Using expletive insertion to pursue and sanction in interaction

This article uses conversation analysis to examine constructions like who the fuck is that—sequence‐initiating actions into which an expletive like the fuck has been inserted. We describe how this turn‐constructional practice fits into and constitutes a recurrent sequence of escalating actions. In this sequence, it is used to pursue an adequate response after an inadequate one was given, and sanction the recipient for that inadequate response. Our analysis contributes to sociolinguistic studies of swearing by offering an account of swearing as a resource for social action.     

Subcultural Identity Work in Social Movements: Barriers to Collective Identity Changes and Overcoming Them

Over time, social movements must contend with a vast array of forces that can lead to changes in the movement's collective identity. As such changes may impact the alignment of movements and their membership, this study explores how changes are perceived by members and how they are interactively addressed. Drawing on ethnographic data gathered from two Native American social movement organizations, this study specifically asks why some changes suggested by movement members might be pursued and others are not. While movement members felt that there were a number of barriers to changes in their movements, the study revealed that it was the resonance of collective memories – presented during interactions as narrative commemorations – that encouraged the pursuit of suggested changes or the maintenance of a status quo.     

Residential exposure to air toxics is linked to lower grade point averages among school children in El Paso,Texas, USA

Children in low-income neighborhoods tend to be disproportionately exposed to environmental toxicants. This is cause for concern because exposure to environmental toxicants negatively affects health, which can impair academic success. To date, it is unknown if associations between air toxics and academic performance found in previous school-level studies persist when studying individual children. In pairing the National Air Toxics Assessment risk estimates for respiratory and diesel particulate matter risk disaggregated by source, with individual-level data collected through a mail survey, this paper examines the effects of exposure to residential environmental toxics on academic performance for individual children for the first time and adjusts for school-level effects using generalized estimating equations. We find that higher levels of residential air toxics, especially those from non-road mobile sources, are statistically significantly associated with lower grade point averages among fourth- and fifth-grade school children in El Paso (Texas, USA).     

Bayesian modeling of temporal properties of infectious disease in a college student population

A Bayesian statistical model is developed for analysis of the time-evolving properties of infectious disease, with a particular focus on viruses. The model employs a latent semi-Markovian state process, and the state-transition statistics are driven by three terms: (i) a general time-evolving trend of the overall population, (ii) a semi-periodic term that accounts for effects caused by the days of the week, and (iii) a regression term that relates the probability of infection to covariates (here, specifically, to the Google Flu Trends data). Computations are performed using Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling. Results are presented using a novel data set: daily self-reported symptom scores from hundreds of Duke University undergraduate students, collected over three academic years. The illnesses associated with these students are (imperfectly) labeled using real-time (RT) polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for several viruses, and gene-expression data were also analyzed. The statistical analysis is performed on the daily, self-reported symptom scores, and the RT PCR and gene-expression data are employed for analysis and interpretation of the model results.     

Experimental design for response surface gradient estimation

In this paper, a new experimental design and gradient estimation procedure is presented for Phase I response surface optimization. The design is motivated by basic principles of differential calculus, which imply that if a point in Rⁿ has been reached by exactly minimizing a function along a given direction, then the gradient of the function at that point must be orthogonal to the search direction followed. While exact line search is not required for the new design to be effective, this principle implies that the dimension of the gradient estimation procedure may often be reduced from n to n-1 variables, and the experimenter is able to concentrate experimental effort within the most productive region around the center of the design. The new design and gradient estimation procedures are presented, and bias and variance properties are derived. The effectiveness of the new design is shown to depend on the experimenter's ability to terminate line search within a near-stationary region of the line search function A simple heuristic is presented which indicates whether the new design should be used at a given experimental region.     

Lack of Confidence in the Federal Government and the Ownership of Firearms

Objective . Scholars have debated the importance of declining confidence in social institutions to the American political system. The objective of this research was to offer and test the hypothesis that individuals with little faith in the three branches of the federal government will be more likely to own firearms than individuals with higher levels of confidence. Methods . The data were drawn from the General Social Survey for the years 1982-1996 and analyzed with a multivariate logistic regression equation that controlled for many of the variables known to be associated with gun ownership. Results . The regression showed that even in the presence of many control measures, respondents who lacked confidence in the federal government were more likely to own firearms than their counterparts who had greater faith in the federal government. Conclusion . Although the hypothesis relating confidence in government to gun ownership was supported and has important policy implications, the data did not permit us to disentangle possible causal relationships. For that, further research will be necessary.     

Sequential analysis of 3m supersaturated factorial experiments

In this paper, designs that allow for the estimation of all main effects, and the detection and estimation of significant interactions in fewer runs than used in traditional approaches are examined. Specifically, a method for sequentially analyzing data from 3m fractional factorial experiments is presented. The procedure is illustrated through two examples.     

The influence of technological opportunity on union membership in U.S. manufacturing industries

I examine influences of technological opportunity on a set of factors determining inter-industry variation in union membership density. A data set of 239 U.S. manufacturing industries is divided into subsets of “technologically progressive “ and “technologically unprogressive “ industries, and my unionization model is estimated for each subset. The study confirms recent findings indicating that innovation activity and industry concentration have significant negative effects on union membership density. However, these results are obtained only for the subset of “technologically progressive industries and not for the “technologically unprogressive “ industries. These findings suggest that estimation bias is imparted to interindustry studies of the extent of union membership through the influence of technological opportunity on the interrelationships between innovation output, industry concentration, and union membership density. I am grateful for the support of the Center for Technology Management Research at Stevens.