Immersed in sfumato: Correggio’s sensory palette and the immersive Renaissance

ABSTRACT

This brief essay examines the multisensory aspects of the painterly technique of sfumato, first through an analysis of Corregio’s interpretation of the myth of Jupiter and Io, then in the broader context of Renaissance approaches to the representation of space. While scholarship has emphasized the optical character of sfumato, aerial and linear perspective, the last part of this essay replaces these approaches in the context of the immersive character of Renaissance arts and suggests parallels with the dissolution of boundaries between art and audience characteristic of modern and contemporary art.     

Children's Friends and Behavioral Similarity in Two Social Contexts

The general purpose of this study was to examine similarity between friends with respect to behavior. The specific goals were to consider; 1) different sources of evaluation (peer ratings and direct observations); 2) different social contexts (classroom and play group); and 3) different subtypes of aggressive behavior (proactive and reactive aggression). In the first phase of the study, sociometric assessments and peer evaluations of behavior were conducted in the school setting with third-grade boys and girls (n - 268). In the second phase, a subsample of boys participated in a series of play group sessions (n = 66). Direct observations and peer ratings of children's behavior were conducted in those sessions. Results showed in both social contexts a tendency towards similarity among friends, especially with respect to aggressive behavior. Separate analyses for subtypes of aggressive behavior revealed that the similarity hypothesis applied for proactive aggression but not for reactive aggression.     

Modeling initiation into drug injection among street youth

This study aimed at examining the predictors of initiation into drug injection among street youth using social cognitive theory framework. A prospective cohort study based on semi-annual interviews was carried out. Psychosocial determinants referred to avoidance of initiation. Other potential predictors were: sociodemographic characteristics, relationships with injectors, parent's substance misuse, drug use patterns, homelessness, survival sex, sexual abuse. Independent predictors were identified using Cox proportional hazards regression models. Among the 352 participants, high control beliefs about avoidance of initiation was protective while younger age, daily alcohol consumption, heroin use, cocaine use, and survival sex all increased risk of initiation. Preventive strategies targeting street youth should both enhance youth's control beliefs and actual control over their substance use and improve their life conditions.     

Linguistic human rights as a source of policy guidelines: A critical assessment

The 'linguistic human rights'(LHR) perspective, though relevant to the protection and promotion of minority languages (or, more generally, of linguistic diversity), displays one major weakness, namely, its almost exclusive reliance on moral considerations. Although LHR advocates often back up their claims with other (including economic) arguments, the latter often fail to pass 'hard' validation tests. Hence, the actual import of LHR arguments is constrained by the extent to which the underpinning moral considerations are shared by public opinion and politicians. Even if there is broad consensus around values, arguments in favour of minority language rights can be defeated by three types of objections that have to do with feasibility, costs, and burden sharing. In order to overcome these objections, it is necessary to draw on the tools of policy evaluation, which provides strong arguments in favour of linguistic diversity.     

Metropolis–Hastings algorithms with adaptive proposals

Different strategies have been proposed to improve mixing and convergence properties of Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms. These are mainly concerned with customizing the proposal density in the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm to the specific target density and require a detailed exploratory analysis of the stationary distribution and/or some preliminary experiments to determine an efficient proposal. Various Metropolis–Hastings algorithms have been suggested that make use of previously sampled states in defining an adaptive proposal density. Here we propose a general class of adaptive Metropolis–Hastings algorithms based on Metropolis–Hastings-within-Gibbs sampling. For the case of a one-dimensional target distribution, we present two novel algorithms using mixtures of triangular and trapezoidal densities. These can also be seen as improved versions of the all-purpose adaptive rejection Metropolis sampling (ARMS) algorithm to sample from non-logconcave univariate densities. Using various different examples, we demonstrate their properties and efficiencies and point out their advantages over ARMS and other adaptive alternatives such as the Normal Kernel Coupler.     

Classical and Bayesian Analysis of Univariate and Multivariate Stochastic Volatility Models

In this paper, efficient importance sampling (EIS) is used to perform a classical and Bayesian analysis of univariate and multivariate stochastic volatility (SV) models for financial return series. EIS provides a highly generic and very accurate procedure for the Monte Carlo (MC) evaluation of high-dimensional interdependent integrals. It can be used to carry out ML-estimation of SV models as well as simulation smoothing where the latent volatilities are sampled at once. Based on this EIS simulation smoother, a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) posterior analysis of the parameters of SV models can be performed.     

La maladie des coûts est-elle contagieuse ? Le cas des ensembles de musique ancienne

To complete traditional explanations of why the performing arts tend to run a deficit, the case of Early Music orchestras is examined. The usual mechanisms do not suffice to explain why these institutions suffer from the “illness of costs”. Two hypotheses are combined to complete Baumol’s model. For one thing the deepening deficit of Early Music orchestras is related to their professionalization; and for another, it is explained by their being simultaneously in two markets: the concert market and the musicians’ labor market, where they have to compete with subsidized orchestras.     

Gender Differences in Time Availability: Evidence from France

The aim of the article is to examine differences in work time from a gender perspective. To this end, a concept broader than mere duration of work time is constructed. This concept, which we call time availability, encompasses not only the volume of hours worked but also the scheduling and predictability of those hours. It is measured by a synthetic indicator showing the extent to which a given group of workers exceeds the societal time norm. After a presentation of the French context, we show that women seem to have less time availability, particularly at the ages that are most decisive in career terms. But these differences do not concern the same aspects of time availability. Thus the time constraints experienced mainly by women are less socially visible and hence undervalued by employers. This lower visibility comes, for a large part, from the social perception of women professionals.     

Beyond Oaxaca–Blinder: Accounting for differences in household income distributions

This paper develops a method to decompose differences across distributions of household income, based on counterfactual distributions that ‘lie between’ the actually observed distributions. Our approach decomposes differences between any two income distributions (or functionals such as inequality or poverty measures) into shares due to price effects; occupational structure effects; and endowment effects. Comparing the household income distributions of the USA and Brazil in 1999, we find that most of Brazil’s excess inequality (of 13 Gini points) is accounted for by underlying inequalities in the distributions of education and of non-labor income, notably pensions (between four and six Gini points each). Steeper returns to education in Brazil also make an important contribution (of two to five points). Differences in occupational structure and in racial and demographic composition are much less important. An erratum to this article can be found at