Is a significant socio-economic structural change a pre-requisite for "inital" fertility decline in the LDCs? Evidence from Thailand based on a multivariate cointegration / vector error correction modelling approach

This study is the first attempt at placing the analysis of fertility in a temporal dynamic framework in the case of a developing Asian economy such as Thailand by binding the relationship between fertility and its determinants within a cointegrated system. The analysis is based on the application of the following recently developed dynamic time series techniques: cointegration, vector error-correction modelling, variance decompositions and the impulse response functions. The results tend to indicate that in the complex dynamic interactions, the importance of the conventional `structural' hypothesis as a significant factor in bringing fertility down in the longer term cannot be denied. However, in the short to longer term, our findings, although not fully supportive of any particular hypothesis, appear to be broadly consistent more with the hypothesis emphasising the critical role played by the `ideational' or diffusion forces along with the demographic variables in ensuring `initial' fertility decline than with the conventional `structural' hypothesis emphasising a significant socio-economic structural change as a pre-condition for `initial' fertility decline. Received: 7 April 1995/Accepted: 15 May 1998     

Estimating Noncancer Uncertainty Factors: Are Ratios NOAELs Informative?

The prominent role of animal bioassay evidence in environmental regulatory decisions compels a careful characterization of extrapolation uncertainties. In noncancer risk assessment, uncertainty factors are incorporated to account for each of several extrapolations required to convert a bioassay outcome into a putative subthreshold dose for humans. Measures of relative toxicity taken between different dosing regimens, different endpoints, or different species serve as a reference for establishing the uncertainty factors. Ratios of no observed adverse effect levels (NOAELs) have been used for this purpose; statistical summaries of such ratios across sets of chemicals are widely used to guide the setting of uncertainty factors. Given the poor statistical properties of NOAELs, the informativeness of these summary statistics is open to question. To evaluate this, we develop an approach to calibrate the ability of NOAEL ratios to reveal true properties of a specified distribution for relative toxicity. A priority of this analysis is to account for dependencies of NOAEL ratios on experimental design and other exogenous factors. Our analysis of NOAEL ratio summary statistics finds (1) that such dependencies are complex and produce pronounced systematic errors and (2) that sampling error associated with typical sample sizes (50 chemicals) is non-negligible. These uncertainties strongly suggest that NOAEL ratio summary statistics cannot be taken at face value; conclusions based on such ratios reported in well over a dozen published papers should be reconsidered.     

Application of Human Reliability Analysis to Nursing Errors in Hospitals

Adverse events in hospitals, such as in surgery, anesthesia, radiology, intensive care, internal medicine, and pharmacy, are of worldwide concern and it is important, therefore, to learn from such incidents. There are currently no appropriate tools based on state-of-the art models available for the analysis of large bodies of medical incident reports. In this study, a new model was developed to facilitate medical error analysis in combination with quantitative risk assessment. This model enables detection of the organizational factors that underlie medical errors, and the expedition of decision making in terms of necessary action. Furthermore, it determines medical tasks as module practices and uses a unique coding system to describe incidents. This coding system has seven vectors for error classification: patient category, working shift, module practice, linkage chain (error type, direct threat, and indirect threat), medication, severity, and potential hazard. Such mathematical formulation permitted us to derive two parameters: error rates for module practices and weights for the aforementioned seven elements. The error rate of each module practice was calculated by dividing the annual number of incident reports of each module practice by the annual number of the corresponding module practice. The weight of a given element was calculated by the summation of incident report error rates for an element of interest. This model was applied specifically to nursing practices in six hospitals over a year; 5,339 incident reports with a total of 63,294,144 module practices conducted were analyzed. Quality assurance (QA) of our model was introduced by checking the records of quantities of practices and reproducibility of analysis of medical incident reports. For both items, QA guaranteed legitimacy of our model. Error rates for all module practices were approximately of the order 10(-4) in all hospitals. Three major organizational factors were found to underlie medical errors: "violation of rules" with a weight of 826 x 10(-4), "failure of labor management" with a weight of 661 x 10(-4), and "defects in the standardization of nursing practices" with a weight of 495 x 10(-4).     

建立科学的图书评价机制--"三个代表"重要思想对图书出版工作的根本要求

建立科学的图书评价机制,即以图书在多大程度上代表了"先进文化"为核心内容,以两个效益为主要内容,并突出经济效益的评价标准.社会效益分内容和形式两部分;经济效益以平均销售额为基数,计量考核,综合记分;规范现有评奖并另行加分的考核方法;从而对图书生产和出版工作起到明确导向、规范考核的作用.     

关于姚鼐章学诚批评《文选》分类之得失问题--兼论"七""设论"与赋的关系

<文选>分类的确有可议之处,尤其是其小类.然这往往是"天然地"存在的,故只要对一大批文章进行较细的分类,就难以完全避免他人之"议".姚鼐、章学诚诸家的批评主要是因其没有充分地考虑到实际操作与理论要求间的差异及其"不思当时事实"所致.姚说似是而非,<古文辞类纂>亦多类似<文选>之"失";章说太半责非其所当责,少半或有理而萧统"持之有故".<文选>在文体分类方面的历史贡献是巨大的,尽管其更多的只是继承而非新的建树.     

关于网络信息分类法的思考

分析了目前网络信息分类存在的问题,建议编制《中图法(网络版)》,并探讨了其编制思路。     

蜀将冯习之死考辨

文学经典名著中,蜀国重要战将冯习先于"先主夜走白帝城"一回中被吴将徐盛的"乱箭射死",继而又死于"八阵图石伏陆逊"的乱军之中,这显然是不合事理的.虽为白璧微瑕,但为不使其谬误继续流传,必须对原著作合理的删改,方能保持名著的权威性,以泽被后世.     

Socio-historical paths of the male breadwinner model - an explanation of cross-national differences

It is often assumed that in the historical transformation to modern industrial society, the integration of women into the economy occurred everywhere as a three‐phase process: in pre‐modern societies, the extensive integration of women into societal production; then, their wide exclusion with the shift to industrial society; and finally, their re‐integration into paid work during the further course of modernization. Results from the author's own international comparative study of the historical development of the family and the economic integration of women have shown that this was decidedly not the case even for western Europe. Hence the question arises: why is there such historical variation in the development and importance of the housewife model of the male breadwinner family? In the article, an explanation is presented. It is argued that the historical development of the urban bourgeoisie was especially significant for the historical destiny of this cultural model: the social and political strength of the urban bourgeoisie had central societal importance in the imposition of the housewife model of the male breadwinner family as the dominant family form in a given society. In this, it is necessary to distinguish between the imposition of the breadwinner marriage at the cultural level on the one hand, and at the level of social practice in the family on the other.     

Imputation by power transformation

In this paper, a new power transformation estimator of population mean in the presence of non-response has been suggested. The estimator of mean obtained from proposed technique remains better than the estimators obtained from ratio or mean methods of imputation. The mean squared error of the resultant estimator is less than that of the estimator obtained on the basis of ratio method of imputation for the optinum choice of parameters. An estimator for estimating a parameter involved in the process of new method of imputation has been discussed. The MSE expressions for the proposed estimators have been derived analytically and compared empirically. Product method of imputation for negatively correlated variables has also been introduced. The work has been extended to the case of multi-auxiliary information to be used for imputation.     

隐喻的分类及其认知功能探索

文章通过综合Lakoff＆Johnson,GeorgeLakoff,BipinIndurkhya,Mey,Ungerer＆Schmid等学者关于隐喻的论述,将隐喻分为结构隐喻,方位隐喻,本体隐喻和创造相似性的隐喻等四种类型并讨论了它们的认知功能;并探索性地运用投射性隐喻过程来解释由Joos提出,易仲良发展了的英语动词过去时"距离性"语法意义拓展的过程。