Testing for climate warming in Sweden during 1850-1999, using wavelets analysis

This paper describes an alternative approach for testing for the existence of trend among time series. The test method has been constructed using wavelet analysis which has the ability of decomposing a time series into low frequencies (trend) and high-frequency (noise) components. Under the normality assumption, the test is distributed as F. However, using generated empirical critical values, the properties of the test statistic have been investigated under different conditions and different types of wavelet. The Harr wavelet has shown to exhibit the highest power among the other wavelet types.

The methodology here has been applied to real temperature data in Sweden for the period 1850-1999. The results indicate a significant increasing trend which agrees with the 'global warming' hypothesis during the last 100 years.     

Estimating the Standard Deviation From the Range: a Replication of Analysis of Demographic Data Reported in Marriage & Family Review, 2016-2017

Abstract

A major concern in the social sciences is lack of replication of previous studies. An important methodological concern in the social sciences is the ability to determine effect sizes in addition to statistical significance levels. Effect sizes cannot be easily calculated in the absence of sufficient data; usually standard deviations are needed. If standard deviations are not available, how can they be estimated? Various proposals have been offered to solve this question. One solution is to divide the range (maximum–minimum) by four; a variety of more complicated solutions, based on sample size or the skew of the variable’s distribution, have been suggested (Schumm, Higgins, et al., 2017). Here, 30 cases involving the demographic variable of age, from 23 articles published in Marriage & Family Review between 2016 and 2017, are assessed to replicate the previous report of Schumm, Higgins et al. (2017). Our results indicated that both linear and power functions significantly predicted the size of standard deviations, with larger samples featuring smaller standard deviations. Aside from sample size, the best solution appears to be to divide the range by 4.5–5.0; although for very small samples (N?<?50), it is probably better to divide by 3.5–4.0 whereas for larger samples, especially those that involve higher levels of skew, it may be better to divide by 5.0 or higher. The Wan et al. (2014) estimation procedure appears to be approximately a power function of sample size. For samples up to several thousand in size, the range of divisors appears to run between 3.0 and 8.0, extremes that could be used to determine the largest or smallest possible standard deviations, respectively. Values far below 3.0 or above 8.0 may reflect typographical errors in data reports or possibly be evidence of artificially generated data, if not scientific fraud. When a variable is split into subsamples, its standard deviations should usually increase for the subsamples compared with the total sample. Similar assessments remain in progress for non-demographic variables in social sciences.     

Designing survivable resilient networks: A stochastic hybrid genetic algorithm approach

As high-speed networks have proliferated across the globe, their topologies have become sparser due to the increased reliability of components and cost considerations. Reliability has been a traditional goal within network design optimization. An alternative design consideration, network resilience, has not been studied or incorporated into network designs nearly as much. The authors propose a methodology for the difficult estimation of traffic efficiency (TE), a measure of network resilience, and a hybrid genetic algorithm to design networks using this measure.     

An islamic perspective for strengths-based social work with muslim clients

This paper examines the Islamic concept of fi?ra or ‘original purity’ in relation to the strengths perspective in social work as a basis to guide religious and culturally appropriate services to Muslim clients. Both fi?ra and the strengths perspective presuppose a positive view of humankind; people are viewed as resilient and capable of growth and development, albeit in respective Islamic and secular systems, these outcomes are towards different ends. In Islam, growth and development links to the self but, ultimately, also to one's relationship with God. In secular social work systems, individual effort and the ability to overcome adversity and become whole are key and need not necessarily be linked to a God. This paper assesses the concept of fi?ra in relation to the strengths perspective to determine a religious and culturally appropriate equivalent for working with Muslim clients within the broader context of multicultural practice.     

Learning from tradition: the planning of residential neighborhoods in a changing world

This paper analyses the community values of residential neighborhoods in the southwestern region of Saudi Arabia as an approach to a new theory in urbanism. The indigenous masterbuilders and tribemen incorporated planning decisions pertinent to climatic, cultural, social, economic and religious factors when designing physical elements in their built environment. This is what makes every traditional settlement in the southwest region of Saudi Arabia unique in terms of urban form and social structure. As a step to examining and evaluating the process of residential neighborhood development, three stages of practiced urbanism are discussed. These stages are labelled “vernacular”, “transitional” and “new vernacularism”. These are planning concepts used worldwide in the development of residential neighborhoods throughout history until the present. “New Vernacularism” is envisioned in this investigation as a design/planning objective implemented in most recently planned neighborhoods in Al-Horaidhah, Southwest Saudi Arabia. The achievement of successful urbanism underlies the political goals of urban planning practice. The Al-Horaidhah planning concept is conceived in the light of preservation of community values in neighborhood design/planning as a critical issue.The paper aims to investigate and reconcile the conflicts in the planning of residential neighborhoods in a changing world. The conflicts are restricted between retaining traditions of architecture, urban design and planning with the necessary social, economic, and technological changes in urban formation, mainly, the vernacular and modern. The paper illustrates the concept “New Vernacularism” by presenting Al-Horaidhah scheme as a model for community development in three administrative regions along the Red Sea coastline. “New Vernacularism” as a planning concept looks at the community development in Al-Horaidhah in the light of Sharicah, the Islamic Law and Customary norms by emphasizing the importance of the involvement of local residents in the planning process and gives suggestions of how this might best be achieved and later implemented into new communities.     

Effective International Tourism Management: A Strategic Approach

The objective of the study was to explore the relationship between international tourism indicators, crime rate, and vulnerability in a panel of 16 tourist-oriented countries over the period of 1990–2014. The study constructed a vulnerability index by using three socioeconomic factors, (1) poverty, (2) income inequality, and (3) unemployment rate. The results show that crime rate and vulnerability both decreases international tourism demand, which were mediated through inadequate education and health resources. Trade openness moderately supported the international tourism demand under the crime rate and vulnerability index. The results confirmed the crime Kuznets curve that turned into inverted U-shaped relationship between crime rate and per capita income, while this relationship was not confirmed for vulnerability index. The panel causality relationships confirmed the unidirectional causality between crime-vulnerability and international tourism. Growth-fueled tourism demand was analyzed under a crime and vulnerability index. The study concludes that international tourism is an implied solution to reduce human costs by involving tourists to in pleasure activities to at tourists’ destinations.     

A proportional hazards regression model with change-points in the baseline function

In this article, we consider a new regression model for counting processes under a proportional hazards assumption. This model is motivated by the need of understanding the evolution of the booking process of a railway company. The main novelty of the approach consists in assuming that the baseline hazard function is piecewise constant, with unknown times of jump (these times of jump are estimated from the data as model parameters). Hence, the parameters of the model can be separated into two different types: parameters that measure the influence of the covariates, and parameters from a multiple change-point model for the baseline. Cox??s semiparametric regression can be seen as a limit case of our model. We develop an iterative procedure to estimate the different parameters, and a test procedure that allows to perform change-point detection in the baseline. Our technique is supported by simulation studies and a real data analysis, which show that our model can be a reasonable alternative to Cox??s regression model, particularly in the presence of tied event times.     

Using the Diffusion of Innovation Concept to Explain the Factors That Contribute to the Adoption Rate of E-journal Publishing

This paper reports on the factors that contribute to the adoption rate of e-journal publishing based upon responses from 82 Malaysian journal publishers. Drawing upon the theory of innovation diffusion, the study examines the role of awareness, three organization variables (publication size, age of the journal, and experience of editors), and attributes of e-journals (relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability) as influences to the rate of e-journal publishing adoption. Findings show that only two attributes—complexity and trialability—emerge as significant contributors to e-journal adoption rates, and all three organization variables—journal's age, publication size, and editorial experience—are significant. Collectively, these five significant variables explained 57.8% of the variance in adoption rate. We discuss the results and implication of the findings with respect to the wider context of e-journal publishing.     

The flexible skew Laplace distribution

ABSTRACT

Skew-symmetric distributions have been discussed by several research-ers. In this article we construct a skew-symmetric Laplace distribution, which is the generalization of distribution given by Ali et al. (2009 Ali, M., Pal, M., Woo, J. (2009). Skewed reflected distributions generated by the Laplace kernel. Aust. J. Statist. 38:45–58. [Google Scholar]) and Nekoukhou and Alamatsaz (2012 Nekoukhou, V., Alamatsaz, M.H. (2012). A family of skew-symmetric-Laplace distributions. Statist. Papers. 53(3):685–696.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). This new distribution contains more parameters, and this induces flexibility properties, such as unimodality or bimodality. We study on some properties of this distribution. In the last section we also provide an application with a real data. Concerning example has recently been discussed by Nekoukhou et al. (2013 Nekoukhou, V., Alamatsaz, M.H., Aghajani, A.H. (2013). A flexible skew-generalized normal distribution. Commun. Statist. Theory Methods. 42(13):2324–2334.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to apply to their model. We compare the behavior of our distribution to their distribution on this example.     

Negotiation of identity and internal contradictions: the Terengganu and Kelantan Peranakan Chinese foodways compared

This study explores the Terengganu and Kelantan Peranakan Chinese foodways with special reference to two types of foods: daily and ancestral prayer foods. The principal focus is to illustrate the negotiation of identity through foodways as well as internal contradictions arising from this process of identity negotiation. These two groups of Peranakan Chinese are largely the product of acculturation by the local Malays through socio-cultural interactions, though the Kelantan Peranakan Chinese are also acculturated by the local Thai community. Their daily and ancestral prayer foods display contrasting identities that stem from the negotiating of their acculturated and primordial identities. The former displays a strong local cultural influence, while the latter displays a strong Chinese cultural influence. However, despite the pervasive influence of localisation in their daily foods, elements of hybridisation are visible in some occasionally prepared food items. Meanwhile, localised and hybrid food items are included in their ancestral prayer foods, which are supposed to express their primordial Chinese identity. These internal contractions illustrate the complexity of the negotiation of identity through foodways within a cross-cultural context.