The Żmiąca effect

Monographs of local communities are a genre of sociological craft which — along with analyses of personal documents — became a distinguishing mark of Polish empirical sociology. In 2003 turned exactly 100 years from publication of the first sociologically mature village monograph in Poland, e. g. “?mi?ca. Wie? powiatu limanowskiego. Stosunki gospodarcze i spo?eczne” [?mi?ca. A village of the Limanowa county. Economic and social relations] by one of the founding fathers of Polish social sciences, Franciszek Bujak. This paper describes and analyses the impacts of this study and develops a typology of monographs. Additionally, problems of representativeness of monographs are discussed.     

Prediction intervals for time series models with trend via sieve bootstrap

This paper discusses method for constructing the prediction intervals for time series model with trend using the sieve bootstrap procedure. Gasser–Müller type of kernel estimator is used for trend estimation and prediction. The boundary modification of the kernel is applied to control the edge effect and to construct the predictor of a trend.     

Electronic Health Record Breaches as Social Indicators

Social Indicators Research - This study presents compelling social indicators of such magnitude that they cannot be ignored. The statistical evidence shows that data breaches of electronic health...     

On exact strong laws of large numbers for ratios of random variables and their applications

Abstract

We study the almost sure convergence of weighted sums of ratios of independent random variables satisfying some general, mild conditions. The obtained results are applied to exact laws for order statistics. An exact law for independent random variables which are nonidentically distributed is also proved and applied to ratios of adjacent order statistics for a sample of uniformly distributed random variables.     

Social Enterprises’ Hybridity in the Concept of Institutional Logics: Evidence from Polish NGOs

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Social enterprises have gained wide recognition as a tool for solving social and environmental problems. They generate new...     

Upper and lower bounds on the variances of linear combinations of the kth records

We describe a method of determining upper bounds on the variances of linear combinations of the kth records values from i.i.d. sequences, expressed in terms of variances of parent distributions. We also present conditions for which the bounds are sharp, and those for which the respective lower ones are equal to zero. A special attention is paid to the case of the kth record spacings, i.e. the differences of consecutive kth record values.     

The development of gaze following in monolingual and bilingual infants: A multi-laboratory study

Determining the meanings of words requires language learners to attend to what other people say. However, it behooves a young language learner to simultaneously encode relevant non-verbal cues, for example, by following the direction of their eye gaze. Sensitivity to cues such as eye gaze might be particularly important for bilingual infants, as they encounter less consistency between words and objects than monolingual infants, and do not always have access to the same word-learning heuristics (e.g., mutual exclusivity). In a preregistered study, we tested the hypothesis that bilingual experience would lead to a more pronounced ability to follow another's gaze. We used a gaze-following paradigm developed by Senju and Csibra (Current Biology, 18, 2008, 668) to test a total of 93 6- to 9-month-old and 229 12- to 15-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants, in 11 laboratories located in 8 countries. Monolingual and bilingual infants showed similar gaze-following abilities, and both groups showed age-related improvements in speed, accuracy, frequency, and duration of fixations to congruent objects. Unexpectedly, bilinguals tended to make more frequent fixations to on-screen objects, whether or not they were cued by the actor. These results suggest that gaze sensitivity is a fundamental aspect of development that is robust to variation in language exposure.     

The Determinants of Student Migration to Poland Based on the Opolskie Voivodeship Study

Until recently Poland has been considered a country to emigrate from. However, the situation is now beginning to change, and Poland is becoming an immigration country. This also refers to student migration. Polish universities are becoming increasingly attractive to foreign students, who are mainly of Ukrainian origin. They only began to promote their services abroad in 2005 and their foreign student population growth dynamic is one of the highest in the world. The study was conducted in the Opolskie Voivodeship, the first region in Poland where systematic action was taken to address depopulation, and the steps to counteract population decline were included in its strategic policies. One of the objectives of such policies was to stimulate immigration. For this reason, it was decided that the Opolskie Voivodeship might serve as a lab to study migration processes, including the inflow of foreign students.     

How protecting a suburban forest as a natural reserve effected small mammal communities

Restoration of mammal communities was studied between 1975–1984 and 2001–2009 (over ca. 30 years) in two suburban forests in central Poland: one protected as a natural reserve and one not protected. The mammal community in the legally protected forest showed more extensive changes than in the case of the nonprotected forest. In the natural reserve, the numbers of Microtus subterraneus, Apodemus agrarius, Rattus norvegicus and Mus musculus decreased while insectivores (mostly Sorex araneus), bats and Apodemus flavicollis increased in numbers. The community of small mammals in the reserve became more similar to the community from the relatively natural area – Białowieża Primeval Forest (eastern Poland). A protection supported restoration processes of tree stands and consequently started to increase the numbers of mammalian species typical of more natural habitats, as well as to reduce the numbers of synanthropic species and those connected to open areas. In the nonprotected forest, fewer species changed their abundance (M. subterraneus decreased, insectivores, bats and A. flavicollis increased). However, an increase in the percentage of bats and a decrease of M. subterraneus in mammal communities of both forests could reflect general trends in their populations noted in recent decades. The population decline of Warsaw’s urban species – A. agrarius perhaps is the best indicator of the restoration of suburban forests.