The Limits of Black Politics in the Post–Civil Rights Era

Pluralist theorists have long contended that to exercise power and influence in the American political system, blacks should come together like any other organized interest group, form coalitions with other like-minded people (white liberals), and advocate for policy reforms. Beginning during the “Black Power” era, the goal of putting black faces in high places to help address black concerns became a driving force in black politics. The deteriorating social and economic status of many in the black community, however, has not been prevented by either the political incorporation of more than 11,000 black elected officials or even the election of the nation’s first black president. This article will show how the inherent limitations of the pluralist interest-group strategy and a growing white backlash fueled by an awareness of changing demographics in the country has spawned an economic and political crisis in black America.     

Will the ASA's Efforts to Improve Statistical Practice be Successful? Some Evidence to the Contrary

ABSTRACT

Recent efforts by the American Statistical Association to improve statistical practice, especially in countering the misuse and abuse of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) and p-values, are to be welcomed. But will they be successful? The present study offers compelling evidence that this will be an extraordinarily difficult task. Dramatic citation-count data on 25 articles and books severely critical of NHST's negative impact on good science, underlining that this issue was/is well known, did nothing to stem its usage over the period 1960–2007. On the contrary, employment of NHST increased during this time. To be successful in this endeavor, as well as restoring the relevance of the statistics profession to the scientific community in the 21st century, the ASA must be prepared to dispense detailed advice. This includes specifying those situations, if they can be identified, in which the p-value plays a clearly valuable role in data analysis and interpretation. The ASA might also consider a statement that recommends abandoning the use of p-values.     

Stress-strength reliability of exponentiated Fréchet distributions based on Type-II censored data

In this paper, we consider inference of the stress-strength parameter, R, based on two independent Type-II censored samples from exponentiated Fréchet populations with different index parameters. The maximum likelihood and uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimators, exact and asymptotic confidence intervals and hypotheses testing for R are obtained. We conduct a Monte Carlo simulation study to evaluate the performance of these estimators and confidence intervals. Finally, two real data sets are analysed for illustrative purposes.     

A new aging concept derived from the increasing convex ordering

In this paper, a comparison between the life distribution of a new unit with that of a used unit in the increasing convex order is made leading to a new class of life distributions which we call “new better than used in convex ordering of second order”. This class includes as subclasses the NBU and the NBUC and is a subclass of the NBUCA class. Preservation properties under convolution, random maxima, mixing and formation of coherent structures are established. Stochastic comparisons of the excess lifetime when the inter-arrival times belong to the NBUC(2) class are developed. Some applications of Poisson shock models and a test of exponentiality against NBUC(2) alternative are presented.     

A Factor-Adjusted Multiple Testing Procedure With Application to Mutual Fund Selection

In this article, we propose a factor-adjusted multiple testing (FAT) procedure based on factor-adjusted p-values in a linear factor model involving some observable and unobservable factors, for the purpose of selecting skilled funds in empirical finance. The factor-adjusted p-values were obtained after extracting the latent common factors by the principal component method. Under some mild conditions, the false discovery proportion can be consistently estimated even if the idiosyncratic errors are allowed to be weakly correlated across units. Furthermore, by appropriately setting a sequence of threshold values approaching zero, the proposed FAT procedure enjoys model selection consistency. Extensive simulation studies and a real data analysis for selecting skilled funds in the U.S. financial market are presented to illustrate the practical utility of the proposed method. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Elementary School-age Children's Attitudes Toward Children in Same-Sex Parent Families

As numbers of families with same-sex parents increase in the United States, children are more likely to encounter diverse family structures. Given that young children can demonstrate in-group bias, prejudicial attitudes, and social exclusion, it is important to understand how children perceive their peers in diverse families. To our knowledge, no studies have assessed elementary-school-age children's attitudes about same-sex parent families. Here, 131 elementary school students (M_age = 7.79 years; 61 girls) viewed images of same-sex (female and male) and other-sex couples with a child and then were asked about their perceptions of these families, particularly the children. Results indicated participants' preferences toward children with other-sex versus same-sex parents. Developmental and practical implications about children's attitudes toward sexual minority parent families are discussed.     

河北省优秀传统文化的近期偏好、现代阐释和愿景设计

河北省作为京津冀协同发展及其雄安新区建设的重要一环,具有很强文化资源禀赋。通过对河北省传统文化近期偏好、现代阐释和愿景设计的研究,为河北省消除地区文化差异和经济差异提供理论指导,并为之注入现代内涵,具有很强的现实意义和理论意义。     

脉冲加热红外热成像无损检测技术回顾

脉冲红外热成像无损检测技术是上世纪末发展起来的一门新兴无损检测技术,该文从脉冲红外热成像无损检测的提出、理论模型的研究以及技术特点对该技术进行了回顾,并展望了其未来发展趋势.     

犯罪记忆心理的可测性与局限性

中国的心理测试技术,是运用现代心理学、犯罪心理学和实验心理学原理以及神经心理学、生物电子学等研究成果,通过专用测试仪器软硬件和智能化计算机系统,同时同步记录人的多项心理生物反映指标,进而评判心理痕迹对应相关程度的实验心理技术。心理测试中心近20年犯罪心理测试的研究成果、以及经过直接参与办理全国各地600多起重特大疑难案件的实践、和经过对近万人实案测试图谱的评判分析研究,得出的结论是:违法犯罪人在经历过违法犯罪事件之后的记忆违法犯罪心理痕迹是可测的。这项技术在辅助刑侦工作方面有着很大的作用,但同样,我们也要看到它的局限性。