An “amorphous mist”? The problem of measurement in the study of culture

Sociological studies of culture have made significant progress on conceptual clarification of the concept, while remaining comparatively quiescent on questions of measurement. This study empirically examines internal conflicts (or “infighting”), a ubiquitous phenomenon in political organizing, to propose a “resinous culture framework” that holds promise for redirection. The data comprise 674 newspaper articles and more than 100 archival documents that compare internal dissent across two previously unstudied lesbian and gay Marches on Washington. Analyses reveal that activists use infighting as a vehicle to engage in otherwise abstract definitional debates that provide concrete answers to questions such as who are we and what do we want. The mechanism that enables infighting to concretize these cultural concerns is its coupling with fairly mundane and routine organizational tasks. This mechanism affords one way to release the culture concept, understood here as collective self-definitions, from being “an amorphous, indescribable mist which swirls around society members,” as it was once provocatively described.     

Clinical trials of drugs used off-label in neonates: ethical issues and alternative study designs

The use of drugs for indications unapproved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), often called "off label use, "is widespread in children, including neonates. The widespread off-label use of drugs in neonates presents ethical and safety challenges. Since the passage of the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act (BPCA) in 2002, both the FDA and National Institutes of Health (NIH) have taken initiatives to facilitate and encourage research to achieve the necessary labeling for drugs routinely used in infants and children. Federal regulations provide broad rules and guidance for the protection of human subjects in research. However, there are ethical issues that a physician may face when designing clinical trials of drugs in neonates that are routinely used off-label and widely believed to be beneficial. We attempt to describe these ethical challenges and provide recommendations, including alternative study designs, to resolve them in an ethical framework that takes into account the Belmont Report, the statement of the World Medical Association (WMA), and federal regulations.     

Legal Representations of Muslim Slaves by American Courts and Legislative Bodies: 1650–1861

This paper is the first specific exploration of Muslim slaves in front of American courts and legal mechanisms more broadly from the seventeenth century through the nineteenth century. As hundreds of thousands of slaves who came to America had Muslim backgrounds, many of those Muslim slaves found themselves in front of legal regimes and American courts. However, the Muslim identities of these slaves, despite the importance that their religious beliefs might have had for them, were rarely discussed in the case law or not mentioned at all. Drawing from Patterson’s notion of the “socially dead” slave, this paper draws on numerous examples from cases like Amistad to cases dealing with wills and estates to note that the ties to Islam in these cases were obfuscated and minimized. The social death of Muslim slaves in the way that the court documented their experiences silences the voices of American Muslim slaves who reacted in unique ways to their condition of slavery.     

Tests for the Validity of the Assumption that the Underlying Distribution of Life is Pareto

This article considers the problem of testing the validity of the assumption that the underlying distribution of life is Pareto. For complete and censored samples, the relationship between the Pareto and the exponential distributions could be of vital importance to test for the validity of this assumption. For grouped uncensored data the classical Pearson χ² test based on the multinomial model can be used. Attention is confined in this article to handle grouped data with withdrawals within intervals. Graphical as well as analytical procedures will be presented. Maximum likelihood estimators for the parameters of the Pareto distribution based on grouped data will be derived.     

Tolerance Limits Based on the Multivariate MaxMin Chart

In a previous paper, we have showed how to obtain sequences of number proved random. With this aim, we used sequences of noises y_n such that the conditional probabilities have Lipschitz coefficients not too large. We transformed them using Fibonacci congruences. Then, we obtained sequences x_n which admit the IID model for correct model. This method consisted to value the work of Marsaglia in order to build his CD-ROM. But we did not use Rap Music (as Marsaglia), but texts files. This method also uses an extractor and at the same time the notion of correct models. In this paper, we apply this method to numbers provided by machines or chips. Unfortunately, it is less sure than they have Lipschtiz coefficient not too large. But we can solve this problem: it suffices to use the Central Limit Theorem. We do it modulo 1. In this case, we use a new limit theorem, the XOR Limit theorem : asymptotic distribution of sum of random vectors modulo 1 are asymptotically independent. Then Lipschtiz coefficient of associated sequences are not too large and we can obtain IID sequences by using Fibonacci congruences.     

Revisiting the urban housing crisis in Zimbabwe: Some forgotten dimensions?

The housing problem in Zimbabwe has become synonymous with housing shortages. The mismatch between housing supply and demand has for long been accepted as the housing problem. Virtually all policies and strategies aimed at alleviating the housing problem reflect this pre-occupation with numbers. The quantitative dimension has been taken so seriously by policy makers that policy and practical responses are aimed almost exclusively towards new construction. This paper re-examines the wider housing crisis in urban Zimbabwe. It looks at problems of obsolescence, overcrowding and other qualitative aspects. It concludes by cautioning that although some of these problems have to do with numbers, construction alone is not the complete solution.     

Women and Jihad: Combating Violent Extremism and Developing New Approaches to Conflict Resolution in the Greater Middle East

The subject of female participation in combative jihad has proved to be contentious in Islam. Whilst some extremist Islamist groups, such as the so-called Islamic State (IS), have advocated women’s direct engagement in fighting in defense of Islam, others, for example Al Qaeda, have endorsed only a supporting role for women, primarily for the purpose of producing the next generation of jihadis. Whatever the validity of this debate, most radical jihadi groups have deployed women for combative operations, including suicide bombings. This has been more in the Middle East, where a resolution of several conflicts requires a comprehensive political strategy as against a predominantly military approach. This article has three objectives. The first is to provide some clarification about combative jihad in conceptual terms. The second is to focus on IS and its underlying appeal to a range of foreign Muslim male and female enthusiasts and several other like-minded entities who have gone to Iraq and to Syria to serve IS for convictive or deceptive reasons. The third is to see what distinguishes IS from other extremist groups which are operational in various parts of the Muslim domain, and to harness some ideas about how to deal with violent Muslim extremism in the Greater Middle East.