Recruitment,enrollment & data collection with victims of elder abuse and neglect identified from police incident reports

ABSTRACT

This study evaluated the success of researcher-generated recruitment, enrollment, data collection, and safety protocols for field research with victims of elder abuse and neglect (EAN) identified from police incident reports in terms of their success including cost-effectiveness, ability to generate a representative sample, and safety. After reviewing 492 police incident reports involving victims age 65 years or older to identify cases of EAN 62 victims were identified. Mail, phone, and in-person recruitment strategies were used. After 259 recruitment attempts, 52 (84%) eligible victims were contacted, of which 24 (46%) consented to participate. Phone calls were the least expensive mechanism to produce a successfully enrolled participant. Findings from a regression show completion of a research interview could not be predicted by victim, suspect, or offense characteristics, indicating that the recruited victims likely represent the population they were drawn from. No safety or adverse events occurred.     

Mathematical analyses of casino rebate systems for VIP gambling

In Macao, the VIP gaming revenue accounts for over two thirds of the total gaming revenue. Since the VIP gaming market is highly competitive, several incentives such as rebates are used to attract the VIP players. There are two commonly used rebate systems in the VIP gaming market: rebate on buy-in and rebate on actual loss. The analysis of rebate on buy-in is relatively easy. However, the analysis of rebate on actual loss is more complicated, which involves the Unit Normal Linear Loss Integral. Using empirical data, MacDonald derived a simple approximation formula for computing the rebate rate on actual loss. In this paper, we use mathematical analysis to derive more accurate approximation formulas for computing the rebate rate on actual loss. Some practical examples are given to compare the accuracies of these formulas. We also discuss how these two rebate systems affect the fluctuations of the results.     

Military Invasion and Women's Political Representation

The bodies produced by the violent practice of suicide bombing are a source of horror and disgust. They are, in feminist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva's concept, abject: that which defies borders and is expelled to create the self. As ‘abject bodies’, suicide bombers' bodies frustrate attempts at calculation and rational control of security risks, and, in their mutilated flesh, expose as unstable the idea of the body as a whole with clearly defined boundaries between inside and outside. Female suicide bombers, whose bodies are already considered ‘abject’, produce a politics of the body that exceeds narratives of victimhood, and whose very monstrosity symbolically threatens the foundations of the nation-state. Attempts at constructing subjects out of the mutilated bodily remains of victims and perpetrators of suicide bombings are key practices in the production of the state and gendered subjects. The practice of suicide bombing and efforts to recover and resignify bodies reveals how power molds and constitutes the border of the body and state simultaneously. The explosive body of the suicide bomber thus has destabilizing effects beyond the motivations of its perpetrators and exposes the political work necessary to maintain the illusion of secure, bounded bodies and states.     

人是思维运动的唯一主体

思维运动主体不是人脑，而是从事社会实践的人。近代形而上学唯物主义把人脑看作是思维运动的主体，虽然肯定了思维运动主体的物质性，但却忽视了它的社会实践性。马克思主义哲学从实践出发理解现存世界和人的思维，把实践看作“人的思维的最本质和最切近的基础”，将从事社会实践活动的人确立为思维运动的主体，从而在思维运动主体上实现了物质性、实践性和社会性三者的有机统一。     

Ecology of urban lawns under three common management programs

Turfgrass lawns are a central part of urban and suburban landscapes throughout North America and are often managed using repeated applications of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These inputs are expensive and may negatively affect ecological processes in lawns. Therefore, we evaluated the influence of three most common lawn care programs on ecological characteristics of turfgrass lawns. Twenty-eight home lawns, separated into 3 groups based on the lawn care program (professional, do-it-yourself [DIY], and no-input), were studied. Data on lawn quality, weed and insect infestation, disease incidence, soil nematode community, soil nitrogen pools, microbial biomass (MBN), and soil organic matter (SOM) were collected. Results indicated that professional lawn care resulted in the highest aesthetic lawn quality mainly due to better weed control, compared to DIY and no-input programs. However, professional and DIY programs negatively affected MBN and SOM pools and enhanced disease (rust) severity. No significant differences in soil nematode population and nematode community indices across the three programs were found, indicating no differences in net ecosystem productivity among the three programs. Overall, soil nematode food web in turfgrass lawns represented a disturbed food web compared to natural grasslands and forest ecosystems, irrespective of the lawn care program used.     

Simultaneous Confidence Intervals for the Difference of Two Survival Functions

In comparing two treatments with failure time observations, confidence bands for the "difference" of two survival curves provide useful information about a global picture of the treatment difference over time. In this note, we propose a rather simple procedure for constructing such simultaneous confidence intervals. Our technique can also be used in the one-sample case, which has been extensively studied in the literature.     

ASYMPTOTIC EXPANSIONS APPLIED TO F-TEST CRITERIA

Using asymptotic expansions of the Kummer hypergeometric function, the sequential. F-test criterion is evaluated asymptotically in terms of the sample size. The continuation region inequalities for the test are inverted and expressed in terms of known test criteria. A rapidly converging algorithm for carrying out the sequential procedure is provided. This makes the F-test easier for the practitioner to use. Almost sure finite termination of the sequential. F-test is asserted by appealing to the continuation inequalities and a heuristic asymptotic expansion of the test criterion. Average stopping times of the sequential procedure for a variety of population means and population number configurations are tabulated. The computer symbolic manipulation program MAPLE was used to derive some formulae.     

When Infants Lose Exclusive Maternal Attention: Is It Jealousy?

To characterize infant reactions to jealousy evocation, 94 6‐month‐olds and their mothers were videotaped in an episode where the mothers directed positive attention toward a lifelike doll, and in 2 contrasting interactions: face‐to‐face play and a still‐face perturbation. Cross‐context comparisons of affects and behaviors revealed that jealousy evocation responses were distinguished by diminished joy and heightened anger and intensity of negative emotionality, comparable to levels displayed during the still‐face episode; heightened sadness, with durations exceeding those displayed during still‐face exposure; and an approach response consisting of interest, looks at mother, and diminished distancing, which was more pronounced than that demonstrated during play. Infants' heightened anger and sadness during jealousy evocation correlated with heightened maternal sensitivity and dyadic vocal turn‐taking, respectively, during play; and infants' diminished joy and interest during jealousy evocation were associated with heightened maternal withdrawal and intrusiveness, respectively, during play. Both fear and mother‐directed gaze were greater in girls. The discussion argues for interpreting the infant's mixed and agitated reaction to jealousy evocation as evidence of jealousy.     

Efficient Estimation in Marginal Partially Linear Models for Longitudinal/Clustered Data Using Splines

Abstract.  We consider marginal semiparametric partially linear models for longitudinal/clustered data and propose an estimation procedure based on a spline approximation of the non-parametric part of the model and an extension of the parametric marginal generalized estimating equations (GEE). Our estimates of both parametric part and non-parametric part of the model have properties parallel to those of parametric GEE, that is, the estimates are efficient if the covariance structure is correctly specified and they are still consistent and asymptotically normal even if the covariance structure is misspecified. By showing that our estimate achieves the semiparametric information bound, we actually establish the efficiency of estimating the parametric part of the model in a stronger sense than what is typically considered for GEE. The semiparametric efficiency of our estimate is obtained by assuming only conditional moment restrictions instead of the strict multivariate Gaussian error assumption.