Regional disparities in Indonesia: A social indicators approach

The paper examines the nature of regional imbalance in Indonesia by using a number of social indicators. Several disaggregated social indices are constructed with the help of a taxonomic technique. For the purpose of comparison, an overall economic index is also constructed. It is observed that the ranking of provinces differ substantially across the indices, implying that there is no causal relationship between the selected social and economic indicators. Regional disparities declined in the past decade in terms of all social indices except the demographic index. Economic inequality nowever increased between 1970 and 1980.     

Nonparametric versus Parametric Estimation of the Cure Fraction Using Interval Censored Data

This article discusses estimation of the cure rate by means of the bounded cumulative hazard (BCH) model using interval censored data. The parametric and nonparametric estimation methods within the framework of the EM algorithm were employed for cure rate estimation and their results compared. The Turnbull estimator was used in the nonparametric estimation while in parametric method both the exponential and Weibull distributions were considered. We show via simulation that the nonparametric method is a viable alternative to the parametric one when the censoring rate is rapidly increasing.     

Social harmony and community wellbeing

This special issue explores social harmony and community wellbeing with some examples of Asian countries. These are essential tools to fight against many social problems and meet elucidation. While these concepts are not documented well in social work literature, the articles on this special issue will provide thoughtful and valuable guidelines to the readers, academics, policy makers and researchers for expanding and improving social and community services.     

A speciation-based bilevel niching method for multimodal truss design problems

Truss design is a well-known structural optimization problem that has important practical applications in various fields. Truss design problems are typically multimodal by nature, meaning that it offers multiple optimal solutions concerning the topology (combinatorial optimization problem) and/or sizes (continuous optimization problem) of the members, but they are evaluated to have similar or equally good objective function values. From a practical standpoint, it is desirable to find as many alternative designs as possible, rather than finding a single design, as often practiced. Several techniques based on classical and metaheuristic optimization methods have been developed for simultaneous optimization of topology and size of a truss. However, all these methods unable to find multiple topologies and their corresponding size solutions in a single run. A few metaheuristics incorporating niching techniques have been developed for finding multiple topologies for the truss design problem, but these studies ignored the fact that for each known topology, multiple design solutions in terms of size can be found. To address this issue, this paper proposes a bi-level truss formulation and subsequently a speciation-based bilevel niching method (BiL-NM) using such a formulation. The BiL-NM consists of a modified SPSO niching method which is robust to find multiple topologies and a canonical PSO for their corresponding size solutions. Extensive empirical studies are carried out to analyze the accuracy, robustness, and efficiency of the BiL-NM. The results confirm that the proposed BiL-NM is superior in all these three aspects over the state-of-the-art methods on several low to high-dimensional truss design problems.

     

Intersectional oppression: A reflexive dialogue between Muslim academics and their experiences of Islamophobia and exclusion in UK Higher Education

Islamophobia has seen a disturbing rise in British and international contexts; however, we see limited attention being afforded to this in the context of Higher Education (HE), particularly the impacts of this through the lens of staff members. HE continues to frame itself as a post-racial, secular, progressive, and inclusive space, yet is perpetually opposed due to its surreptitious and violent incidences of racism, classism, sexism and ableism. We discuss here, using liberatory-based and autoethnographic methodologies, Muslim staff members' experiences and insights of Islamophobia in UK HE institutions (HEIs)—a severely underrepresented group and largely invisible issue in the academy. We highlight the need to expose, challenge, question, and destabilise the continuous victimisation of Muslims within these spaces and beyond. We unpick issues related to intersectionality and different levels of exclusion by exploring the sense of belonging felt by Muslim staff; specific challenges and episodes of Islamophobia faced; and ways the sector can dismantle Islamophobia and begin developing practices to genuinely support anti-Muslim, anti-racist inclusion and social justice.     

Computational Social Science for Nonprofit Studies: Developing a Toolbox and Knowledge Base for the Field

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - How can computational social science (CSS) methods be applied in nonprofit and philanthropic studies? This paper...