Appraising the Quality of Democracy as a Developmental Phenomenon: How South Koreans Appraise the Quality of Their Democracy

In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have made serious efforts to assess the quality of democracy from the perspective of ordinary citizens. Their research endeavors to date have all sought to distinguish democracies exclusively in terms of low to high levels of quality. Unlike these studies, which are solely concerned with the varying levels of democratic quality, this study offers a new conceptual framework that allows for discerning and monitoring its shifting patterns from electoral through liberal to civic quality. An analysis of the 2010 Korea Democracy Barometer survey confirms that the quality of democracy is, indeed, a developmental and multidimensional phenomenon. Furthermore, it reveals that ordinary citizens are capable of identifying its particular dimensions, and Korean democracy shows a significant deficit in two: the liberal and civic domains.     

Modified linear discriminant analysis using block covariance matrix in high-dimensional data

Among many classification methods, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is a favored tool due to its simplicity, robustness, and predictive accuracy but when the number of genes is larger than the number of observations, it cannot be applied directly because the within-class covariance matrix is singular. Also, diagonal LDA (DLDA) is a simpler model compared to LDA and has better performance in some cases. However, in reality, DLDA requires a strong assumption based on mutual independence. In this article, we propose the modified LDA (MLDA). MLDA is based on independence, but uses the information that has an effect on classification performance with the dependence structure. We suggest two approaches. One is the case of using gene rank. The other involves no use of gene rank. We found that MLDA has better performance than LDA, DLDA, or K-nearest neighborhood and is comparable with support vector machines in real data analysis and the simulation study.     

Exploring the link between integrated leadership and public sector performance

This study develops the concept of integrated leadership in the public sector. Integrated leadership is conceived as the combination of five leadership roles that are performed collectively by employees and managers at different levels of the hierarchy. The leadership roles are task-, relations-, change-, diversity-, and integrity-oriented leadership. Using data from the Federal Human Capital Survey and Program Assessment Rating Tool, we analyze the relationship between integrated leadership and federal program performance. The findings from the empirical analysis indicate that integrated leadership has a positive and sizeable effect on the performance of federal sub-agencies. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings and limitations of the study.     

Religious affiliation and Hispanic health in Utah

Two research hypotheses are addressed in this study. (1) Do health trajectories of Hispanics in Utah differ from what has been documented in states with longstanding large Hispanic populations? (2) Do non-Mormon groups in Utah have less favorable health status than Mormons in Utah? This study employs three health outcome measures: activity limitations caused by emotional problems, activity limitations caused by physical problems, and self-rated health status using the 2001 Utah Health Status Survey. Comparisons of Hispanics in their traditional settings within the U.S. generally show more favorable health status for Hispanics than for whites. We find little difference in health status between Hispanics in Utah and their Anglo counterparts. Hispanics were more likely than Anglos to have “a little” activity limitation due to physical problems, but were not more likely to report “a little” or “considerable” activity limitations due to emotional or physical problems. Hispanics and Anglos were statistically equal in probability of self-reported fair to poor health. Important in relation to studies outside of Utah, we find little support for the epidemiologic paradox, the usual finding of more favorable health for Hispanics than for whites. As with ethnicity, we find little difference between non-Mormon and Mormons with respect to health. The most notable exception is that Mormon Hispanics are at a significantly greater risk of emotional problems than Catholic Hispanics in Utah.     

Optimal Digital Rights Management with Uncertain Piracy

Many firms that sell digital copies of copyrighted materials online face a common dilemma: the use of digital rights management (DRM) to impede pirates can impose restrictions on legitimate use. We introduce a two‐period model in which the use of DRM in the first period affects the probability that a consumer finds a pirated copy in the second period; the threat of legal action reduces consumers’ consumption of pirated copies; and firms choose whether to sell, and at what prices, either strongly or weakly DRM‐protected products, or both. Furthermore, we incorporate the role of uncertainty concerning future levels of piracy. Using a two‐period model with uncertainty, we investigate a firm's optimal DRM strategies and present the optimal pricing strategy as well as product launch strategy under different market conditions. We find that one important characteristic of the optimal strategy is that it is optimal to maintain the same product line configuration strategy for both periods. We also characterize the conditions under which each strategy is optimal.     

Association between sexually explicit messages and sleep health among French sexual minority men

It has been demonstrated that sexual minority men (SMM) participate in sexting. While research has shown that engagement in the exchange of sexually explicit media is associated with poor health outcomes, no previous research has investigated its association with sleep health outcomes. This study sought to examine the association between sexually explicit media and sleep health among SMM, a population that suffers from poor sleep health. A popular geosocial networking application was used to recruit SMM individuals (N?=?580) in the Paris, France, metropolitan area. Multivariate analyses, adjusting for sociodemographics, were used to test the association between the frequency of sexually explicit messaging and three dimensions of sleep health: (1) sleep quality, (2) sleep duration, and (3) two aspects of sleep problems. In multivariate analyses, those who reported engaging in sexually explicit messaging more were more likely to report getting less than seven?hours of sleep (aRR = 1.24; 95% CI = 1.08, 1.43) compared with those who reported engaging in sexually explicit messaging less. No significant associations were found between sexting and sleep quality or reporting sleep problems. Sexually explicit messaging was associated with shorter sleep duration. Intervention targeted at individuals who sext could potentially improve sleep health outcomes.     

Impact of metabolic status on the association of serum vitamin D with hypogonadism and lower urinary tract symptoms/benign prostatic hyperplasia

Objective: The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of metabolic status on associations of serum vitamin D with hypogonadism and lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS)/benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH).

Patients and methods: A total of 612 men underwent physical examination, biochemical/hormonal blood testing, and transrectal prostate ultrasound. Moreover, the subjects filled out standard questionnaires for identification and grading of LUTS and hypogonadism symptoms. Parameters were statistically compared with independent t-tests and correlation analyses.

Results: Vitamin D levels positively correlated with total testosterone (TT) but not with prostate volume or International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS). Patients with metabolic syndrome had significantly lower vitamin D levels, which were not correlated with TT, prostate volume, or IPSS. However, vitamin D was positively correlated with TT, and negatively correlated with prostate volume and quality-of-life IPSS in subjects without metabolic syndrome.

Conclusion: The clinical usefulness of vitamin D for treatment of hypogonadism or LUTS/BPH varies according to metabolic status.     

Olympic rankings based on objective weighting schemes

In this paper, we propose an objective principal components weighting scheme for all-time Winter Olympic gold, silver and bronze medals based solely on the number of medals won. Our results suggest that the approximately equal weights be assigned (or the total medal counts be used regardless of color) if all of the three medal types are retained for ranking purposes. When the proposed methodology is tested against five alternative weighting schemes that have been suggested in the literature using the results for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, we find a significant agreement in the country rankings. Furthermore, our implementation of principal components variable reduction strategy results in the identification of silver as the best representative medal count for parsimonious Winter Olympics rankings.KEYWORDS: Olympic rankings, principal components analysis, variable reduction strategy, medal counts, objective weighting schemeJEL Classifications: C18, C38, C43     

Stationarity test of electromyographic signals during isokinetic trunk exertions

The aim of this study is to investigate the stationarity of the electromyographic (EMG) signals during isokinetic exertions of the trunk muscle. Six healthy subjects participated in this study. The erector spinae muscles were used to collect the signals. In order to simulate the isokinetic exercises of the trunk, a Cybex system with a trunk modular component was used. All subjects performed sustained exertions with a combination of load (25%, 50% MVC) and angular velocity (0, 15, 30 degree/s). The stationarity of the signals was tested by the reverse arrangements test and modified reverse arrangements test. In the results, the signal stationarity was high in all conditions in the reverse arrangements test. However, in the modified reverse arrangements test it was relatively low at about the 30 degree/s angular velocity. In the analysis of variance, the effect of angular velocity was statistically significant at the 0.05 significance level in the modified reverse arrangements test and Tukey's HSD grouping showed that the stationarity of 30 degree/s angular velocity was significantly different from 0, 15 degree/s condition. These results indicate that the stationarity of the EMG signals showed no difference between isometric and isokinetic conditions when the angular velocity was equal to 15 degree/s.     

A reference activity model for smart factory design and improvement

Smart manufacturing systems (SMSs) are envisioned to contain highly automated and IT-driven production systems. To address the complexity that arises in such systems, a standard and holistic model for describing its activities and their interrelationships is needed. This paper introduces a factory design and improvement (FDI) activity model and illustrates a case study of FDI in an electromechanical component factory. In essence, FDI is a reference activity model that encompasses a range of manufacturing system activities for designing and improving a factory during its initial development and also its operational phases. The FDI model shows not only the dependency between activities and manufacturing control levels but also the pieces of information and software functions each activity relies on. We envision that the availability of these pieces of information in digital form to integrate across the software functions will increase the agility of factory design and improvement projects. Therefore, our future work lies in contributing to standards for exchanging such information.