In-Store Experimental Approach to Pricing and Consumer Behavior

This study assessed how, and to what extent, it is possible to use behavioral experimentation and relative sales analysis to study the effects of price on consumers' brand choices in the store environment. An in-store experiment was performed in four stores to investigate the effects of different prices of a target brand on consumers' relative buying behavior using an alternating treatment design with baseline. The intervention consisted of periodically reducing the target brand's price by 17–26%. Price reductions generally had none or minor effects. However, data for one store showed lower relative sales for the price reduction condition. These are surprising results and they underline the need to examine all of the marketing mix factors, not only price.     

Semi-parametric extended Poisson process models for count data

A general framework for the analysis of count data (with covariates) is proposed using formulations for the transition rates of a state-dependent birth process. The form for the transition rates incorporates covariates proportionally, with the residual distribution determined from a smooth non-parametric state-dependent form. Computation of the resulting probabilities is discussed, leading to model estimation using a penalized likelihood function. Two data sets are used as illustrative examples, one representing underdispersed Poisson-like data and the other overdispersed binomial-like data.     

Global Markov models for eukaryote nucleotide data

We discuss the quite remarkable global Markovian structure of the nucleotides in eukaryotic DNA strands with special emphasis on (i) the similarity property for intra- species chromosomes and (ii) the reversibility property for the two (complementary) strands of a chromosome.     

Four-wheel drivescapes: Embodied understandings of the Kimberley

In this paper, we explore understandings of the Kimberley as wilderness through the embodied knowledge of sites encountered on the travels of four-wheel drivers. We critically review attempts to conceptualise the social role of automobiles in touring practices then turn to non-representational theory to develop our own conceptual framework of four-wheel drivescapes. Our use of this term acknowledges that understandings of the world are fashioned by our bodily situatedness in, and towards the world. Through the vantage point provided by four-wheel drive technologies, tourists are engaged in generating embodied understandings of tourism destinations through an ongoing process of defining, experiencing, interpreting and responding to human and non-human worlds. We trace the means by which the emobodied knowledge of tourists who travel through the Kimberley by four-wheel drive becomes integral to their understanding of this place as wilderness. Our results suggest how two separate, yet intersecting four-wheel drivescapes of luxury and hardship reconfigure normative ideas of the outback as wilderness.     

Children's Coping with Marital Conflict: The Role of Conflict Expression and Gender

This study compared boys’ and girls’ coping responses to videotaped representations of marital conflict that varied in conflict content, tactic, and the gender of the parent engaging in conflict behaviour. Participants were 398 children (208 boys, 190 girls) aged 12–13 years old living in the United Kingdom. Child‐related conflict exchanges characterized by hostile behaviour (e.g., physical aggression) elicited greater mediation efforts by children. Children were more likely to mediate father‐enacted conflict. Girls, relative to boys, endorsed more mediation to fathers’ physical aggression and mothers’ pursuit of an issue and were more avoiding of mothers’ physical aggression and threats to intactness of the family. Findings underscore the importance of considering parent and child gender in determining children’s coping efforts in the context of interparental conflict.     

For Better,For Worse: Life Satisfaction Consequences of Migration1

This study explores the extension of microeconomic and migrant network theoretical frameworks for explaining perceived post‐migration life satisfaction of repeat (temporary) and more permanent labor force internal migrants in Thailand. Data from the 1992 National Migration Survey were used in logistic regression models to predict increased versus decreased post‐move satisfaction with employment situation, living environment, and community facilities. Contrary to the neoclassical migration theory assumption, results showed that migration was associated with decreased post‐move satisfaction. Microeconomic theory indicators were related to increased employment satisfaction but decreased post‐move satisfaction with living environment. For network theory indicators, the results showed the opposite pattern — related to improved living environment satisfaction but decreased employment post‐move satisfaction. Repeat (temporary) migrants were disadvantaged in post‐move employment satisfaction compared to more permanent single move labor force migrants.     

A Bayesian hierarchical model for inference across related reverse phase protein arrays experiments

We consider inference for functional proteomics experiments that record protein activation over time following perturbation under different dose levels of several drugs. The main inference goal is the dependence structure of the selected proteins. A critical challenge is the lack of sufficient data under any one drug and dose level to allow meaningful inference on dependence structure. We propose a hierarchical model to implement the desired inference. The key element of the model is a shared dependence structure on (latent) binary indicators of protein activation.     

Improving robustness of next-hop routing

A weakness of next-hop routing is that following a link or router failure there may be no routes between some source-destination pairs, or packets may get stuck in a routing loop as the protocol operates to establish new routes. In this article, we address these weaknesses by describing mechanisms to choose alternate next hops. Our first contribution is to model the scenario as the following tree augmentation problem. Consider a mixed graph where some edges are directed and some undirected. The directed edges form a spanning tree pointing towards the common destination node. Each directed edge represents the unique next hop in the routing protocol. Our goal is to direct the undirected edges so that the resulting graph remains acyclic and the number of nodes with outdegree two or more is maximized. These nodes represent those with alternative next hops in their routing paths. We show that tree augmentation is NP-hard in general and present a simple \(\frac{1}{2}\)-approximation algorithm. We also study 3 special cases. We give exact polynomial-time algorithms for when the input spanning tree consists of exactly 2 directed paths or when the input graph has bounded treewidth. For planar graphs, we present a polynomial-time approximation scheme when the input tree is a breadth-first search tree. To the best of our knowledge, tree augmentation has not been previously studied.