Crawling Predicts Infants’ Understanding of Agents’ Navigation of Obstacles

We investigated whether crawling versus noncrawling infants interpret an agent's movements around an obstacle as goal‐directed. Infants (6–9 months) were habituated to a self‐propelled circle jumping over an obstacle to reach a goal. When the obstacle was removed, infants who crawled (n = 13) showed longer looking time to the familiar but now nonrational jumping path versus a novel but rational straight‐line path. Noncrawlers (n = 17) did not discriminate. Looking preference was independent of age and speed of habituation. These findings support the claim that infants’ processing of agency emerges early and applies to all agents, but stress the role of experience in the development of action interpretation.     

Socioeconomic Strain,Family Ties,and Adolescent Health in a Rural Northeastern County

In adolescence, vital sources of support come from family relationships; however, research that considers the health‐related impact of ties to both parents and siblings is sparse, and the utility of such ties among at‐risk teens is not well understood. Here we use two waves of panel data from the population of 8th and 12th grade students in a geographically isolated, rural, northeastern U.S. county to assess whether socioeconomic status (SES) moderates the effects of parental and sibling attachments on three indicators of adolescent health: obesity, depression, and problem substance use. Our findings indicate that, net of stressful life events, prior health, and sociodemographic controls, increases in parental and sibling attachment correspond with reduced odds of obesity for low‐SES adolescents, reduced odds of depression for high‐SES adolescents, and reduced odds of problem substance use for low‐SES adolescents. Results suggest also that sibling and maternal ties are more influential than paternal ties, at least with regard to the outcomes considered. Overall, the findings highlight the value of strong family ties for the physical, psychological, and behavioral health of socioeconomically strained rural teens, and reveal the explanatory potential of both sibling and parental ties for adolescent health.     

Efficiency in Games With Markovian Private Information

We study repeated Bayesian games with communication and observable actions in which the players' privately known payoffs evolve according to an irreducible Markov chain whose transitions are independent across players. Our main result implies that, generically, any Pareto‐efficient payoff vector above a stationary minmax value can be approximated arbitrarily closely in a perfect Bayesian equilibrium as the discount factor goes to 1. As an intermediate step, we construct an approximately efficient dynamic mechanism for long finite horizons without assuming transferable utility.     

A general algorithm for computing simultaneous prediction intervals for the (log)-location-scale family of distributions

Making predictions of future realized values of random variables based on currently available data is a frequent task in statistical applications. In some applications, the interest is to obtain a two-sided simultaneous prediction interval (SPI) to contain at least k out of m future observations with a certain confidence level based on n previous observations from the same distribution. A closely related problem is to obtain a one-sided upper (or lower) simultaneous prediction bound (SPB) to exceed (or be exceeded) by at least k out of m future observations. In this paper, we provide a general approach for computing SPIs and SPBs based on data from a particular member of the (log)-location-scale family of distributions with complete or right censored data. The proposed simulation-based procedure can provide exact coverage probability for complete and Type II censored data. For Type I censored data, our simulation results show that our procedure provides satisfactory results in small samples. We use three applications to illustrate the proposed simultaneous prediction intervals and bounds.     

Conceptual design pattern for ergonomic workplaces

In this paper, we analyzed two laboratories of liquid chromatography (LC), separation technique of mixtures and identification of its components, in order to identify projectual gaps relating to the environment and the working station. The methodology used was the ergonomic analysis with interactional and participatory techniques applied during the activity performance. This work incorporated and adapted the concept developed by Alexander (1979)--pattern languages--passing from architectural projects to workstations project and physical arrangement of the work environment. The adaptation of the concept resulted in a list of recommendations, requirements and concepts that have brought design solutions for the problematic aspects observed in the ergonomic analysis. The employed methodology, strongly supported in ergonomics principles, and in interactional and participatory techniques, contributed to achieve our gold that is what we now call Conceptual Standards. The patterns go beyond of a usual model of book a of ergonomics specification, once incorporating the viewpoint of the end user, it is also a set of best project practices and of project management in conception ergonomics.     

Can Migration Foster Development in Mexico? The Case of Poverty and Inequality

The impact of migration on development can be analysed from a number of perspectives. This article focuses on poverty and inequality. It assesses the relative contribution of migrants to Mexico′s economy through remittances, compared to other Latin American countries; analyses the distributional impact of remittances (with an emphasis on the poor), and compares this impact to the counterfactual impact of migrants’ stay‐at‐home income. It explains the processes leading to scant economic success rates among poor international migrants. Finally, it describes the nature and impact of current Mexican migrant‐oriented policies, and recommends a shift in focus, to lessen emigration, increase the income of migrants, promote returns, and bolster the economic impact of returning migrants.     

The use of finite mixture models to estimate the distribution of the health utilities index in the presence of a ceiling effect

Finite mixture models are flexible parametric models that allow one to describe complex probability distributions as a mixture of a small number of simple probability distributions. Measures of health status are often used to reflect a person's overall health. Such measures may be subject to a ceiling effect, in that the measure is unable to discern gradations in health status above the ceiling. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the use of finite mixture models to describe the probability distribution of the Health Utilities Index, under the assumption that the HUI is subject to a ceiling effect. Mixture models with two through six components are fit to the HUI. Bayes factors were used to compare the evidence that the Canadian population of non-institutionalized residents is composed of four distinct subpopulations, and that a mixture of six Normal components is required to describe these four subpopulations.     

发展的历史, 现代性的困境———以批判性的发展研究视角审视全球化

文章旨在通过回顾批判性发展研究以及有关现代性的争论中历史的和现今的主要趋势,借以构想对中国农村发展研究有所启迪的相关问题。同时,本文简要地呈现了一个哥伦比亚地区雨林保护的案例研究。文章第一部分从话语与社会实践的维度对发展进行了历史回顾,指出发展不仅是近代以来（二战以后）的产物,且具有更深远的历史渊源（植根于欧洲现代性）,并以探讨后发展、另类现代性、非现代性等概念作为小结。文章第二部分关于哥伦比亚的案例研究,介绍了该地区某社会运动如何构建自身的政治生态,并一度对该地区的发展方向产生重大影响。文章第三部分提出了一个大纲式框架,旨在从生态、文化和经济差异的角度思辨发展。作为结论,本文提出了一些可能与中国农村发展具有相关性的问题。