The impact of relative residence times on the distribution of heavy drinkers in highly distinct environments

Alcohol consumption is a function of social dynamics, environmental contexts, individuals' preferences and family history. Empirical surveys have focused primarily on identification of risk factors for high-level drinking but have done little to clarify the underlying mechanisms at work. Also, there have been few attempts to apply nonlinear dynamics to the study of these mechanisms and processes at the population level. A simple framework where drinking is modeled as a socially contagious process in low- and high-risk connected environments is introduced. Individuals are classified as light, moderate (assumed mobile), and heavy drinkers. Moderate drinkers provide the link between both environments, that is, they are assumed to be the only individuals drinking in both settings. The focus here is on the effect of moderate drinkers, measured by the proportion of their time spent in “low-” versus “high-” risk drinking environments, on the distribution of drinkers.A simple model within our contact framework predicts that if the relative residence times of moderate drinkers are distributed randomly between low- and high-risk environments then the proportion of heavy drinkers is likely to be higher than expected. However, the full story even in a highly simplified setting is not so simple because “strong” local social mixing tends to increase high-risk drinking on its own. High levels of social interaction between light and moderate drinkers in low-risk environments can diminish the importance of the distribution of relative drinking times on the prevalence of heavy drinking.     

Profiling mobile TV adopters in college student populations of Korea

By profiling demographic characteristics, perceived general adoption attributes, perceived value-based adoption attributes, motivational needs, mass media use, and content interest, this exploratory study examines the nature of four categories of mobile TV adopters — current, potential, continuous non-, and discontinuous user groups. Despite the limited sample size (N = 214), there are some meaningful findings. First of all, the non-adoption rate of mobile TV of the continuous non-, and discontinuous user groups is higher than the adoption rate of the current and potential user groups. Less than half of the respondents (N = 34) who had used TV on a mobile device were unwilling to use it again in the next twelve months, and almost half of those (N = 102) did not have the intention of using it within the coming year. The results suggest that the discontinuous group seems to have been dissatisfied with the actual mobile TV use when compared with their expectations and evaluations, while the potential user group is more likely to have high expectations and positive evaluations before the adoption and use of mobile TV. All user groups were unwilling to pay the fee, despite the current and potential user groups perceiving the exceptional values. No differences were found in the personality trait of innovativeness and mass media use behaviors among the four groups.     

Managing Financial Integration and Capital Mobility—Policy Lessons from the Past Two Decades

Emerging market experience over the past two decades has revealed the tenuous links between external financial integration and faster growth, and the proclivity of such integration to fuel costly crises. Emerging markets learned, converging to the middle ground of the macroeconomic trilemma. Following their crises of 1997–2001, emerging markets added financial stability as a goal, self‐insured by building up international reserves, and adopted a public finance approach to financial integration. The global crisis of 2008–09 illustrated that the advanced economies “overshot” the optimal degree of financial deregulation, while the resilience of the emerging markets validated their public finance approach to financial integration.     

美国医疗决策中的卫生技术评估

卫生技术评估（Health technology assessment，HTA）是对卫生保健技术应用所产生的短期与长期结果进行检验的一种政策研究形式。评估的内容包括安全性、有效性、患者自报结果、现实效果、成本和成本一效果以及社会、法律、伦理和政治影响等。     

Surviving leisure time racism: the burden of racial harassment on Britain's black footballers

This paper explores the burden of racial harassment and abuse on Britain's black footballers and places this in the context of leisure time racism. It is based on research carried out between 1989 and 1994. It is suggested that the source of such racism has been a neglected issue and only gained significant recognition in 1993 when the Commission for Racial Equality launched its Let's Kick Racism Out of Football campaign. It is argued that the racial abuse and chanting aimed at black footballers are examples of racial harassment. The research gathered evidence from two locations - Leeds and Newcastle - to assess the extent to which players were being disproportionately affected by this harassment and introduces the concept of 'burden of abuse'. Some historical background is provided and football stadia are considered as key symbolic leisure sites where a basic white working class racism has found expression. The growth of black footballers since the 1970s is considered, as well as the way such players have survived the racial harassment, some of whom were interviewed as part of the research exercise.     

Building internal business scenarios based on real data from a performance measurement system

This paper presents a new methodology to build internal business scenarios from the data gathered by some key performance indicators (KPIs) defined within a performance measurement system. The application of the principal components analysis technique leads to the identification of latent relationships between KPIs that underlies some important business aspects. Further, this methodology allows to represent not only the temporal evolution of the organisation as a function of these business aspects but also the definition and determination of internal business scenarios, being therefore the source of meaningful managerial information. At the end of the paper, results of a practical application are presented and discussed, as well as their importance for the organisation from a decision making point of view.