性的成分．从而使社会主流意识因为得到青年文化的反哺而走向年轻。     

Corporate statement serving as information subsidies in the product-harm crisis

This study explores the attributes of a crisis statement which influence its utility as an information subsidy in the process of product-harm crises in China. Through investigating and analyzing 92 statements released in times of product-harm crises, the results show that the form in which the statement is released, and the length of the statement have significant effects on whether the statement will be quoted fully or partially by the news media.     

顺应论视域下的企业网站翻译问题探析

根据Verschueren的语言顺应理论,翻译是译者对原文和译文的语言结构以及语境关系不断顺应的动态过程,但在企业网站翻译中,未对译文做出动态顺应的例子比比皆是,影响了网站的宣传推介作用。以平湖服装企业的网站英译为例,从语言结构和语境关系两个方面分析网站英译存在的问题,并提出相应的解决方法。     

An assessment of GRAI Grids and their use in the Strathclyde Integration Method

The purpose of this paper is to present a critical assessment of GRAI Grids as a tool for improved manufacturing integration. GRAI Grids, a key component of the GRAI approach, form an integral part of the Strathclyde Integration Method SIM for manufacturing integration. The contribution of the paper is thus to provide a 'third party' view of the effectiveness of GRAI Grids as a modelling tool. The paper presents a brief overview of the GRAI approach, concentrating particularly on the Grids, and an overview of SIM, showing how GRAI Grids are used. The main section of the paper presents an assessment and critique of GRAI Grids. Several benefits and limitations of the Grid as used in SIM and some suggestions for extensions are presented. The paper concludes that the use of the GRAI Grid, within a methodology, provides a unique insight into the behaviour and design of manufacturing information systems and that those who criticize the technique perhaps do so from a lack of awareness of its concepts, principles and advantages.     

王岱舆著作的思想结构

研究王岱舆著作的思想结构,必然要涉及到他的《正教真诠》、《清真大学》和《希真正答》之间的关系,涉及到这三本著作的内容及其表述形式。只有这样,才能了解他的整个著作的思想结构,进而有可能从整体上对他的思想作深入、系统的分析和探讨。 一、王岱舆的著作 20世纪80年代,王岱舆的《正教真诠》、《清真大学》和《希真正答》由余振贵点校、宁夏人民出版社结集出版。该合刊本是目前比较流行的版本。书后,以白寿彝的《王岱舆传》和金吉堂的《王岱舆阿衡传》为附录。本文拟依据该合刊本展开相关的讨论。其中,     

Effect of Inventory Information Discrepancy in a Drop‐Shipping Supply Chain

This article investigates the impact of information discrepancy between a drop‐shipper and an online retailer on the drop‐shipping supply chain performance. The inventory information misalignment between them contributes to the failure of order fulfillment and demand satisfaction, and hence the associated penalties are incurred. In this article, we first analyze the penalties of ignoring such information discrepancy on both the drop‐shipper and the online retailer. We then assess the impact of information discrepancy on both parties when the drop‐shipper understands the existence of the information discrepancy but is not able to eliminate the errors. The numerical experiments indicate that both parties can have significant amount of the percentage cost reductions if the information discrepancy can be eliminated, and the potential savings are substantial especially when the errors have large variability. Furthermore, we observe that the online retailer is more vulnerable to information discrepancy than the drop‐shipper, and the drop‐shipper is likely to suffer from the online retailer's underestimation of the physical inventory level more than the problem of its overestimation. Moreover, even if eliminating errors is not possible, both parties could still benefit from taking the possibility of errors into consideration in decision making.