Does Internet use provide a deeper sense of political empowerment to the Less Educated?

In politics, there is an offline power imbalance between the Educated and the Less Educated caused, in part, by the fact that those individuals with more extensive levels of education are more equipped to influence the political process. This study analyses the impact of Internet use on this imbalance and investigates whether the disparity remains intact in the Digital Age. Accessibility to the Internet is somewhat agnostic to one’s education and may be a quick and cost-effective tool to affect the political process. This study employs the concept of online political efficacy (OPE), which is likely to impact online political participation (OPP), to test whether Internet use provokes a sense of political effectiveness in the less educated to a greater extent than those more educated. Internet Service Types, particularly social media, were found to be positively associated with OPE to a much greater extent among the less educated. These findings indicate that, as a result of an enhanced positive perception of the Internet from using the Internet Service Types, the less educated are likely to feel empowered to affect the political process to a greater degree than the educated. Such use, in turn, is more likely to lead the less educated to OPP. This flow in the context of Internet use and education levels was presented in the framework of the O-S-R-O-R model of communication effects. As such, Internet use has the potential to contribute toward an equalization of the offline power imbalance.     

Social work education and political conflict: preparing students to address the needs of victims and survivors of the Troubles in Northern Ireland

This paper reports on the evaluation of a European PEACE III sponsored teaching and learning project that was designed to enable social work students to better understand the needs of victims and survivors of the conflict in Northern Ireland. The paper begins with an introduction to policy, practice and educational contexts before reviewing the literature on social work, conflict and trauma. It also summarises key, innovative pedagogical approaches used in the teaching, including the use of ground rules, teaching teams consisting of lecturer and service user dyads, learning exercises and case studies. The paper then explains the evaluation methodology. This involved two surveys which returned 144 student and 34 practice teacher questionnaires. The findings revealed that students were generally committed to this form of teaching and engagement with victims and survivors of the conflict, although some students reported that their attitudes towards this subject had were not changed. Some students also discussed how the conflict had affected their lives and the lives of families and friends; it is argued that such biographical details are crucial in developing new pedagogical approaches in this area. Practice teachers who supervised some of these students on placement reported general levels of satisfaction with preparedness to work with conflict related situations but were less convinced that organisations were so committed. The paper concludes with a discussion of the study limitations and a recommendation for more robust methods of teaching and evaluation in this area of social work education and practice.     

Alternative beta estimation for the market model using partially adaptive techniques

The leptokurtosls of many security market return distributions can contaminate ordinary least squares estimates of the β coefficient of the market model. Partially adaptive estimation techniques accommodate the possibility of fat tailed distributions. this methodology limits the influence of extremely large residuals and yields estimates which are both statistically and practically different from ordinary least squares.     

Local influence in box-cox transformation for multivariate regression data

The Box-Cox power family of transformations for multivariate regression data is considered. The influence of cases on the maximum likelihood estimators of the transformation parameters is investigated using the local influence approach, An example is given to- illustrate the local influence method and to show the effectiveness of the method.     

深基坑变形影响因子分析及预测方法研究

影响基坑变形的因子有很多，有主要因子和次要因子。根据实际工程经验以及相关资料，在较为全面地总结所有影响基坑变形因子的基础上，结合层次分析法，筛选出主要影响因子，建立一定的量化标准。将影响因子作为输入层，构建基于主要影响因子的BP神经网络。结合天津市中国铁建国际城1D地块深基坑工程，选出围护结构发生明显变形的各时间段，建立17×106的训练数据，采用黄金分割法对隐含层的节点数进行筛选，以4 m，8 m，12 m，16 m处的变形数据为目标层进行训练和仿真。最后，对其它测斜点的变形进行预测，精度满足要求，验证了这种影响因子选择和样本选择方法的有效性，对基坑变形预测有一定的应用指导意义。     

契丹文化的源流及其历史影响

契丹文化是辽文化的重要组成部分,契丹文化包括本源文化、主源文化和他源文化,以本源文化为主,同时吸收了主源、他源文化而最终形成。主源文化与他源文化对契丹文化的影响是多方面的。契丹文化在中华文化发展中占有重要的地位,是中华文化的重要组成部分,并在历史发展中深刻影响到周边的民族。     

On the presidential campaign trail: Apologia of association

During the 2008 presidential primary campaign, the supporters of Senators Clinton, McCain, and Obama made a number of controversial public statements. After these remarks became public and a focus of media attention, the candidates and their surrogates/supporters engaged in what we term apologia of association. This study examines this previously unexplored apologetic form.     

论电影《山楂树之恋》的叙事美学

电影《山楂树之恋》用政治语境下的"纯爱"故事展现人性,其叙事手法与海明威"压力下的光辉"及"冰山原则"有异曲同工之妙。山楂树意象蕴含着三个维度的隐喻:政治和人性、生与死、人与物,从而使影片形成一种富有张力的叙事结构。影片用政治色彩的解构反衬至美的人性光辉,用生命易逝的缺憾凸显人类存在的悲剧宿命,用灰白色调衬托自然永恒的空灵之美。该片是张艺谋艺术风格的转型之作,也是对当代大众娱乐文化的反拨。     

An Application of the Local Influence Diagnostics to Ridge Regression Under Elliptical Model

In this article, we study the effect of a minor perturbation on the ridge estimator considering the elliptical distribution for the errors. The necessary matrices for assessing the local influence under the perturbation of the explanatory variables and the scale matrix are derived. The Longley data is analyzed for illustration.     

An implicit function based procedure for analyzing maximum likelihood estimates from nonidentically distributed data

A methodology is presented for gaining insight into properties — such as outlier influence, bias, and width of confidence intervals — of maximum likelihood estimates from nonidentically distributed Gaussian data. The methodology is based on an application of the implicit function theorem to derive an approximation to the maximum likelihood estimator. This approximation, unlike the maximum likelihood estimator, is expressed in closed form and thus it can be used in lieu of costly Monte Carlo simulation to study the properties of the maximum likelihood estimator.