PRODUCT CHARACTERISTICS, HUMAN CAPITAL, AND LABOR MARKET SEGMENTS:

This article contends that one key to understanding different forms of work organization lies in the nature of the products being created. Product characteristics are proposed to be critical determinants of the type of human capital, either general or firm specific. Following from prior theory, labor market barriers develop based on type of human capital. These barriers then have a direct bearing on employee rewards. The nature of the product distinction is captured with a comparison of two product-types (goods and services) conceived as theoretically distinct. General skills are hypothesized to be more important in the service-producing sector, while firm-specific skills are hypothesized to be more important in the goods-producing sector. Empirical analyses using the 1991 General Social Survey compare workers in the service-producing and goods-producing sectors to illustrate differences in the salience of firm-specific and general skills. Two hypotheses are supported. Firm-specific skills have a stronger effect on earnings in manufacturing industries than in service industries. Also, skills acquired from on-the-job training, when compared with other skills, are more weakly related to service employee rewards. These distinctions between sectors suggest insights into structures unique to the service employment workplace.     

Maximum entropy sampling and optimal Bayesian experimental design

When Shannon entropy is used as a criterion in the optimal design of experiments, advantage can be taken of the classical identity representing the joint entropy of parameters and observations as the sum of the marginal entropy of the observations and the preposterior conditional entropy of the parameters. Following previous work in which this idea was used in spatial sampling, the method is applied to standard parameterized Bayesian optimal experimental design. Under suitable conditions, which include non-linear as well as linear regression models, it is shown in a few steps that maximizing the marginal entropy of the sample is equivalent to minimizing the preposterior entropy, the usual Bayesian criterion, thus avoiding the use of conditional distributions. It is shown using this marginal formulation that under normality assumptions every standard model which has a two-point prior distribution on the parameters gives an optimal design supported on a single point. Other results include a new asymptotic formula which applies as the error variance is large and bounds on support size.     

Easy-to-construct confidence bands for comparing two simple linear regression lines

This paper shows how to construct confidence bands for the difference between two simple linear regression lines. These confidence bands provide directly the information on the magnitude of the difference between the regression lines over an interval of interest and, as a by-product, can be used as a formal test of the difference between the two regression lines. Various different shapes of confidence bands are illustrated, and particular attention is paid towards confidence bands whose construction only involves critical points from standard distributions so that they are consequently easy to construct.     

Improving the quality of care of veterans with diabetes. A simulation intervention for psychiatric nurses

The primary objective of this study was to provide and evaluate strategies beneficial in preparing psychiatric nurses to exercise clinical judgment needed for adequate assessment and care of veterans with diabetes. Psychiatric nurses completed a pretest evaluation of their knowledge of care for veterans with diabetes. During the intervention stage, a human patient simulator was used to create an interactive scenario for participants to propose a diagnosis and administer treatment. Clinical judgment attributes were evaluated during the simulation by instructors using a rubric. Participants then completed a posttest evaluation. In addition, data about medical transfer rates for veterans with diabetes were provided 1 month before and 1 month after project implementation. All participants (N=20) demonstrated an increase on posttest scores. Medical emergencies decreased from 55% to 20% after project implementation, indicating improvement in the quality of care of veterans with diabetes.     

Empirical geodesic graphs and CAT(k) metrics for data analysis

Statistics and Computing - A methodology is developed for data analysis based on empirically constructed geodesic metric spaces. For a probability distribution, the length along a path between two...     

Gröbner bases and factorisation in discrete probability and Bayes

Gröbner bases, elimination theory and factorization may be used to perform calculations in elementary discrete probability and more complex areas such as Bayesian networks (influence diagrams). The paper covers the application of computational algebraic geometry to probability theory. The application to the Boolean algebra of events is straightforward (and essentially known). The extension into the probability superstructure is via the polynomial interpolation of densities and log densities and this is used naturally in the Bayesian application.     

Dynamic risk control for project development

A statistical methodology for dynamic risk control is discussed. The research is aimed at constructing tools for the analysis of expert opinions within a company about the risks involved in the production of a new commercial product or service. Focus is on risk events and on the analysis of the expert assessments of probabilities, losses and correlations of such events. A rescoring loop of risk assessments and preventive actions taken by the company on the basis of these assessments is illustrated through an example on software development. Relevant literature on risk and subjective elicitations is reviewed.     

Providing mental health care to veterans in rural areas: using telehealth in mobile clinics

The purpose of this article is to provide information to improve the quality of care of veterans living in geographically isolated areas who require treatment for mental health issues. Because interactive care solutions are currently hot topics in the health care community, they should be viewed as possible strategies to meet the needs of this specialty group of veterans. An intervention using a mobile clinic and clinical video telehealth reduces distance barriers by making it possible for mental health specialists to come to rural veterans instead of the veteran attempting to find a way to get to the practitioner, who may be located in a clinic or hospital many miles away. This article focuses on an alternate strategy-telehealth in mobile clinics-as a possible solution to the mental health crisis of veterans in rural areas.