A concentration approach to sensitivity studies in statistical estimation problems

It is shown that the concept of concentration is of potential interest in the sensitivity study of some parameters and related estimators. Basic ideas are introduced for a real parameter θ>0 together with graphical representations using Lorenz curves of concentration. Examples based on the mean, standard deviation and variance are provided for some classical distributions. This concentration approach is also discussed in relation with influence functions. Special emphasis is given to the average concentration of an estimator which provides a sensitivity measure allowing one to compare several estimators of the same parameter. Properties of this measure are investigated through simulation studies and its practical interest is illustrated by examples based on the trimmed mean and the Winsorized variance.     

Decentralizing Risk Analysis in Large Engineered Systems: An Approach to Articulating Technical and Socioorganizational Dimensions of System Performance1

Nuclear power production in France, as the domain of one national utility and one reactor builder, has a standardized profile of technical installations, safety procedures, and personnel qualifications. Despite this relative homogeneity, discrepancies are observed from one production unit to another, notably in the area of worker-safety performance. There is a strong implication for risk analysis: varying performance cannot be attributed solely to the technical dimensions of equipment, procedures, and human skills. The authors retain as a working hypothesis that safety performance is an outcome of interactions between technical and organizational factors. Traditional risk analysis appears to be underequipped to represent such interactions. The notion of decentralized risk analysis (DRA) is introduced as a means of achieving this goal. A program of applied research carried out in a NPP facility is presented. It aims at increasing, across plant work structure, knowledge and control of these interactions specific to the given context. Systematic measurements and feedback of social representations are performed, using a three-dimensional factor space of individual and organizational values. Direct involvement of the total plant population, transfer of analytic tools, methodological continuity, interactive elaboration of data, coordination of different levels of findings with operations, follow-up and feedback of measured change, are the main features of this DRA process. In the case cited, improvement observed in safety performance parallels changes in measured social representations. The value of DRA for articulating technical and organizational dimensions of risk, and for integrating information into decision-making, is argued.     

Genetically Modified Organisms in the Portuguese Press: thematization and anchoring

ABSTRACT: The main aim of this paper is to examine how the recent themata developments in Social Representations Theory can be linked with the classical process involved in the construction of social representations—anchoring—, as well as with the communicative modalities that are part of the theory since its inception. This was done through a study of the representation of GMOs in the Portuguese press, taken as an opportunity for addressing the issues related to the role played by old categories in rendering new meanings and in establishing new categories.
A further objective of the study, more applied in nature, was to explore whether the central characteristics of the representations of biotechnology in European countries were also present in Portugal.
All articles that included the expressions Genetically Modified/Genetic Modification/Manipulation or Transgenics, were collected, in five Portuguese newspapers, during the years of 1999, 2000 and 2001. Content analysis of the 239 articles collected showed that their thematical organisation re-constitutes the Red/Green dichotomy found in most European countries. The Red/health discussion is structured around such themata as health/disease, risk/safety, benefits/problems, and anchors in categories like science and progress. The nature/culture opposition emerges, in turn, in the Green/food discussion, which anchors on categories like ideology and employs Propaganda as a communicative modality—a set of indicators configuring a more polemic debate. The conclusions discuss the relevance of linking themata with anchoring and the importance of devising more fine-grained tools for the analysis of Diffusion.     

On beta type-1 distributed random points in an n-ball

This article considers the problem of finding the exact density of the r-content of the simplicial convex hull of r+1 independent points in Rⁿ ” Consider r+1 independent and identically distributed points in a unit n–ball such that p of them are in the interior and r+l?p of them are on the surface of the unit n-ball., Consider the case when each point is type-1 beta distributed,, These points determine almost surely via their convex hull a unique r-simplex in Rⁿ Ihe problem of getting the exact density of the r-content of this random r-simplex is transformed into a problem in multivariate statistical analysis connected with the distribution theory of test statistics., Thus various representations for the exact density are given in this article.     

Embodiment and the Construction of Social Knowledge: Towards an Integration of Embodiment and Social Representations Theory

Recent developments in the psychological and social sciences have seen a surge of attention to concepts of embodiment. The burgeoning field of embodied cognition, as well as the long‐standing tradition of phenomenological philosophy, offer valuable insights for theorising how people come to understand the world around them. However, the implications of human embodiment have been largely neglected by one of the key frameworks for conceptualising the development of social knowledge: Social Representations Theory. This article seeks to spark a dialogue between Social Representations Theory and embodiment research. It outlines the position the body occupies in the existing theoretical and empirical social representations literature, and argues that incorporating concepts gleaned from embodiment research may facilitate a more comprehensive account of the aetiology of social representations. The value of analytic attention to embodiment is illustrated with reference to a recent study of social representations of neuroscience, which suggested that embodied experience can shape the extent to which people engage with certain topics, the conditions under which they do so, and the conceptual and affective content of the ensuing representations. The article argues that expanding Social Representations Theory's methodological and conceptual toolkit, in order to illuminate the interplay between embodied experience and social communication in the development of common‐sense knowledge, promises productive directions for empirical and theoretical advancement.     

高校是实践“三个代表“重要思想的重要阵地

高校作为宣传理想、传播文化、培养精神、塑造灵魂的主要阵地,应该充分发挥自身 的哲学社会科学研究、教学的优势和"两课"研究、教学的优势,充分发挥自身实践宣传"三个代表" 重要思想的优势。