Sex Differentials in Childhood Feeding,Health Care,and Nutritional Status in India

Strong preference for sons in South Asia is well documented, but evidence on female disadvantage in childhood feeding, health care, and nutritional status is inconclusive. This article examines sex differentials in indicators of childhood feeding, health care, and nutritional status of children under age 3 by birth order and sex composition of older living siblings. Data are from India's 1992–93 and 1998–99 National Family Health Surveys. The analysis finds three reasons for inconclusive evidence on female disadvantage in aggregate analyses. First, discrimination against girls is limited to the relatively small fraction of children of certain birth orders and sex compositions of older siblings. Second, discrimination against girls when boys are in short supply and discrimination against boys when girls are in short supply cancel each other to some extent. Third, some discrimination against girls (e.g., in exclusive breastfeeding at 6–9 months) is nutritionally beneficial to girls. Separate analyses for North and South India find that gender discrimination is as common in the South as in the North, where son preference is generally much stronger.     

A sequential discrimination procedure for two almost identically shaped wrapped distributions

The way of investigating a distribution knowing its interesting properties might be often inadequate when the shapes of two distributions are almost similar. In each of these circumstances, the accurate decision about the genesis of a random sample from any of the two parent distributions will be very much ambiguous even with the availability of the existing testing procedure of the circular data. A sequential discrimination procedure has been suggested which is also invariant to the sample size. The performance of the proposed discrimination procedure has been evaluated by checking its capability of detecting the genesis of the known samples from the two identically shaped wrapped distributions.     

Managing Coopetitive Tensions at the Working‐group Level: The Rise of the Coopetitive Project Team

This study seeks to provide insights into the management of coopetitive tensions at the working‐group level. We theoretically discuss the principles of separation and integration and a combination of both to manage coopetitive tensions at this level. An in‐depth case study of a space programme conducted by two competitors ? Astrium and Thales Alenia Space ? was conducted. At the organizational level, according to the separation principle, we found that the coopetitors implemented a Coopetitive Project Team separated from the rest of their organization. At the individual level, according to the integration principle, we evidenced that project managers internalize the coopetitive paradox. At the working‐group level, we revealed a new principle, that of co‐management. The co‐management principle, in the case of dyadic coopetition, relies on the implementation of a dual, equally shared governance structure and a dual management committee. To efficiently manage coopetitive tensions, firms are combining the separation principle at the organizational level, the co‐management principle at the working‐group level and the integration principle at the individual level.     

Techniques for nonlinear least squares and robust regression

Recently, the authors and others have made considerable progress in developing algorithms for solving certain large-residual nonlinear least-squares problems where Gauss-Newton (GN) methods can be expected to perform poorly. These methods take account of the term in the Hessian ignored by the GN methods and use quasi-Newton procedures to update this term explicitly. This paper reviews these new approaches and discusses how they can be modified to give good performance on nonlinear models with robust loss functions where lack of scale invariance causes several new problems to arise.     

Federal nutrition programs and childhood obesity: inside the black box

In response to the dramatic rise in childhood obesity, particularly among low income individuals, federal nutrition assistance programs have come under scrutiny. However, the vast majority of this research focuses on the direct relationship between these programs and child health, while little is known about the mechanisms by which such relationships arise. Using the 2007 American Time Use Survey and the Eating and Health Module, we explore differences in time use—albeit in a non-causal framework—across families that participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the School Breakfast Program, and the National School Lunch Program to better understand behavioral differences across participants and non-participants. These differences have important implications for future research and policy.     

An approximation to the distribution of the ratio of two general quadratic forms with application

Based on mixed cumulants up to order six, this paper provides a four moment approximation to the distribution of a ratio of two general quadratic forms in normal variables. The approximation is applied to calculate the percentile points of modified F-test statistics for testing treatment effects when standard F-ratio test is misleading because of dependence among observations. For the special case, when data is generated by an AR(1) process, the approximation is evaluated by a simulation study. For the general SARMA (p,q)(P,Q)_s process, a modified F-test statistic Is given, and its distribution for the (0,1)(0,l)₁₂ process, is approximated by the moment approximation technique.     

How many logics of collective action?

Theory and Society -     

Motion Picture Department

While historical thinking has a rich literature, civic thinking has been an underdeveloped area of research in social studies education. I discuss in this article three activities designed to strengthen students’ civic thinking skills by examining the “political death and resurrection” of Richard Nixon in the 1960s. These three activities help students critically analyze politicians’ remarks to grasp direct and indirect messages contained within political statements and advertising. The steps and resources to implement these activities are provided. The development of students’ civic thinking skills helps them analyze a politician’s arguments and judge for themselves the merits of a candidate and his or her statements and policy recommendations.     

Imaging convex quadrilateral inclusions in uniform conductors from electrical boundary measurements

We demonstrate simulation-based Bayesian imaging from electrical impedance tomographic data, by summarizing the set of conductance images which could give rise to the data. The forward map from conductance image to data requires the solution of a partial differential equation subject to boundary conditions. We develop the example of recovering an unknown convex polygonal insulating inclusion within an object made of otherwise uniformly conducting material, and illustrate our methods with noisy synthetic data. Sampling is carried out using Markov chain Monte Carlo with the efficiency of the algorithm investigated over a range of noise levels.