Comparing film and videotape

This review compares videotape and film to help the researcher choose the one most suited to the specific research problem. The review treats initial costs, running costs, resolution, required light levels, sound, color, processing, and data viewing. Half-inch videotape is the most versatile equipment, especially indoors. A motor-driven 35-mm camera is necessary when extreme resolution is required.     

The Newhalf Net: Japan's “Intermediate Sex” On-Line

After English, Japanese is the most widely represented language on the Internet; yet, because Japanese is not widely spoken outside Japan, very little information exists in English about the ways in which the Internet is being used by queer communities in Japan. This essay looks at how one group within Japan's transgender community is deploying Internet technology. Japan's newhalf (nyuuhaafu) are transgendered men who consider themselves to be a third or intermediate sex, and they work in clearly-defined roles as hostesses, companions, and sex workers within Japan's extensive sex and entertainment industry. The contents of several newhalf Websites are analyzed, and their different applications are discussed. It is suggested that the Internet is being used to disseminate information about sexual services and identities that have a long history in Japan, rather than to encourage the development of more politicized sexual identities.     

Modeling the Effects of Genetic Factors on Late-Onset Diseases in Cohort Studies

Many late-onset diseases are caused by what appears to be a combination of a genetic predisposition to disease and environmental factors. The use of existing cohort studies provides an opportunity to infer genetic predisposition to disease on a representative sample of a study population, now that many such studies are gathering genetic information on the participants. One feature to using existing cohorts is that subjects may be censored due to death prior to genetic sampling, thereby adding a layer of complexity to the analysis. We develop a statistical framework to infer parameters of a latent variables model for disease onset. The latent variables model describes the role of genetic and modifiable risk factors on the onset ages of multiple diseases, and accounts for right-censoring of disease onset ages. The framework also allows for missing genetic information by inferring a subject's unknown genotype through appropriately incorporated covariate information. The model is applied to data gathered in the Framingham Heart Study for measuring the effect of different Apo-E genotypes on the occurrence of various cardiovascular disease events.     

Household environmental protection and the intergenerational transmission of human capital

The estimated discount rate of parents is used to test a choice-based intergenerational model of the contribution of environment to the cognitive skills of a child of a given endowment. A lower parental discount rate is shown to imply higher cognitive skills of the young child. In the context of the model, estimates also imply that environmental conditions and human capital formation are not separable. Lesser environmental quality raises the costs of human capital formation in children and lesser human capital reduces parents' demand for environmental quality. Environmental quality differences among families, just like genetic differences, may persist across generations.     

An Integrated Model of Infection Risk in a Health-Care Environment

Certain respiratory tract infections can be transmitted by hand-to-mucous-membrane contact, inhalation, and/or direct respiratory droplet spray. In a room occupied by a patient with such a transmissible infection, pathogens present on textile and nontextile surfaces, and pathogens present in the air, provide sources of exposure for an attending health-care worker (HCW); in addition, close contact with the patient when the latter coughs allows for droplet spray exposure. We present an integrated model of pertinent source-environment-receptor pathways, and represent physical elements in these pathways as "states" in a discrete-time Markov chain model. We estimate the rates of transfer at various steps in the pathways, and their relationship to the probability that a pathogen in one state has moved to another state by the end of a specified time interval. Given initial pathogen loads on textile and nontextile surfaces and in room air, we use the model to estimate the expected pathogen dose to a HCW's mucous membranes and respiratory tract. In turn, using a nonthreshold infectious dose model, we relate the expected dose to infection risk. The system is illustrated with a hypothetical but plausible scenario involving a viral pathogen emitted via coughing. We also use the model to show that a biocidal finish on textile surfaces has the potential to substantially reduce infection risk via the hand-to-mucous-membrane exposure pathway.     

Revolution: Refining Its Defining

Definitions of revolution have strongly influenced theorization about it. We argue here that revolution is a highly variable phenomenon. Rigid definitions of revolution do not allow for theorizing which explains this variability. Revolution can occur to various degrees along various dimensions. These include the political, international, economic, cultural, ethnic, and gender dimensions. Revolutions do not necessarily affect all these dimensions equally. Revolutions that have led to great change along some of these dimensions have also led to little or no change along others. We further argue that an understanding of revolution requires an understanding of what maintains social order.     

Covariance Models For Latent Structure In Longitudinal Data

We present several approaches to modeling latent structure in longitudinal studies when the covariance itself is the primary focus of the analysis. This is a departure from much of the work on longitudinal data analysis, in which attention is focused solely on the cross-sectional mean and the influence of covariates on the mean. Such analyses are particularly important in policy-related studies, in which the heterogeneity of the population is of interest. We describe several traditional approaches to this modeling and introduce a flexible, parsimonious class of covariance models appropriate to such analyses. This class, while rooted in the tradition of mixed effects and random coefficient models, merges several disparate modeling philosophies into what we view as a hybrid approach to longitudinal data modeling. We discuss the implications of this approach and its alternatives especially on model interpretation. We compare several implementations of this class to more commonly employed mixed effects models to describe the strengths and limitations of each. These alternatives are compared in an application to long-term trends in wage inequality for young workers. The findings provide additional guidance for the model formulation process in both statistical and substantive senses.     

Where is the market failure? A review of OSHA’s economic analysis for its proposed ergonomics standard

conclusion OSHA justifies its proposed regulation on the basis of “market failures in employ-ment and insurance markets. However, the Administration's own analysis demonstrates that about half of the benefits of the proposed regulation accrue directly to industry. It appears that the marginal social costs and marginal private benefits of achieving OSHA's desired level of workplace safety are approximately equal, implying no need for further government intervention. Our analysis demonstrates the following points: • When the total costs and benefits of OSHA's proposed standard are com-pared across all industries, no significant market failure is evident — the benefits to industry are approximately equal to the costs — indicating that government intervention is unnecessary. The authors thank Michael Liu and Alison Pan for their excellent research assistance on this project.