当代公共生活面临的伦理困境研究

在当前中国社会转型时期,人们的生活方式、行为方式、价值规范和文化观念都发生了急剧的变化,使得公共生活产生了许多新的伦理问题,面临着新的伦理困境.主要表现在:一是"熟人社会"向"陌生人社会"转变,交往实践前所未有的拓宽了,信息交流产生不对称;二是社会公共生活在"情"和"理"之间矛盾增加;三是群己调适的问题凸显,在"群己"问题上更强调二者的合理性共存.参9.     

考虑双向群组运动特征的场域模型研究

行人动力学的研究能为火灾等紧急情况下的疏散研究提供理论支撑。现有研究多以独立行人为研究对象,群组作为行人流的重要组成部分,有必要进行研究分析。以场域模型为基础,在前人提出群组场的基础上进行拓展,并引入预测场模拟群组行人避让行为,构建了考虑双向群组运动特征的拓展场域模型,对双向群组运动特征进行研究。在双向流通道中进行模拟发现:随着预测场敏感性参数增大避让行为意识增强,时间损失增加,与反向行人的正面冲突减少;拓展模型能使群组维持较近距离的同时减少群组成员之间的冲突;该模型能模拟密度越大速度越小的典型现象。     

A formal model for consensus and negotiation in environmental management

Environmental management decisions typically lie at the interface of science and public policy. Consequently, these decisions involve a number of stakeholders with competing agendas and vested interests in the ultimate decision. In such cases, it is appropriate to adopt formal methods for consensus building to ensure transparent and repeatable decisions. In this paper, we use an environmental management case study to demonstrate the utility of a mathematical consensus convergence model in aggregating values (or weights) across groups. Consensus models are applicable when all parties agree to negotiate in order to resolve conflict. The advantage of this method is that it does not require that all members of the group reach agreement, often an impossible task in group decision making. Instead, it uses philosophical foundations in consensus building to aggregate group members' values in a way that guarantees convergence towards a single consensual value that summarizes the group position. We highlight current problems with ad hoc consensus and negotiation methods, provide justification for the adoption of formal consensus convergence models and compare the consensus convergence model with currently used methods for aggregating values across a group in a decision making context. The model provides a simple and transparent decision support tool for group decision making that is straightforward to implement.     

Differences in rural landscape perceptions and preferences between farmers and naturalists

A long history of human–nature interactions mediated by agriculture, resulted in high biodiversity in Japanese rural landscapes. This diversity faces drastic decline due to the changes following the socioeconomic circumstances regarding agriculture. Rural conservation will require cooperation among major stakeholders, and knowing how preferences for and perceptions of rural landscapes differ among them can help crafting and implementing effective conservation measures. This study investigated how perceptions of rural landscapes in the Arai-Keinan region, Niigata, Japan differ among people having very different relationships to them. In a photograph-based semantic differential survey, farmers and naturalists, major stakeholders in rural conservation, rated both rice paddy and woodland landscapes. In determining preferences for rice paddy landscapes, perceptions of stewardship and openness were significantly more important for farmers, whereas those of naturalness and biodiversity were significantly more important for naturalists. Such group differences were not found for woodland landscapes. Analysis of perceptions for landscape changes suggested that farmers may have higher normative criteria for rural landscapes than naturalists. Group preferences for intensified rice paddies on sloped topography may conflict, and any rural conservation planning effort should carefully consider that farmers and naturalists consider different aspects of landscapes as important.     

Auditing International Environmental Agreements: The Role of Supreme Audit Institutions

Environmental problems are often transboundary in nature. International cooperation to solve them has resulted in a growing number of environmental agreements. Supreme Audit Institutions, which are the highest national audit institutions in a country and are responsible for auditing the regularity of governmental expenditure and receipts, can contribute to the success of international cooperation by auditing government compliance with international environmental obligations and commitments. This is a new challenge for supreme audit institutions. To encourage and support this work a Workgroup on Environmental Auditing of the International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions has developed guidelines, which are presented in this article. The possible practical role of audit institutions is illustrated by the audit on the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Ships, in which eight European audit institutions cooperated. This article is published in a personal capacity and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Netherlands Court of Audit.     

MNLR and ANN structural group contribution methods for predicting the flash point temperature of pure compounds in the transportation fuels range

A QSPR method is presented for predicting the flash point temperature (FPT) of pure compounds in the transportation fuels range. A structural group contribution method is used to determine the flash point temperature using two techniques: multivariable nonlinear regression and artificial neural networks. The method was used to probe the structural groups that have significant contribution to the overall FPT of pure compounds and arrive at the set of 37 atom-type structural groups that can best represent the flash point for about 375 substances. The input parameters to the model are the number of occurrence of each of the 37 structural groups in each molecule. The neural network method was the better of the two techniques and can predict the flash point of pure compounds merely from the knowledge of the molecular structure with an overall correlation coefficient of 0.996 and overall average and maximum errors of 1.12% and 6.62%, respectively. The results are compared to the more traditional approach of the SGC method along with other methods in the literature.     

河流水质时间序列分析的自组织预测方法及应用

应用前苏联学者伊万年科基于生物控制论中的自组织原理提出的一种数据组合处理方法，有效地解决复杂非线性系统预测。以汾河某段的水污染时间序列监测数据为基础，建立了一个河流水质污染预测的自组织模型，其建模样本的拟合值和检验样本的预测值相对误差分别在３．１％和５．３％以内。结果表明，自组织模型能较好地描述水污染时间序列数据之间的非线性关系，适合复杂水环境污染系统的预测工作。     

生态工业园区--资源枯竭地区的新型工业化道路

系统描述了东北老工业基地以及资源枯竭地区目前发展所面临的困境，并以具体的实例说明了生态工业园区在促进上述地区走上新型工业化道路中的重要作用。     

Resource distributions and diet development by trial-and-error learning

We study interactions between resource distributions, grouping, and diet development in foragers who learn by trial-and-error. We do this by constructing an individual-based model where individuals move and forage in groups in a 2-D space with high resource diversity and learn what to eat. By comparing diet development in different resource distributions, and in gregarious and solitary individuals, we elucidate how these factors affect patterns of diet variation. Our results indicate that different resource distributions have profound effects on learning opportunities, and thereby lead to contrasting phenomena. In uniform environments, local resource depletion by gregarious individuals, in interaction with learning, leads to diet differentiation. In patchy environments, grouping leads to enhanced diet overlap within groups and leads to differences in diet between groups. Surprisingly, mixed environments can generate all these phenomena simultaneously. Our results predict relationships between diet variation, trial-and-error learning, and resource distributions. The phenomena we describe are not evolved strategies, but arise spontaneously when groups of individuals learn to forage in certain resource distributions. This suggests that describing diet specialization or diet homogenization as the result of behavioral strategies may not always be justified.     

Kinship and social tolerance among female and juvenile wild house mice: kin bias but not kin discrimination

Kin-biased social tolerance among house mice has been interpreted in terms of kin discrimination. However, several lines of evidence suggest it may instead be an incidental artifact of group member discrimination. This leads to very different predictions about the social consequences of relatedness within and between social groups. Social interactions between wild-stock adult female and juvenile house mice (Mus domesticus) established in neighbouring territorial groups within enclosures reveal relatedness to dominant males within groups as the major factor determining social tolerance of juveniles by females. Relatedness to the female herself had no significant independent effect on responses indicating tolerance. Females were generally more aggressive toward neighbouring-group juveniles (all unrelated to females) compared with those from their own group (all related to females), but were most aggressive toward neighbouring juveniles sired by the neighbouring dominant male. They were also more aggressive toward their own-group juveniles that had been sired by the neighbouring dominant but only when encountered in the neighbouring territory and with a greater bias against female juveniles. Females were least aggressive toward own-group juveniles sired by their own-group dominant male. The sire-bias in tolerance among females is similar to that reported among the dominant males themselves in an earlier study. As a result of the combined sire-bias in tolerance by adult males and females, juveniles sired by their own-group dominant males become less likely to intrude into a neighbouring territory with time. Overall, the results suggest that differences in social tolerance reflect discrimination on the basis of social group membership rather than relatedness between interactants and thus provide strong experimental evidence in support of incidental kin bias rather than kin discrimination.