Comparing public attitudes toward providing for the livelihood of the elderly in two aging societies: Germany and Japan

Using an ordered logit model on representative survey data, we study attitudes about who should provide for the livelihood of the elderly in two aging societies—Germany and Japan. We find that in both countries, those with higher income are more inclined toward the private option, whereas age has the opposite effect. Part-time work status negatively (positively) affects the inclination toward a government-based pension system in Japan (Germany). Other significant influences are the pensioner status of the respondents in Japan and specific left-wing party support in the case of Germans.     

Interval estimation in discriminant analysis for large dimension

This paper is concerned with the interval estimation for the log odds of the posterior probability that the observation vector belongs to one of two homoscedastic multivariate normal distributions (Π₁ and Π₂). We give the limiting distribution of the unbiased estimator for the log odds as the sample sizes and the dimension jointly tend to infinity, and approximate the confidence interval based on the asymptotic distribution. Small-scale simulations are performed to check the precision of the approximation.     

Geographical variation of elytral spot patterns in the phytophagous ladybird,Epilachna vigintioctopunctata (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) in the Province of Sumatera Barat, Indonesia

Summary Geographical variation in the elytral spot patterns of a phytophagous ladybird,Epilachna vigintioctopunctata, was studied in the Province of Sumatera Barat, Indonesia. Populations ofE. vigintioctopunctata were divided into four major groups (I–IV) by the incidence of spot pattern variations. Group I, occurring in the coastal plains and inland lowlands, and Group IV, confined to the highlands, were the extremes of the spot pattern variations, the latter had many more non-persistent spots and confluences with larger body size and advanced melanism than the former. These two groups were connected with each other via the intermediate groups. A positive relationship was detected between the elevations of sample sites and the average number of non-persistent spots per elytron. Consequently, present results favor the view that the two previously recognized forms ofE. vigintioctopunctata (formae A and B inKatakura et al., 1988) represent a complicated intraspecific variation rather than two distinct sibling species. Elytral spot pattern variations were not different between the sexes or between the beetles collected from different kinds of host plants. Contribution No. 30 of Sumatra Nature Study (Entomology). Supported in part by grants from Japan Society for the Promotion Science for JSPS-DGHE Scientific Cooperation (1980, 1982) and for the RONPAKU program (toI. Abbas, 1984) and Grants-in-Aid for Overseas Scientific survey from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan (Nos. 56041027 and 58041030).     

藏语方言学研究与语言地图：如何看待“康方言”

本文介绍藏语方言学研究中的地理语言学的研究方法,并利用此方法对所谓的藏语“康方言”进行分析,探讨其具体语言现象,并提出在以往藏语研究中常见的“康方言”并不成立,应将其理解为“语言复合体”之见解.由于方言学研究涉及的领域除了语言本身之外,还需要考虑地理关系及历史关系,其研究不同于普通的方言研究.本文主要讨论有关“康方言”的三个问题,通过实际问题的讨论了解到,方言学研究中绘制语言地图是一种不可回避的过程,通过地图能了解到各个方言群的分布地域,并加上地理、历史等人文信息探讨方言的形成,才能得到可信的方言分类.     

Supersaturated design including an orthogonal base

Recently, many supersaturated designs have been proposed. A supersaturated design is a fractional factorial design in which the number of factors is greater than the number of experimental runs. The main thrust of the previous studies has been to generate more columns while avoiding large values of squared inner products among all design columns. These designs would be appropriate if the probability for each factor being active is uniformly distributed. When factors can be partitioned into two groups, namely, with high and low probabilities of each factor being active, it is desirable to maintain orthogonality among columns to be assigned to the factors in the high-probability group. We discuss a supersaturated design including an orthogonal base which is suitable for this common situation. Mathematical results on the existence of the supersaturated designs are shown, and the construction of supersaturated designs is presented. We next discuss some properties of the proposed supersaturated designs based on the squared inner products.     

加入WTO后的中国经济及日本的对策

虽然东亚产业分布正从"一极集中"到"多极分散",中国东部沿海也在迅速崛起,但笔者依然反对"中国威胁论",认为中国实行的是"非完全、彻底的"市场化,且沿海地区的迅速发展不能代替说明整个中国的发展。与此同时,加入WTO之后会对中国经济和世界经济产生深远的影响,并将成为日本及其国民真正迈向国际化的契机。日本要想有效地利用好中国的优势,一方面应与中国地方政府合作,支持本地中小企业的对外发展,另一方面必须大力推进内部国际化。     

康定市吉居藏语所属问题

本文针对分布在四川甘孜州康定市吉居乡的藏族语言进行分析。吉居话的语言所属在以往研究里没有共识,有属于扎巴语的意见和属于康巴藏语的意见。通过与藏文的对比,可见该语言为一个属于康巴藏语崩波岗方言群的土话,并非木雅语或扎巴语。基于与吉居话周边土话的比较,我们提出吉居话属于崩波岗方言群雅砻江组的假设性结论。本文的分析方法亦能作为识别康巴藏语中方言所属的参考。     

Some Theoretical and Simulation Results on the Frequency Domain Causality Test

Breitung and Candelon (2006 Breitung , J. , Candelon , B. ( 2006 ). Testing for short- and long-run causality: A frequency-domain approach . Journal of Econometrics 132 : 363 – 378 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in Journal of Econometrics proposed a simple statistical testing procedure for the noncausality hypothesis at a given frequency. In their paper, however, they reported some theoretical results indicating that their test severely suffers from quite low power when the noncausality hypothesis is tested at a frequency close to 0 or pi. This paper examines whether or not these results indicate their procedure is useless at such frequencies.     

Teaching Note—Teaching Intersectionality: Transforming Cultural Competence Content in Social Work Education

Intersectionality has been gaining momentum among social workers as a framework to allow a fuller understanding of the complexity of diverse social identities and the impact of social structures on power, privilege, and oppression. However, the application of intersectionality to teaching in social work education has been relatively absent in the literature. This article describes a 3-hour graduate-level classroom exercise designed to increase knowledge and proficiency of intersectionality. Critical self-reflections of the participants’ experiences are provided to illustrate the evolving growth and awareness that can result from the educational process using this framework. Examples and suggestions for reading assignments and classroom activities are offered. Implications for social work education and future directions are discussed.