Implied Preference for Seismic Design Level and Earthquake Insurance

Seismic risk can be reduced by implementing newly developed seismic provisions in design codes. Furthermore, financial protection or enhanced utility and happiness for stakeholders could be gained through the purchase of earthquake insurance. If this is not so, there would be no market for such insurance. However, perceived benefit associated with insurance is not universally shared by stakeholders partly due to their diverse risk attitudes. This study investigates the implied seismic design preference with insurance options for decisionmakers of bounded rationality whose preferences could be adequately represented by the cumulative prospect theory (CPT). The investigation is focused on assessing the sensitivity of the implied seismic design preference with insurance options to model parameters of the CPT and to fair and unfair insurance arrangements. Numerical results suggest that human cognitive limitation and risk perception can affect the implied seismic design preference by the CPT significantly. The mandatory purchase of fair insurance will lead the implied seismic design preference to the optimum design level that is dictated by the minimum expected lifecycle cost rule. Unfair insurance decreases the expected gain as well as its associated variability, which is preferred by risk-averse decisionmakers. The obtained results of the implied preference for the combination of the seismic design level and insurance option suggest that property owners, financial institutions, and municipalities can take advantage of affordable insurance to establish successful seismic risk management strategies.     

构建沈阳自主创新科技投融资体系的途径选择

建立创新型城市离不开多元化、多渠道、多层次的科技投融资体系。通过有效的政策安排,不断完善科技投融资体系,对加快沈阳的发展,加速科技创新进程和科技成果转化具有重要意义。本文提出了沈阳自主创新亟待投融资体系的完善,着重分析了沈阳自主创新科技投融资体系的现状和存在的问题,提出了促进沈阳自主创新科技投融资体系完善的途径。     

论英语语言课程设计中的需求分析

界定需求要从目标和目的两个方面进行,这两个方面是我们发展测试、材料、教学活动、评价策略的基础。因此需求分析是语言课程建设不可分割的一部分。本文重点介绍了英语语言课程设计中需求分析的方法及步骤。目的在于强调需求分析的重要性,以及需求分析对于教师改进教学方法、提高教学效果、提高学生学习的主动性和积极性的重要意义。     

新世纪"模具设计与制造"专科专业课程体系改革的研究

文章从社会和科技的发展出发,对模具专业课程体系改革的相关问题进行了研究,拟定的改革方案已付诸实施,并已取得初步成果.     

中日文化差异与日语教学

中日两国一衣带水,相互毗邻,有着两千多年的友好交往历史。在语言文字方面两国人民互相学习,相互影响,有不少相同、相似之处。但其中也有一些看似相同,实际上已经出现差异并具有特色的词汇和习俗,弄清这些词汇和习俗差异对我们学习日语和同日本人交流大有益处。尤其是在日语教学中,把这些词汇与习俗的异同及时渗透给学生,把中日文化的对比融入日语语言教学中,既可大大地活跃课堂气氛,又可提高学生的积极性和交际水平、应用能力。     

Ethnic patterns in the phonetics of Montreal English

Most North American cities no longer display strong ethnic differentiation of speech within the European‐origin population. This is not true in the English‐speaking community of Montreal, Canada, where English is a minority language. Differences in the phonetic realization of vowels by Montrealers of Irish, Italian, and Jewish ethnic origin are investigated by means of acoustic analysis. A statistical analysis of ethnic differences in formant frequencies shows that ethnicity has a significant effect on several variables, particularly the phonetic position of /u:/ and /ou/ and the allophonic conditioning of /æ/ and /au/ before nasal consonants. The unusual tenacity of ethnophonetic variation in Montreal English is explained in light of the minority status of English, and the social and residential segregation of ethnic groups in distinct neighborhoods, which limits their exposure to speakers of Standard Canadian English who might otherwise serve as models for assimilation.     

A sociolinguistic application of Bakhtin's authoritative and internally persuasive discourse

Through the use of two central Bakhtinian concepts, authoritative and internally persuasive discourse (word), this paper examines the tension between the ideology of linguistic hegemony as a source of power in the Greek public sphere and the condition of language shift faced by the Albanian‐speaking communities of modern Greece. I argue here that a cautious application of these two notions, which are relevant to linguistic ideology, can reveal crucial aspects of two processes: that of subordination to and that of questioning of the dominant linguistic ideology by local Albanian‐speaking communities. Thus, in language shift contexts, it is possible that no simple relations obtain that place social agents in unquestionable and easily predictable positions. Such an approach proves useful for the sociolinguistic study of threatened language communities.     

ASSESSING CONGRUENCEAMONG DISTANCE MATRICES: SINGLE-MALT SCOTCH WHISKIES REVISITED

A test of congruence among distance matrices is described. It tests the hypothesis that several matrices, containing different types of variables about the same objects, are congruent with one another, so they can be used jointly in statistical analysis. Raw data tables are turned into similarity or distance matrices prior to testing; they can then be compared to data that naturally come in the form of distance matrices. The proposed test can be seen as a generalization of the Mantel test of matrix correspondence to any number of distance matrices. This paper shows that the new test has the correct rate of Type I error and good power. Power increases as the number of objects and the number of congruent data matrices increase; power is higher when the total number of matrices in the study is smaller. To illustrate the method, the proposed test is used to test the hypothesis that matrices representing different types of organoleptic variables (colour, nose, body, palate and finish) in single‐malt Scotch whiskies are congruent.     

Estimation of Hazard, Density and Survivor Functions for Randomly Censored Data

Maximum likelihood estimation and goodness-of-fit techniques are used within a competing risks framework to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of hazard, density, and survivor functions for randomly right-censored variables. Goodness-of- fit techniques are used to fit distributions to the crude lifetimes, which are used to obtain an estimate of the hazard function, which, in turn, is used to construct the survivor and density functions of the net lifetime of the variable of interest. If only one of the crude lifetimes can be adequately characterized by a parametric model, then semi-parametric estimates may be obtained using a maximum likelihood estimate of one crude lifetime and the empirical distribution function of the other. Simulation studies show that the survivor function estimates from crude lifetimes compare favourably with those given by the product-limit estimator when crude lifetimes are chosen correctly. Other advantages are discussed.     

小议英语无灵句及其翻译

无灵句是英语中一种很重要的句式结构，能否掌握无灵句的特点及其翻译方法直接影响到英语学习者的学习效果。本文主要概括了无灵句的特点及其分类，并且归纳出较为行之有效的翻译方法。