Parents at‐risk and their children: intersections of gender role attitudes and parenting practices

Existing research demonstrates that parent and child gender may influence important aspects of family relationships; however, most research in this area has been conducted with non‐clinical samples. As clinicians, it is important to consider how gender impacts family relationships, particularly among vulnerable families. This study examined the intersections of gender role attitudes and parenting practices among 34 parents involved with the child welfare system and referred for clinical intervention. Using a mixed methods design, themes regarding gender role beliefs and parenting practices were found through qualitative interviews with parents. Findings suggested that fathers felt responsible for financially providing for their families and expressed challenges in communicating with mothers, and mothers described challenges they face because of a lack of father involvement. Parents also discussed a perceived need to monitor daughters closely while fostering the independence of their sons. Results of the qualitative analyses were supported by quantitative findings indicating significant differences in harsh and inconsistent discipline practices and clear expectations for girls compared to boys. The discussion addresses implications for clinicians, including how a feminist family therapy perspective may help promote client influence over traditional gender norms by questioning gender role attitudes and exploring alternate narratives that may impact family dynamics.     

北朝《李骞墓志》考释

李骞是北朝赵郡李氏代表人物之一。近年来《李骞墓志》的发现,为研究其生平以及赵郡李氏的有关问题提供了新史料。结合墓志和相关史料可知,李骞原名希义,字景让,后改名骞,再改字希义;李骞家族原来聚居平棘,后来迁居柏仁;李骞庶长兄长钧未被记入《李骞墓志》,李骞长女宝信当为高延宗妃;李骞生于北魏宣武帝永平元年(公元508年),卒于东魏孝静帝武定七年(公元549年),曾在北魏和东魏担任多种官职;《李骞墓志》出土于河北省赞皇县。     

Bias correction for parameter estimates of spatial point process models

When a spatial point process model is fitted to spatial point pattern data using standard software, the parameter estimates are typically biased. Contrary to folklore, the bias does not reflect weaknesses of the underlying mathematical methods, but is mainly due to the effects of discretization of the spatial domain. We investigate two approaches to correcting the bias: a Newton–Raphson-type correction and Richardson extrapolation. In simulation experiments, Richardson extrapolation performs best.     

Infill asymptotics for adaptive kernel estimators of spatial intensity

We apply the Abramson principle to define adaptive kernel estimators for the intensity function of a spatial point process. We derive asymptotic expansions for the bias and variance under the regime that n independent copies of a simple point process in Euclidean space are superposed. The method is illustrated by means of a simple example and applied to tornado data.     

The precision of regression-type estimator for incremental cost–effectiveness ratio

The estimation of incremental cost–effectiveness ratio (ICER) has received increasing attention recently. It is expressed in terms of the ratio of the change in costs of a therapeutic intervention to the change in the effects of the intervention. Despite the intuitive interpretation of ICER as an additional cost per additional benefit unit, it is a challenge to estimate the distribution of a ratio of two stochastically dependent distributions. A vast literature regarding the statistical methods of ICER has developed in the past two decades, but none of these methods provide an unbiased estimator. Here, to obtain the unbiased estimator of the cost–effectiveness ratio (CER), the zero intercept of the bivariate normal regression is assumed. In equal sample sizes, the Iman–Conover algorithm is applied to construct the desired variance–covariance matrix of two random bivariate samples, and the estimation then follows the same approach as CER to obtain the unbiased estimator of ICER. The bootstrapping method with the Iman–Conover algorithm is employed for unequal sample sizes. Simulation experiments are conducted to evaluate the proposed method. The regression-type estimator performs overwhelmingly better than the sample mean estimator in terms of mean squared error in all cases.     

论夜间搜查——从两则案例谈起

由于我国《刑事诉讼法》对搜查的时间未作规定,导致司法实践中夜间搜查频繁出现。夜间搜查很容易侵犯被搜查人和与其同住的人的隐私权和生活安宁权,给其造成伤害,司法实践中也确实发生了因夜间搜查而把人吓病的案例。因此,我国在再次修改《刑事诉讼法》时应规定禁止夜间搜查。当然,在保护公民隐私权和生活安宁权的同时,也要兼顾打击犯罪的需要,法律可以设置一些禁止夜间搜查的例外。     

Monstrosities and moral publics

Interdisciplinary scholarship on neoliberal urban governmentality has been attentive to the knowledges and techniques of government currently emerging at the interface of local state politics and invested claims of voluntary private actors such as corporate partners and philanthropic agencies. This article draws attention to the workings of the aesthetic as an epistemological grounding for the rationalization of urban rule. Specifically, I explore a Toronto, Canada-based philanthropic agency’s reliance on a mise-en-scene of urban terror to animate its own self-validated knowledges about targeted inner-suburban subjects and spaces. In their circulation and demand for public address, the agency’s graphic public service announcements, launched in 2007, herald what I argue is a moralized set of knowledges about municipal renewal that has its own normative orientations grounded in a neoliberal political rationality, and tangentially, in racialized security imperatives. I detail various dimensions of the social life of a video associated with this public service campaign targeting ‘youth at risk’, considering the ethical, political and economic valences it was expected to convey; its semiotic exchange with other images and representations of disenfranchised spaces, subjects and communities; and the publics it attempted to interpellate. Importantly, given the agency’s current standing as a prominent player in Canadian urban policy arenas, I pay analytical attention to the visual campaign as a site for the production of knowledges about proper urban citizenship and social governance, and as such, a strategic-orienting device for urban policy interventions and directives.     

Bayesian analysis of multivariate stochastic volatility with skew return distribution

Multivariate stochastic volatility models with skew distributions are proposed. Exploiting Cholesky stochastic volatility modeling, univariate stochastic volatility processes with leverage effect and generalized hyperbolic skew t-distributions are embedded to multivariate analysis with time-varying correlations. Bayesian modeling allows this approach to provide parsimonious skew structure and to easily scale up for high-dimensional problem. Analyses of daily stock returns are illustrated. Empirical results show that the time-varying correlations and the sparse skew structure contribute to improved prediction performance and Value-at-Risk forecasts.     

Monte carlo estimates of the distributions of the random polygons of the voronoi tessellation with respect to a poisson process

A large-scale study, in which two million random Voronoi polygons (with respect to a homogeneous Poisson point process) were generated and mensurated, is described. The polygon characteristics recorded are number of sides (or vertices), perimeter, area and interior angles. A feature is the efficient “quantile” method of replicating Poisson-type random structures, which it is hoped may find useful application elsewhere.