Using a “child's‐eye view” of social success to understand the importance of school readiness at the transition to formal schooling

Recent research into school readiness has highlighted the importance of not only children's cognitive and socio‐emotional skills, but also the degree to which they have family support in the home. The current study examines the association between social success upon school entry and teacher‐ratings of school readiness as assessed by the Brief Early Skills and Support Index (BESSI), controlling for language ability. Importantly, social success was assessed using a “child's‐eye view” with peer‐reported assessments of both social preference and reciprocated friendships. A total of 244 children (131 boys, M_age = 61 months, SD = 4.78 months) in their first year of formal schooling participated. Child school readiness was found to be important for social preference, with the association being more marked for boys versus girls. Family support was the only independent predictor of children's reciprocated friendships. The use of the BESSI, with its broad scope compared to other measures of school readiness, highlights the importance of focusing both on a child's cognitive and socio‐emotional skills at school entry and their family support when exploring the association of school readiness to children's social success at the transition to formal schooling.     

信贷歧视、青年创业群体与互保信贷模式

通过构建一个基于互保制度不存在情况下的银行信贷选择的理论模型,揭露银行对于青年创业者的信贷偏向.进而建立一个基于随机组合情况下的互保信贷模型,发现随机组合的互保机制反而不如普通信贷模式.运用此理论模型重点分析欺诈不存在和存在的互保信贷机制,得出如下的结论:创业者欺诈意愿不存在的情况下,银行给优质小组和混合小组的借贷成本应该让他们项目的经济利润近似于零,违约连带还款额接近投资项目的总收益.创业者欺诈意愿存在的情况下,在具有完善的合作约束和激励约束的前提下,银行应该对任一创业群体互保小组一视同仁,给予相同的贷款利率.同时,一旦小组成员违约,银行对承担责任的创业者抽贷行为不应该出于惩罚目的.     

浅析里克纳家庭品格教育理论及其启示

本文对里克纳《美式家庭:品质教育家长对策》一书阐述的理论及其启示加以论述。     

边塞与闺情的结合——论纳兰容若边塞词的艺术个性

纳兰容若边塞词在词史上是独特的存在,塞外风物与闺中情愫的巧妙结合,边塞题材与婉约词性的完美统一,显示了纳兰容若卓绝的艺术个性。这源于其独特的人生经历和对情的特殊体认。纳兰对情的体认和表述,受晚明重情、任情的文学观念的影响,词中在乎的是情的充分表达,而不注重边塞景物的猎奇性描写。纳兰词把闺情的叙写置于边塞词的核心,把边塞景物作为情感表现的背景,从而在传统的边塞词领域开拓出新的气象。     

The exponential distribution analog of the Grubbs–Weaver method

Abstract

Grubbs and Weaver (1947 Grubbs, F. E., and C. L. Weaver. 1947. The best unbiased estimate of population standard deviation based on group ranges. Journal of the American Statistical Association 42 (238):224–41. doi: 10.2307/2280652.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) suggest a minimum-variance unbiased estimator for the population standard deviation of a normal random variable, where a random sample is drawn and a weighted sum of the ranges of subsamples is calculated. The optimal choice involves using as many subsamples of size eight as possible. They verified their results numerically for samples of size up to 100, and conjectured that their “rule of eights” is valid for all sample sizes. Here we examine the analogous problem where the underlying distribution is exponential and find that a “rule of fours” yields optimality and prove the result rigorously.     

20 years of Bologna - a story of success,a story of failure

The Bologna Process is a unique harmonisation process taking place outside the policy-making framework of the European Union. It aims at enhancing the comparability and compatibility of higher education structures and degrees across Europe, as well as to institutionalise quality assurance mechanisms. The aim of this article is to provide a condensed, up-to-date overview of the Bologna Process with regard to structural characteristics, before embedding it into a discussion on processes on voluntary policy convergence and to which extent we should be able to find this kind of policy harmonisation in the realm of the Bologna Process. Related to this are questions why this, in principle, completely voluntary process of policy harmonisation, has appealed to so many countries and why they might or might not feel committed to the implementation of its policies and tools.     

USING THE PARETO DISTRIBUTION TO IMPROVE ESTIMATES OF TOPCODED EARNINGS

Inconsistent censoring in the public‐use March Current Population Survey (CPS) limits its usefulness in measuring labor earnings trends, as previous approaches for imputing topcoded earnings systematically understate top earnings. Using Pareto estimation methods with less‐censored internal data, we create an enhanced cell‐mean series to capture top earnings in the public‐use data. Annual earnings inequality trends since 1963 using our series largely mirror those found by Kopczuk, Saez, and Song using social security administration data for commerce and industry workers. When we extend our analysis to 2013 and consider all workers, earnings inequality levels are higher but its growth is more modest. (JEL C81, D31, J01)     

Predictive Hierarchic Modeling of Operational Characteristics in Clinical Trials

An analytic methodology for patient enrollment modeling using a Poisson-gamma model is developed by Anisimov & Fedorov (2005–2007). For modeling hierarchic processes associated with enrollment, a new methodology using evolving stochastic processes is proposed. This provides rather general and unified framework to describe various operational processes associated with enrollment. The technique for calculating predictive distributions, mean, and credibility bounds for evolving processes is developed. Some applications to modeling operational characteristics in clinical trials are considered with focus to modeling events associated with incoming and follow-up patients in different settings. For these models, predictive characteristics are derived in a closed form.     

Cities evolution tree and applications to predicting urban growth

China’s unprecedented urbanization and economic modernization have brought about significant growth and land use changes in cities and their surroundings. Traditional analyses of the relationship between urbanization and land use change have not fully incorporated important factors like city function or developmental stage. We define and apply a new visualization and analysis tool—an evolution tree—showing how an understanding of evolutionary pathways taken by growing cities contributes to visualization and forecasting of urban development and spatial expansion. We clustered 253 Chinese cities by type and developmental stage, arranging them in a “tree” structure, with types grouped as branches and leaf position along branches reflecting developmental stage. Urban growth rates are higher for business-oriented, manufacturing-oriented, and functionally comprehensive cities than for those oriented toward tourism. Extent of spatial growth is dominated by city type and developmental stage. Cities evolve along typical pathways, punctuated by occasional leap developments across functional types.     

Analysis of California propositions: An experiment in the empirical revelation of shared mental models

This paper uses factor analysis to analyze Californians’ voting on 12 propositions considered during the 2008 general election. The result is to create quantitative representations of shared mental models. After generating two county-level shared mental model indices, the indices are further examined to explain their variation across counties and to evaluated their performance as substitutes for previous presidential voting as an independent variable in a presidential voting model.