case

клинический случай

не для слабонервных

vkontakte

как я (неправильно) понимаю сайт хакнули, вконтактный спам хлынул уже и в ЖЖ
свой акаунт уже неск. месяцев не контролирую

если кому пришла какая-то хрень от меня -- приношу извинения, удалить тоже не могу :(

мб, отписать вконтактным админам?

hope U already have the book

preventive image

Итальянская кортинко против СПИДа -- непосредственно указывает на возможный путь проникновения инфекции

подробности см.

VaginaVertising

International Journal of Russian Studies

The fourth issue of the International Journal of Russian Studies has been published. You can find it at
http://radtr.net/tr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=59&Itemid=138.

We are now calling for articles for our fifth issue. Articles are accepted on topics relating to the Central Eurasian region. The deadline for the fifth issue will be 31 December 2009.


Prof. Ayse Dietrich

WCF Coverage on RH Reality Check

In partnership with RH Reality Check, a second piece covering Amsterdam's World Congress of Families, A Bankrupt Worldview and an Identity Crisis at the WCF, has now been posted.

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/08/11/a-bankrupt-worldview-display-amsterdam-identity-crisis-wcf

The piece provides greater context to WCF's day one....

The initial coverage piece can be found here: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/08/10/world-congress-families-gathers-%E2%80%9Cbastion%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%9Cantifamily-policies%E2%80%9D

Can anyone point to routines or software, preferably for R, that use baseline data to identify "best matched sets (e.g. pairs)" of units over which to randomize? I am trying to do this for the case where exact matches won't be possible, in which case some kind of balance statistic will be necessary to find optimal matches over which to
randomize. I can imagine a combinatorial search that tries out all possible pair (or trio, or whatever) combinations and then evaluates them somehow, or perhaps something that samples units, and then tries to best match them, and does so over oodles of samples, and then ranks the pairings somehow.

Wondering if someone has already invented this wheel.

2 possibilities are CEM, http://gking.harvard.edu/cem,
and BlockTools, http://rtm.wustl.edu/software.blockTools.htm.

http://gking.harvard.edu

The software available here
(http://rtm.wustl.edu/software.blockTools.htm) addresses this problem
with several algorithms, arbitrary group sizes (pairs, triples, etc.),
and some methods for dealing with outliers, conducting the
randomization, and outputting easy-to-read results. For an
application in designing and conducting a randomized field experiment,
see

King, Gary, Emmanuela Gakidou, Nirmala Ravishankar, Ryan T. Moore, Jason Lakin, Manett Vargas, Martha María Téllez-Rojo, Juan Eugenio Hernández Ávila, Mauricio Hernández Ávila and Héctor Hernández Llamas. 2007. "A 'Politically Robust' Experimental Design for Public Policy Evaluation, with Application to the Mexican Universal Health Insurance Program". Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 26(3): 479-509.

Based on responses I've received, I think I need to clarify what I was asking.

I am not looking for routines that match data for observational studies.

I am looking for something that automates the creation of matched sets over which treatments **will** be randomized. That is, the experimental treatments have **not yet been assigned.**

We want to automate the search for matched sets if units over which we will actually be randomizing treatment assignment.

For example, if we have a dataset with 1000 units, and we have a budget to treat 50 units, we want a routine that searches for an optimal set, based on input criteria, of 50 pairs within which we will randomize treatment.

So one possible approach could be to use our priors about what "matters" to stratify the 1000 units into 50 blocking cells (not necessarily evenly sized) and then examine all pair combinations within each cell to see which is a best matched pair. That's one example off the top of my head.

Hopefully that's more clear. But if I'm missing something obvious, please let me know.

From: Sergey Glebov [mailto:sglebov@smith.edu]

Dear colleagues,

The editors of Ab Imperio invite submissions of manuscripts to the third and fourth issues of the journal in 2009. These issues continue to explore the annual program of the journal focused on individual experiences of imperial space.

Information on manuscript submission can be found at the journal website at http://abimperio.net <http://abimperio.net>

Sergey Glebov


CALL FOR PAPERS: Ab Imperio in 2009 : Homo Imperii: The Imperial Situation of Multiple Temporalities and Heterogeneous Space

When Marc Bloch coined his famous definition of history as a science about humans in time,[1] he anticipated by several decades the "anthropological turn" in historical studies. The humanistic message of Bloch's formulation is ambivalent: does it suggest that human beings change together with the circumstances of "total history," or that they remain essentially the same throughout different epochs and situations? Is it really possible to "translate" adequately the life experience of a representative of a certain epoch in terms of a different time period? How do "grand narratives" look through the prism of an individual's life experience? How does one's life perception depend on the different aspects of the imperial situation that may combine uneven social and cultural spaces, and elements of different epochs, both archaic and modern? Can the methods of biographical writing and prosopography be regarded as an alternative to grand, depersonalized historical narratives? Writing biography is inconceivable without taking into
consideration time and space as crucial factors, but how does the specificity of these features affect human life and its perception?

[1] In the 1950s, this formula ("Science des hommes... dans le temps") was translated into English in the both old-fashioned and misleading way: "The science of men... in time", even though in the next sentence Bloch clarified the meaning of the word: "L'historien ne pense pas
seulement 'humain'" - "think [only] of the human." Cf.: Marc Bloch. Apologie pour l'histoire ou Metier d'historien. 2e edition. Paris, 1952. Pp. 4-5; Marc Bloch. The Historian's Craft. New York, 1953. P. 27.

No. 3/2009 "Maison des sciences de l'Homme: Human Sciences in the Empire"

The history of enlightenment in Russia as a project of normalization and Europeanization * scientific classifications of the population * borrowings and adaptations of the scientific discourses and practices of nineteenth-century colonial empires as a condition of admittance into the club of European colonial powers * psychology, its subjects and its objects of study * social sciences in imperial context * the sciences of imperial diversity: anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, etc. * museums and exhibitions as imperial "Panopticons" * political human sciences in empire * the humanistic paradigm and the problem of representation of the modern personality * medicine as a language of studying the individual and society * the imperial concept of norm and deviation * scientific foundations of uprising against empire * projects of rational cognition and re-description of empire and its inhabitants * "caring for souls:" theology on personality and empire.

No. 4/2009 "From Homo Imperii to Civitas: Projects of Imagined Imperial Communities"

Is civic society possible in empire? * Projects of state reform of imperial population: social engineering from above in empire * great ideologies on "small men" and their communities * "underground Russia" as an alternative social network * the corporate structure of imperial
society: cooperative, professional, confessional, et al. self-organization * Utopian projects of imperial society * political parties and movements and programs of imperial social reform * the
empire of "obshchestvennost'" in Russia and USSR.