The validity of survey responses on abortion: Evidence from Estonia

This paper presents results of a validation survey of abortion conducted in Tallinn, Estonia in April and May 1992. The sample was drawn from patient records in a maternity hospital. Women who had an abortion in that hospital in 1991 were asked about recent abortions as part of a survey about women’s health. More than 80% of the respondents reported having a recent abortion. Some respondents misreported their abortion as a miscarriage. Moreover, some variation in reporting was associated with respondents’ characteristics. Ethnic Estonians were less likely to report their abortion than were Russians, women over age 40 were less likely to report the abortion than younger women, and women who had the abortion late in the first trimester were less likely to report that abortion. There was some evidence that unmarried women were less likely than married women to report their abortion, and that women who had borne three or more children were less likely to report their abortion than women who had borne fewer children. These differences probably stem from the extent to which pregnancy or abortion is considered stigmatizing for women in different situations.     

Sarah was a butch: sexual identity, gender practices, and Sarah's place as mother in the Jewish National Pantheon

Three fields of discourse regarding a masculine-like woman connect at a point that the queer field calls intersex, medical practice calls a sexual disorder, and rabbinic literature terms aylonit. The queer discursive field focuses on the freedom to choose an identity, but not the freedom from choosing one. The medical field focuses on sexual practice as the source of determining "normal" sexuality. In the discursive field of Jewish law there are no demands, because the Halakhic authority determines gender identity on behalf of the individual, maintaining ambiguity.     

Electricity Cost as a Driver of Competitiveness in Northern Europe: The Case of Estonia

The Estonian electricity market will be fully opened in 2013. Given ever-stricter environmental standards limiting the use of domestically available oil shale as main fuel for electricity generation and expansion of regional power pools, it is widely believed that Estonia’s currently low electricity prices are set to increase. Authors argue that cost differentiation and regional competition will be based on transmission charges and add-on fees. Measuring exporting industry’s total electricity costs as a share of total production costs shows that for the majority of Estonian producers electricity costs make up only around 1–2 % of production costs, but noteworthy exceptions exist.     

韩东和Alan的故事--菜鸟与加拿大留学信息港的诞生

2001年5月份,韩东从多伦多大学计算机系毕业后没多久,便找到了一份工作,在一家金融软件公司里做软件工程师,主要从事软件的维护与开发.经过3年的考验,他在这个公司立住了脚跟.就在IT业不景气,公司裁员,而老板却打算给他加工资的时候,他和另一位华人同事Alan却提出了辞职,似乎轻而易举地丢掉了这份年薪在6万元以上的工作.两人决定创办一家加拿大留学网站.     

Reviews

Beyond Hitler's Grasp. Michael Bar‐Zohar, Beyond Hitler's Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria's Jews (Holbrook MA: Adams Media Corporation 1998), 299pp.

Russian Jews Abroad. Evrei v kulture zarubezhnoy Hossii: Statii, publikatsii, vospominaniya, ocherki (Jews in the Culture of Russia Abroad: Articles, Publications, Memoirs and Essays), Vol. 5. Compiled and published by M. Parkhomovsky. Jerusalem 1996. 560pp. Index

Learning the Lessons of the Past. Istvan Pogany, Righting Wrongs in Eastern Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press 1997, xiv+226pp. Notes. Index. £45.00     

Sarah was a Butch: Sexual Identity,Gender Practices,and Sarah's Place as Mother in the Jewish National Pantheon

Three fields of discourse regarding a masculine-like woman connect at a point that the queer field calls intersex, medical practice calls a sexual disorder, and rabbinic literature terms aylonit. The queer discursive field focuses on the freedom to choose an identity, but not the freedom from choosing one. The medical field focuses on sexual practice as the source of determining “normal” sexuality. In the discursive field of Jewish law there are no demands, because the Halakhic authority determines gender identity on behalf of the individual, maintaining ambiguity.     

On the influence of market structure in modelling the US copper industry

Many of the contemporary models used to describe the behavior of the mineral industries assume a competitive market i.e. one in which market price is equal to marginal production cost. One such recent model of the worldwide copper industry is the MIDAS-II model developed for the Bureau of Mines [3, 4]. This model is used to project production and prices up through the year 2000. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of the assumed market structure in the construction of these forecasts. If the market structure of the US copper industry is assumed to be comprised of a few large firms (an oligopoly), then forecasts based upon exactly the same data base differ significantly from the competitive market assumption.     

On the quality of k-means clustering based on grouped data

Let us have a probability distribution P   (possibly empirical) on the real line R$\mathbb{R}$. Consider the problem of finding the k-mean of P, i.e. a set A of at most k points that minimizes given loss-function. It is known that the k-mean can be found using an iterative algorithm by Lloyd [1982. Least squares quantization in PCM. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 28, 129–136]. However, depending on the complexity of the distribution P, the application of this algorithm can be quite resource-consuming. One possibility to overcome the problem is to group the original data and calculate the k-mean on the basis of the grouped data. As a result, the new k-mean will be biased, and our aim is to measure the loss of the quality of approximation caused by such approach.     

Survival rates of breeding common gulls in Estonia

The aim of the present paper was to estimate the survival rates of breeding common gulls, using mark-recapture data, gathered in 1968-1983 (16 sampling periods) in Estonia. We analyzed effects of age (breeding experience), year and sex on survival. Every year we observed more than 90% of the breeders and ringed about 95% of the nestlings. Two samples of gulls were used in the analyses. The first sample (347 individuals) consisted of birds thought to be first-time breeders when first observed in colony. The second sample (1269 individuals) may contain birds which have nested earlier. In the first sample, we did not detect any influence of age and sex on survival, but time dependence was significant and can be explained by winter severity. In cold winters the survival was lower (0.865) than in normal (0.896) and warm (0.929) winters. We suspect that the age effect on survival rate remained undetected owing to sparse data. In the second sample, we detected age- and time-dependent survival for both sexes. We also found differences between the sexes in recapture probability (in both samples). This was probably caused by lower site tenacity of females.     

Narrative of a Worker: Havatzelet Ingbar and the Atzmaout Textile Factory Mitzpe Ramon,Israel, 2000

This article is about the struggle of a group of marginalized women who stood up for their rights, providing a dramatic lesson of courage and self‐empowerment. These women, who were workers in a textile factory in the remote town of Mitzpe Ramon in Israel, became its managers and owners. This article documents their groundbreaking experience and investigates some of the problems that arose during this period. The conclusion of this research is that the main knowledge and experience that is required from workers who become managers overnight is political rather than professional, economic or commercial. Moreover, the women learned that political knowledge cannot be replaced by accelerated courses in management, marketing and business administration. Finally, the women realized that the men with whom they interacted desired to see them return to the sewing machines as unprofessional workers, in traditional female roles.