Risk Ranking by the British Public: A Survey of Worry About a Broad Spectrum of Risk Issues

Much attention has focused on people's concerns about technological and environmental risks, but it is important to acknowledge that these are not the only risks that individuals have to face. In this article we present the results of a national survey ranking levels of worry across a broader spectrum of risk issues, including ‘lifestyle’, social welfare, financial and personal safety risks. A total of 1742 interviews were conducted, at home, among a nationally representative quota sample of adults age 15+ in Great Britain. Field work took place between January 24 to 27, 1997. Respondents' spontaneous mentions of worry centered on issues to do with health, education, and money. When prompted, respondents expressed most concern about a number of social issues, while certain ‘lifestyle’ factors identified as significant risks to health were accorded only low levels of worry. The survey demonstrates that risk issues that engage some expert attention do not always have the same immediacy for the general public. Thus, while technological and environmental risks certainly deserve attention, they should not overshadow consideration of other risks that have equal if not greater implications for people's lives.     

肝功能检验建议性报告软件临床分析管理的优势

介绍一种方便于临床分析、鉴别诊断和分析管理的临床检验专家系统。利用人工神经网络（Artificial Neural. Networks,ANN）挖掘患者基本信息和实验室数据,进行综合统计分析,对已确诊的患者（肝炎、肝癌、肝硬化和胆囊结石）的生化检验项目进行梳理,得出相应疾病生化指标的临床阳性预测值,然后以各项生化指标为多因素变量、诊断为输出变量建立ANN预测模型。另外抽取肝功异常并已明确诊断的患者60例进行生化指标测定,利用ANN系统,综合分析预测临床符合率,同时构建对初诊病人的树状筛查程序和直观判读报告软件的开发。利用专家诊断系统对肝脏疾病预测的准确率分别为：肝炎80.0%、肝硬化86.7%、肝癌66.7%和胆囊结石73.3%,优化后的报告格式直观反映患者的病情变化。借助于建议性报告软件可快速简易地作出对肝胆系统疾病鉴别诊断,达到医疗资源优化利用的目的。     

食源性致病菌风险排名方法

综述食品风险排名的相关概念及其在风险评估中的重要性,探讨发达国家进行风险分析的方法与经验,其中致病菌风险排名的研究因病原菌的动态性和宿主特异性而呈现出独特的挑战性。重点详细探讨美国对食源性致病菌排名的创新方法——专家组启发法,此法作为弥补数据不足和不确定性的手段,结合传统的＂自上而下＂和＂自下而上＂方法,可以为风险管理者提供了更全面更有效的食源性致病菌风险排名。     

Book reviews

Hugh Honour, THE IMAGE OF THE BLACK IN WESTERN ART, IV FROM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION TO WORLD WAR I, Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1989; part i, 379 pp., 196 ill., part ii, 306 pp., 183 ill., £34.95 each volume.

Deborah Willis‐Thomas, AN ILLUSTRATED BIO‐BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BLACK PHOTOGRAPHERS, 1940–1988, New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989, 483 pp., $85.00.

John Hutchinson, THE DYNAMICS OF CULTURAL NATIONALISM: THE GAELIC REVIVAL AND THE CREATION OF THE IRISH NATION STATE, London: Allen and Unwin, 1987, viii + 343 pp., £38.00.

Arthur Aughey, UNDER SIEGE: ULSTER UNIONISM AND THE ANGLO‐IRISH AGREEMENT, London: Hurst & Co, 1989, xv + 214 pp., £18.50.

Richard Jenkins (ed.), NORTHERN IRELAND: STUDIES IN SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC LIFE, London: Avebury, 1989, xii + 197 pp., £23.50.

J. I. Little, NATIONALISM, CAPITALISM, AND COLONIZATION IN NINETEENTH‐CENTURY QUEBEC: THE UPPER ST. FRANCIS DISTRICT, Kingston, Montreal, London: McGill‐Queen's University Press, 1989, 336 pp., £31.45.

Basdeo Mangru, BENEVOLENT NEUTRALITY: INDIAN GOVERNMENT POLICY AND LABOUR MIGRATION TO BRITISH GUIANA 1854–1884, London: Hansib, 1987, 267 pp., £12.95.

Carole Marks, FAREWELL ‐ WE'RE GOOD AND GONE: THE GREAT BLACK MIGRATION, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989, x + 209 pp., $37.50 and $12.95 (paper).

James R. Grossman, LAND OF HOPE: CHICAGO, BLACK SOUTHERNERS, AND THE GREAT MIGRATION, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989, 384 pp., £23.95.

Robert M. Jiobu, ETHNICITY AND ASSIMILATION: BLACKS, CHINESE, FILIPINOS, JAPANESE, KOREANS, MEXICANS, VIETNAMESE AND WHITES, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988, np.

John M. MacKenzie (ed.), IMPERIALISM AND POPULAR CULTURE, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989, 264 pp., (illus.), £10.95 (paper).

Anne Phillips, THE ENIGMA OF COLONIALISM: BRITISH POLICY IN WEST AFRICA, James Currey and Indiana University Press, vii + 184 pp., £25.00 and £8.95 (paper).

John Darwin, BRITAIN AND DECOLONISATION: THE RETREAT FROM EMPIRE IN THE POST‐WAR WORLD, London: Macmillan, 1988, xiii + 383 pp., £33.00, and £9.95 (paper).

Tony Kushner and Kenneth Lunn (eds), TRADITIONS OF INTOLERANCE: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON FASCISM AND RACE DISCOURSE IN BRITAIN, Manchester University Press, 1989, 245 pp., £29.95.     

Policies and public opinion towards immigrants: the Spanish case

By tackling negative opinions towards immigration we can create a basis to orientate policies that seek to reduce them. My purpose is to highlight that the analysis of immigration in Spain exemplifies a clear link between policies and public opinion. It is this link that is at the basis of what I will call the ambivalence of Spanish public opinion, when border and integration issues are compared.     

Public opinion,prejudice and the racialization of welfare in Canada

Drawing on a unique survey experiment in the 2011 Canadian Election Study data set, this paper examines the ways in which racial cues influence attitudes towards redistributive policy. While work in the USA points to a strong racialization of welfare attitudes, little research explores the ways in which racial cues may structure attitudes about welfare elsewhere. In the Canadian context, Aboriginal peoples have faced both historic persecution and continue to face severe discrimination. They also experience much higher levels of poverty than other groups in Canada. Our results examine the effect that (hypothetical) Aboriginal recipients have on public support for social assistance. Results suggest that respondents' support for redistribution is lower when recipients are Aboriginal rather than white. As we have seen in the USA, then, support for welfare is related to racialized perceptions about those who benefit from social assistance.     

Intragenesis and cisgenesis as alternatives to transgenic crop development

One of the major concerns of the general public about transgenic crops relates to the mixing of genetic materials between species that cannot hybridize by natural means. To meet this concern, the two transformation concepts cisgenesis and intragenesis were developed as alternatives to transgenesis. Both concepts imply that plants must only be transformed with genetic material derived from the species itself or from closely related species capable of sexual hybridization. Furthermore, foreign sequences such as selection genes and vector‐backbone sequences should be absent. Intragenesis differs from cisgenesis by allowing use of new gene combinations created by in vitro rearrangements of functional genetic elements. Several surveys show higher public acceptance of intragenic/cisgenic crops compared to transgenic crops. Thus, although the intragenic and cisgenic concepts were introduced internationally only 9 and 7 years ago, several different traits in a variety of crops have currently been modified according to these concepts. Five of these crops are now in field trials and two have pending applications for deregulation. Currently, intragenic/cisgenic plants are regulated as transgenic plants worldwide. However, as the gene pool exploited by intragenesis and cisgenesis are identical to the gene pool available for conventional breeding, less comprehensive regulatory measures are expected. The regulation of intragenic/cisgenic crops is presently under evaluation in the EU and in the US regulators are considering if a subgroup of these crops should be exempted from regulation. It is accordingly possible that the intragenic/cisgenic route will be of major significance for future plant breeding.     

What is an expert? A systems perspective on expertise

Expert knowledge is a valuable source of information with a wide range of research applications. Despite the recent advances in defining expert knowledge, little attention has been given to how to view expertise as a system of interacting contributory factors for quantifying an individual's expertise. We present a systems approach to expertise that accounts for many contributing factors and their inter‐relationships and allows quantification of an individual's expertise. A Bayesian network (BN) was chosen for this purpose. For illustration, we focused on taxonomic expertise. The model structure was developed in consultation with taxonomists. The relative importance of the factors within the network was determined by a second set of taxonomists (supra‐experts) who also provided validation of the model structure. Model performance was assessed by applying the model to hypothetical career states of taxonomists designed to incorporate known differences in career states for model testing. The resulting BN model consisted of 18 primary nodes feeding through one to three higher‐order nodes before converging on the target node (Taxonomic Expert). There was strong consistency among node weights provided by the supra‐experts for some nodes, but not others. The higher‐order nodes, “Quality of work” and “Total productivity”, had the greatest weights. Sensitivity analysis indicated that although some factors had stronger influence in the outer nodes of the network, there was relatively equal influence of the factors leading directly into the target node. Despite the differences in the node weights provided by our supra‐experts, there was good agreement among assessments of our hypothetical experts that accurately reflected differences we had specified. This systems approach provides a way of assessing the overall level of expertise of individuals, accounting for multiple contributory factors, and their interactions. Our approach is adaptable to other situations where it is desirable to understand components of expertise.