The role,importance and challenges of social sciences and humanities in the work of the intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services (IPBES)

Qualified competences in social science and humanities are required across the various deliverables of the intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services (IPBES) in order to fully address the objectives of IPBES. Building integrative approaches has long been acknowledged as a scientific challenge. Hence, new paths have to be forged, including revisiting basic ontological and epistemological considerations, such as how we understand the world, what knowledge is, and the role of science. Constructive interdisciplinary dialogues in IPBES supports the development of innovative frames and terminologies. One example is the evolution from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment ecosystem service framework to the Nature’s Contributions to People classification now applied in IPBES assessments. IPBES is still in a learning phase and critical examination of what is accomplished this far is useful when refining ongoing modes of work and in long-term strategic considerations.     

Does the Role of Student Factors with Adolescent Substance Use Vary by Geography?

This study assesses the association of 12th-grade student factors (e.g., grades, classroom misbehaviors) with substance use (i.e., binge drinking, cigarette smoking, marijuana) across large, medium-sized, and nonmetropolitan areas. Based on a sample of 2,189 students from the 2013 Monitoring the Future data set, logistic regression analyses showed that poor student academic and behavioral factors were associated with higher substance use after controlling for gender, race, and socioeconomic status. Interaction analyses further showed no significant differences in the influence of student factors on substance use across locales. Results suggest that prevention efforts against substance use should target student factors regardless of area of residency.     

The Bayes rule of the variance parameter of the hierarchical normal and inverse gamma model under Stein's loss

For the variance parameter of the hierarchical normal and inverse gamma model, we analytically calculate the Bayes rule (estimator) with respect to a prior distribution IG (alpha, beta) under Stein's loss function. This estimator minimizes the posterior expected Stein's loss (PESL). We also analytically calculate the Bayes rule and the PESL under the squared error loss. Finally, the numerical simulations exemplify that the PESLs depend only on alpha and the number of observations. The Bayes rules and PESLs under Stein's loss are unanimously smaller than those under the squared error loss.     

Synthetic double sampling s chart

This study proposes a synthetic double sampling s chart that integrates the double sampling (DS) s chart and the conforming run length chart. An optimization procedure is proposed to compute the optimal parameters of the synthetic DS s chart. The performance of the synthetic DS s chart is compared with other existing control charts for monitoring process standard deviation. The results show that the synthetic DS s chart is more effective for detecting increases in the process standard deviation for a wide range of shifts. An example is provided to illustrate the operation procedure of the synthetic DS s chart.     

Medicare and Amyloid PET Imaging: The Battle Over Evidence

We examine a recent dispute regarding the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) refusal to unconditionally pay for amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) imaging for Medicare beneficiaries being assessed for Alzheimer’s disease. CMS will only pay for amyloid PET imaging when patients are enrolled in clinical trials that meet certain criteria. The dispute reflects CMS’s willingness in certain circumstances to require effectiveness evidence that differs from the Food and Drug Administration’s standard for pre-market approval of a medical intervention and reveals how stakeholders with differing perspectives about evidentiary standards have played a role in attempting to shape the Medicare program’s coverage policies.     

Wang Ming-hui and Blacklist Production: the Third World/Asia turn of Taiwan’s new music production

ABSTRACT

The paper discusses the music group ‘Blacklist Production’ (also known as Blacklist Studio) that was established in the late 1980s when the Martial Law was lifted in Taiwan, and the group’s original works of music. It investigates the music composition and thinking process of Wang Ming-hui, the founder of Blacklist Production, and analyses two albums produced by the music studio, Songs of Madness (1989) and Lullaby (1996), as a way of reconsidering and reflecting the feeling process and limitations of the nativist ideology from 1989 to 1996 that took shape in Taiwan’s society. In addition, the paper also explores Wang’s musical practices through which he has tried to answer the question of ‘how to express thoughts with music’. Through the historical analysis of musical works and interviews with Wang Ming-hui, the paper suggests that ‘Taiwan’s New Music Production’ brought up and practiced by Wang and Blacklist Production is embedded with the possibility for Taiwan’s culture and imagination of modernity to ‘turn’ the referent point to the Third World/Asia.     

Un-imagining the local/future: cinematic engagement with the absence of hope

ABSTRACT

With reference to the 2014 Umbrella Movement and Hong Kong’s uncertain fate come 2047, I ask how one un-imagines the cultural future of inhabiting the locality. As people take prompts from the present predicament to cope with real possibilities about the future, they realize that a strong embodiment of local consciousness permeates the sociocultural space. I discuss how such engagement takes place through cinematic experience, and examine tactics of the spectator’s critique centring around the erosion of hope at the core of everyday, intellectual and affective imagination. I trace the ways in which postcolonial subjects engage with hope and with the shock of hopelessness in a lived social imaginary. Examining in detail three differently representative recent films, namely, The Midnight After (2014. Dir. Fruit Chan, The Midnight After Film and One Ninety Films), Overheard 3 (2014. Dir. Alex Mak and Felix Chong, Sil-Metropole, Bona Film and Pop Movies) and Ten Years (2015. Dir. K. L. Ng (‘Local Egg’, Boon-deh dan), J. Au (‘Dialect’, Fong-yin), K. Chow (‘Self-Immolator’, Jee-fun jeh), F. P. Wong (‘Season of the End’, Dong sim), and Z. Kwok (‘Extras’, Fau gua), Ten Years Studio), I depict the modes in popular imagination that invoke people’s engagement with the ‘local’, albeit in its affective state. Accordingly, in the context of ‘externalized’ social realities, I identify three interlocking modes of cultural engagement, which I characterize as figurative, performative and prefigurative, respectively. In their ‘future’ imaginary, I look for ordinary people’s ways to face the absurdity of the status quo and the performativity of local struggles with the self.