Politics and Scientific Expertise: Scientists, Risk Perception, and Nuclear Waste Policy

To study the homogeneity and influences on scientists'perspectives of environmental risks, we have examined similarities and differences in risk perceptions, particularly regarding nuclear wastes, and policy preferences among 1011 scientists and engineers. We found significant differences ( p 0.05)in the patterns of beliefs among scientists from different fields of research. In contrast to physicists, chemists, and engineers, life scientists tend to: (a)perceive the greatest risks from nuclear energy and nuclear waste management; (b)perceive higher levels of overall environmental risk; (c)strongly oppose imposing risks on unconsenting individuals; and (d)prefer stronger requirements for environmental management. On some issues related to priorities among public problems and calls for government action, there are significant variations among life scientists or physical scientists. We also found that–independently of field of research–perceptions of risk and its correlates are significantly associated with the type of institution in which the scientist is employed. Scientists in universities or state and local governments tend to see the risks of nuclear energy and wastes as greater than scientists who work as business consultants, for federal organizations, or for private research laboratories. Significant differences also are found in priority given to environmental risks, the perceived proximity of environmental disaster, willingness to impose risks on an unconsenting population, and the necessity of accepting risks and sacrifices.     

尊重党员主体地位、保障党员民主权利与增进党内和谐

尊重党员主体地位和保障党员民主权利是增进党内和谐的基础和关键，是以党内和谐促社会和谐的根本要求，是科学发展观在党内和谐建设中的重要体现，也是检验以党内民主促进党内和谐的重要标准。因此，以尊重党员主体地位和保障党员民主权利实现党内和谐要着力提高党的领导干部的民主意识和民主素质，促进普通党员与党的领导干部之间的和谐；要着力保障党内选举的公信度，促进党组织活动与党的制度之间的和谐；要着力推进党务公开．促进党组织与党员之间的和谐；要着力提高党内监督的实效，维护党员与党组织之间的和谐；要着力建立和完善党内关爱机制，巩固和发展党组织与党员之间的扣谐。只有这样，才能更好地尊重党员主体地位。保障党员民主权利，实现党内和谐。     

Improving the contributions of technology assessment to the health care system of the U.S.A.

Summary Based on 14 case studies of highly effective therapies and the reasons they succeeded less frequently than they could, we propose a variety of steps to improve the health care system of the U.S.A. Whatever proposal emerges from current national debates until innovations are shown to be safe and effective, they should not be supported; when slightly better technologies are much more expensive than other good ones we need to consider appropriate choices carefully; simplified billing and bookkeping would reduce our costs; when a technology is rapidly introduced cautionnary measures may be needed; tracking immunization and repairing their omissions requires a new system; educational programs such as seen effective in hypertension should be applied in other areas such as vaccination; in organ transplantation the nation should consider “presumed consent”; our payment system sometimes creates perverse incentives and therefore needs review; and the preferences of the public in allocation of health resources need to be discovered once the public is informed about the issues. Research supported by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.     

Government Risk Management Priorities: A Comparison of the Preferences of Asian Indian Americans and Other Americans

A survey was conducted of approximately 200 Asian Indian Americans and 200 other residents of New Jersey in order to understand the risk management priorities that they want government to have. We found that Asian Indian Americans, especially younger women, focused on personal/family risks, such as alcohol and drug abuse, sexual abuse, and domestic violence. The New Jersey comparison group, in contrast, placed war/terrorism and loss of health care services and insurance at the top of their priorities for government. These results suggest stressful acculturation-related issues within the Asian Indian community. Both populations want more risk management from government than they believe government is currently providing. Respondents who wanted more from government tended to dread the risk, be fearful of the consequences, trust government, and have a feeling of personal efficacy. Within the Asian Indian American sample, wide variations were observed by language spoken at home and religious affiliation. Notably, Muslims and Hindi language speakers tended not to trust government and hence wanted less government involvement. This study supports our call for studies of recent migrant populations and Johnson's for testing ethnic identity and acculturation as factors in risk judgments.     

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.     

冲突视角下运输订单商业竞争战略研究

运用图模型理论研究冲突视角下中欧班列运营过程中运输订单商业竞争战略,构建“渝新欧”班列运营商、“苏满欧”班列运营商和昆山IT企业之间的商业竞争冲突模型。利用TOPSIS法评估班列的运输效率,确定决策者偏好,通过计算均衡解获得符合各决策者利益的理性对策。借助灵敏度分析研究决策者偏好改变对模型冲突结果的影响。研究表明:在竞争中,运输效率较低的一方可以通过降低价格弥补自身劣势而获得订单;运输效率较高的一方只有通过降价才能获得订单。该研究为班列运营商提供利益冲突中的商业竞争战略,能为顾客企业选择高效合理的运输线路提供有效的战略决策,同时亦能为宏观调控者规范市场、提高市场运输效率提供有效的政策启示。     

Preferences of the Central Bank of Brazil under the inflation targeting regime: Estimation using a DSGE model for a small open economy

The main objective of this paper is to estimate the preferences of the Central Bank of Brazil after the inflation targeting regime (January 2000 to December 2013), using a DSGE model with microeconomic foundations for a small open economy, based especially on the work of Kam et al. (2009). The model used in this study considers that the Central Bank minimizes a loss function, taking into account the deviation of inflation from its target, output stabilization, the interest rate smoothing and, unlike the previous works, the exchange rate. The results show that the major concern of the monetary authority in the period was the stabilization of inflation, followed by interest rate smoothing, exchange stabilization and, finally, output stabilization. The large value for the exchange rate smoothing parameter suggests the presence of fear of floating in the Brazilian case. An improved inflation targeting strategy should allow for less Central Bank intervention in the exchange rate market.     

基层党员坚定“四个自信”的实证研究——以浙江省嵊泗县为例

“四个自信”是党的最新理论成果，其对基层党员的影响理应是深远的。通过问卷、访谈以及文献分析等方法调查了以浙江省嵊泗县为代表的基层党员对“四个自信”的坚定状况。调研结果表明：其在总体上的坚定情况是可喜的，但也存在不少问题。通过对比参与调查的基层党员和非党员对在中国特色社会主义理论、道路、制度和文化等方面的差异，从民生问题、贫富差距扩大趋势、理论宣传教育程度和发展实际问题等方面分析原因，并据此提出了相应对策。