TEACHING THE PRODUCTION/OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT CORE COURSE: INTEGRATING LOGISTICS PLANNING ACTIVITIES

This paper discusses the benefits of restructuring the introductory undergraduate production and operations management (pom) course to improve its pedagogical effectiveness and to better convey the importance of integrating logistics planning activities. The introduction of a dynamic integrative semester-long case study which involves students in applying pom concepts and tools through a simulation game is reported.     

Intergenerational Assimilation by Intermarriage: Hispanic and Asian Immigrants

Using multigenerational data, intermarriage rates were examined among non-White, non-European immigrants to test two competing assimilation theories: classic assimilation theory and segmented assimilation theory. Later generations of Asian and Hispanic immigrants were more likely to outmarry than their first-generation relatives, an outcome predicted by both theories. High achieving Asians were not more likely to engage in outmarriage, whereas educational achievement was positively correlated with outmarriage rates among Hispanics. Classic assimilation theory predicts outmarriage only after structural assimilation is achieved; therefore, this study provided more evidence to support segmented assimilation theory. However, low socioeconomic status Hispanics and Asians were not more likely to outmarry non-Whites, as segmented assimilation theory would suggest.     

GENDER IDEOLOGY AND STATUS ATTAINMENT OF CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN WOMEN IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Theoretically derived measures and hypotheses concerning the connection between family ideology, gender ideals, and status attainment levels of conservative Christian women are examined in the twenty-first century. Conservative Christian women have a more intensive view of mothering, a stronger prolife stance, a younger age of childbearing, a higher number of children and a lower education level. These trends tend to intensify for women who convert to conservative churches after the age of 16 and reduce for women who engage in wage-work. A belief in Biblical inerrancy directly reduces educational attainment as does a higher intensity of mothering, a younger age of childbearing, and higher number of children. While there is no discernible direct effect of religiosity on income level, there is an indirect effect that is important to note.     

The dynamics of hapū research relationships

Abstract

The Whakaki Lake Trust has a long history of being an active kaitiaki of Whakaki Lake and has developed a hapū-based restoration and enhancement programme at the Lake property. Part of this programme has involved working with a range of external agencies and researchers. Research relationships have become an important part of the restoration process to build the capability and capacity of hapū to execute activities associated with restoration. In addition, relationships have provided an opportunity to strengthen and expand the knowledge base that hapū can draw upon to inform ecological restoration and resource management decisions. Some of these relationships have been adversarial and a source of much frustration. As a consequence the Trust has developed very clear expectations and policy around working with others. My experience of developing a doctoral research project with Whakaki Lake Trust is used here to discuss hapū expectations of research and resultant academic dilemmas.     

Penalized Maximum Likelihood Estimator for Normal Mixtures

The estimation of the parameters of a mixture of Gaussian densities is considered, within the framework of maximum likelihood. Due to unboundedness of the likelihood function, the maximum likelihood estimator fails to exist. We adopt a solution to likelihood function degeneracy which consists in penalizing the likelihood function. The resulting penalized likelihood function is then bounded over the parameter space and the existence of the penalized maximum likelihood estimator is granted. As original contribution we provide asymptotic properties, and in particular a consistency proof, for the penalized maximum likelihood estimator. Numerical examples are provided in the finite data case, showing the performances of the penalized estimator compared to the standard one.     

中国古代慈善事业的发展特点

中国古代慈善事业在漫长的历史发展过程中不但逐渐形成了庞杂而丰富的思想体系,而且其慈善主体也实现了从最初单纯的国家慈善到以国家慈善为主、宗族慈善和宗教慈善为重要补充的多元化发展过程。另外,中国古代慈善事业的发展轨迹还明显具备与整个中国古代社会兴衰相表里的重要特点。     

Liberated and inclusive? An analysis of self-representation in a popular lesbian magazine

Comparisons of a popular lesbian lifestyle magazine to a popular heterosexual women's magazine show that lesbian-controlled media do indeed expand representation when it comes to weight, age, and degree of femininity/masculinity, but not in terms of racial representation. An examination of the textual material and visual images also shows that the lesbian publication gives women a more active role, while the heterosexual magazine depicts females as more passive. However, the evidence also shows that the lesbian and heterosexual magazines have similar rates of objectification, but substantively, the lesbian magazine is less severe in degree of objectification.     

Intra-group variation in conservative Christians’ gender ideologies (1972–2006)

This paper illuminates significant intra-group variations in the gender ideologies of conservative Christians in the United States. Between the 1970s and the present, both conservative Christian men and women have become increasingly accepting of women's roles in politics and women's participation in the workforce. Religiously conservative women have become more opposed to sexual freedoms and abortion rights. Religiously conservative men have become less opposed over time to sexual freedoms and have not changed with regard to abortion ideology. In general, for both men and women, conservative Christians who are older, attend church services more often and have less education tend to be more conservative in their gender ideologies. For females only, higher incomes lead to less conservative gender ideologies, and living in the southern region of the United States tends to decrease their support for female politicians.     

Non-parametric Quantile Regression with Censored Data

Abstract.  Censored regression models have received a great deal of attention in both the theoretical and applied statistics literature. Here, we consider a model in which the response variable is censored but not the covariates. We propose a new estimator of the conditional quantiles based on the local linear method, and give an algorithm for its numerical implementation. We study its asymptotic properties and evaluate its performance on simulated data sets.     

Estimating the Effects of Residential Mobility: A Methodological Note

This article reviews the methodological challenges of estimating a causal association between mobility and children's cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development. Utilizing a comprehensive set of empirical articles published in the past 25 years that employ quantitative methods, it describes the limitations of previous studies and the innovative ways that researchers have attempted to deal with them. The concept of mobility is inconsistently operationalized along four dimensions: school versus residential, distance, timing, and frequency. Imprecise operationalization conflates different forms of mobility, which have differential effects on development. Attempts to estimate a causal association between mobility and development suffer from three sources of bias: selection, contextual shifts, and contemporaneous instigating events. (a) Methods that account for unobserved differences between mobile and nonmobile children have consistently shown smaller or even positive effects of mobility. (b) Moving can have a positive or negative effect on children's ecological contexts in ways that are systematically correlated with child development. (c) Moves are frequently catalyzed by changes in family structure and employment. The article concludes with recommendations for future research. Researchers should continue to engage fixed- and random-effect, matching, and instrumental variable techniques, each of which makes the question of causality explicit.