Subjective probabilities and utility with event-dependent preferences

This article generalizes Savage's theory to include event-dependent preferences. The state space is partitioned into finitely many events. The induced preferences over consequences are assumed independent of the underlying states within, but not across, these events. This results in an additively separable representation of preferences over acts. The dependence of the preference relation over consequences on the events is represented by event-dependent mappings of the set of consequences onto itself. Given these mappings, the preferences on acts are represented by the expectation of event-dependent utilities on the consequences with respect to unique subjective probabilities on the states.Helpful discussions with David Schmeidler are gratefully acknowledged.     

Does the Person‐of‐the‐Therapist Training (POTT) Promote Self‐Care? Personal Gains of MFT Trainees Following POTT: A Retrospective Thematic Analysis

As we recognize how taxing our profession can be, therapist's self‐care has become a salient topic in mental health. However, we are still discerning how to promote self‐care in our practice and in training. In this paper, we present a study on the personal gains that MFT students experienced after participating in the Person‐of‐the‐Therapist Training (POTT). We propose that the reported changes (better understanding of self, change to self, relational changes, and change as a process) constitute improvements in the trainees’ well‐being, and can therefore be considered self‐caring behaviors and practices. We state that models like POTT, that focus on embracing our vulnerability, can help clinicians be more caring toward ourselves. We conclude this paper by presenting clinical and training recommendations.     

Raymond Williams and sociology

The purpose of this article is to recover Williams as a major theoretical inspiration for the social sciences, specifically, as the inaugurator of what might be regarded as a research paradigm, cultural materialism. In the first section, Williams's encounter with the discipline of sociology is traced and distinguished as a critical alternative to the presently ascendant – at least in the USA – neo‐Durkeimian school of ‘cultural sociology’. In the second section, his cultural‐materialist programme is proposed as a powerful analytical framework for the study of culture and society today. In the final section, a key concept of Williams's cultural materialism, mobile privatization, is selected illustratively and proposed as a powerful analytical tool for studying the production and technological mediation of typical modes of communicative sociality in the early twenty‐first century.     

A LOWER BOUND FOR THE SINGLE-LEVEL DYNAMIC HORIZON LOT-SIZING PROBLEM

Conventional production planning methods assume the existence of a medium- or longrange demand horizon. However, demand usually is known over a much shorter range; scheduling decisions must be made within this “decision window,” which rolls forward in time. This paper presents a new lower bound for lot-sizing heuristics in a rolling-horizon framework and compares it to the well-known Wagner-Whitin bound. The new bound indicates heuristic schedules that have costs close to the optimum. Rolling-horizon schedule costs are compared to corresponding static-horizon schedule costs (assuming the whole horizon is known in advance), using the ratio of decision-window size to the natural order cycle as a parameter. For values below unity, the rolling-horizon policy is significantly more costly. For values above one, the two policies have similar costs and actually converge as the parameter value increases.     

Evaluating consumer satisfaction in residential continuing care settings

The outcome of the project reported on here is a client-centered consumer satisfaction questionnaire designed to evaluate new models of residential continuing care in Alberta, Canada. Satisfaction is defined as a multi-dimensional construct that is grounded in the consumer's experience. Consultation with the clients of the services during development of the instrument ensured that characteristics important to the clients were assessed. The result is an instrument with which to measure satisfaction that is fully client-centered and that, with appropriate modifications, can be used to monitor any client-centered program for cognitively-able continuing care clients.     

Alterations in IGF-I affect elderly: role of physical activity

The growth hormone–insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) axis is an important physiological regulator muscle for development. Although there is evidence that aging muscle retains the ability to synthesize IGF-I, there is also evidence that aging may be associated with attenuation of the ability of exercise to induce an isoform of IGF-I that promotes satellite cell proliferation. However, it is clear that overexpression of IGF-I in the muscle can protect against age-related sarcopenia. Strength training appears to be the intervention of choice for the prevention and treatment of sarcopenia. IGF-I has been implicated in the loss of the muscle with age, and IGF-I expression levels change as a consequence of strength training in older adults. However, it seems that advancing age, rather than declining serum levels of IGF-I, appears to be a major determinant of life-time changes in body composition in women and men. We concluded that resistive exercise is a significant determinant of muscle mass and function. Elevated levels of IGF-I have been found in physically active compared to sedentary individuals. Recent work suggests that IGF-I as a mediator plays an important role in muscle hypertrophy and angiogenesis, both of which characterize the anabolic adaptation of muscles to exercise.     

Civil Society Opposition to Nonferrous Metals Mining in Montana

This paper discusses the opposition of civil society to nonferrous metals mining in Montana. The mineral resources and mining history of Montana are discussed, as is the vibrant civil society of that state. Montana’s civil society has opposed mining due to its environmental effects, particularly upon areas of high conservation value. This opposition has involved litigation and the implementation of a ban on the use of cyanide by the mining industry. The paper concludes with a discussion of whether this opposition to mining has damaged the economy of the state and Montana’s future as an example of the “New West,” wherein amenities based growth act as the principal agent of economic activity.     

Moral sentiments and social choice

We examine the implications, for social choice, of individuals having an intrinsic sense of fairness. Taking the viewpoint that social justice reflects the moral attitudes of the constituent members, we analyze the effect of the intensity of the individual sense of fairness on the solution of Nash bargaining over random allocation procedures. We use a stylized model of university admission policies to illustrate our approach. We show that even if social policies are ultimately determined by the bargaining power of the different groups, a society whose members have a common notion of fairness tends to implement fairer admission policies when the intensity of the sense of fairness of individual members increases. While working on the research that is summarized in this paper the authors visited several institutions. Edi Karni visited the Berglas School of Economics, Tel Aviv University and GRID, at Ecole Normale Superieur de Cachan. Zvi Safra visited CERMCEM and EUREQua, at the University of Paris I and LIP6, at the University of Paris 6. The hospitality of these institutions is gratefully acknowledged. We are also grateful to the editor and two anonymous referees for their very useful comments and suggestions. Zvi Safra thanks The Israel Science Foudation (grant 1299/05) for its support.     

Unbounded behaviorally consistent stopping rules

In this article we study behaviorally consistent stopping rules in an unbounded search from a known distribution with no recall and with positive search cost. We show that if the searcher's preferences are quasi-convex in the probabilities, then behaviorally consistent search strategies in the unbounded case are obtained as limits of the corresponding bounded search strategies and are characterized by reservation levels property. Unlike optimal stopping rules under expected utility theory, however, the reservation levels may not be monotonically increasing in the number of permissible stages of the search process, and, in the unbounded case, may not be unique.