The social as signal in the body of chromatin

Human social interactions and material cultures are increasingly understood as biologically consequent environmental signals. Within the explanatory framework of epigenetics, such signals become biologically inscribed when transduced into bodies as persistent patterns of molecular conformation. In the life sciences, persistence of the social as the biological is understood as establishment of gene expression potentials, physiological changes, or epigenetic memories. How did the social become interchangeable with the environmental? When did both become scientifically graspable as signals? This article recounts the history of how hormone biologists came to think in terms of signal transduction in the late 1960s. This cybernetic legacy is important for understanding the ‘environmental turn’ of epigenetics. To understand the social as signal in the present moment – a post-cybernetic rather than post-genomic moment – the theory of the signal must itself be excavated and analysed.     

Making Professional Decisions in Research: Measurement and Key Predictors

The professional decision-making in research (PDR) measure was administered to 400 National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded and industry-funded investigators, along with measures of cynicism, moral disengagement, compliance disengagement, impulsivity, work stressors, knowledge of responsible conduct of research (RCR), and socially desirable response tendencies. Negative associations were found for the PDR and measures of cynicism, moral disengagement, and compliance disengagement, while positive associations were found for the PDR and RCR knowledge and positive urgency, an impulsivity subscale. PDR scores were not related to socially desirable responding, or to measures of work stressors and the remaining impulsivity subscales. In a multivariate logistic regression analysis, lower moral disengagement scores, higher RCR knowledge, and identifying the United States as one’s nation of origin emerged as key predictors of stronger performance on the PDR. The implications of these findings for understanding the measurement of decision-making in research and future directions for research and RCR education are discussed.     

Measuring operational excellence: an operational excellence profitability (OEP) approach

The pursuit of operational excellence in the manufacturing industry is at rise but its measurement still lacks of appropriate indicators to determine its financial benefits. The ambiguity is due to the impact arisen from manufacturing fluctuations such as price and cost, production mix and direct and indirect parameters variations. Manufacturing fluctuations distort the cost benefit of operational excellence. This paper, therefore, proposes the OEP (Operational Excellence Profitability) indicators to isolate the impact of manufacturing fluctuation and distinctly identify the payback of operational excellence strategies and initiatives through cost benefits of achieving higher efficiency and yield. The paper presents the conceptual and mathematical development of the proposed OEP indicators and the formulas used for their calculation. Hypothetical and industrial-based investigations and applications of the OEP indicators are conducted for their validation. The results obtained from the hypothetical exercise and industrial case suggest that OEP indicators can provide an effective cost-benefit analysis of operational excellence. This would contribute in providing manufacturing organizations with more complete information regarding the performance of their processes, which will allow their directors and managers to take better decisions related to the management and improvement of their processes.     

Simultaneous edit-imputation and disclosure limitation for business establishment data

Business establishment microdata typically are required to satisfy agency-specified edit rules, such as balance equations and linear inequalities. Inevitably some establishments' reported data violate the edit rules. Statistical agencies correct faulty values using a process known as edit-imputation. Business establishment data also must be heavily redacted before being shared with the public; indeed, confidentiality concerns lead many agencies not to share establishment microdata as unrestricted access files. When microdata must be heavily redacted, one approach is to create synthetic data, as done in the U.S. Longitudinal Business Database and the German IAB Establishment Panel. This article presents the first implementation of a fully integrated approach to edit-imputation and data synthesis. We illustrate the approach on data from the U.S. Census of Manufactures and present a variety of evaluations of the utility of the synthetic data. The paper also presents assessments of disclosure risks for several intruder attacks. We find that the synthetic data preserve important distributional features from the post-editing confidential microdata, and have low risks for the various attacks.     

Was Cicourel’s critique in Methods and Measurement in Sociology too radical?

This article is a contribution to a mini symposium on the 50th anniversary of the publication of A V Cicourel’s Method and Measurement in Sociology (1964). The central theme of the book is reviewed – the problem of the relationship between everyday language and cultural meanings, and the language of measurement in social research – and the lack of an adequate ontology of social actors is identified as being the cause of the problem. The solution offered by Alfred Schütz – that social scientific language should be derived from everyday language – is discussed and it is argued that this was probably too radical at the time the book was published, and is still generally neglected in the social sciences.     

后金融危机时期完善公允价值计量的探索

在2008年的金融风暴中,公允价值计量虽然暴露出其固有缺陷,但目前仍不失为一种面对市场的、动态反映产权价值运动的最佳计量模式。在后金融危机时期,我们需要通过建立健全市场机制、降低公允价值计量的实际操作难度、完善估值技术等手段进一步修改与完善公允价值计量模式,助推经济复苏与调整。     

Mean shift and influence measures in linear measurement error models with stochastic linear restrictions

We present influence diagnostics for linear measurement error models with stochastic linear restrictions using the corrected likelihood of Nakamura in 1990. The case deletion and mean shift outlier models are developed to identify outlying and influential observations. We derive a corrected score test statistic for outlier detection based on mean shift outlier models. The analogs of Cook's distance and likelihood distance are proposed to determine influential observations based on case deletion models. A parametric bootstrap procedure is used to obtain empirical distributions of the test statistics and a simulation study has been used to evaluate the performance of the proposed estimators based on the mean squares error criterion and the score test statistic. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the theoretical results.     

Modal non‐linear regression in the presence of Laplace measurement error

In this paper, we propose a robust estimation procedure for a class of non‐linear regression models when the covariates are contaminated with Laplace measurement error, aiming at constructing an estimation procedure for the regression parameters which are less affected by the possible outliers, and heavy‐tailed underlying distribution, as well as reducing the bias introduced by the measurement error. Starting with the modal regression procedure developed for the measurement error‐free case, a non‐trivial modification is made so that the modified version can effectively correct the potential bias caused by measurement error. Large sample properties of the proposed estimate, such as the convergence rate and the asymptotic normality, are thoroughly investigated. A simulation study and real data application are conducted to illustrate the satisfying finite sample performance of the proposed estimation procedure.     

新型订单农业合作模式的优化模型分析

根据当前的中央脱贫政策,本文考虑到脱贫方式,提出了基于新型合作模式的订单农业方式,构建了新型订单农业优化模型。首先根据区域经济发展需要成立一个农业合作社,农户以土地面积比例入股,合作社通过与农产品收购公司谈判并签订收购合同来获得收益,并把收益的一部分用于农户分红。合作社聘用职业经理负责经营,除此之外,合作社还会按所入股份给农户提供一份固定费用以保证农户的收益。根据上述内容构建了一个新的"农户+合作社+收购公司"型三级新型订单农业供应链优化模型,并在条件风险（CVaR）度量准则下得出合作社在不同风险规避度下的具体收益,在保证农户和合作社收益的前提下,建立相应的约束优化模型,利用拉格朗日函数及其相应的KKT条件得出农户加入合作社可获得更多利益的最小土地面积和合作社应提供的最小固定费用。     

中国及TTIP国家贸易便利化水平测评

准确测度中国与TTIP主要成员国之间的贸易便利化差异,便于深刻把握TIP催生的国际贸易便利化新趋势,应对全球贸易规则变迁的挑战.文章首先构建了贸易便利化测评指标体系,采用《全球竞争力报告》《腐败指数》以及《世界竞争力年鉴》的相关数据,对2008-2014年TTIP主要成员国及中国的贸易便利化水平进行了对比测评.研究发现,虽然中国的贸易便利化水平整体上升了,但与TTIP发达成员国的差距依然较大,在口岸效率、海关环境、规制环境和电子商务方面均低于其平均水平.为此,中国应进一步简化海关程序和手续,改善海关环境,提升政策制定的透明度,加大对电子商务中的新信息技术的应用力度,防范TTIP区域内贸易转移效应对我国的影响.