Some results on optimality in models with heteroscedastic errors from partial optimum designs

This paper studies optimum designs for linear models when the errors are heteroscedastic. Sufficient conditions are given in order to obtainD-, A- andE-optimum designs for a complete regression model from partial optimum designs for some sub-parameters. A result about optimality for a complete model from the optimality for the submodels is included. Supported by Junta de Andalucía, research group FQM244.     

Determinants of Organizational Flexibility: A Study in an Emerging Economy

This paper examines the processes of organizational adaptation and competitiveness of firms in an emerging economy. The study is set in the Argentinian context of the 1990s when a combination of economic and political change triggered a massive change in the competitive context of indigenous firms. Two highly flexible firms and two less‐flexible firms are studied from the pharmaceutical and edible oil industries and longitudinal data are supplied to explore the determinants of organizational flexibility in those organizations.     

Internalized Other Interviewing in Relational Therapy: Three Discursive Approaches to Understanding its Use and Outcomes

For over 20 years, family therapist Karl Tomm has been engaging families and couples with a therapeutic intervention he calls Internalized Other Interviewing (IOI). The IOI (cf. Emmerson‐Whyte, 2010; Hurley, 2006) entails interviewing clients, from the personal experiences of partners and family members as an internalized other. The IOI is based on the idea that through dialogues over time, one can internalize a sense of one's conversational partner responsiveness in reliably anticipated ways. Anyone who has thought in a conversation with a family member or partner, “Oh there s/he goes again,” or anticipates next words before they leave the other's mouth, has a sense of what we are calling an internalized other. For Tomm, the internalized anticipations partners and family members may have offers entry points into new dialogues with therapeutic potential—particularly, when their actual dialogues get stuck in dispreferred patterns.     

The State of Research in Latino Academic Attainment

In this essay, I present an interdisciplinary examination of the state of research in Latino education, addressing not only the cultural forces influencing Latinos’ educational attainment, but also the structural conditions faced by them—as a racialized minority group—throughout their schooling and that have a cumulative effect on their academic attainment. Overall, I suggest that by engaging in a critical review of the literature on Latinos’ educational attainment, the reader will acknowledge that the racially driven hierarchical structural arrangements are highly responsible for the patterns observed.     

Trend smoothness achieved by penalized least squares with the smoothing parameter chosen by optimality criteria

This work presents a study about the smoothness attained by the methods more frequently used to choose the smoothing parameter in the context of splines: Cross Validation, Generalized Cross Validation, and corrected Akaike and Bayesian Information Criteria, implemented with Penalized Least Squares. It is concluded that the amount of smoothness strongly depends on the length of the series and on the type of underlying trend, while the presence of seasonality even though statistically significant is less relevant. The intrinsic variability of the series is not statistically significant and its effect is taken into account only through the smoothing parameter.     

Long-term care in Spain: Difficulties in professionalizing services

The aim of this article is to analyze the difficulties in professionalizing the long-term care system in Spain. Since 2006, the new Spanish law has recognized care as a subjective right, and regulations are being designed to create a framework for its professionalization. Nowadays, family remains the most important group of providers who care for their elders, and women remain the main informal caregivers. Why do families resist using public long-term care services and professional carers included in the new law? The hypothesis highlights sociocultural factors as an obstacle to professionalization of long-term care services in addition to political and economic factors. The results show qualitative data about expectations, preferences, and discourses that women caregivers have in relation to their responsibility. The empirical material includes 25 interviews with different profiles of caregivers and six focus groups with family caregivers. The article suggests that the Spanish ideal of care is a problem for the professionalization of services because the family remains as the main provider of care—without specific skills, knowledge, and abilities.     

Sport and disability: Pistorius does not fit with the categories

Oscar Pistorius presents a major issue to sports organisations, as exposed in the media. First and foremost, media wrongly perceive him as the first disabled athlete to participate in the Olympic Games. Second, they openly question the legitimacy of his participation mainly based on the inequity introduced by his prosthetic legs. Content analysis, in English and French, of written press, International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) texts, from 2004 to 2012, confirms that Pistorius presents a new puzzle to sports organizations. This is partly because they are not able to determine whether his performances are a result of his body strength or if they are biased by his artificial limbs. Furthermore, when he is competing against able-bodied athletes, sports organizsations put him in a ‘monstrous’ position. Similarly, while categorising him as an ‘athlete’ they do not grant him the characteristic feature of this category: certified comparability of performances to ultimately establish ranks.