bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Life Office Solvency and Insolvency.
Authors: Ferguson D. G. R.
Published: August 2014

It is quite impracticable to devise an equitable mode of winding-up an insolvent life insurance company (5).

A company being found to be insolvent, what is to be done with it ?… The actuaries have unanimously recommended a reduction of the sums assured, the same premiums being paid, but the lawyers have agreed that this is impracticable … The actuaries are able to take a much higher view; they need not consider what is the law, but what is most consistent with real and substantial justice to all parties. In fact, we may sum it up by saying that the courts of this country are not courts of justice but courts of law (4).

[In relation to a method of treating insolvent life insurance companies as a closed fund] Its simplicity, and the entire absence of opportunity for the kind of deception and fraud usually committed by those who manipulate the assets of insolvent companies, are its most striking merits, and are certainly merits of a high order (1).
Motor Outstanding Claims.
Authors: Bennett M. C. , Taylor J. M.
Published: August 2014

A Report with the above title, which forms Section B of this paper, was presented at the conference at Hythe, Kent in September 1977 of the General Insurance Study Group, which is sponsored jointly by the Institute and the Faculty. The conference was attended by about sixty people, nearly all non-life practitioners and nearly all actuaries.

Previous papers on technical reserves had discussed various statistical methods of estimating outstanding claim reserves, and in some cases had included some data to provide numerical examples of the use of the methods. In our report we chose tostartwith some data and to look at the degree of stability in those data. Inspection of the data showed remarkably stable patterns and it was apparent that a simple method not previously described based on average payments was likely to be satisfactory for estimating the reserve for outstanding claims. The report then seeks to explain why the authors consider that this method has advantages over two well-known but more complicated methods.
The Role of the Life Reassurer.
Authors: Clark C.
Published: August 2014

The complete role of the life reassurer in the U.K. is not well known. Many will be aware of the involvement of the reassurer in the handling of very large risks or impaired lives, but relatively few may have experience of the other areas in which a reassurer operates. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the extent of the reassurer's services in the U.K.

Very few papers appear to have been written on reassurance for either the Students Society or the Institute, there having been two papers to the Students Society, one by A. J. Steeds in 1953 (J.S.S.XII, part 3) and another by I. C. Smart in 1970, and the most recent paper submitted to the Institute by G. T. Foster, in 1946 (J.I.A.LXXII).

Reassurance began in the early days of life assurance development, by the simple exchange of business between two life offices. The last fifty years have seen the emergence of a small number of life offices known as professional reassurers; life offices whose sole purpose is the acceptance of reassurance. This specialization has produced an increasing dependence by the life offices on the professional reassurer for their reassurance needs.
U.S. Gaap—A U.K. Actuary's Perspective.
Authors: Creedon S.
Published: August 2014

Unlike his U.K. counterpart, who opines on a ‘true and fair view’, the more limited objective of the U.S. Certified Public Accountant is to certify that financial statements present fairly ‘in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles’. Generally accepted accounting principles, as applicable to proprietary life insurance companies, are set out in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Audit Guide ‘Audits of Stock Life Insurance Companies’ (1) (hereafter referred to as the ‘Audit Guide’). Despite being neither general in application nor universally accepted, it is these accounting principles which are commonly known as U.S. GAAP.

U.S. GAAP are relevant to U.K. actuaries because:

(a) Many actuaries work for, or with, life insurance subsidiaries of U.S. companies which are required to prepare financial statements in accordance with U.S. GAAP

(b) More generally, on the grounds that developments in the U.S. often precede similar developments in the U.K., we should anticipate the possible development of U.K. generally accepted accounting principles (or even EEC GAAP).
The Canadian Life Assurance Market.
Authors: Rosenfelder M. , Roberts R. M.
Published: August 2014

The authors have endeavoured to highlight those aspects which, because of the way they contrast with British practices, are likely to be of particular interest to actuaries in the U.K.

Subjects reviewed include economic and demographic trends; a description of the life companies, both Canadian and foreign, operating in Canada; the regulatory environment including the recent legislative changes designed to bring financial statements closer to ‘GAAP’; the new actuarial valuation procedures and the wider responsibilities of the signing actuary; asset values and the new treatment of investment gains and losses; taxation; marketing systems; and the major types of policies and benefits sold, including the implications of guaranteed cash values.

Also included is a review of the actuarial profession and the education of the actuary in Canada.
Catastrophes and Catastrophe Insurances.
Authors: Lockett J. E. , Taylor Nick
Published: August 2014

1.1 This paper focuses on sections of the insurance industry which are not often widely discussed. If catastrophe insurances are to be transacted successfully, a large number of different technical skills and experiences must be combined. Actuaries in the U.K. are still relatively little employed on the problems of general insurance, and are rarely involved in the complexities of these particular sections of it. It must be recognized that there is only limited scope for the application of actuarial skills in this field. However, there may be some advantage to be gained by mixing an intelligent statistical opinion with other specialized technical or practical ones when some catastrophe problems are being discussed. Before expressing a view on any topic, it is, of course, essential to learn about the background and existing conditions.

1.2 The concept of catastrophe is considered in section 2 of this paper. Potential catastrophe situations can be classified into two groups, natural hazards and man-made hazards. Each of the sections 3–9 deals with one of the principal natural hazards, giving an outline of the causes of catastrophic events, the type of losses to be expected, and the form of insurance cover likely to be available in vulnerable areas. Section 10 describes the New Zealand state scheme, which provides cover in the event of extraordinary losses from nearly all elemental perils, and war. Sections 11–16 each deal with a different type of situation where a man-made catastrophe can occur, and the insurance provisions available in each case.
The Proficient Instrument—A New Appraisal of the Commutation Function in the Context of Pension Fund Work.
Authors: Chamberlin G.
Published: August 2014

In this paper, we aim to demonstrate the continuing usefulness, despite many recent attacks, of the commutation function in pension fund work. To do this we take the offensive and show how the range of the function can be extended to provide factors suitable for the N-Year discontinuance valuation. In such a valuation, by contrast to the more usual aggregate method, it is assumed that the fund will be voluntarily wound up after the passage of the given period of years. The normal result of such a step will be to slacken the recommended pace of funding, at least in the immediately future years.

What may be said to be the point of so doing? By having at his fingertips N-year as well as aggregate-type functions, the actuary will add a further dimension to his possible choice of valuation basis. The dimension may be thought of as his ‘horizon’ on those future events which affect the payment of benefit under the Scheme. The use of such an horizon as an element of the basis is likely to have particular relevance in an era of high inflation and negative real returns on fund investments.
Should Actuaries be Random?.
Authors: Campbell R. D. , Clarke H. E.
Published: August 2014

The aims of this paper are twofold:

(a) To act as a guide to the basic mathematics and methods of simulation which might be useful to actuaries.

(b) To describe how simulation techniques might be used by actuaries, to promote a discussion about whether the suggested approaches are worth pursuing and to encourage people to suggest other possible actuarial uses for simulation.

Section 2 of the paper outlines the general methodology of simulation and serves as a guide to those appendices of the paper where some technical details are given.

Section 3 of the paper considers various actuarial problems and discusses how simulation methods might be applied to them. We have not worked on all the problems described in this section ourselves. The intention is partly to suggest problems that could be tackled by simulation and to consider whether this approach is worthwhile.
The Insurance Companies Act 1981 and Some of the Associated Regulations.
Authors: Pickford M. A.
Published: August 2014

The Insurance Companies Act 1981, after a relatively uncontroversial passage through both Houses of Parliament, received the Royal Assent on 2 July 1981. The main purposes of the Act were:

(a) to implement the provisions of the E.E.C. Life Directive of 5 March 1979,

(b) to enact in primary legislation the provisions of the E.E.C. Non-Life Directive dated 24 July 1973 (the provisions of this directive had already been implemented by statutory instruments under the European Communities Act 1972), and

(c) to remedy some defects in the Insurance Companies Act 1974 which had come to light in the course of day-to-day supervision, and to make other changes consequent on the implementing of the directives. Changes of particular interest to actuaries include:

(i) a requirement for annual actuarial investigations,

(ii) where any rights of long-term policyholders to participate in profits relate to the profits of particular parts of a long-term fund, a requirement to determine a separate surplus for that sub-fund,

(iii) some closing of loopholes in the requirement that no transfers out of the long-term fund should be made without an actuarial valuation and without meeting the conditions of §25 of the 1974 Act.
A Prophet of Profits: An Introduction to the theory and applications of profit tests.
Authors: Lee R. E.
Published: August 2014

One of the most interesting developments of the last decade has been the advance in micro-computer technology, and the actuary has taken full advantage. The advent of the mainframe computer heralded the use of a whole range of techniques which had previously been impractical because of the lengthy calculations involved; it is, however, the convenience and flexibility of the micro-computer that has brought some of these techniques to life. As a result the micro-computer has become an indispensable tool for a wide variety of actuarial work. In no area of actuarial practice has the impact of the micro been more noticeable than in that of profit testing. It is profit tests and their applications that are the subject of this paper.

In the discussion on Smart's paper (J.I.A., 104, 125) it was suggested that, for all its general excellence, it did not make the subject of profit testing readily accessible to the student. One of my aims in writing this paper has been to present the subject in a more practical form. In an attempt to make the paper readily comprehensible many aspects have been simplified, which I consider to be necessary if the principles are to be expounded clearly and are not to be clouded by unnecessary detail.
Immunized and Dedicated Bond Portfolios for U.K. Pension Funds.
Authors: Morrison Gordon M.
Published: August 2014

Most of the published actuarial literature in the U.K. on immunization has been applied to the valuation of a life office. The authors have shown how the immunization techniques first introduced by Redington (3) in 1952 can be used to match the liability outgo of the office, to a greater or lesser extent.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the student to the underlying concept of immunization and to show how it can be utilized to produce a guaranteed rate of return with a high degree of probability, irrespective of the future course of interest rate levels.

The term to maturity and duration (mean term) of a bond are discussed in §2. The maturity is only of limited help in characterizing a specific bond. The duration—a measure of the average time until the bond payments are received—is an easily determined figure which is more informative about a bond than maturity. The price sensitivity of a bond (i.e. volatility) is linearly related to the duration.
The Direct Marketing of Life Assurance in the United Kingdom.
Authors: Fairless Elaine
Published: August 2014

This paper describes the basic principles, methods and techniques of direct marketing, particularly as they relate to the Insurance Industry. It concentrates on those areas that are peculiar to this art and which would not necessarily be familiar to the Actuarial Profession in the normal course of events. The paper therefore has a marketing rather than a technical bias.

Legislation relating to this business is set out briefly and a review of the types of insurance product marketed by this method is included.

The paper concludes with some of the problems direct marketing presents to the Actuary and with some thoughts for the future.
Personal Financial Planning.
Authors: Chapman R. J.
Published: August 2014

The paper explains how Personal Financial Planning (PFP) covers all aspects of financial advice for individuals, with emphasis on pensions, life assurance, tax and investment. Advice may be confined to one of these subjects, but in its widest sense PFP extends to the process whereby an individual's financial affairs are looked at as a whole before comprehensive planning recommendations are made in accordance with his or her objectives.

The training of actuaries specifically covers the subjects of pensions, life assurance and investment. It also provides a working knowledge of trust law and tax. A familiarity with financial projections, an understanding of the effects of inflation and the ability to use computers provide actuaries with a further strong base for giving PFP advice.
Towards a Pensions Act.
Authors: Wynne-Griffith H. R.
Published: August 2014

Despite a plea for no more legislation, the author admits to having been overtaken by events. To this extent, the paper should be seen as a review of the current position in 1984. Whilst the trust fund might not be an ideal vehicle it did seem to be the best available and probably better than an alternative, totally new instrument. This view is held by the TUC, Gower, the Wilson Committee, and the Occupational Pensions Board (OPB). The principal deficiency at present is that the three relationships: Employee-Employer, Employer-Trustee and Trustee-Employee need to be better defined. Is membership of a scheme enforceable by an employee under contract law—or, indeed, by the employer? If so, are the benefits enforceable by the employee against the employer if the trustees have inadequate resources? Certain more immediate suggestions were (i) a pension fund should be protected against claims by a liquidator, (ii) the trustees on wind-up should be a creditor ranking with unpaid salaries, (iii) separate bank accounts for trustees and employer (this has now come to pass).
Extended Warranty Insurance.
Authors: Taylor J. M.
Published: August 2014

Extended warranty insurance for consumer durables was introduced into the United Kingdom as recently as 1981. Since then there has been a major expansion of this class of business, much of which has still to reach the later periods of exposure with, as yet, unknown levels of claims experience. Considerable future liabilities could therefore be involved, with implications both for reserving and rate-setting. The business has already caused problems for certain insurers and agencies, and has attracted an amount of adverse publicity amongst the public.

Many people would argue that this should be relatively simple business; in point of fact it is surprisingly complex and poses a number of problems of particular interest to actuaries and statisticians. This paper therefore aims to describe the basic features of this type of business, which will probably be unfamiliar to the majority of readers, and to highlight the principal problems and dangers involved for the insurers. It does not set out to solve all these problems. At this stage, as a learned judge has recently suggested, this may be better left to the astrologers!
Marketing the Actuarial Profession.
Authors: Lagden Jim
Published: August 2014

This paper was born over a year ago in Autumn 1983 when I proposed a thorough discussion of the whole current image of the actuarial profession.

The reasons I gave then were:

(a) There were a number of current debates affecting our livelihood into which there had been little official input from the profession, the pensions debate at the time being an example.

(b) There had been no effective response to specific attacks on us by other professions; judges for example, or by the financial media.

(c) A number of actuaries in major positions reported a disturbing lack of knowledge of the profession among prospective new recruits, combined with a view that the profession is becoming a less attractive career option.

(d) We live in a changing world where the role of all the professions is being brought under public scrutiny, with the need to justify the quality and relevance of the services available. Other professions are taking very positive action to communicate an image and a role, this affects us directly as well as indirectly.

(e) There has been no comprehensive paper or related discussion within the profession before, arising not least from a feeling that it was not needed, as we are small and safe, secure within the wider financial and professional system.
Join the DOTS and Make a Picture.
Authors: Macdonald A. S.
Published: August 2014

The Guinness Book of Records once claimed that the number π to a million decimal places, printed in full and bound in book form, was the Most Boring Book in the World. To the uninitiated, the Department of Trade Returns of U.K. life offices must seem to be in the same class, and when I chose the topic I wondered if this might affect the welcome which this paper would receive. For anyone with a professional interest in life offices, however, the Returns are too important to ignore. They contain the greatest amount of published data on the U.K. life assurance industry, they form an essential prop of our liberal supervisory system and they ought to be a line of defence against tighter controls.

Life assurance has always been unusual in attracting long term contractual savings in large amounts. This was even more true a century ago than it is today, as there were no great pension funds or unit trusts. Human nature being what it is, this led some to view life assurance with more enthusiasm than sense. The mid-nineteenth century saw numerous small life offices set up, many of which were soon in trouble and it became common for such offices to be taken over by others. This was not so bad when the business was transferred to a larger, sounder office but quite often the new proprietor was an office in no better state than that taken over.
Leveraged Leasing: An Example of the use of Investment Appraisal Techniques.
Authors: Sherris Michael
Published: August 2014

The origins of leveraged leasing are the trust arrangements used in the 1870's in the United States of America by railroad companies to finance the acquisition of rolling stock (Fritch, 1977, p. 98). A trust was established to purchase the equipment. The trustee issued trust certificates to investors who provided the funds for the equipment acquisition. The trust certificates provided for the repayment of principal and interest at specified dates. The trust then leased the equipment to the railroad company and the rental paid by the railroad company was used to repay the trust certificates as they fell due. These arrangements were in reality conditional sale agreements and not leveraged leases.

Leveraged leasing as we know it today was introduced in the U.S.A in 1963 after the Comptroller of the Currency permitted national and state chartered banks to own and lease personal property (Weston, 1983, p. 271). The arrangement was used initially by railroad and airline companies to finance the acquisition of large items of capital equipment. Companies within capital intensive industries could not absorb the tax benefits of ownership whereas the banks could. Leveraged leasing meant that the banks owned the equipment and claimed depreciation and other tax deductions associated with ownership. These benefits were passed onto the railroad companies through lower rentals which reflected the value of these taxation benefits.
Further Thoughts on Long-term Rates of Interest in the Valuation of a Pension Fund.
Authors: Daykin C. D.
Published: August 2014

Daykin (1976) suggested a method of evaluating the rate of return achieved over a past period which did not depend directly on the market value at the end of the period in question. This was intended to avoid the volatility in the results of an assessment based on market values and sought to give a more reliable indication of the underlying rate of return which had been achieved.

If the general problem in relation to equities is considered, an investment of 1 at the beginning of year M will roll up with reinvestment of dividends to give an accumulated investment, XN
, at the end of year N, in terms of ‘units’ in an index P, of:

(1)
Pension Schemes and Early Retirement.
Authors: Parsons D. J.
Published: August 2014

An actuary has two major responsibilities in respect of a fully functional pension scheme:

(i) To perform (and report on) periodic actuarial investigations; these have the dual purpose of confirming the security of the members' accumulated benefits and of determining, with the agreement of the employers, an appropriate scheme of funding;

(ii) To provide tables for application to early leaver benefits for the determination of alternative options.

Much has been written on the first of these functions and I expand on this only to a limited extent in §2. This paper addresses itself more to the practical implications of the second of them and, in particular, to the early retirement option.
Pension Fund Performance Measurement—the Way Ahead?.
Authors: Gardener T. J. A.
Published: August 2014

In the last ten years Staple Inn has played host to two major discussions on performance measurement. In November 1976, Holbrook's definitive paper to the Institute set out in some detail the theoretical basis of performance measurement while in January 1980 Hager's paper to the Student's Society gave a detailed view of performance measurement in practice.

Between them the two papers provide a fairly comprehensive description of what was, even in 1980, a relatively novel science for many U.K. pension funds. At the time of writing the majority of large- and medium-sized directly invested pension funds have their investment performance measured. Yet even after fifteen years of performance measurement in the U.K. some of the fundamentals of performance measurement are questioned and even disputed by a sizeable proportion of actuaries—for example in his March 1985 paper to the Faculty of Actuaries Marshall states, “This must call in question the validity of its (the Time Weighted Rate of Return) use for comparative purposes”.
Gift-Giving, Anti-Bribery Laws and the Nigerian Constitution: Matters Arising
Authors: Bello Akeem Olajide
Published: August 2014

This article examines the culture of gift-giving against the background of anti-bribery laws, which preclude gift-giving in certain contexts, and the Code of Conduct for Public Officers which allows gift-giving in other contexts. It identifies what is wrong with bribery and uses this to distinguish between bribery and socio-cultural gift-giving practices in Nigeria. The author argues that the boundary between acceptable gift-giving and bribery is crossed whenever a gift induces or is intended to induce the recipient to perform a relevant function in breach of the expectation to act impartially, in good faith or in a manner that amounts to a betrayal of trust. The article finds that the Code of Conduct for Public Officers, which allows public officers to receive gifts from relatives and personal friends on occasions recognized by custom, dilutes the constitutional objective to eradicate corruption and recommends their removal.
The Legal Framework for the Protection of Geographical Indications in Ethiopia: A Critical Review
Authors: Hirko Sileshi Bedasie
Published: August 2014

The legal protection of geographical indications (GIs) has become an important concern in both developed and developing countries. In Ethiopia, despite the existence of the need and enormous potential for the protection of GIs, the issue of GIs has not been given due attention. The legal protection of GIs in Ethiopia has not been expressly regulated by any specific legislation. It may arguably be protected under a collective trademark system. However, this system only operates for distinctive GIs. Consequently, most descriptive GIs are not embraced by the system unless the distinctiveness requirement is dispensed with for the registration of GIs as collective trademarks. Moreover, the existing system needs to be redefined in light of the notion of GIs under the TRIPs Agreement. It is therefore high time that an appropriate legal framework be designed to ensure the effective protection and enforcement of GIs in Ethiopia.
USA Murated Nation, or, the Sublime Spherology of Security Culture
Authors: COLLIGNON FABIENNE
Published: August 2014

This article investigates David Foster Wallace's 1996 novelInfinite Jestin terms of the links between Cold Containment, the reconfigured United States energy system and the Cold War. The essay focusses on the Reconfiguration's defensive mechanisms against waste as a retooled version of Ronald Reagan's SDI, both of which are fantasy systems imagined as constructions of glass, mirror and plastic. The materiality of these “defensive” arrangements is, then, of paramount importance: it is this trinity of substances that forms the subject of this essay.
A Model-Free Measure of Aggregate Idiosyncratic Volatility and the Prediction of Market Returns
Authors: Garcia René , Mantilla-García Daniel , Martellini Lionel
Published: August 2014

In this paper, we formally show that the cross-sectional variance of stock returns is a consistent and asymptotically efficient estimator for aggregate idiosyncratic volatility. This measure has two key advantages: It is model free and observable at any frequency. Previous approaches have used monthly model-based measures constructed from time series of daily returns. The newly proposed cross-sectional volatility measure is a strong predictor for future returns on the aggregate stock market at the daily frequency. Using the cross section of size and book-to-market portfolios, we show that the portfolios’ exposures to the aggregate idiosyncratic volatility risk predict the cross section of expected returns.
Activating Citizens to Participate in Collective Co-Production of Public Services
Authors: BOVAIRD T. , VAN RYZIN G.G. , LOEFFLER E. , PARRADO S.
Published: August 2014

User and community co-production of public services first became topical in the late 1970s, both in private and public sectors. Recent interest has been triggered by recognition that the outcomes for which public agencies strive rely on multiple stakeholders, particularly service users and the communities in which they live. Extra salience has been given to the potential of co-production due to fiscal pressures facing governments since 2008. However, there has been little quantitative empirical research on citizen co-production behaviours. The authors therefore undertook a large-sample survey in five European countries to fill this gap. This article examines an especially significant finding from this research – the major gulf between current levels of collective co-production and individual co-production. It explores the drivers of these large differences and examines what the social policy implications would be if, given the potential benefits, the government wishes to encourage greater collective co-production.
Developing of the future: Scaffolded Darwinism in societal evolution
Authors: Andersson Claes , Törnberg Anton , Törnberg Petter
Published: August 2014

We sympathize with the project of a synthetic approach for devising a “theory of intentional change” and agree that Darwinism should be central in such a theory. But Darwinism is not the only process of evolution that needs to be included. Evolutionary biology itself has taken such a turn recently, with the emergence of developmental evolutionary approaches.
Large-scale societal changes and intentionality – an uneasy marriage
Authors: Bodor Péter , Fokas Nikos
Published: August 2014

Our commentary focuses on juxtaposing the proposed science of intentional change with facts and concepts pertaining to the level of large populations or changes on a worldwide scale. Although we find a unified evolutionary theory promising, we think that long-term and large-scale, scientifically guided – that is, intentional – social change is not only impossible, but also undesirable.
Toward an integrated science and sociotecture of intentional change
Authors: Costanza Robert , Atkins Paul
Published: August 2014

We heartily agree with the target article and focus on how positive sociocultural change can be accelerated through the systematic use of scenario planning – what we call sociotecture. Scenario planning is a design process for the creation and selection of symbotypes that make a positive difference. It cuts through complexity by integrating cognitive and affective processes across multiple scales.
A science of intentional change and the prospects for a culture of peace
Authors: Fox Michael Allen
Published: August 2014

Have humans evolved as violent and warlike? Studies of peaceful societies, historical trends of warfare and violence, and cooperation say otherwise. Evolution is not destiny; human choices are important interventions in the process. A science of intentional change, using alternative learning techniques that support human interactions based on nonviolence and peaceful coexistence, might help to evolve a culture of peace.
Evolving the future of education: Problems in enabling broad social reforms
Authors: Gray Peter
Published: August 2014

The apparent success of the Sudbury Valley School, coupled with its lack of impact on the larger culture, is used here to illustrate general constraints on managed change at the large-population level. Government regulations preventing innovation, the difficulty of bucking social norms, and the inadequacy of current indices of success operate against beneficial educational change in the larger culture.
Cooperation and emergence: The missing elements of the Darwin machine
Authors: Grotuss Jason
Published: August 2014

The authors present a compelling argument for a science of intentional change by unifying evolutionary psychology (EP) with the standard social science model; however, since its inception, traditional EP models have not held up well to empirical scrutiny. The authors address the importance of cooperation in individuals and social systems, but the Darwin machine they propose does not adequately stress fundamental aspects of evolutionary processes.
Incorporating coordination dynamics into an evolutionarily grounded science of intentional change
Authors: Kostrubiec Viviane , Kelso J. A. Scott
Published: August 2014

We suggest the authors' endeavor toward a science of intentional change may benefit from recent advances in informationally meaningful self-organizing dynamical systems. Coordination Dynamics, having contributed to an understanding of behavior on several time scales – adaptation, learning, and development – and on different levels of analysis, from the neural to the social, may complement, if not enhance, the authors' insights.
Evolving the future by creating and adapting to novel environments
Authors: LaFreniere Peter
Published: August 2014

Adaptation demands effective responses to both recurrent and novel environmental challenges. Developmental plasticity and domain-general mechanisms have important consequences with respect to our human capacity for imagining, creating, and adapting to novel environments. They facilitate the evolution of any cognitive mechanism, no matter how opportunistic, flexible, or domain-general, that is able to solve new problems or achieve new goals.
Niche construction is an important component of a science of intentional change
Authors: O'Brien Michael J.
Published: August 2014

Wilson and colleagues are correct that a modern theory of evolution must go beyond reliance on natural selection. Niche-construction theory, although it does not ignore selection, emphasizes the capacity of organisms to modify environmental states, often in a manner that suits their genotypes. Such matches are the dynamic products of a two-way process that involves organisms both responding to “problems” posed by their environments through selection and setting themselves new problems by changing environments through niche construction.
Evolving the future by learning from the future (as it emerges)? Toward an epistemology of change
Authors: Peschl Markus F. , Fundneider Thomas
Published: August 2014

At the core of Wilson et al.'s paper stands the question of intentional change. We propose to extend this notion by introducing concepts from the domains of innovation and knowledge creation. By going beyond their “acceptance and commitment therapy” approach we present a comprehensive framework for a theory of change culminating in the change strategy of “learning from the future as it emerges.”
Is the science of positive intentional change a science of objective moral values?
Authors: Rottschaefer William Andrew
Published: August 2014

I examine whether Wilson et al.'s argument for a science of positive intentional change constitutes an argument for a science of objective moral values. Drawing from their discussion, I present four reasons for thinking that it may be and some considerations on why it may not be. Concluding, I seek help from the authors.
Conservation combats exploitation: Choices within an evolutionary framework
Authors: Wang X. T. , Li Shu , Rao Li-Lin
Published: August 2014

Intentional change when viewed as making a risky or intertemporal choice with evolutionary relevance helps us understand its successes and its failures. To promote future-oriented ecological rationality requires establishing a linkage between nongenetic, cultural, and symbolic selections and genetic adaptations. Coupled with biophilic instinct, intentional conservation is more likely to prevail against evolved desires of environmental exploitation.
Does evolving the future preclude learning from it?
Authors: Dowrick Peter W.
Published: August 2014

Despite its considerable length, this article proposes a theory of human behavioral science that eschews half the evidence. There is irony in the title “Evolving the Future” when the featured examples of intentional change represent procedures that build slowly on the past. Has an opportunity been missed, or is an evolutionary perspective simply incompatible with learning from the future?
Evolutionary processes and mother-child attachment in intentional change
Authors: Ho S. Shaun , Torres-Garcia Adrianna , Swain James E.
Published: August 2014

Behavioral change may occur through evolutionary processes such as running stochastic evolutionary algorithms, with a fitness function to determine a winning solution from many. A science of intentional change will therefore require identification of fitness functions – causal mechanisms of adaptation – that can be acquired only with analytical approaches. Fitness functions may be subject to early-life experiences with parents, which influence some of the very same brain circuits that may mediate behavioral change through interventions.
Martyrdom redefined: Self-destructive killers and vulnerable narcissism
Authors: Bobadilla Leonardo
Published: August 2014

Lankford shows that suicide terrorists have much in common with maladjusted persons who die by suicide. However, what differentiates suicidal killers from those who “only” commit suicide? A key element may be vulnerable narcissism. Narcissism has been simultaneously linked to interpersonal aggression, achievement, and depression. These traits may explain the paradoxical picture of a person who may appear “normal” in some aspects, and yet hate himself and others so intensely as to seek mutual destruction.
Weighing dispositional and situational factors in accounting for suicide terrorism
Authors: Funder David C.
Published: August 2014

Lankford's book makes the important point that analyses of suicide terrorists often commit the error of overestimating the importance of situational causes of behavior and underestimating dispositional causes, such as underlying pathology. Personality and individual differences are important; suicide terrorists are not ordinary people driven by situational pressures. However, citation of empirical evidence is haphazard; the scholarly argument is not well-developed.
Suicide terrorism and post-mortem benefits
Authors: Gray Jacqueline M. , Dickins Thomas E.
Published: August 2014

Lankford claims that suicide terrorists are suicidal, but that their suicidal tendencies are often frustrated by injunctive social norms. Martyrdom represents a solution, and terrorist organizations exploit this. In this commentary, we claim that this argument has not been fully made and that such ideation in itself does not explain a willingness to engage in punitive actions against an enemy. We suggest the psychology of kinship as a possible missing factor.
The importance of cultural variables for explaining suicide terrorism
Authors: Güss C. Dominik , Tuason Ma. Teresa
Published: August 2014

Lankford criticizes the notion that suicide terrorists are “normal” and argues that they are suicidal. We have two misgivings about this. First, he puts sole focus on the personal side of suicidality and ignores the individual's context. Second, he fails to elaborate on the intent to harm others, which must also include the cultural, political, religious/ideological, and social-organizational factors of suicide terrorism.
Suicide terrorism, moral relativism, and the situationist narrative
Authors: Mandel David R.
Published: August 2014

Lankford challenges two popular views of suicide terrorists: first, that they are psychologically normal and, second, that they are heroic, not unlike professional soldiers. I augment Lankford's critique by tracing these views to a simplistic situationist narrative and to a careless form of moral relativism to which many scholars adhere. Conceptual weaknesses of these positions are briefly discussed.
How many suicide terrorists are suicidal?
Authors: McCauley Clark
Published: August 2014

Suicide terrorists in recent decades total approximately 3,500. Lankford finds risk factors for suicide for about 40 of these cases. Given that many with risk factors for suicide never attempt suicide, a reasonable estimate might be that one percent of suicide terrorists are suicidal.
Normative seeds for deadly martyrdoms
Authors: Tobeña Adolf , Vilarroya Oscar
Published: August 2014

Even if Lankford's biographical examination of perpetrators of suicidal attacks serves to alert us on the role played by individual factors in their recruitment, psychological frailties, distress, or coercion do not exhaust the causal pathways to deadly martyrdom. Normative personality attributes must be explored further in order to ascertain plausible roots of murderous sacrifice. We have advanced (Tobeña 2004b; 2009; 2011) a template of normative temperamental traits that could lead activists to the threshold of volunteering for murderous missions.
Winning counterterrorism's version of Pascal's wager, but struggling to open the purse
Authors: Gibbs Brian J.
Published: August 2014

Lankford's essential empirical argument, which is based on evidence such as psychological autopsies, is that suicide attacks are caused by suicidality. By operationalizing this causal claim in a hypothetical experiment, I show the claim to be provable, and I contend that its truth is supported by Lankford's data. However, I question his ensuing arguments about beauty and goodness, and thereby the practical value of his work in counterterrorist propaganda.
Individual differences in relational motives interact with the political context to produce terrorism and terrorism-support
Authors: Thomsen Lotte , Obaidi Milan , Sheehy-Skeffington Jennifer , Kteily Nour , Sidanius Jim
Published: August 2014

The psychology of suicide terrorism involves more than simply the psychology of suicide. Individual differences in social dominance orientation (SDO) interact with the socio-structural, political context to produce support for group-based dominance among members of both dominant and subordinate groups. This may help explain why, in one specific context, some people commit and endorse terrorism, whereas others do not.
TRANSCATHETER AORTIC VALVE IMPLANTATION AND ADAPTIVE / PROGRESSIVE COVERAGE
Authors: Klemp Marianne , Cros Sophie , Sugarman Mitchell
Published: August 2014

Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI or TAVR) is a newly introduced medical procedure enabled by a new device. Although its introduction does not represent that of all medical devices, it does illustrate a situation in which a device provides a new alternative to standard care in a specific group of patients. Unlike drugs, the medical device category is highly heterogeneous and includes both diagnostic and treatment (accessories, implantable, enablers) and capital equipment. The TAVI- case was discussed as one of the examples in the Policy Forum Meeting and the authors were acting as facilitators that summed up both the case as presented and the discussion between the members that followed. We wish to give a special thanks to the participants of the group work for their input to the discussion.
MOOD SELECTION IN RELATIVE CLAUSES
Authors: Borgonovo Claudia , Garavito Joyce Bruhn de , Prévost Philippe
Published: August 2014

There is presently a lively debate in second language (L2) acquisition research as to whether (adult) learners can acquire linguistic phenomena located at the interface between syntax and other modules, such as semantics, pragmatics, and lexical semantics, in contrast to phenomena that are purely syntactic in nature. For some researchers, the interface is precisely the place where fossilization occurs and the source of nonconvergence in L2 speakers. In this article we focus on the acquisition of the morphosyntax-semantics interface by examining the acquisition of mood in Spanish relative clauses by native speakers (NSs) of English. In particular, we focus on the contrast illustrated byBusco unas tijeras que corten“I am looking for scissors that cut-subj” versusBusco unas tijeras que cortan“I am looking for scissors that cut-ind.” When the indicative is used, there is a specific pair of scissors that the speaker is looking for. With the subjunctive, any pair of scissors will do, as long as it satisfies the condition expressed by the relative clause; the determiner phrase is nonspecific. In other words, we are dealing not with ungrammaticality, as both moods are possible in these contexts, but rather with differences in interpretation. General results showed that the learners could appropriately select the expected mood. We also saw that performance was not uniform across the various conditions tested. However, variability is not solely a product of L2 acquisition; we show it can be found in NSs as well.
Factors affecting the acquisition of plural morphology in Jordanian Arabic
Authors: ALBIRINI ABDULKAFI
Published: August 2014

This study investigates the development of plural morphology in Jordanian Arab children, and explores the role of the predictability, transparency, productivity, and frequency of different plural forms in determining the trajectory that children follow in acquiring this complex inflectional system. The study also re-examines the development of the notion of default over several years. Sixty Jordanian children, equally divided among six age groups (three to eight years), completed an oral real-word pluralization task and a nonsense-word pluralization task. The findings indicate that feminine sound plurals are acquired before and extended to the other plural forms. Productivity and frequency seem to shape the acquisition patterns among younger children, but predictability becomes more critical at a later age. Younger children use the most productive plural as the default form, but older children tend to use two default forms based on frequency distributions in the adult language. The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.
Developmental inventories using illiterate parents as informants: Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) adaptation for two Kenyan languages
Authors: ALCOCK K. J. , RIMBA K. , HOLDING P. , KITSAO-WEKULO P. , ABUBAKAR A. , NEWTON C. R. J. C.
Published: August 2014

Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs, parent-completed language development checklists) are a helpful tool to assess language in children who are unused to interaction with unfamiliar adults. Generally, CDIs are completed in written form, but in developing country settings parents may have insufficient literacy to complete them alone. We designed CDIs to assess language development in children aged 0;8 to 2;4 in two languages used in Coastal communities in Kenya. Measures of vocabulary, gestures, and grammatical constructions were developed using both interviews with parents from varying backgrounds, and vocabulary as well as grammatical constructions from recordings of children's spontaneous speech. The CDIs were then administered in interview format to over 300 families. Reliability and validity ranged from acceptable to excellent, supporting the use of CDIs when direct language testing is impractical, even when children have multiple caregivers and where respondents have low literacy levels.
Obtaining optimal structural data from X-ray powder diffraction using the Rietveld method
Authors: Liu Shanke , Li He , Liu Jianming
Published: August 2014

Diffraction data of calcite were collected using a conventional Bragg–Brentano diffractometer, which is a convenient, low-cost, and highly popular in-house instrument, and its crystal structure was refined by the Rietveld method. This paper shows how one treats preferred orientation and how different refinement strategies affect the accuracy of the result.