A new tool for urban governance or just rhetoric? The case of participatory budgeting in Taipei City

Increasing interest in participatory budgeting has been observed in local governments around the world. This paper stresses direct citizen participation in the budgeting process leads to good governance, deepens democracy and improves social justice, while also highlighting some challenges in its efficiency and effectiveness. Unlike participatory budgeting, the Sub-borough Chiefs Forum is a community-based representative democratic mechanism; it could be regarded as a form of participatory budgeting in a broad sense. If so, then did the Taipei programme simply duplicate the goals of the Forum or lead to a better governance by making up for the inadequacies of the Chiefs Forum? To find out whether the Taipei participatory budgeting programme made a difference, we carried out qualitative and quantitative comparisons of projects passed under the participatory budgeting process and at the Forum. We also interviewed several participatory budgeting participants and sub-borough chiefs. The findings suggested that participatory budgeting and the Forum generated different proposals and budget requests, and the Taipei programme supplemented the shortcomings of the Forum and therefore led to deeper civic engagement and better urban governance.     

论东女国的经济生活

东女国是沟通唐朝与吐蕃之间的政治和经济联系的重要桥梁,当然,在唐朝和吐蕃政治、经济、宗教、社会习俗等综合因素的影响下,加之东女国自身社会生产力的发展变化,东女国的经济生活逐渐形成了自己的民族特色,而这种民族特色不仅被保留了下来,而且作为一种文化资源和旅游品牌,它在振兴西部经济的伟大战略中必将发挥着越来越突出的"鼓手"作用.     

《慕莱堂诗文征存》和秋寿南、秋瑾的诗词

根据秋寿南在《乡试录》中的记载,他的曾祖秋学礼曾著《补斋文集》《仅礼节读》两种,另有《补斋图册》一种;他的祖父秋家丞著有《八一编》行世;他的父亲秋嘉禾没有著作。这些著作中,只有秋学礼的《补斋文集》流传下来,其它都已流失。最近,又从《晚晴簃诗汇》中发现了一首秋学礼的诗,从《慕莱堂诗文征存》中发现了一首秋寿南的诗,这为研究秋家的家史和秋家的文风提供了新的资料。     

Bayesian semiparametric inference for the accelerated failure-time model

Bayesian semiparametric inference is considered for a loglinear model. This model consists of a parametric component for the regression coefficients and a nonparametric component for the unknown error distribution. Bayesian analysis is studied for the case of a parametric prior on the regression coefficients and a mixture-of-Dirichlet-processes prior on the unknown error distribution. A Markov-chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method is developed to compute the features of the posterior distribution. A model selection method for obtaining a more parsimonious set of predictors is studied. The method adds indicator variables to the regression equation. The set of indicator variables represents all the possible subsets to be considered. A MCMC method is developed to search stochastically for the best subset. These procedures are applied to two examples, one with censored data.     

点模式指纹匹配算法研究与实现

指纹匹配是实现指纹识别的重要环节,针对如何提高识别率、减少算法复杂度,介绍了一种点模式的指纹匹配算法。其优点是:将匹配分为两步进行,减少了拒判时间;初匹配利用了细节点间的局部结构关系,既克服了图像的平移和旋转也得到了更精确的坐标校准参数;二次匹配阶段,整合多种判决条件作为识别的依据,提高了识别率。其实验结果表明,该算法复杂度低,识别率较高,有较强实用价值。