[Book review] Chance encounters: a first course in data analysis and inference

Book review of: Chance Encounters: A First Course in Data Analysis and Inference by Christopher J. Wild and George A.F. Seber 2000, John Wiley & Sons Inc. Hard-bound, xviii + 612 pp ISBN 0-471-32936-3

Research in statistical education — planning of an international survey

As announced in the November 2000 issue of MathStats&OR [1], one of the projects supported by the Maths, Stats & OR Network funds is an international survey of research into pedagogic issues in statistics and OR. I am taking the lead on this and report here on the progress that has been made during the first year. A paper giving some background to the project and describing initial thinking on how it might be implemented was presented at the 53rd session of the International Statistical Institute in Seoul, Korea, in August 2001 in a session on The future of statistics education research [2]. It sounded easy. I considered that I was something of an expert on surveys having lectured on the topic for many years and having helped students and others who were doing surveys, particularly with the design of their questionnaires. Surely all I had to do was to draft a few questions, send them electronically to colleagues in statistical education who would be only to happy to respond, and summarise their responses? I should have learnt from my experience of advising all those students who thought that doing a survey was easy and to whom I had to explain that their ideas were too ambitious. There are several inter-related stages in survey research and it is important to think about these before rushing into the collection of data. In the case of the survey in question, this planning stage revealed several challenges. Surveys are usually done for a purpose so even before planning how to do them, it is advisable to think about the final product and the dissemination of results. This is the route I followed.

Origin of Low CO2 Selectivity on Platinum in the Direct Ethanol Fuel Cell

Calculated answer: First-principles calculations have been applied to calculate the energy barrier for the key step in CO formation on a Pt surface (see picture; Pt blue, Pt atoms on step edge yellow) to understand the low CO2 selectivity in the direct ethanol fuel cell. The presence of surface oxidant species such as O (brown bar) and OH (red bar) led to an increase of the energy barrier and thus an inhibition of the key step. © 2012 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

Citizenship and Collective Identity in Europe

No abstract available

Prediction of Transonic Limit-Cycle Oscillations Using an Aeroelastic Harmonic Balance Method

This work proposes a novel approach to compute transonic limit-cycle oscillations using high-fidelity analysis. Computational-Fluid-Dynamics based harmonic balance methods have proven to be efficient tools to predict periodic phenomena. This paper’s contribution is to present a new methodology to determine the unknown frequency of oscillations, enabling harmonic balance methods to accurately capture limit-cycle oscillations; this is achieved by defining a frequency-updating procedure based on a coupled computational-fluid-dynamics/computational-structural-dynamics harmonic balance formulation to find the limit-cycle oscillation condition. A pitch/plunge airfoil and delta wing aerodynamic and respective linear structural models are used to validate the new method against conventional time-domain simulations. Results show consistent agreement between the proposed and time-marching methods for both limit-cycle oscillation amplitude and frequency while producing at least a one-order-of-magnitude reduction in computational time.

Coping, fatores psicossociais e capacidade para o trabalho

O coping desempenha um importante papel na saúde individual e rendimento organizacional. Tal como o coping é um tema de interesse recente e promissor na área da psicologia da saúde ocupacional, também os fatores psicossociais do trabalho têm ganho um crescente interesse no domínio da saúde ocupacio-nal. No entanto, pouco se sabe acerca das configurações de coping mais salu-togénicas no mundo do trabalho, e menos ainda acerca da participação dos fatores psicossociais na definição das mesmas. Esta última perspetiva assume os fatores psicossociais não como causas de stresse, mas enquanto recursos de coping. Com o presente estudo, desejávamos saber se as pessoas com melhor saúde no trabalho usam estratégias de coping diferentes daquelas com menor saúde, bem como se a escolha dessas estratégias é influenciada pelos fatores psicossociais do trabalho. Pretendia-se ainda caracterizar o coping dos trabalhadores mais saudáveis e produtivos, e perceber que fatores psicosso-ciais contribuem para o mesmo. Foram estudados 2960 profissionais de traba-lhos mentais, sendo 31% (n=909) profissionais de saúde e 69% (n=2051) pro-fissionais de outras áreas. Além das variáveis sociodemográficas, avaliou-se o coping (Brief COPE), os fatores psicossociais do trabalho (COPSOQ) e o índi-ce de capacidade para o trabalho (ICT), enquanto indicador de saúde ocupa-cional. Desenhou-se um estudo transversal e quantitativo, com níveis de análi-se descritivo, exploratório, correlacional e preditivo. Os resultados confirmaram as hipóteses de estudo e permitem concluir genericamente que (1) o coping diferencia e determina a saúde no trabalho, (2) os fatores psicossociais do trabalho influenciam o coping, ainda que modestamente, e (3) o coping dos profissionais de saúde é estruturalmente diferente do coping dos não profissio-nais de saúde. Os resultados possibilitam ainda estabelecer perfis de bom e de mau coping no trabalho e concorrem para definir estratégias de intervenção psicológica para o desenvolvimento do reportório de coping dos profissionais de trabalhos mentais, bem como estratégias de gestão (de recursos humanos) para a melhoria do ambiente psicossocial do trabalho. Por fim, os resultados estimulam algumas considerações teóricas e metodológicas que sugerem direções futuras para o estudo dos efeitos da relação do coping com o ambien-te psicossocial do trabalho na saúde e bem-estar individual, no rendimento organizacional e na qualidade de vida no trabalho. Julgamos, por fim, que os resultados obtidos podem contribuir para aprimorar os mecanismos de coping dos profissionais e para ajustar o ambiente psicossocial do trabalho.

Gestão fiscal e benefícios fiscais

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentado ao Instituto de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Auditoria, sob orientação de Doutor José Campos Amorim

Sommes-nous prêts à prescrire une polypill à nos patients [Are we ready to prescribe a polypill to our patients?].

The all-in-one pill combination (Polypill) of several active components used in primary prevention of cardiovascular disease was a decade ago purposed to reduce the cardiovascular burden by more than 80%. This Polypill could be approved before 2013 in United States. Although controversed, it could answer to the worried situation even observed in Switzerland: the adherence to secondary prevention treatments is clearly insufficient and the cardiovascular events remain in the first row of death's causes. This abstract summarize the results from interventional studies who tried to valid this concept as well as the main stakes to be assessed on the medical side before to consider such a similar approach in Switzerland.

L'Écho de Paris

1889/12/29 (Numéro 2051).