Longitudinal Patterns of Daily Affect and Global Mood During Adolescence

This study examined grade and sex patterns in real‐time measures of daily mood using Ecological Momentary Assessments via palmtop computers among 8th (N=296) and 10th graders (N=266) for 1 year using a three‐wave longitudinal design. Participants responded to five to seven random prompts/day for 7 consecutive days; when prompted, participants rated eight mood adjectives assessing positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). Global depressed mood was also assessed via self‐report questionnaire at every wave. Mixed‐effects regression analyses indicated that PA modestly but significantly declined across Grade 8 to 11, but NA was relatively stable over time. Sex by time interactions showed that boys experienced greater declines in daily mood over time than did girls. In contrast, global depressed mood did not change over time, and girls reported higher depressed mood than boys. Findings suggest that normative mood declines in adolescence may be driven by deteriorations in PA, rather than increases in NA.     

A COMPARISON OF MIXED MODEL SPLINES FOR CURVE FITTING

Three types of polynomial mixed model splines have been proposed: smoothing splines, P‐splines and penalized splines using a truncated power function basis. The close connections between these models are demonstrated, showing that the default cubic form of the splines differs only in the penalty used. A general definition of the mixed model spline is given that includes general constraints and can be used to produce natural or periodic splines. The impact of different penalties is demonstrated by evaluation across a set of functions with specific features, and shows that the best penalty in terms of mean squared error of prediction depends on both the form of the underlying function and the signal:noise ratio.     

Auditing the strategic role of operations

The literature relating to auditing the strategic role and contribution of operations has been dominated by methodologies attuned to the predominance of the environmental and competitive forces, and entry deterrence approaches to achieving and sustaining competitive advantage, broadly termed the outside‐in perspective. However, tools suited to the resource‐based and associated dynamic capability view to strategy formulation, deemed the inside‐out perspective, are sparse. This paper makes a contribution to furthering understanding of the auditing of the strategic role and contribution of operations by conducting a review and critique of established ideas, practices and approaches from both strategy formulation perspectives. It argues that the reported methodologies reflect the traditional outside‐in perspective to strategy formulation. It highlights the limitations of the available tools for an inside‐out view and questions the suitability of the existing methods to the more recent inside‐out emphasis, also a factor vital in circumstances where a firm typically is pursuing a combination or blend of the outside‐in and inside‐out approaches to strategy formulation. Finally, it presents the outline of an additional audit tool designed to address these limitations and describes next steps in future research.     

A procedure for the clustering of cell wall mutants in the model plant Arabidopsis based on Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy

FT-IR microspectroscopy can be used to study the global composition and architecture of plant cell walls and it allows cell wall mutants to be identified. Our aim is to define a distance between cell wall mutants in the model species Arabidopsis based on FT-IR spectra. Since the number of data points that constitute a spectrum exceeds the number of samples analysed, it is essential to reduce first the dimension of the dataset. We present a comparison of several compression methods, including linear discriminant analysis using a non-canonical covariance matrix. The calculated distances were used to define clusters of mutants that appeared to be biologically meaningful.     

Women and War: Militarism, Bodies, and the Practice of Gender

Women around the world, in various geographic spaces, social and cultural contexts, as partners, wives, sisters, daughters, mothers, mourners, and victims experience war. Women's experience of war and their participation in it, either as actors or resistors, victims or perpetrators ( Moser and Clark 2001 ), cheerleaders or critics, are always influenced by the construction of gender operating in and around their lives. While constructions of masculinity and femininity are always circulating in and around militarism and war, women's bodies are sometimes primary considerations for military and state leaders; this creates a visibility/invisibility/hyper-visibility problem for women in wartime. In this essay, women's participation in war as soldiers, refugees, prisoners, jailers, activists, and suicide bombers and the accompanying shift in the practice of femininity and masculinity is explored.     

A compound Poisson model for word occurrences in DNA sequences

Summary. We present a compound Poisson model describing the occurrence process of a set of words in a random sequence of letters. The model takes into account the frequency of the words and their overlapping structure. The model is compared with a Markov chain model in terms of fit and parsimony. Special attention is given to the detection of poor or rich regions. Several applications of the model are presented and a combination of the Markov and compound Poisson models is proposed.     

Attribute networking: A technique for modeling social perceptions1

An original, network‐based technique is presented for modeling community members’ conceptions of local social space. Social categories derived from the model are used to investigate the social meaning of linguistic variation. The technique is first explained and then demonstrated using linguistic and ethnographic data from Worthington, Ohio, a Columbus suburb. Two linguistic variables are analyzed: (1)/l/ vocalization; and (2) the phonetic realization of the before vowel‐initial words. The results are discussed in the context of Columbus‐area urban sprawl and its perceived threat to Worthington's distinctiveness.