Dose-Response Assessment of Airborne Methyl Isothiocyanate (MITC) Following a Metam Sodium Spill

A tank car derailment in northern California in 1991 spilled metam sodium into the Sacramento River, and released its breakdown product, methyl isothiocyanate (MITC), into the air. This paper describes the risk evaluation process used. Over 240 individuals reported symptoms such as eye and throat irritation, dizziness, and shortness of breath. Reference exposure levels (RELs) for 1 hr were developed for MITC and compared to exposure concentrations. Ocular irritation in cats was the most sensitive endpoint reported. The no observed adverse effect level (NOAEL), divided by an uncertainty factor (UF) of 100, produced an REL of 0.5 ppb of MITC in air to prevent discomfort. An REL to prevent disability was estimated to be 40 ppb. An REL to prevent life-threatening injury was estimated to be 150 ppb. Measured MITC levels ranged from 0.2-37 ppb and estimated peak levels ranged from 140-1600 ppb. The usefulness of RELs for emergency planning is discussed.     

翻译中分析的对象与分析的参照物

奈达把翻译的过程分为分析 -转化 -重组三个步骤。本文通过区分及分析翻译过程中分析的对象与分析的参照物 ,论证了在绝大部分情况下 ,整个语篇不是也不必是译者分析的对象 ,它只起语境的作用 ,从而证明了翻译中“句本位”的合理性     

兼并效应与产品覆盖策略

在行业寡头垄断竞争中, 引入产品覆盖策略竞争的变量, 把企业兼并时的竞争假定为两 个阶段两种变量: 先是产品覆盖策略竞争, 后是产品产量竞争, 并设计了一个描述这种兼并竞 争的模型. 在此基础上, 分析了参与和未参与兼并的企业的产品覆盖策略变化对各企业利润和 价格的影响, 在一定程度上解释了兼并悖论. 我们赞成适度的兼并控制政策, 但在经济萧条时 期可适当放宽.     

Social mobility and personal satisfaction: evidence from ten countries

This paper examines survey data relating class mobility to satisfaction and dissatisfaction with seven different domains of everyday life among nationally representative samples of men and women living in ten industrialized nations. The evidence is set against competing pessimistic and optimistic accounts of the mobility experience found in earlier literature. Results show that individuals who move from working-class origins to middle-class destinations are no more likely to be systematically satisfied or dissatisfied with life than are the socially immobile or even those downwardly mobile from advantaged backgrounds into the working class. Indeed, in all nations, the overall association between class experience and satisfaction with life is both weak and uneven across the different life-domains. The study also serves to illustrate an important principle of research methodology more generally.     

Residential Building Codes,Affordability, and Health Protection: A Risk-Tradeoff Approach

Residential building codes intended to promote health and safety may produce unintended countervailing risks by adding to the cost of construction. Higher construction costs increase the price of new homes and may increase health and safety risks through income and stock effects. The income effect arises because households that purchase a new home have less income remaining for spending on other goods that contribute to health and safety. The stock effect arises because suppression of new-home construction leads to slower replacement of less safe housing units. These countervailing risks are not presently considered in code debates. We demonstrate the feasibility of estimating the approximate magnitude of countervailing risks by combining the income effect with three relatively well understood and significant home-health risks. We estimate that a code change that increases the nationwide cost of constructing and maintaining homes by $150 (0.1% of the average cost to build a single-family home) would induce offsetting risks yielding between 2 and 60 premature fatalities or, including morbidity effects, between 20 and 800 lost quality-adjusted life years (both discounted at 3%) each year the code provision remains in effect. To provide a net health benefit, the code change would need to reduce risk by at least this amount. Future research should refine these estimates, incorporate quantitative uncertainty analysis, and apply a full risk-tradeoff approach to real-world case studies of proposed code changes.     

Some practical issues in the evaluation of heterogeneous labour market programmes by matching methods

Summary.  Recently several studies have analysed active labour market policies by using a recently proposed matching estimator for multiple programmes. Since there is only very limited practical experience with this estimator, this paper checks its sensitivity with respect to issues that are of practical importance in this kind of evaluation study. The estimator turns out to be fairly robust to several features that concern its implementation. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates that the matching approach per se is no panacea for solving all the problems of evaluation studies, but that its success depends critically on the information that is available in the data. Finally, a comparison with a bootstrap distribution provides some justification for using a simplified approximation of the distribution of the estimator that ignores its sequential nature.     

论我国企业的危机公关--以"特富龙"事件为例

任何组织在成长过程中无一例外都会经历各种各样的危机.若无有效的快速反应和处理机制,一旦危机爆发,就只能仓促上阵,被动应对,如处理不当,殚精竭虑建设起来的组织形象就可能毁于一旦.因此,任何组织都应该而且必须重视危机公关处理.而杜邦公司"特富龙"事件处理方法无疑是个成功案例,值得我国企业学习和借鉴.     

Covariates and Random Effects in a Gamma Process Model with Application to Degradation and Failure

The gamma process is a natural model for degradation processes in which deterioration is supposed to take place gradually over time in a sequence of tiny increments. When units or individuals are observed over time it is often apparent that they degrade at different rates, even though no differences in treatment or environment are present. Thus, in applying gamma-process models to such data, it is necessary to allow for such unexplained differences. In the present paper this is accomplished by constructing a tractable gamma-process model incorporating a random effect. The model is fitted to some data on crack growth and corresponding goodness-of-fit tests are carried out. Prediction calculations for failure times defined in terms of degradation level passages are developed and illustrated.     

“以学生为中心的主题教学模式”实验研究

通过“以学生为中心的主题教学模式”教改实验测试成绩数据和一系列调查结果的比较分析 ,说明了教学改革对于大学英语课堂教学的效果和学生学习能力的培养有着十分重要的作用     

Covariate Order Tests for Covariate Effect

A new approach for constructing tests for association between a random right censored life time variable and a covariate is proposed. The basic idea is to first arrange the observations in increasing order of the covariate and then base the test on a certain point process defined by the observation times. Tests constructed by this approach are robust against outliers in the covariate values or misspecification of the covariate scale since they only use the ordering of the covariate. Of particular interest is a test based on the Anderson-Darling statistic. This test has good power properties both against monotonic and nonmonotonic dependencies between the covariate and the life time variable.