A new approach to default priors and robust bayes methodology

Following the developments in DasGupta et al. (2000), the authors propose and explore a new method for constructing proper default priors and a method for selecting a Bayes estimate from a family. Their results are based on asymptotic expansions of certain marginal correlations. For ease of exposition, most results are presented for location families and squared error loss only. The default prior methodology amounts, ultimately, to the minimization of Fisher information, and hence, Bickel's prior works out as the default prior if the location parameter is bounded. As for the selected Bayes estimate, it corresponds to ‘Gaussian tilting’ of an initial reference prior.     

Transitivity and fuzzy preferences

The authors would like to thank a referee at Social Choice and Welfare for insightful comments.     

Charting the Course: An Overview of Domestic Violence in the South Asian Community in the United States

In the South Asian community in the United States, domestic violence is a prevalent problem of significant magnitude. Although the community stridently denies the existence of this horror, women have been systematically organizing antiviolence-against-women work for the last 15 years. At this time, it is a vibrant movement struggling with several complex issues that are perhaps less common in the dominant white community. As in the lives of immigrant women of color, much of the intricacies of domestic violence in the South Asian context emerge from the intersections of race, class, and residency status problems. Consequently, a slew of personal, institutional, and cultural barriers commingle to form roadblocks for battered South Asian women, who attempt to escape family violence. As the needs of battered South Asian first and second generation women enlarge and become more perceptible, the community-based organizations have to ready themselves for more complicated activities in the future.     

Participation as a Health Communication Strategy in HIV/AIDS Intervention Projects: an Examination of a Project Targeting Commercial Sex Workers in India

This article examines how participation frames health communication strategies in the Sonagachi Project. The current research, which involves a study of 37 commercial female sex workers in a red-light district of India, investigates how the participation of target audiences in the enunciation of health problems in HIV/AIDS intervention projects engenders change. The study analyzed how a participatory framework in an HIV/sexually transmitted infection intervention project among sex workers addresses sociostructural constraints that affect the lives of the sex workers. The article aims to investigate how participation engages the sex workers in roles of power and decision-making within a health intervention program directed toward curbing sexually transmitted infections.     

The spokane heart study: weibull regression and coronary artery disease

Coronary artery calcium is a marker of coronary artery disease and measures the progression of atherosclerosis. It is measured by electron beam computed tomography, and the measured amount of coronary artery calcium is highly skewed to the right and left censored. The distribution of coronary artery calcium appears to be Weibull. We propose a Weibull regression model and we analyze the data using these techniques. Our analysis is based on data from the Spokane Heart Study, which is a cohort of about a thousand subjects that are assessed every two years for coronary artery calcium and risk factors of coronary artery disease. The major focus of the heart study is to determine the natural history of atherosclerosis in its early phase, and we analyze the data as a cross-sectional study with 859 subjects. We would also like to highlight the use of Weibull regression techniques in situations like this, where we have extreme right skewed data. Our main emphasis will be on examining the effect of the traditional risk factors of age, gender, lipid profile (cholesterol and HDL), patient history of lipid abnormality, hypertension, and smoking, and other family history risks on coronary artery calcium. We found that the most important factors influencing the disease were age, sex, and patient history of smoking and lipid abnormality.     

A continuous approximation for evaluating reliability of complex systems under stress-strength model.

Evaluation of system reliability for complex systems based on Taylor's approximation becomes increasingly intractable. Taguchi's concept of random experimentation has been exploited by English et al (1996) for discretization of complex systems and determination of reliability values. We indicate a few demerits of discretization method and propose to retain the continuous character of the original problem by evaluating system reliability using a range approximation method. Our proposed method works better than discretization approach in all the three engineering problems considered for the purpose of demonstration.     

Trying to make race science the “civil” science: charisma in the race and intelligence debates

Theory and Society - When studying science contexts, scholars typically position charismatic authority as an adjunct or something that provides a meaning-laden boost to rational authority. In this...     

Many-to-one comparison of nonlinear growth curves for Washington's Red Delicious apple

In this article, we are interested in comparing growth curves for the Red Delicious apple in several locations to that of a reference site. Although such multiple comparisons are common for linear models, statistical techniques for nonlinear models are not prolific. We theoretically derive a test statistic, considering the issues of sample size and design points. Under equal sample sizes and same design points, our test statistic is based on the maximum of an equi-correlated multivariate chi-square distribution. Under unequal sample sizes and design points, we derive a general correlation structure, and then utilize the multivariate normal distribution to numerically compute critical points for the maximum of the multivariate chi-square. We apply this statistical technique to compare the growth of Red Delicious apples at six locations to a reference site in the state of Washington in 2009. Finally, we perform simulations to verify the performance of our proposed procedure for Type I error and marginal power. Our proposed method performs well in regard to both.     

Population and Resources: An Exploration of Reproductive and Environmental Externalities

This article identifies four types of social externalities associated with fertility behavior. Three are shown to be pronatalist in their effects. These three are exemplified by the way theories of economic growth treat fertility and natural resources, the way population growth and economic stress in poor countries are seen by environmental and resource economists, and the way development economists accommodate environmental stress in their analysis of poverty. It is shown that the fourth type of externality, in which children are regarded as an end in themselves, can even provide an invidious link between fertility decisions and the use of the local natural‐resource base among poor rural households in poor countries. The fourth type is used to develop a theory of fertility transitions in the contemporary world; the theory views such transitions as disequilibrium phenomena.