The quantile-based flattened logistic distribution: Some properties and applications

In this paper, the quantile-based flattened logistic distribution has been studied. Some classical and quantile-based properties of the distribution have been obtained. Closed form expressions of L-moments, L-moment ratios and expectation of order statistics of the distribution have been obtained. A quantile-based analysis concerning the method of matching L-moments estimation is employed to estimate the parameters of the proposed model. We further derive the asymptotic variance–covariance matrix of the matching L-Moments estimators of the proposed model. Finally, we apply the proposed model to simulated as well as two real life datasets and compare the fit with the logistic distribution.     

江泽民关于选拔和培养优秀中青年干部的辩证思想

江泽民同志于 2 0 0 0年 6月在全国党校工作会议上的讲话 ,充满了实事求是的精神和深刻的辩证思维风格 ,体现了鲜明的时代特色。他对新时期干部德才基本要求所作出的新的规定 ,是对马克思主义人才理论的极大丰富。他提出的“重发现同时重培养”的原则、“使用、培养同一论”以及“德才具体说”、“辩证的台阶、资历观”等 ,是对传统的人才理论的突破和对马克思主义人才学说的丰富和发展     

Implementation in generic environments

In this paper, we study implementation in “economic environments”. It is shown that there is a dense subset of the set of preference profiles such that given an arbitrary social choice function, f, and ε>0, there exists another social choice function, f _ε, within ε of f uniformly and implementable in Nash equilibrium on the dense subset.     

Applicability of a Neuroprobabilistic Integral Risk Index for the Environmental Management of Polluted Areas: A Case Study

Recently, we developed a GIS-Integrated Integral Risk Index (IRI) to assess human health risks in areas with presence of environmental pollutants. Contaminants were previously ranked by applying a self-organizing map (SOM) to their characteristics of persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity in order to obtain the Hazard Index (HI). In the present study, the original IRI was substantially improved by allowing the entrance of probabilistic data. A neuroprobabilistic HI was developed by combining SOM and Monte Carlo analysis. In general terms, the deterministic and probabilistic HIs followed a similar pattern: polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and light polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were the pollutants showing the highest and lowest values of HI, respectively. However, the bioaccumulation value of heavy metals notably increased after considering a probability density function to explain the bioaccumulation factor. To check its applicability, a case study was investigated. The probabilistic integral risk was calculated in the chemical/petrochemical industrial area of Tarragona (Catalonia, Spain), where an environmental program has been carried out since 2002. The risk change between 2002 and 2005 was evaluated on the basis of probabilistic data of the levels of various pollutants in soils. The results indicated that the risk of the chemicals under study did not follow a homogeneous tendency. However, the current levels of pollution do not mean a relevant source of health risks for the local population. Moreover, the neuroprobabilistic HI seems to be an adequate tool to be taken into account in risk assessment processes.     

用于分散电压控制的规则库法

电力系统正常运行时,无功/电压控制目的是安全经济供电.而在紧急情况下,首要目标是运行的安全性,其次才是经济性.本文提出的局部网概念及其灵敏度矩阵,以及对电压违限严重性的分级和控制战略,使控制更为快速有效.此法更适用于当事故引起全系统运行数据不全时对局部网的电压控制.     

The revolutions of 1989: Socialism,capitalism, and democracy

Many journalists and scholars will look for the correlation of that chain of spectacular transformations that changed, as if at one blow, the fates of tens of millions of individuals and the hitherto firm bipolar picture of the modern world ... Today, many people are talking and writing about the role of the intellectuals, students, and the theatre, or the influence of the Soviets' perestroika, and economic difficulties. They're right. I myself as a playwright would also add the influence of humour and honesty, and perhaps even something beyond us, something maybe even unearthly.Vaclav Havel, Preface to Gwyn Prins (editor),Spring in Winter: The 1989 Revolutions.     

Welfare inequalities and Rawlsian axiomatics

This paper is concerned with ordinal comparisons of welfare inequality and its use in social welfare judgements, especially in the context of Rawls' difference principle. In Section 1 the concept of ordinal inequality comparisons is developed and a theorem on ordinal comparisons of welfare inequality for distributional problems is noted. Section 2 is devoted to Harsanyi's (1955) argument that a concern for reducing welfare inequalities among persons must not enter social welfare judgements. In Section 3 an axiomatic derivation of Rawls' lexicographic maximim rule is presented; this relates closely to results established by Hammond (1975), d'Aspremont and Gevers (1975) and Strasnick (1975). In the last section the axioms used are examined and some alternative axioms are analysed with the aim of a discriminating evaluation of the Rawlsian approach to judgements on social welfare.Based on the text of a lecture delivered at the International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science in London, Ontario, Canada, on August 29th, 1975. Thanks are due to Peter Hammond and Kevin Roberts for helpful comments and criticisms.     

基于iCARE理论的《大学英语》课程定位研究与教改实践

《大学英语》是高校一门重要的公共基础课,厘清课程性质是推进教学改革的基础。在梳理不同时期《大学英语》教学大纲有关规定,借鉴国外高校现代语言课程定位基础上,提出《大学英语》课程定位是EGP,提高"交互密度"是保证学习效率和效果的关键。河北科技大学在多年教改实践基础上,创建了iCARE教学理论,并从六个方面推进《大学英语》课程改革,形成具有校本特色的《大学英语》教学模式,取得良好教改成效。     

Decomposition of Changes in Korean Wage Inequality, 1998–2007

South Korea experienced a steep increase in wage inequality between the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the global financial crisis in 2008. This paper investigates the causes of the sharp change during that time period by looking at the contributions of changes in the distributions of schooling and unionization. The effects are estimated applying two robust distributional function based decomposition methods on Korean Labor and Panel Survey data for the time period 1998–2007. The results suggest changes in the distribution of schooling can explain about 10 % of the changes in the 90/50 percentile wage gap. The declining unionization rate does not have much impact on the upward trend of Korean wage inequality. In addition, aggregate decomposition results suggest that changes in labor force composition can explain a significant proportion of the total wage changes in the upper-tail of the distribution. Based on our findings we provide a list of policy recommendations to address the wage inequality issue in Korea.     

Accounting for Uncertainty in Heteroscedasticity in Nonlinear Regression

Toxicologists and pharmacologists often describe toxicity of a chemical using parameters of a nonlinear regression model. Thus estimation of parameters of a nonlinear regression model is an important problem. The estimates of the parameters and their uncertainty estimates depend upon the underlying error variance structure in the model. Typically, a priori the researcher would not know if the error variances are homoscedastic (i.e., constant across dose) or if they are heteroscedastic (i.e., the variance is a function of dose). Motivated by this concern, in this paper we introduce an estimation procedure based on preliminary test which selects an appropriate estimation procedure accounting for the underlying error variance structure. Since outliers and influential observations are common in toxicological data, the proposed methodology uses M-estimators. The asymptotic properties of the preliminary test estimator are investigated; in particular its asymptotic covariance matrix is derived. The performance of the proposed estimator is compared with several standard estimators using simulation studies. The proposed methodology is also illustrated using a data set obtained from the National Toxicology Program.