Pairwise likelihood estimation for multivariate mixed Poisson models generated by Gamma intensities

Estimating the parameters of multivariate mixed Poisson models is an important problem in image processing applications, especially for active imaging or astronomy. The classical maximum likelihood approach cannot be used for these models since the corresponding masses cannot be expressed in a simple closed form. This paper studies a maximum pairwise likelihood approach to estimate the parameters of multivariate mixed Poisson models when the mixing distribution is a multivariate Gamma distribution. The consistency and asymptotic normality of this estimator are derived. Simulations conducted on synthetic data illustrate these results and show that the proposed estimator outperforms classical estimators based on the method of moments. An application to change detection in low-flux images is also investigated.     

Loneliness,immigration background and self-identified ethnicity: a nationally representative study of adolescents in Denmark

Migration is an increasing worldwide phenomenon that creates multicultural societies with a growing number of adolescents who have experienced a process of migration or who have an ethnic background other than that of the majority. Migration may lead to loss of social relations and create challenges related to acculturation in the new country. These experiences may induce feelings of loneliness. Research on ethnic and migrant disparities in loneliness among adolescents is limited and inconsistent. The purpose of this study was to examine how adolescents’ immigration background and self-identified ethnicity are associated, independently and combined, with loneliness. We used data from the Danish 2010 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey which included a representative sample of 3083 13- and 15-year-olds. The results suggest that immigrants but not descendants of immigrants have an increased risk of loneliness compared to adolescents with a Danish origin. The results also suggest that adolescents’ self-identified ethnicity plays an essential role but differently for immigrants and descendants: identifying with the Danish majority was protective against loneliness among immigrants, whereas identifying with an ethnic minority group was protective against loneliness among descendants.     

Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark: Bringing Capitalism back into the ‘New’ History of Capitalism

A growing number of historians are self‐identifying as historians of capitalism, a new subfield within the discipline, and have produced research on interesting new questions that transcend the subfields of economic, business, social, cultural, and political history. Ironically, what is missing from the “new” history of capitalism is any serious engagement with the new subfield's central character—capitalism, which instead is simply assumed despite being a contested concept. The implications are not trivial and include making unfalsifiable claims, unwittingly implying that capitalism is totalizing, and reproducing rather than exposing ahistorical understandings of the concept.     

Sexual Distress Mediates the Associations Between Sexual Contingent Self-Worth and Well-Being in Women With Genitopelvic Pain: A Dyadic Daily Experience Study

Provoked vestibulodynia (PVD), a common cause of women’s genitopelvic pain, is associated with poorer psychological and sexual well-being in affected couples. Greater sexual contingent self-worth (CSW)—defined as self-esteem that is dependent on the perceived success or failure of a sexual relationship—has been linked to poorer well-being in a cross-sectional study of couples coping with PVD. This study aimed to examine whether daily sexual distress mediated the associations between greater sexual CSW and lower sexual satisfaction and greater anxiety, depressed mood, and women’s pain in affected couples. Women (N = 125) diagnosed with PVD and their partners completed the Sexual CSW Scale and then online daily surveys for eight weeks measuring sexual distress, sexual satisfaction, anxiety, depressed mood, and women’s pain during intercourse. Multilevel analyses were based on the actor–partner interdependence model (APIM). For women who had higher sexual CSW (compared to lower sexual CSW), on sexual activity days when their sexual distress was higher, they reported lower sexual satisfaction and greater anxiety, depressed mood, and pain (compared to their average level across all sexual activity days). Findings suggest that daily sexual distress may be one pathway between greater sexual CSW and poorer day-to-day well-being in women with PVD.     

Rhetoric and Etiological Beliefs About Sexuality: Reader Responses to Cynthia Nixon’s New York Times Interview

In 2012, the U.S. actress Cynthia Nixon was quoted in the New York Times Magazine as having stated that “for me, it [being gay] is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.” The interview attracted international media attention and public criticism by lesbian and gay activists. This article suggests a rhetorical approach to understanding etiological beliefs and provides a discursive analysis of 198 online comments by readers of Pink News, a gay news Web site that reported on Nixon’s controversial interview. This article explores common arguments used in readers’ comments about Nixon and examines the rhetorical construction of sexuality. The analysis examines three themes within the data. First, biological essentialism was treated by many readers as common knowledge; second, readers suggested that only bisexuals have “choice”; and, third, it was suggested by both Nixon’s critics and her supporters that counterarguments colluded with homophobia. The article suggests that there is an ideological dilemma whereby both “born-this-way” and “choice” arguments can be understood as colluding with anti-gay prejudice.     

Personalized information and willingness to pay for non-financial risk prevention: An experiment

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty - When receiving personalized rather than population-based information, agents improve their knowledge about their probability of experiencing adverse events (e.g....     

Vlogging on YouTube: the online,political engagement of young Canadians advocating for social change

Youth are often perceived as passive and disengaged from civic and political life. However, many researchers have countered such discourses of youth passivity and isolation, highlighting young people's active and interactive political engagement through less traditional outlets, especially online. In this article, we are influenced by a poststructural orientation to agency to identify themes across the social change-oriented YouTube channels of eighteen young Canadians. The themes we have identified counter a dominant focus on youth civic disengagement, political apathy, and isolation, instead highlighting the diverse political issues young Canadian vloggers address, the strategies they use, their multiple subjectivities, the interaction and support of their online community, and the relevance of inequality. We show how YouTube has become an important venue for the production and dissemination of youth perspectives.     

Nonparametric prediction of spatial multivariate data

This paper investigates a nonparametric spatial predictor of a stationary multidimensional spatial process observed over a rectangular domain. The proposed predictor depends on two kernels in order to control both the distance between observations and that between spatial locations. The uniform almost complete consistency and the asymptotic normality of the kernel predictor are obtained when the sample considered is an alpha-mixing sequence. Numerical studies were carried out in order to illustrate the behaviour of our methodology both for simulated data and for an environmental data set.