Two‐sample empirical likelihood ratio tests for medians in application to biomarker evaluations

The median is a commonly used parameter to characterize biomarker data. In particular, with two vastly different underlying distributions, comparing medians provides different information than comparing means; however, very few tests for medians are available. We propose a series of two‐sample median‐specific tests using empirical likelihood methodology and investigate their properties. We present the technical details of incorporating the relevant constraints into the empirical likelihood function for in‐depth median testing. An extensive Monte Carlo study shows that the proposed tests have excellent operating characteristics even under unfavourable occasions such as non‐exchangeability under the null hypothesis. We apply the proposed methods to analyze biomarker data from Western blot analysis to compare normal cells with bronchial epithelial cells from a case–control study. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 39: 671–689; 2011. © 2011 Statistical Society of Canada     

A two-sample empirical likelihood ratio test based on samples entropy

Powerful entropy-based tests for normality, uniformity and exponentiality have been well addressed in the statistical literature. The density-based empirical likelihood approach improves the performance of these tests for goodness-of-fit, forming them into approximate likelihood ratios. This method is extended to develop two-sample empirical likelihood approximations to optimal parametric likelihood ratios, resulting in an efficient test based on samples entropy. The proposed and examined distribution-free two-sample test is shown to be very competitive with well-known nonparametric tests. For example, the new test has high and stable power detecting a nonconstant shift in the two-sample problem, when Wilcoxon’s test may break down completely. This is partly due to the inherent structure developed within Neyman-Pearson type lemmas. The outputs of an extensive Monte Carlo analysis and real data example support our theoretical results. The Monte Carlo simulation study indicates that the proposed test compares favorably with the standard procedures, for a wide range of null and alternative distributions.     

中国农村贫困人口的估计与瞄准问题

随着农村低保的全面实施,中国的农村扶贫从开发式扶贫为主转变为扶贫开发与最低生活保障并重,扶贫资源也大幅度增加.然而,这一政策转变似乎没有带来明显的减贫效果.我们的研究发现,由于数据基础和估计方法不同,国家统计局估计的贫困人口和民政部门确定的低保人口在很大程度上是两个不同的群体.国家统计局估计的是经济上的贫困人口,而这些贫困人口绝大部分有劳动能力.民政部门确定的农村低保人口主要是一些特殊的人群(残疾人、慢性病人等没有劳动能力的人口).这些人口中的相当部分的收入水平并不低于贫困线.中国需要建立统一的贫困人口识别机制,改善农村扶贫对象的选择和瞄准机制,以提高扶贫效果.     

中国环境与规划（三）

中国人常说：“良药苦口,忠言逆耳”。在中国做了10年规划,我看到了一些不是简单的问题。有些问题不知道是否应该说出来,但是如果不说出来,我认为有愧领导的爱护。有一次,我与好朋友前纽约环境保护局局长、世界上一流的水处理专家AL APPLETON交谈这些问题。没想到,他与我有许多共同的看法。后来,我告诉他我正在写一本有关对中国规划建议的书,不如他来个“友情演出”,替我写一篇我们对环境保护共同看法的文章。为了得到更多“外脑”的意见和支持,我要求编辑必须将原文登出。     

The Tale of Cochran's Rule: My Contingency Table has so Many Expected Values Smaller than 5, What Am I to Do?

In an informal way, some dilemmas in connection with hypothesis testing in contingency tables are discussed. The body of the article concerns the numerical evaluation of Cochran's Rule about the minimum expected value in r × c contingency tables with fixed margins when testing independence with Pearson's X² statistic using the χ² distribution.     

Evidence of Global Civil Society

This paper considers the relationship between Seoul's growing status as a world city and the practices of urban destruction and development which are being used to construct it as a world city in the age of neoliberal globalisation. The urbicide approach is often used to explain the reasons for urban destruction and the cultural and social implications of urban restructuring. The paper questions the novelty and substantive nature of the South Korean government's soft-power ‘global Korea’ rhetoric of Seoul as a world city of cultural diversity. The paper uses the South Korean case to show how urbicide as a western concept can be developed within non-western urban processes, and identifies conceptual limits and how these limits might be overcome.

Este artículo considera la relación entre el estado creciente de Seúl como una ciudad mundial y las prácticas de destrucción y desarrollo urbano que se han utilizado para construir a Seúl como una ciudad mundial en la era de la globalización neoliberal. El enfoque de urbicidio se usa frecuentemente para explicar las razones por la destrucción urbana y las implicaciones culturales y sociales de la reestructuración urbana. El artículo cuestiona la novedad y naturaleza substantiva del poder blando del gobierno de Corea del Sur, sobre la retórica de ‘Corea global’ de Seúl como una ciudad mundial de diversidad cultural. El artículo usa el caso de Corea del Sur para mostrar cómo el ubicidio como un concepto de occidente puede desarrollarse dentro de procesos urbanos no occidentales, e identifica límites conceptuales y cómo esos límites pueden sobreponerse.

本文考察首尔作为世界都市日益增长的地位同在新自由主义的全球化时代为把首尔建设为世界都市而带来的都市破坏、开发之行为之间的关系。都市自我毁灭方式 (urbicide approach）一词 经常被用来解释都市大破坏的原因,以及都市重组的社会和文化影响。本文质疑南韩政府把首尔打造为具有文化多样性的世界城市“全球的首尔”这一软实力之奇思异想及其实质。本文运用南韩的案例以图说明,作为一个西方概念的都市自我毁灭如何能够在（南韩这样的）非西方的都市化进程中再现,并试图探讨概念上的局限,以及如何克服这些局限。

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? ?? ???? ?? ????? ??? ??? ????? ??? ??? ??? ?? ???? ??? ??? ???? ?? ??? ?? ???? ??? ???. ????(urbicide) ??? ?? ??? ??? ?? ???? ??? ??? ??? ???? ?? ?? ?????. ? ?? ??? ??? ???? ?? ?????? ?? ??? ??? ?? ‘??? ???’ ??? ???? ???? ??? ??? ????. ? ?? ???? ??? ????? ??? ??? ?? ???? ??? ? ???? ???? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???? ? ??? ??? ??? ? ???? ???? ?? ?? ??? ????

В работе рассматривается взаимосвязь между растущим статусом Сеула как города мира и методами городского уничтожения и развития, которые используются для построения Сеула как мирового города в эпоху неолиберальной глобализации. “Urbicide” подход часто используется, чтобы объяснить причины городского разрушения, культурные и социальные последствия городской реструктуризации. Статья подвергает сомнению новизну и независимую природу “мягкой силы” “Глобальной Кореи”, исповедуемой южнокорейским правительством, как и Сеула как города мирового культурного многообразия. Статья использует южнокорейский случай, чтобы показать, что “urbicide” как западная концепция может быть развита в рамках не-западных городских процессов, а так же определяет концептуальные ограничения и как эти ограничения могут быть преодолены.     

The Educational Homogamy Gap Between Married and Cohabiting Couples in Latin America

The explosive expansion of non-marital cohabitation in Latin America since the 1970s has led to the narrowing of the gap in educational homogamy between married and cohabiting couples (what we call “homogamy gap”) as shown by our analysis of 29 census samples encompassing eight countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama (N = 2,295,160 young couples). Most research on the homogamy gap is limited to a single decade and a small group of developed countries (the United States, Canada, and Europe). We take a historical and cross-national perspective and expand the research to a range of developing countries, where since early colonial times, traditional forms of cohabitation among the poor, uneducated sectors of society have coexisted with marriage, although to widely varying degrees from country to country. In recent decades, cohabitation is emerging in all sectors of society. We find that among married couples, educational homogamy continues to be higher than for those who cohabit, but in recent decades, the difference has narrowed substantially in all countries. We argue that assortative mating between cohabiting and married couples tends to be similar when the contexts in which they are formed are also increasingly similar.     

Moral Disengagement in the Corporate World

We analyze mechanisms of moral disengagement used to eliminate moral consequences by industries whose products or production practices are harmful to human health. Moral disengagement removes the restraint of self-censure from harmful practices. Moral self-sanctions can be selectively disengaged from harmful activities by investing them with socially worthy purposes, sanitizing and exonerating them, displacing and diffusing responsibility, minimizing or disputing harmful consequences, making advantageous comparisons, and disparaging and blaming critics and victims. Internal industry documents and public statements related to the research activities of these industries were coded for modes of moral disengagement by the tobacco, lead, vinyl chloride (VC), and silicosis-producing industries. All but one of the modes of moral disengagement were used by each of these industries. We present possible safeguards designed to protect the integrity of research.