Importance of immunization in child care and prevention

This article stresses the importance of immunization in child care for prevention of many diseases. It discusses the reasons for the failure within the United States to eradicate many infectious diseases in children despite the availability of technology. Suggestions for action to improve this situation are made.     

The Baltimore City Drug Treatment Court: 3-year self-report outcome study

This study reports results from interviews with 157 research participants who were interviewed 3 years after randomization into treatment and control conditions in the evaluation of the Baltimore City Drug Treatment Court. The interviews asked about crime, substance use, welfare, employment, education, mental and physical health, and family and social relationships. Program participants reported less crime and substance use than did controls. Few differences between groups were observed on other outcomes, although treatment cases were less likely than controls to be on the welfare rolls at the time of the interview. Effects differed substantially according to the originating court.     

On the Bayesian analysis of categorical data: the problem of nonresponse

It is demonstrated how a suitably chosen prior for the frequency parameters can streamline the Bayesian analysis of categorical data with missing entries due to nonresponse or other causes. The two cases where the data follow the Multinomial or the Hypergeometric model are treated separately. In the first case it is adequate to restrict the prior (for the cell probabilities) to the class of Dirichlet distributions. In the case of the Hypergeometric model it is convenient to select a prior from the class of Dirichlet-Multinomial (DM) distributions. The DM distributions are studied in some details.     

Waiting time to exhaust lottery numbers

Questions related to lotteries are usually of interest to the public since people think there is a magic formula which will help them to win lottery draws. This note shows how to compute the expected waiting time to observe specific numbers in a sequence of lottery draws and show that surprising facts are expected to occur.     

A class of bivariate regression models for discrete and/or continuous responses

ABSTRACT

A general class of models for discrete and/or continuous responses is proposed in which joint distributions are constructed via the conditional approach. It is assumed that the distributions of one response and of the other response given the first one belong to exponential family of distributions. Furthermore, the marginal means are related to the covariates by link functions and a dependency structure between the responses is inserted into the model. Estimation methods, diagnostic analysis and a simulation study considering a Bernoulli-exponential model, a particular case of the class, are presented. Finally, this model is used in a real data set.     

Mortality analysis of persons with disabilities in Argentina by age,sex and duration of benefit, 2015–16

This article describes the differential mortality of Argentina’s disability pension beneficiaries during the 2015–16 period, based on National Social Security Administration (Administración Nacional de la Seguridad Social – ANSES) payment records. It compares data for those with an assessed disability with overall population data, as well as with available international data (from Canada, Chile, Mexico, and the United States of America). In addition to breaking down mortality rates for people with disabilities by age and sex, it also factors in duration of benefit, establishing an inverse correlation between benefit duration and mortality.     

Work Trajectories of Female and Male Immigrants in Spain

This article aims to examine in depth the work trajectories of individuals over time, in order to provide a wider perspective of the employment history of immigrants compared to native people, by gender and for more than one decade (2005–2017) in Spain. We use microdata (cohort and multivariate analysis) from the Labour Force Survey and carry out a comparison for three groups: the Spanish born in Spain, the Spanish born abroad, and the non-Spanish born abroad. The results confirm that the non-Spanish born-abroad group is characterized by the existence of segmented assimilation. All foreigners suffered a loss in their work trajectories, since their employment rate in 2017 has as yet neither reached the level of the last years of the previous economic expansion nor the level of the previous cohorts at the same age.     

Aesthetics of disaster as decolonial aesthetics: making sense of the effects of Hurricane María through Puerto Rican contemporary art

ABSTRACT

On 20 September 2017, Hurricane María made landfall on Puerto Rico causing unprecedented disaster. From that day onwards, the Puerto Rican multi-layered colonial, social and political context was further complicated by the traumatic acceleration of a human disaster via this natural disaster. This crystalized the urgency of using art as vehicle for (social) catharsis, a practice that continues to be used by individual artists, collectives, community organizations, art projects, and other art institutions on the island and abroad, through mural art, community paintings, art exhibitions, literature, music, and many other aesthetic expressions. This article examines, from a decolonial and critical cultural studies perspective, post-Hurricane María artistic expressions in contemporary art as decolonial aesthetics through the cathartic use of the frame of an aesthetics of disaster. It is argued that, an aesthetics of disaster aims to re-assert an artistic form that is able to accelerate the discursive nullification of a deeply rooted colonial, social and cultural problem by way of art as catharsis inspired by the way that Hurricane María unveiled these problems. The piece briefly contextualizes Puerto Rico, and it examines the idea of Puerto Rican contemporary art as catharsis. Then, it describes how Puerto Rican contemporary art exhibitions and associated aesthetic production are processing urgent post-hurricane issues through three illustrative pieces in exhibitions in PR and abroad in the United States (US). Lastly, decolonial aesthetics is reexamined and re-understood, informed by Édouard Glissant's view expressed in Poetics of Relation which aids to the conclusion that Puerto Rican contemporary art using the frame of an aesthetics of disaster functions as a powerful form of decolonial aesthetics.     

Policies to Attract R&D-related FDI in Small Emerging Countries: Aligning Incentives With Local Linkages and Absorptive Capacities in Chile

Over the last decade we have witnessed an unprecedented growth in the number of cross-border R&D investments towards large emerging countries such as China and India. However, small middle-income countries have played a marginal role as recipients of R&D-related FDI despite increasing policy efforts. In particular, several Latin American countries have recently launched new policy programs with the aim of attracting this kind of investments, but it remains uncertain whether public incentives can be useful to compensate for other locational disadvantages. The case of Chile provides an interesting empirical setting to explore these issues because during the last decade its government has been actively promoting R&D-related FDI through a new policy mix. This article suggests that for national innovation systems to benefit from the attraction of internationally-mobile R&D it is critical for public policies to ensure that appropriate linkages are established with local actors that hold absorptive capacities. Equally important for a small emerging economy like Chile is to prioritize R&D-related FDI in strategic technology niches where the country can realistically attain critical mass.