Where You Lead,I Will Follow: Exploring Sibling Similarity in Brain and Behavior During Risky Decision Making

This exploratory study examined whether social learning increases similarity in adolescent siblings’ behavior and neural patterns during risky decision making. Participants included 86 adolescents (43 sibling dyads; younger siblings: M_age = 12.2 years; 22 females; older siblings: M_age = 14.6 years; 20 females) who completed questionnaires, and a decision‐making task during an fMRI scan. Younger siblings became more similar to their older siblings’ risky decision making after observing their older sibling take risks). Younger siblings who reported greater modeling of their older sibling, and less differentiation from them, showed increased neural similarity to their older siblings in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and the right anterior insula and ventral striatum, respectively. These findings highlight siblings as salient social agents in how adolescents process risky decision making.     

Finite-sample properties of the bootstrap estimator in a Markov-switching model

The size distortion problem is clearly indicative of the small-sample approximation in the Markov-switching regression model. This paper shows that the bootstrap procedure can relieve the effects that this problem has. Our Monte Carlo simulation results reveal that the bootstrap maximum likelihood asymptotic approximations to the distribution can often be good when the sample size is small.     

Constrained Bayes and empirical Bayes estimation under random effects normal ANOVA model with balanced loss function

The paper develops constrained Bayes and empirical Bayes estimators in the random effects ANOVA model under balanced loss functions. In the balanced normal–normal model, estimators of the Bayes risks of the constrained Bayes and constrained empirical Bayes estimators are provided which are correct asymptotically up to O(m^-1)$\mathrm{O}(m^{-1})$, that is the remainder term is o(m^-1)$\mathrm{o}(m^{-1})$, m$m$ denoting the number of strata.     

Social change and nationalism in China's popular songs

ABSTRACT

The unveiling of memorials to those who fell in the First World War were highly solemn, dramatic and emotional events. Yet, while much attention has been given by historians to memorials and the purposes behind memorialisation, there has been less discussion of just how the feelings of the public were stimulated and provoked. Most accounts concentrate on the aesthetics and symbolism of the monuments themselves, and the speeches given by the officiating parties and individuals at unveilings. In doing so, however, they miss what was perhaps the most important emotional aspect of these ceremonies: music. This article argues that non-verbal sounds best expressed the raw emotions of the occasions and, in doing so, gave them their power and significance in establishing the mood of the moment and the public’s attachment to the memorials. Examining the major city memorials of Scotland as well as the National Memorial at Edinburgh Castle, it focuses on the significance of the bagpipes and Scotland’s most famous lament, ‘The Flowers of the Forest’, in providing the emotional high points of the ceremonies.     

Prevalence and risk and protective factors associated with HIV-related behavior among transgender people in Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper presents findings from the first large-scale quantitative study into HIV-related behavior among transgender people in Hong Kong. A survey of 195 transgender people found that only one-third of those who had engaged in sexual behavior in the past 3?months reported consistent condom use. Stable relationships, beliefs in low HIV transmission risk, and condom inaccessibility were cited as reasons for inconsistent condom use. The HIV testing figures were also strikingly low. This study demonstrates an urgent need for addressing HIV issues among transgender people in Hong Kong as there are currently no such specific services.     

Nonparametric Bayesian analysis for multi-site hidden Markov model

The hidden Markov model (HMM) provides an attractive framework for modeling long-term persistence in a variety of applications including pattern recognition. Unlike typical mixture models, hidden Markov states can represent the heterogeneity in data and it can be extended to a multivariate case using a hierarchical Bayesian approach. This article provides a nonparametric Bayesian modeling approach to the multi-site HMM by considering stick-breaking priors for each row of an infinite state transition matrix. This extension has many advantages over a parametric HMM. For example, it can provide more flexible information for identifying the structure of the HMM than parametric HMM analysis, such as the number of states in HMM. We exploit a simulation example and a real dataset to evaluate the proposed approach.     

A study of the Health of Children Born to Foreign- and Native-Born Mothers in Taiwan

This paper examined the health of children born to foreign-born and native-born mothers. Using a logistic methodology to analyze data from the 2008 Survey of Foreign and Mainland Chinese Spouses’ Living Demand and the 2005 National Health Survey of Children 12 Years old and under in Taiwan, the results showed girls were more likely to have better health than boys regardless of whether they were born to migrant or native-born mothers. In addition, a more significant effect was found for native-born fathers than foreign-born mothers on children’s health among transnational marriage families. Finally, household income might have a more significant impact on children’s health in native-born mothers’ families than those of foreign-born mothers.     

Tablet assessment of word comprehension reveals coarse word representations in 18–⁠20-month-old toddlers

The present study explores the viability of using tablets in assessing early word comprehension by means of a two-alternative forced-choice task. Forty-nine 18–20-month-old Norwegian toddlers performed a touch-based word recognition task, in which they were prompted to identify the labeled target out of two displayed items on a touchscreen tablet. In each trial, the distractor item was either semantically related (e.g., dog–cat) or unrelated (e.g., dog–airplane) to the target. Our results show that toddlers as young as 18 months can engage meaningfully with a tablet-based assessment, with minimal verbal instruction and child–administrator interaction. Toddlers performed better in the semantically unrelated condition than in the related condition, suggesting that their word representations are still semantically coarse at this age. Furthermore, parental reports of comprehension, using the Norwegian version of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories, predicted toddlers’ performance, with parent–child agreement stronger in the semantically unrelated condition, indicating that parents declare a word to be known by their child if it is understood at a coarse representational level. This study provides among the earliest evidence that remote data collection in 18-20 month-old toddlers is viable, as comparable results were observed from both in-laboratory and online administration of the touchscreen recognition task.     

Production scheduling for apparel manufacturing systems

In this paper, we model an apparel manufacturing system characterized by the co-existence of the two production lines, i.e. traditional, long lead time production line and flexible, short lead time production line. Our goal is to find strategies which decide: (i) the fraction of the total production capacity to be allocated to each individual line, and (ii) the production schedules so as to maximize the overall profits. In this problem, searching for the best solution is prohibited in view of the tremendouscomputing budget involved. Using ordinal optimization ideas, we obtained very encouraging results not only have we achieved a high proportion of 'good enough' designs but also tight profit margins compared to a pre-calculated upper bound. There is also a saving of at least 1/2000 of the computation time.