THE IRRUPTION OF TRANCE IN CONTEMPORARY YORUBA THEATRE: THEATRE,WITCHCRAFT, AND SOCIAL FRAGMENTATION IN LAGOS,NIGERIA

The golden age of Yoruba folk opera, Yoruba travelling theatre, and Yoruba theatre is over and the brightly coloured trucks carrying the companies that cruised the Nigerian Federation up to the middle of the 1980s have certainly long since been dismantled. Although many actors, musicians, and directors have indeed moved from theatre to the flourishing home-video industry, a community of actors continues to present live performances that can be categorized as “neotraditional.” This genre of Yoruba theatre is undergoing a crisis in the context of an unrelenting economic recession in Nigeria that began in the early 1980s. This situation has released tensions that lead to a real and sadly all-too-justifiable sense of insecurity and to proliferating accounts of witchcraft attacks. The outcome has been a rise in violence manifested in the unleashing of the powers of witchcraft and enflaming relations between small rival groups hitherto unified under the sway of a salaried and—at least until the beginning of the 1980s—optimistic middle class. Yoruba neotraditional theatre that represents deities on stage that belong to “an invisible world” is playing with fire and, by conjuring up the powers of witchcraft, has in turn itself been bewitched.     

The use of predicted values for item parameters in item response theory models: an application in intelligence tests

In testing, item response theory models are widely used in order to estimate item parameters and individual abilities. However, even unidimensional models require a considerable sample size so that all parameters can be estimated precisely. The introduction of empirical prior information about candidates and items might reduce the number of candidates needed for parameter estimation. Using data for IQ measurement, this work shows how empirical information about items can be used effectively for item calibration and in adaptive testing. First, we propose multivariate regression trees to predict the item parameters based on a set of covariates related to the item-solving process. Afterwards, we compare the item parameter estimation when tree-fitted values are included in the estimation or when they are ignored. Model estimation is fully Bayesian, and is conducted via Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. The results are two-fold: (a) in item calibration, it is shown that the introduction of prior information is effective with short test lengths and small sample sizes and (b) in adaptive testing, it is demonstrated that the use of the tree-fitted values instead of the estimated parameters leads to a moderate increase in the test length, but provides a considerable saving of resources.     

Emergent Indicators Lock and Unlock Public Organizations: An Ethic of Commitment

This article focuses on management indicators, their emergence, theirs functions and their impact for a public action. It does so through an analysis of the implementation of indicators in three forest management units in Belgium, France and Luxembourg. M. Crozier theory and M. Callon theory are crossed to drawn attention to the manner in which, at the micro-level, indicators are worked out. We argue that these emergent measurements are vectors of a particular ethic of behavior. Our aim is to contribute to the study of indicators in three aspects. First, it offers a more detailed understanding of the double nature of indicators: they constrain action and, at the same time, support actors autonomy. Second, it illustrates the major functions of indicators but also theirs paradoxes: actually, indicators lock and unlock organizations. Third, it brings to light the practical rationality and the ethic of commitment connected to indicators.     

Adolescents' beliefs about marijuana use: a comparison of regular users, past users and never/occasional users

A questionnaire investigating adolescents' opinions and experiences regarding marijuana use was administered to 163 adolescents and young adults (96 boys and 67 girls) aged 13 to 20 (mean age = 16.8, s.d. = 1.5). Items referred to marijuana and other substances' dangerousness, representations regarding the positive and negative consequences of marijuana use. Responses were compared according to marijuana use status (classified into never/occasional use, current regular use and past regular use). Results show that adolescents' opinions differ according to their experience with marijuana use. Current regular users evaluate marijuana as less dangerous, but alcohol and heroin as more dangerous in comparison with never/occasional and past users. Current and past users are more likely to define marijuana as a medical drug and a plant used in agriculture, and less likely to define it as an illegal drug. Current and past users evaluate marijuana use as a way to cope with stress, to relax to a greater extent than do never/occasional users do. The latter attribute more negative consequences to marijuana use such as diminished driving ability and school performance and a pathway to hard drugs.     

Force steadiness in the lower extremities as an independent predictor of functional performance in older women

The relationship between isometric force control and functional performance is unknown. Submaximal steadiness and accuracy were measured during a constant force-matching task at 50% of maximal isometric voluntary contraction (MVC) of the knee extensors in 19 older women (70-89 years). Other variables included MVC, rate of torque development, and EMG activity. Functional performance was assessed during maximal performance of walking endurance, chair rising, and stair climbing. Isometric steadiness (but not accuracy) was found to independently predict chair-rise time and stair-climbing power and explained more variance in these tasks than any other variable. Walking endurance was related to muscle strength but not steadiness. These results suggest that steadiness is an independent predictor of brief, stressful functional-performance tasks in older women with mild functional impairment. Thus, improving steadiness might help reduce functional limitations or disability in older adults.     

Empirical testing of the expected utility model

Suppose an individual is faced with a set of alternatives with uncertain money outcomes, then according to the expected utilily moded the alternative with the highest cxpected utility will be chosen. In the present paper this model is tested against the more general model given by Kahneman and Iversky (1979) and others. As contrasted with usual practice, the test is based on an exogenously measured utility function. The result of the test is that the expected utility model has to be rejected, both for a concavee and for an S-shaped specification of the utility function. The subjective evaluation of an objectve probability of 0.5 is in this study estimated at a value of 0.45 or 0.47. depending on the functional specification used.Our main conclusion is that although the hypotlicsis of expected utility has to be rejected, for practical purposes the difference between 0.5 and 0.45 (0.47) is so slight, that the hypothesis is a good working approximation. We do not know whether this remains true for valus of the objective probability considerably different from 0.5.