Sir Moses Montefiore's 1846 visit to Vil'na and its reflection in local maskilic literature

This article discusses the 1846 visit of the leading Anglo-Jewish figure Sir Moses Montefiore to Vil'na in the Russian Empire. Invited by leading figures of the city's Jewish community, Montefiore had a broader agenda at hand – the investigation of Jewish education in the empire. The visit had a profound and enduring effect on the Jews of Vil'na. This was reflected in the varying literary responses, especially among the city's maskilim. It forms the central theme of this article.     

“Mnandi-licious!” trends in African language usage in South African television advertising

Advertisements in African languages are generally confined to radio, and in that medium are factual, dialogic and direct. When used in television advertising, however, South Africa’s indigenous languages, particularly those spoken by the largest number of people in South Africa (Nguni languages), play a less informative role, being employed rather to index a concretised African essence, African identity or urban style, or a particular reified post-apartheid togetherness and cultural mobility. In this essay, we analyse four recent television advertisements, all using a Nguni language, and reflect on how and why the vernacular is used and to what extent African languages are no longer seen by television advertisers as carriers of information but as exploitable symbols of trustworthiness, multiculturalism, belonging and innovation. Key tropes that emerge as motivating the inclusion of African languages in television advertisements are identified and serve to organise and focus the argument.     

Quantifying Cyberinfrastructure Resilience against Multi‐Event Attacks

This article introduces a general approach for characterizing cyberinfrastructure resilience in the face of multiple malicious cyberattacks, such as when a sequence of denial‐of‐service attacks progressively target an already weakened information system. Although loss assessment frequently focuses on a single overall measure such as cost or downtime, the proposed technique considers both the timing and the amount of loss associated with each individual attack, as well as whether this loss is incurred suddenly or is “slow‐onset.” In support of this, an underlying mathematical model is developed to represent the relative impact of each attack and the corresponding length of time that its effects persist within the system, as well as to illustrate the trade‐offs between these two factors. The model is extended to represent uncertainty in its parameters and thus to support comparative analyses among various security configurations with respect to a baseline estimate of resilience. Monte Carlo simulation is then used to illustrate the model's capabilities and to support a discussion of its ability to provide for more effective decision making in the context of disaster planning and mitigation. [Submitted: March 21, 2011. Revised: July 14, 2011; November 4, 2011. Accepted: December 19, 2011.]     

Varying levels of anomie in Europe: a multilevel analysis based on multidimensional IRT models

Recent years have seen increased attention paid to monitoring social anomie and its dependency on micro- and macro-factors. In this paper, we endorse the theorisation of social anomie as a complex, multidimensional and multilevel phenomenon. To ensure a rigorous measurement of the varying levels of social anomie in the European countries, the current study relies on a multilevel multidimensional item response theory model which explicitly accounts for the presence of a non-ignorable missing data mechanism. This unified approach makes it possible to specify an analytical model of links between anomie features and their determinants and to explore how the latent traits of interest are influenced by individual-level factors, as well as by country-level indicators. Additionally, to avoid misleading inferential conclusions, the proposed model takes into account the respondent’s omitting behaviour, assuming that the missingness mechanism is driven by a latent propensity to respond. Data used in this study have been collected in the 2010 wave of the European Social Survey. To reduce the computational complexities, a Bayesian specification of the MIRT model is provided and the parameter model estimates are obtained through MCMC algorithms.     

Selection of a voice for a speech signal for personalized warnings: the effect of speaker's gender and voice pitch

There is an increasing interest in multimodal technology-based warnings, namely those conveying speech-warning statements. This type of warning may be tailored to the situation as well as to the target user's characteristics. However, more information is needed on how to design these warnings in a way that ensures intelligibility, promotes compliance and reduces the potential for annoyance. In this context, this paper reports an exploratory study whose main purpose was to assist the selection of a synthesized voice for a subsequent compliance study with personalized (i.e., using the person's name) technology-based warnings using Virtual Reality. Participants were requested to listen to speech signals, gathered from a speech synthesizer and post-processed in order to change the pitch perception, and then these were evaluated by fulfilling the MOS-X questionnaire. After that, the participants ranked the voices according to their preference. The effects of the speaker's gender and voice pitch, on both ratings and ranking were assessed. The preference of the male and female listeners for a talker's voice gender was also investigated. The results show that participants mostly prefer as first choice the high-pitched female voice, which also gathered the highest overall score in the MOS-X questionnaire. No significant influence of the participants' gender was found on the assessed measures.     

Stimulus-Stimulus Pairing of Vocalizations: A Systematic Replication

The current study replicated an enhanced stimulus-stimulus pairing (SSP) procedure used by Esch et al. (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 42: 42–225, 2009) for increasing vocalizations in children with autism. The enhanced SSP procedure consisted of pairing target vocalizations with high-preference items, interspersed target and nontarget trials, an observing response, and the presentation of the vocalizations in “motherese” speech. Results showed substantial increases in target vocalizations above baseline levels and above nontarget vocalizations for two of three participants.     

人口普查净误差估计中的三系统估计量研究

本文针对作为当今人口普查质量评估领域主流方法的双系统估计量因受独立性不满足困扰而有偏估计总体人数的问题,明确提出了用三系统估计量替代双系统估计量的研究目标.三系统估计量指的是依据对同一时点上同一总体的人口普查、人口普查之后的质量评估调查和人口行政记录系统这三个不同途径获得的三份人口登记数据来估计总体人数所使用的估计量.为实现上述目标,采用实地调研、数理模型、抽样估计与实证分析相结合的研究方法,以及借鉴国际相关前沿研究成果的研究思路,研究了人口普查质量评估中三系统估计量的构建、三系统估计量应用操作等问题.通过理论与实证研究,得出如下结论:三系统估计量能够有效地摆脱双系统估计量的独立性约束从而解决估计量偏误的问题;将三系统估计量应用于人口普查质量评估,必须科学合理地解决三个人口登记系统定格在统一的标准时点、人口在三个登记系统等概率分层、用人口普查质量评估调查样本对三系统估计量再估计等实践方面的问题;基于Logistic回归模型的三系统估计量可以较好地实现人口等概率分层目标,但尚有较多的理论与实践问题有待研究解决,在这一问题上有着相当大的研究空间.建议我国在未来人口普查质量评估中应用三系统估计量.     

Negotiating Conflict through Music: The Case of the Tsonga Tingoma Ritual

Abstract

Tingoma is a three-day ritual conducted by Tsonga people to facilitate communication between the living and their Ancestor spirits, and to ensure that there is no disharmony between the beings in these two realms. Using a tingoma conducted for Eunice Maluleke as a case study, we argue that this ritual not only negotiates tension within an individual (body and spirit), and between an individual and his or her Ancestor spirits, but also functions as a site through which larger social and political tensions are addressed. Further, we propose that the structure of tingoma as it is practiced today inscribes and negotiates inter-ethnic tensions of the past. In the second part of this article we examine the ways in which tingoma has been affected by, and engages with, more recent power struggles and related identity politics, specifically those relating to the religious and political affiliations of people residing in South Africa's Limpopo province since the early 1980s.     

Imaging crisis in Indigenous Australia and Canada: towards an analysis of neoliberal primitivism

The last decade has witnessed a significant shift in the terms through which Indigenous people are rendered visible in public debate in Australia and Canada. In observing the long and recursive history of colonial visual regimes, this paper argues that contemporary politics of Indigenous representation are nevertheless distinctively marked by a regime of neoliberal primitivism. Tracing the features and operations of this regime across a selection of images and discursive imaging practices in Australia and Canada, the paper identifies three tropes that are centrally involved in imaging contemporary Indigenous crises: the suffering child, the silenced woman and the dysfunctional landscape. The visual regime of neoliberal primitivism operationalises these tropes in relation to each other and plays a vital role in the neoliberal turn in Indigenous governance. While bringing attention to the very real forms of damage and distress with which Aboriginal individuals and communities must contend in the present, paradoxically, the paper argues, this regime works to occlude from view the constellation of forces at work in those very circumstances.     

CHAUFFEURING AND COMMUTING

Work and family decision-making as a factor of life in a small middle class town in semi-rural Michigan is discussed in relation to class reproduction and gendered parenting identities. Interview and ethnographic data reveal why parents choose to live in this community and how their work and family lives are shaped in part by the town's location and character. Topics considered are children's school and extracurricular activities and parents’ career trajectories, commuting distances, local job opportunities, and family participation. Framed by a life course approach, the data provide a holistic on-the-ground picture of the intersection of these diverse elements in the lives of study participants.