Sacrifice and Community: Jewish Offering and Christian Eucharist – Matthew Levering

Book reviewed:
Sacrifice and Community: Jewish Offering and Christian Eucharist , Matthew Levering, Blackwells Publishing 2005 (1-4051-3690-1), ix + 210 pp., pb $29.95     

The Jewish Social Contract: An Essay in Political Theology – David Novak

Book reviewed:
The Jewish Social Contract: An Essay in Political Theology , David Novak, Princeton University Press 2005 (0-691-12210-5), xxi + 257 pp., hb $39.50     

Efficient spatio-temporal data mining with GenSpace graphs

We describe a method for spatio-temporal data mining based on GenSpace graphs. Using familiar calendar and geographical concepts, such as workdays, weeks, climatic regions, and countries, spatio-temporal data can be aggregated into summaries in many ways. We automatically search for a summary with a distribution that is anomalous, i.e., far from user expectations. We repeatedly ranking possible summaries according to current expectations, and then allow the user to adjust these expectations. We also choose a propagation path in the GenSpace subgraph that reduces the storage and time costs of the mining process.     

Development of sign-based perception by deaf children

In this study the sign-based perceptual abilities of 59 deaf children are investigated. Like many hearing speaking children, deaf signing children appear to perceive isolated lexical items based on the formational parameters of those items. Also, deaf signers show trends similar to those exhibited by hearing speakers for the development of the perceptual ability necessary to distinguish between minimal pairs within their respective language systems.     

AN ANALYSIS OF AND INTERVENTION IN THE SEXUAL TRANSMISSION OF DISEASE

Sexually transmitted diseases are a serious threat to the public health. Indeed, when an individual seeks medical treatment for a sexually transmitted disease, health authorities frequently attempt to identify, procure, and treat that individual's sexual contact(s). We conducted a comparative analysis of three alternative approaches to tracing the sexual partners of individuals diagnosed as having a sexually transmitted disease. The first approach involved counseling individuals (n = 27) infected with either gonorrhea or nongonococcal urethritis and exhorting them to procure their sexual partners for treatment. In addition to counseling, the second and third approaches involved distributing “occasion cards” for patients to use when informing sexual contacts of the need for treatment. Moreover, in the second approach, the counselor (a nurse or physician) informed infected patients (n = 19) that they and their partners could waive the $3 clinic fee contingent upon the partners seeking treatment within 1 week. In the third approach, the counselor asked infected persons (n = 19) to accept a follow-up telephone contact if their sexual partners failed to seek treatment within 1 week. The third approach was most effective. Ninety percent of the partners identified through this approach sought treatment, versus only about 60% of the partners in the other two conditions. The third approach was also the least expensive, costing about $2.95 to procure each partner for treatment.     

Credit and blame among American and Japanese children: normative, cultural, and individual differences

Japanese and American 5th graders (N = 593 children, 198 American and 395 Japanese) assigned credit and blame to good and bad classroom deeds and performances. Theoretically, a morality of aspiration involves assigning more credit for a good deed than blame for a corresponding bad deed; a morality of duty involves assigning more blame than credit. In both countries academic achievement norms were most consistent with aspiration, moral norms were judged as duties, and procedural norms were intermediate. Japanese children's responses were more consistent with aspiration than those of Americans. Analyses also explored cultural versus individual differences in sanctioning. The conclusion addresses the relevance of the concept of aspiration to the study of achievement and other norms.     

Using masculine generics: Does generic he increase male bias in the user's imagery?

Previous research has shown that experimenter-presented masculine generics can create male bias in the gender content of subjects' imagery. The present study tests experimentally whether subjects' own use of masculine generics has a similar effect on their imagery. College student subjects were induced to complete sentence fragments using masculine or unbiased generics, then asked to describe their imagery for each sentence and to give a first name to fit the person they visualized for each sentence. These dependent measures were coded for gender, and as predicted, analysis of variance showed that male bias was higher in the masculine generic condition than in the unbiased condition. Also as predicted, male subjects were more male-biased overall than were female subjects. The findings are discussed in terms of linguistic relativity (the proposition that language can shape thought), prototypicality (the most typical he is probably a man), and activation of multiple meanings (he has male-specific and gender-neutral denotations, and both may be activated even when the gender-neutral meaning is intended).     

Effects of alternatives in coalition bargaining

A critical factor in bargaining and coalition formation is the alternative outcomes of the bargainers if an agreement cannot be reached. In some situations bargainers have individual alternatives while in other situations their alternatives must be negotiated with others. The purpose of this study was to contrast the effects of one-person and two-person alternatives on coalition outcomes. The second purpose of the study was to contrast the predictions of four theories of coalition formation: bargaining theory, equal excess model, Shapley value, and a special case of equity theory. The results indicate that one-person alternatives enhance the bargaining strength of the stronger players more than two-person alternatives. The predictions of the equal excess model and the Shapley value were more accurate than the predictions of bargaining theory and equity theory. However, the greater accuracy of the equal excess model and the Shapley value may be restricted to situations in which the bargainers have one-person rather than two-person alternatives.