Urban growth management-the Saudi experience

Saudi Arabia experienced a high rate of urbanization during the period 1970–1986 resulting in accelerated annual growth rates for Saudi cities averaging more than 6.4%. Higher than usual growth rates created demand for the opening up of huge areas to meet housing, commercial, industrial and other land uses. Government's land grant policy and liberal interest free loans resulted in massive expansion of cities and towns all over the country with major cities of Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dammam having the biggest share. Lack of planning frameworks and weak city institutions could not direct the growth properly leading to sprawl and lop-sided development. This meant rapid extension of road network and utilities with high financial outlays. The slow-down in the economy and ever-increasing demand for infrastructure provision forced the government to initiate growth boundaries to tackle these problems in 1986. The paper discusses the methodology adopted and the process of devising urban limits and evaluates their impact on urban structures of Saudi cities. The paper draws some conclusions in the realization of objectives of the exercise with respect to, (a) control urban sprawl by encouraging infill development where utilities were generally available; (b) reduce cost of provision of infrastructure through better coordination tied to commonly agreed phasing; (c) maintain natural environment around the cities.     

Relative performance of stein-rule and preliminary test estimators in linear models least squares theory

In the classical (univariare) linear model, bearing the plausibility of a subset of the regression parameters being close to a pivot, shrinkage least squares estimation of the complementary subset is considered. Based on the usual James-Stein rule, shrinkage least squares estimators are constructed, and under an asymptotic setup (allowing the shrinkage parameters to be 'close to ' the pivot), the relative performance of such estimators and the prcliminary test estimators is studied. In this context, the normality of the errors is also avoided under the same asymptotic setup. None of the shrinkage and preliminary test estimators may dominate the other (in the light of the asymptotic distributional risk criterion, as has been developed here), though each of them fares well relative to the classical least squeres estimator. The chice of the shrinkage factor is also examined properly.     

Positive youth development in Māori and New Zealand European adolescents through an adventure education programme

Within Aotearoa New Zealand there is growing interest in positive youth development (PYD). A PYD approach provides balance to narratives surrounding outcomes for youth and broadens our views of what we consider beneficial developmental outcomes. In the current study we used sail training as a method to promote PYD in Māori and New Zealand European adolescents. Specifically, 54 Māori and 37 New Zealand European adolescents completed the 7-day youth-development voyage on-board the gaffed rigged schooner, R. Tucker Thompson. We demonstrate that, for both Māori and New Zealand European adolescents, psychological resilience, self-esteem, and positive outlook on life increased from the first day to the last day of the voyage. In addition, we demonstrate that the increases in psychological resilience were driven by the social/collective identity adolescents formed with their group over the course of the voyage.     

Estimating the quantile function of a location-scale family of distributions based on few selected order statistics

Some general asymptotic methods of estimating the quantile function, Q(ξ), 0<ξ<1, of location-scale families of distributions based on a few selected order statistics are considered, with applications to some nonregular distributions. Specific results are discussed for the ABLUE of Q(ξ) for the location-scale exponential and double exponential distributions. As a further application of the exponential results, we discuss a nonlinear estimator of Q(ξ) for the scale-shape Pareto distribution.     

Preliminary test estimation of the parameters of exponential and Pareto distributions for censored samples

This paper deals with the preliminary test estimation (PTE) of the parameters of the exponential and Pareto distributions in censored samples. The biases, risk functions, efficiency tables and the graphs for the relative efficiency for the proposed estimators for the parameters of the exponential and Pareto distributions are given. We find that the proposed estimators dominate the corresponding unrestricted (usual) estimators in the neighborhood of null hypothesis. The range of the parameters for which the proposed estimators dominate the corresponding usual estimators for different sample sizes and level of significance are given. The findings of the paper will be useful for the practitioners who are dealing with the censored samples in life testing experiments.     

The Impact of Islamic and Customary Laws on Urban form Development in Southwestern Saudi Arabia

Urban form and architecture, whether religious or secular, does not rely only on principles of aesthetics to reflect its essence, but to a great extent reflects a society's religious and social demands. The article reviews Islamic law, shari^cah, and local customary laws, ^curf, and the influence they have had on the structural development of the urban form and architecture of the traditional highland settlements of southwestern Saudi Arabia. Although living conditions in Saudi Arabia are much changed today, the Islamic religion still plays a prominent role in everyday life. The paper argues that the architectural heritage in traditional villages may provide a more satisfactory basis for contemporary community design than the concepts now being implemented since Islamic law continues to influence the organizational characteristics of Saudi settlements. An analysis of physical elements shows how the principles underlying the structure of Islam and the tribal system are pertinent to each settlement's physical development. The conclusion is that the urban form resulted as a response to the Shari^cah and ^cUrf to verify the basic need for defense, climate and the community's social structure.     

Simultaneous estimation of several CDF’s: homogeneity constraint

Let {x_ij(1 ? j ? n_i)|i = 1, 2, …, k} be k independent samples of size n_j from respective distributions of functions F_j(x)(1 ? j ? k). A classical statistical problem is to test whether these k samples came from a common distribution function, F(x) whose form may or may not be known. In this paper, we consider the complementary problem of estimating the distribution functions suspected to be homogeneous in order to improve the basic estimator known as “empirical distribution function” (edf), in an asymptotic setup. Accordingly, we consider four additional estimators, namely, the restricted estimator (RE), the preliminary test estimator (PTE), the shrinkage estimator (SE), and the positive rule shrinkage estimator (PRSE) and study their characteristic properties based on the mean squared error (MSE) and relative risk efficiency (RRE) with tables and graphs. We observed that for k ? 4, the positive rule SE performs uniformly better than both shrinkage and the unrestricted estimator, while PTEs works reasonably well for k < 4.     

Sexual deviancy: diagnostic and neurobiological considerations

Individuals who engage in sexual offenses may be afflicted with a paraphilic disorder or sexual deviation syndrome. Paraphilias are psychiatric disorders characterized by deviant and culturally non-sanctioned sexual fantasies, thoughts, and/or behaviors. A proportion of these individuals may also suffer from symptoms of mental illness that can go unrecognized. Although the etiology and pathophysiology of paraphilic disorders continue to be under investigation, data from empirical, biomedical, and psychopharmacological studies suggest abnormalities at a biological level. This article will discuss and review clinical and neurobiological characteristics of the paraphilias. To this end, we will begin with a general exploration and overview of basic principles that are germane to the subject matter and will conclude with an examination of the most recent relevant research findings.     

On the structural estimation of certain correlation coefficients

In this paper, the estimation of a real-valued function of the parameter by minimizing the expected value of the quadratic loss function relative to the structural distribution of the parameter is proposed; this is called structural estimation. The general formulae developed have been used to obtain the structural estimate of the bivariate correlation coefficient and of the intraclass correlation coefficient.     

Pitman-closeness of some preliminary test and shrinkage estimators

For the model X ～ N_p: (θ,I)preliminary test estimator (PTE), shrinkage and positive-rule versions of the MLE (X) of θare mutually compared in the light of the Pitman closeness measure. The usual dominance properties of these estimators pertaining to the conventional quadratic loss criterion are shown to remain intact in the current context too. In an asymptotic setup, the conclusions hold for a much wider class of estimators pertaining to general parametric and nonparametric models.