Clarifying the Association Between Mother–Father Relationship Aggression and Parenting

Although much research examines the association between fathers' relationship aggression and mothers' parenting, little attention is given to mothers' aggression, mutual aggression, or fathers' parenting. Using a sample of coresiding couples from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 973), the authors examine the association between mothers' and fathers' relationship aggression, measured as frequency and perpetration–victimization types (mutual, mother only, father only), and mothers' and fathers' parenting. Fixed effects regression models show that fathers' aggression is positively related to mothers' parenting stress, whereas father‐only or mother‐only aggression is related to fathers' stress. For both parents, aggression perpetration is negatively related to their own engagement with children. Mother‐only aggression is negatively related to mothers' spanking and positively related to fathers' spanking. These findings suggest the importance of examining both parents' aggression and perpetrators' as well as victims' parenting to better understand the link between relationship aggression and parenting.     

Decomposition of the main effects and interaction term by using orthogonal polynomials in multiple non symmetrical correspondence analysis

The multiple non symmetric correspondence analysis (MNSCA) is a useful technique for analyzing a two-way contingency table. In more complex cases, the predictor variables are more than one. In this paper, the MNSCA, along with the decomposition of the Gray–Williams Tau index, in main effects and interaction term, is used to analyze a contingency table with two predictor categorical variables and an ordinal response variable. The Multiple-Tau index is a measure of association that contains both main effects and interaction term. The main effects represent the change in the response variables due to the change in the level/categories of the predictor variables, considering the effects of their addition, while the interaction effect represents the combined effect of predictor categorical variables on the ordinal response variable. Moreover, for ordinal scale variables, we propose a further decomposition in order to check the existence of power components by using Emerson's orthogonal polynomials.     

A Framework for Analyzing the Economic Tradeoffs Between Urban Commerce and Security Against Terrorism

This article presents a framework for economic consequence analysis of terrorism countermeasures. It specifies major categories of direct and indirect costs, benefits, spillover effects, and transfer payments that must be estimated in a comprehensive assessment. It develops a spreadsheet tool for data collection, storage, and refinement, as well as estimation of the various components of the necessary economic accounts. It also illustrates the usefulness of the framework in the first assessment of the tradeoffs between enhanced security and changes in commercial activity in an urban area, with explicit attention to the role of spillover effects. The article also contributes a practical user interface to the model for emergency managers.     

Relations Between Alphabetized Name Order and Nomination Counts in Peer Nomination Measures

Peer nominations, a central method for measuring peer relationships in developmental research, typically involve asking children or adolescents to choose peers who fit various criteria from an alphabetized roster of classmates or grade‐mates. Although such measures have been used for decades, very little research has investigated the effects of alphabetical name order on the number of nominations received by peers. This study collected peer nominations for 20 items among 607 eighth grade participants in two schools. Regression analyses showed that earlier name order significantly predicted higher nomination counts for eight of the items, and explained over 5 percent of the variance in four affective variables (friendship, acceptance, acquaintanceship, and received liking). Across variables, name order effects were negatively correlated with internal reliability of nominations, implying that order effects may be related to the consensus of the peer group. Name order also had a minimal effect on inter‐correlations among a subset of variables. Implications and concrete recommendations for controlling and reducing name order effects in future research are discussed.     

Enabling robust assessment of QTc prolongation in early phase clinical trials

Since the implementation of the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) E14 guideline in 2005, regulators have required a “thorough QTc” (TQT) study for evaluating the effects of investigational drugs on delayed cardiac repolarization as manifested by a prolonged QTc interval. However, TQT studies have increasingly been viewed unfavorably because of their low cost effectiveness. Several researchers have noted that a robust drug concentration‐QTc (conc‐QTc) modeling assessment in early phase development should, in most cases, obviate the need for a subsequent TQT study. In December 2015, ICH released an “E14 Q&As (R3)” document supporting the use of conc‐QTc modeling for regulatory decisions. In this article, we propose a simple improvement of two popular conc‐QTc assessment methods for typical first‐in‐human crossover‐like single ascending dose clinical pharmacology trials. The improvement is achieved, in part, by leveraging routinely encountered (and expected) intrasubject correlation patterns encountered in such trials. A real example involving a single ascending dose and corresponding TQT trial, along with results from a simulation study, illustrate the strong performance of the proposed method. The improved conc‐QTc assessment will further enable highly reliable go/no‐go decisions in early phase clinical development and deliver results that support subsequent TQT study waivers by regulators.     

Evolution of product quality in European,Japanese and US automotive firms: An exploratory longitudinal analysis

For years we have been hearing that US automobile manufacturers have been losing market share to their Japanese rivals who are reputed to make better quality vehicles. Most such reports are based on the initial quality surveys on new automobiles. In this paper we address two exploratory questions: (1) how does the quality of an automobile change with its age, and, (2) can firm level variables help explain differences quality. To answer these questions, we collected Consumer Reports’ reliability ratings on approximately 300 automobile models made by European, Japanese and US automotive firms during the 1998–2007; and approximately 240 models made by these firms over period of 2008–2015. For both periods we found that not only do automobiles made by Japanese firms have higher initial quality, but, as automobiles get older the difference in the product quality between Japanese versus European and US firms increases. We also found that the more generalist a European or US automobile firm, i.e., the wider is the firm׳s product offering in the marketplace, the lower its overall automobile quality during the 1998–2007 period. Conversely, Japanese generalist firms were found to have higher quality than specialist firms over the same period. The result is partly explained by the fact that Japanese firms have taken a different path to broadening their product variety – they have ensured a high level of quality of their initial offerings before entering newer market segments. The rate of reliability decline was found to be slower for all firms, and the differences in reliability across the 3 groups of firms were much less pronounced during the 2008–2015 period. This improvement may be as result of restructuring done by US automobile firms.     

Quantifying the Establishment Likelihood of Invasive Alien Species Introductions Through Ports with Application to Honeybees in Australia

The cost of an uncontrolled incursion of invasive alien species (IAS) arising from undetected entry through ports can be substantial, and knowledge of port‐specific risks is needed to help allocate limited surveillance resources. Quantifying the establishment likelihood of such an incursion requires quantifying the ability of a species to enter, establish, and spread. Estimation of the approach rate of IAS into ports provides a measure of likelihood of entry. Data on the approach rate of IAS are typically sparse, and the combinations of risk factors relating to country of origin and port of arrival diverse. This presents challenges to making formal statistical inference on establishment likelihood. Here we demonstrate how these challenges can be overcome with judicious use of mixed‐effects models when estimating the incursion likelihood into Australia of the European (Apis mellifera) and Asian (A. cerana) honeybees, along with the invasive parasites of biosecurity concern they host (e.g., Varroa destructor). Our results demonstrate how skewed the establishment likelihood is, with one‐tenth of the ports accounting for 80% or more of the likelihood for both species. These results have been utilized by biosecurity agencies in the allocation of resources to the surveillance of maritime ports.     

A latent variable model for analyzing mixed longitudinal (k,l)-inflated count and ordinal responses

A random effects model for analyzing mixed longitudinal count and ordinal data is presented where the count response is inflated in two points (k and l) and an (k,l)-Inflated Power series distribution is used as its distribution. A full likelihood-based approach is used to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of parameters of the model. For data with non-ignorable missing values models with probit model for missing mechanism are used.The dependence between longitudinal sequences of responses and inflation parameters are investigated using a random effects approach. Also, to investigate the correlation between mixed ordinal and count responses of each individuals at each time, a shared random effect is used. In order to assess the performance of the model, a simulation study is performed for a case that the count response has (k,l)-Inflated Binomial distribution. Performance comparisons of count-ordinal random effect model, Zero-Inflated ordinal random effects model and (k,l)-Inflated ordinal random effects model are also given. The model is applied to a real social data set from the first two waves of the national longitudinal study of adolescent to adult health (Add Health study). In this data set, the joint responses are the number of days in a month that each individual smoked as the count response and the general health condition of each individual as the ordinal response. For the count response there is incidence of excess values of 0 and 30.     

美的静悟——视觉冲击力与经典工笔画辨析

经典的绘画作品感染并打动观众，是通过视觉这一感官体验来完成的。因此，在今天展览越来越多、展厅越来越大的情况下，有一些人从简单的视觉体验出发，使“视觉冲击力”这一曾经只运用于设计领域的词汇，在绘画中泛滥，进而波及工笔画领域。文章根据中国传统工笔画的品评标准，结合现代工笔画的绘画创作实践，分析视觉冲击力与经典的工笔画之间的矛盾与联系：经典的工笔画具有一定的视觉冲击，但是具有“视觉冲击力”的工笔画不一定就是经典的画作，真正的经典作品必须具有崇高的审美本质，在经过岁月的检验后，才能焕发出像珍珠一样夺目的光彩。