The Perceptions of Infant Distress Signals Varying in Pitch by Cocaine‐Using Mothers

Perceptual responses to infant distress signals were studied in 16 cocaine‐using and 15 comparison mothers. All mothers rated tape recordings of 48 replications of a newborn infant's hunger cry digitally altered to increase in fundamental frequency in 100‐Hz increments. Cries were rated on 4 perceptual (arousing, aversive, urgent, and sick) and 6 caregiving rating scale items (clean, cuddle, feed, give pacifier, pick up, and wait and see) used in previous studies. Analyses of variance showed that, as cry pitch increased, cries were rated as more arousing, aversive, and urgent sounding. The highest pitched cries received the highest ratings for caregiving interventions. Main effects for cocaine use showed cocaine‐using mothers (a) rated cries as less arousing, aversive, urgent, and sick; (b) indicated they were less likely to pick up or feed the infant; and (c) indicated they more likely to give the crying infant a pacifier or just “wait and see.” A Group x Cry Pitch interaction effect showed that mothers in the cocaine group gave higher ratings to wait and see as the pitch of the cries increased, whereas mothers in the comparison group gave lower ratings to wait and see as the pitch of the cries increased. These ratings indicate that cocaine‐using mothers found cries to be less perceptually salient and less likely to elicit nurturant caregiving responses. These results suggest that maternal cocaine use is associated with altered perceptions of infant distress signals that may provide the basis for differential social responsivity in the caregiving context.     

Small sample properties of a sign test carried out under a Curtailed Inverse Sampling Scheme

The standard procedure of carrying out a sign test of location by attribute inspection under a Curtailed Inverse Sampling Scheme (CISS), for detecting both one-and two-sided alternatives, and also its error controlling properties, has been discussed. The nature of the Average Amount of Inspection (AAI) function of the procedure in small sample situations have been examined under four different symmetric models-normal, Laplace, Cauchy and logistic. The small sample efficiency of the sign test carried out under CISS has been compared with that of the UMP test based on the sample mean, under normal model.     

Optimum invariant tests for random manova models

Consider the canonical-form MANOVA setup with X: n × p = (+ E, X_i n_i × p, i = 1, 2, 3, M_i: n_i × p, i = 1, 2, n₁ + n₂ + n₃) p, where E is a normally distributed error matrix with mean zero and dispersion I_n (> 0 (positive definite). Assume (in contrast with the usual case) that M₁i is normal with mean zero and dispersion I_n1) and M₂2 is either fixed or random normal with mean zero and different dispersion matrix I_n2 (being unknown. It is also assumed that M₁ E, and M₂ (if random) are all independent. For testing H₀) = 0 versus H₁: (> 0, it is shown that when either n₂ = 0 or M₂ is fixed if n₂ > 0, the trace test of Pillai (1955) is uniformly most powerful invariant (UMPI) if min(n₁, p)= 1 and locally best invariant (LBI) if min(n₁ p) > 1 underthe action of the full linear group Gl (p). When p > 1, the LBI test is also derived under a somewhat smaller group G_T(p) of p × p lower triangular matrices with positive diagonal elements. However, such results do not hold if n₂ > 0 and M₂ is random. The null, nonnull, and optimality robustness of Pillai's trace test under Gl(p) for suitable deviations from normality is pointed out.     

Fertility and son preference in Korea

In Korea, total fertility declined from 6.0 in 1960 to 1.6 in 1990, in spite of a strong preference for male offspring. This paper addresses the notion that son preference hinders fertility decline, and examines the effects of patriarchal relations and modernization on fertility using the 1991 Korea National Fertility and Family Health Survey. It was found that women who have a son are less likely to have another child, and that women with a son who do progress to have another child, take longer to conceive the subsequent child. This pattern prevailed for women of parity one, two, and three, and became more pronounced with higher parity. A multivariate analysis showed that preference for male offspring, patriarchy, and modernization are all strong predictors of second, third, and fourth conceptions.     

Role of women in schooling and child labour decision: the case of urban boys in India

This paper uses household level data from National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) of India, the 55th round (1999–2000), to show that for urban male children there exists significant wage incentive for schooling, though school dropout rate and child labour incidence are not so small. The parents’ level of education plays an important role in reducing this tendency; thus establishing the linkage between social and human capital outcomes in the family. We also look at the incidence of harmful and manual occupations among the child labour. Mother’s education now appears as a very important factor in curbing these incidences; supporting earlier findings that women’s empowerment (one important indicator of which would be female educational level) is indeed instrumental in increasing parental awareness.     

A general method of correction for age misreporting in census populations

The paper provides a general method for estimating age-reporting errors from two consecutive census populations along the lines suggested by Demeny and Shorter (1968). When the true age structures in the two censuses are the same, the general method and the Demeny-Shorter method give identical results. However, the latter method faces increasingly the problem of inconsistency of the results with the underlying sssumptions as the disparity between the age structures becomes more and more significant. The present method is more general in the sense that it always gives consitent results irrespective of the populations under consideration.     

Risk,Process Maturity,and Project Performance: An Empirical Analysis of US Federal Government Technology Projects

In recent years, there has been increasing pressure on the US federal government to reduce spending and improve the management of its technology projects. Mitigating the adverse impact of risks on the performance of these projects presents a significant challenge for its stakeholders. Our research examines this challenge in two steps. First, we identify and define a set of salient risks in federal technology projects—specifically, complexity risk and contracting risk in the planning process, and execution risk in the execution process. Next, we investigate whether higher levels of process maturity, assessed by the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) framework, mitigate the negative effect of project risks on project performance. The analysis of time‐series data collected from 82 federal technology projects across 519 quarterly time periods indicates that each of the three types of risks has a significant negative effect on project performance. This finding highlights the practical significance of managing these risks in the federal technology project context. Further, we find that increasing levels of process maturity attenuate the negative effect of project risks on the performance of federal technology projects. However, the attenuation effects are consequential only at high levels of project risks; at low levels of project risk, increasing levels of process maturity can adversely affect project performance. To demonstrate the financial implications of increasing process maturity levels in federal technology projects, we examine the magnitude of project cost savings (and overruns) across different levels of CMMI and project risks. In summary, our study contributes to the sparse literature on public sector operations by addressing the understudied context of federal technology projects, and provides a nuanced examination of the implications of process maturity in managing the risk to performance relationship in such projects.     

The Tradeoffs of Inclusionary Zoning: What Do We Know and What Do We Need to Know?

Inclusionary zoning (IZ), a controversial planning tool for supplying affordable housing, grew significantly during the 2000s' housing boom in the USA. We review the resultant scholarly literature on IZ. Our key reading is that IZ can include both tradeoffs and practical efforts to address them. There is also a need for additional research. More specifically, we find that IZ programs (i) have many components and vary considerably; (ii) can increase affordable housing production and social integration, but there can be a tradeoff between these goals; and (iii) can have slight adverse market effects, but cost-offsets can help mitigate the outcomes. Finally, we discuss the need for more research, particularly in-depth case studies and make suggestions.     

The fallacy of the five million women: A re-estimate

Explicit policy to control fertility in the United States to date has focussed on the “unmet need” for contraceptive services in 1966 among an estimated five million poor and near-poor women. This paper reestimates the number of women in need of contraceptive services by disaggregating (on the basis of tabulations from the Current Population Surveys for 1966 and 1967, and the 1965 National Fertility Study) all poor and near-poor women into 54 subgroups differentiated by age, marital status, religion, and color. Data from the 1965 National Fertility Study, and from other studies, are then used to estimate for each subgroup deductions for sterility, pregnancy, waiting time for conception, and negative attitudes toward and current use of contraception. The residual number of women who both want and require contraceptive services, but do not have them, is estimated to be 1.2 million, rather than 4.6 million. The fact that the re-estimate takes into account both existing contraceptive practice and negative attitudes toward family limitation accounts for much of the difference between it and the original figure.     

Effect of urbanization on the dynamics of ecosystem services: An analysis for decision making in Kolkata urban agglomeration

Urban Ecosystems - Urbanization has profound influence on the changes of land use and land cover, which on the other hand exert significant impact on ecosystem services and their values, especially...