Inference on C pk for autocorrelated data in the presence of random measurement errors

The present paper examines the properties of the C _pk estimator when observations are autocorrelated and affected by measurement errors. The underlying reason for this choice of subject matter is that in industrial applications, process data are often autocorrelated, especially when sampling frequency is not particularly low, and even with the most advanced measuring instruments, gauge imprecision needs to be taken into consideration. In the case of a first-order stationary autoregressive process, we compare the statistical properties of the estimator in the error case with those of the estimator in the error-free case. Results indicate that the presence of gauge measurement errors leads the estimator to behave differently depending on the entity of error variability.     

Latent profiles of health and reproductive risk and protective factors among women in Appalachia

ABSTRACT

Women who use opiates and are involved in the criminal justice system in Appalachia may be prone to adverse health outcomes. In this study, we performed a latent class analysis of risk and protective factors on 400 drug-using women recruited from rural, Appalachian jails. A two-profile solution best fit the data. Both profiles evinced low levels of condom use, reproductive and physical health screens, and STD history. However, the primary substantive difference between the profiles was partner risk behavior: the higher risk class had main male partners with histories of injection drug use and incarceration. Results suggest that interventions need to be tailored to unique profiles of risk and protective factors, which should include taking partner risk into consideration.     

Environmental stewardship footprint research: linking human agency and ecosystem health in the Puget Sound region

Urbanization processes challenge ecosystem health in many metropolitan areas. New policy and program approaches are needed to restore and sustain natural systems as public agencies and organizations face greater demands and declining budgets. Environmental stewardship is an often overlooked intervention strategy, and the full potential of civic engagement by citizens on behalf of ecosystem health is little understood. Using a coupled systems approach, integrated analysis of social and ecological footprints can lead to greater theoretical understanding and more effective programs at the landscape scale. Here we outline two pilot studies as part of an emergent research program that is investigating the extent and impact of environmental stewardship. Qualitative interviews of stewardship managers revealed multiple dimensions of motivations and purposes for stewardship, ranging from the practical to the conceptual. A regional organization census yielded a surprisingly large number of organizations that conduct stewardship, with social and ecological values being of comparable emphasis. The initial research is based in the Puget Sound area of Washington State, U.S., but results have relevance to other urban areas. Pilot study findings now guide additional research effort about motivations, organizational networks, and theory of integrated socio-ecological systems to be derived from comprehensive footprint analysis of stewardship activity.     

Insights from a Management Prophet: Mary Parker Follett on Social Entrepreneurship

Current‐day management leaders such as Peter Drucker and Rosabeth Moss Kanter have cited Mary Parker Follett as guru and prophet given her foreknowledge of systems theory, action research and leadership. She viewed business as a social institution and work itself as a community service, concepts particularly relevant in the context of understanding social entrepreneurship. Referencing two of her works, “The Individual in Society” and “Business in Society”, this paper introduces Follett, defines social entrepreneurship and presents her ideas as timely insights on the meaning of work, ethics and the role of business in society.     

The last drag: an evaluation of an LGBT-specific smoking intervention

Many studies in the past 20 years have documented that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals smoke at rates that exceed the general population, yet, there have been few reports of smoking cessation interventions targeting this population. This study reports on data from 233 participants in The Last Drag, a seven-session, six-week group education and support intervention tailored for LGBT smokers. Data on smoking rates were collected during the first and last sessions, and at one, three, and six months post-intervention. As with many interventions over time, missing data is a challenge in determining success rates, but even using the most conservative estimates, nearly 60% were smoke-free at the end of the intervention, and 36% remained smoke-free by six months post-intervention. This success rate is comparable to, or better, than many mainstream smoking cessation interventions reported in the literature. The Last Drag is an effective, low-cost, LGBT-specific community intervention that can be replicated in other communities.     

The association between discrimination and violence among Somali Canadian youth

Analyses were conducted with a sample of 18–30-year-old Somali Canadians to test the association between discrimination and violence-related beliefs and behaviours, whether this association differs by the source of the discrimination, and whether there is a different pattern of effects for men and women. Results indicate that discrimination from within one’s own community is not associated with attitudes towards violence, anti-violence behaviours or criminal violence. By contrast, out-group discrimination is associated with more anti-violence behaviours by women, although these effects are not strong. Out-group discrimination is also related to criminal violence among men but not women.     

Body shopping: Maternity and alterity in Mamatoto

ABSTRACT

The products and practices of The Body Shop, both material and rhetorical, can be inserted into a number of competing discourses along the axes of feminist interests in the body and its relation to culture. We focus here on The Body Shop's Mamatoto range as it relates to contemporary Western discursive formations of maternity, alterity, and the vexed constructions of ‘difference’ and ‘globalism’ that emerge from them. Among the meta-products of Mamatoto are discursive formations of the body itself which, while they appear to endorse, even to celebrate, an active engagement with transcultural specificity and difference, actually reinstate the Western, white body of ‘woman’ as the ‘gold standard’ against which the exoticized currency of other women can be classified, appropriated and disowned. Within this framework, maternity itself is deployed by The Body Shop as a richly suggestive trope that serves to represent the problematics of body-as-nature, body-as-culture and body-as-identity that continue to preoccupy feminists across a wide range of political and cultural agendas.     

Nonprofit watchdogs: Do they serve the average donor?

Nonprofit watchdog organizations—organizations devoted to rating the accountability and transparency of nonprofits—claim to serve donors who are selecting which nonprofits to support. However, using three waves of the Harris Interactive Donor Pulse, we found that the overwhelming majority of donors (77.6 percent) do not consult these online intermediaries when making donations. Those who do are likely to fall into one of two groups: donors who give large sums of money or donors who are engaged in advocacy. We conclude with conceptual and practical implications.     

Rule-Governed Behavior: Teaching a Preliminary Repertoire of Rule-Following to Children With Autism

Rule-governed behavior is generally considered an integral component of complex verbal repertoires but has rarely been the subject of empirical research. In particular, little or no previous research has attempted to establish rule-governed behavior in individuals who do not already display the repertoire. This study consists of two experiments that evaluated multiple exemplar training procedures for teaching a simple component skill, which may be necessary for developing a repertoire of rule-governed behavior. In both experiments, children with autism were taught to respond to simple rules that specified antecedents and the behaviors that should occur in their presence. In the first study, participants were taught to respond to rules containing "if/then" statements, where the antecedent was specified before the behavior. The second experiment was a replication and extension of the first. It involved a variation on the manner in which rules were presented. Both experiments eventually demonstrated generalization to novel rules for all participants; however variations to the standard procedure were required for several participants. Results suggest that rule-following can be analyzed and taught as generalized operant behavior and implications for future research are discussed.     

On the performances of Nash equilibria in isolation games

We study the performances of Nash equilibria in isolation games, a class of competitive location games recently introduced in Zhao et al. (Proc. of the 19th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC), pp. 148–159, 2008). For all the cases in which the existence of Nash equilibria has been shown, we give tight or asymptotically tight bounds on the prices of anarchy and stability under the two classical social functions mostly investigated in the scientific literature, namely, the minimum utility per player and the sum of the players’ utilities. Moreover, we prove that the convergence to Nash equilibria is not guaranteed in some of the not yet analyzed cases.