Safe Spaces,Nurturing Places

This article discusses the limited yet important literature on the contributions of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to students and the profession of social work. The vital role of HBCUs in social work education and their mission to advocate for social and economic justice for disenfranchised populations is also discussed. A case example is then provided to illustrate the safe and nurturing context of HBCUs. Implications for the future are offered.     

A new procedure for testing equivalence in comparative bioavailability and other clinical trials

The problem of testing for equivalence in clinical trials is restated here in terms of the proper clinical hypotheses and a simple classical frequentist significance test based on the central t distribution is derived. This method is then shown to be more powerful than the methods based on usual (shortest) and symmetric confidence intervals.

We begin by considering a noncentral t statistic and then consider three approximations to it. A simulation is used to compare actual test sizes to the nominal values in crossover and completely randomized designs. A central t approximation was the best. The power calculation is then shown to be based on a central t distribution, and a method is developed for obtaining the sample size required to obtain a specified power. For the approximations, a simulation compares actual powers to those obtained for the t distribution and confirms that the theoretical results are close to the actual powers.     

Defining estimands using a mix of strategies to handle intercurrent events in clinical trials

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the gold standard for evaluation of the efficacy and safety of investigational interventions. If every patient in an RCT were to adhere to the randomized treatment, one could simply analyze the complete data to infer the treatment effect. However, intercurrent events (ICEs) including the use of concomitant medication for unsatisfactory efficacy, treatment discontinuation due to adverse events, or lack of efficacy may lead to interventions that deviate from the original treatment assignment. Therefore, defining the appropriate estimand (the appropriate parameter to be estimated) based on the primary objective of the study is critical prior to determining the statistical analysis method and analyzing the data. The International Council for Harmonisation (ICH) E9 (R1), adopted on November 20, 2019, provided five strategies to define the estimand: treatment policy, hypothetical, composite variable, while on treatment, and principal stratum. In this article, we propose an estimand using a mix of strategies in handling ICEs. This estimand is an average of the “null” treatment difference for those with ICEs potentially related to safety and the treatment difference for the other patients if they would complete the assigned treatments. Two examples from clinical trials evaluating antidiabetes treatments are provided to illustrate the estimation of this proposed estimand and to compare it with the estimates for estimands using hypothetical and treatment policy strategies in handling ICEs.     

Equilibrium in Continuous‐Time Financial Markets: Endogenously Dynamically Complete Markets

We prove existence of equilibrium in a continuous‐time securities market in which the securities are potentially dynamically complete: the number of securities is at least one more than the number of independent sources of uncertainty. We prove that dynamic completeness of the candidate equilibrium price process follows from mild exogenous assumptions on the economic primitives of the model. Our result is universal, rather than generic: dynamic completeness of the candidate equilibrium price process and existence of equilibrium follow from the way information is revealed in a Brownian filtration, and from a mild exogenous nondegeneracy condition on the terminal security dividends. The nondegeneracy condition, which requires that finding one point at which a determinant of a Jacobian matrix of dividends is nonzero, is very easy to check. We find that the equilibrium prices, consumptions, and trading strategies are well‐behaved functions of the stochastic process describing the evolution of information. We prove that equilibria of discrete approximations converge to equilibria of the continuous‐time economy.     

Revisiting the Impact of Prison Building on Job Growth: Education,Incarceration, and County‐Level Employment, 1976–2004*

Objectives. It is widely believed that prison construction offers significant economic benefits to local areas. We review the popular and scholarly literature and provide a quantitative analysis of claims. Methods. We analyze data on all existing and new prisons in the United States since 1960 to assess the impact of these prisons on the pace of public, private, and total employment growth in U.S. counties from 1976 to 2004. Results. Our results suggest that enhanced human capital is associated with employment gains and cast doubt on the assertion that prisons provide economic benefits to local areas. We provide evidence that prison construction impedes economic growth in rural counties, especially in counties that lag behind in educational attainment. Conclusions. Based on empirical results, this research casts further doubt on claims that prisons offer a viable economic development option for struggling rural communities. Possible explanations for the failure of prisons to help local areas are explored, including existing corrections officers moving to fill openings, adverse local impacts of prison labor, and paucity of local multipliers when a prison opens.     

Assessing PTSD and resilience for females who during childhood were exposed to domestic violence

This study examined 68 females, who as children were exposed to domestic violence, to explore childhood risk and protective factors and their relationship to adult levels of post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and resilience. Independent sample t‐tests indicated significant differences in PTSD levels between participants with and without police involvement during childhood. There were also significant differences in PTSD levels between participants who reported their mothers had mental‐health problems with those who did not. Additionally, participants whose mothers had full‐time steady employment had significantly higher resilience than those with mothers who did not work or worked inconsistently. Implications include advancing ecological theory and conceptual insights regarding childhood risk and protective factors and their association to adult psychological distress and hardiness for daughters exposed to their mothers' intimate partner violence.     

A CME course aimed at addressing disruptive physician behavior

Examine the results of a study of physicians with disruptive behavior who went through a special training program to help them better control their anger and outbursts.     

Partitioning a weighted partial order

The problem of partitioning a partially ordered set into a minimum number of chains is a well-known problem. In this paper we study a generalization of this problem, where we not only assume that the chains have bounded size, but also that a weight w _i is given for each element i in the partial order such that w _i ≤w _j if i ≺ j. The problem is then to partition the partial order into a minimum-weight set of chains of bounded size, where the weight of a chain equals the weight of the heaviest element in the chain. We prove that this problem is -hard, and we propose and analyze lower bounds for this problem. Based on these lower bounds, we exhibit a 2-approximation algorithm, and show that it is tight. We report computational results for a number of real-world and randomly generated problem instances.     

Can we Lend?: Communicating Interlibrary Loan Rights

At the 22nd Annual North Carolina Serials Conference, focused on “Collaboration, Community, and Connection,” Linda Blake and Hilary Fredette of West Virginia University presented, ““Can we Lend?”: Communicating Interlibrary Loan Rights,” reviewing their experiences collaborating across an academic library to achieve the best possible interlibrary loan e-journal access within the bounds of sometimes inscrutable licenses.     

EBSCO Publishing

Abstract

EBSCO Publishing is an innovative company that has its roots in paper publishing. It now produces hundreds of online resources in a state-of-the-art facility located along the banks of the Ipswich River in Massachusetts. Considerable work occurs behind the scenes in Ipswich (and around the world) to produce the online databases in EBSCOhost that appear to the user at the click of a mouse. Jennifer Carroll toured the headquarters in Ipswich to learn about the processes that make these valuable resources available.