‘Rachel's not here’: Constructed dialogue in gossip

Sociolinguistic research has demonstrated that gossip is a co‐constructed phenomenon, which allows participants to establish solidarity and build alignments with each other, while evaluating an absent party. Gossip can also serve important social functions, such as helping to establish and reconfirm group norms and values. The present study provides a detailed analysis of an extended gossip episode that occurred within an institutional context: a study group interaction at a U.S. university. Our analysis shows how, in gossip, constructed dialogue both prompts and legitimizes pejorative evaluations towards an absent third party, and is actually the pivot around which group members negotiate values and norms in the process of arriving at a shared moral stance. Our analysis also demonstrates that alignment in gossip interactions is tenuous and must be continuously renewed.     

A general inverse sampling scheme and its application to adaptive cluster sampling

Not having a variance estimator is a seriously weak point of a sampling design from a practical perspective. This paper provides unbiased variance estimators for several sampling designs based on inverse sampling, both with and without an adaptive component. It proposes a new design, which is called the general inverse sampling design, that avoids sampling an infeasibly large number of units. The paper provide estimators for this design as well as its adaptive modification. A simple artificial example is used to demonstrate the computations. The adaptive and non‐adaptive designs are compared using simulations based on real data sets. The results indicate that, for appropriate populations, the adaptive version can have a substantial variance reduction compared with the non‐adaptive version. Also, adaptive general inverse sampling with a limitation on the initial sample size has a greater variance reduction than without the limitation.     

Institutional Voids,Economic Adversity and Inter‐firm Cooperation in an Emerging Market: The Mediating Role of Government R&D Support

This paper examines the mediating mechanism of the relationship between institutional voids (IVs) and inter‐firm cooperation and the moderating role of economic adversity in the context of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) based in emerging markets. The hypotheses are tested using time‐lagged survey data from 214 SMEs in Ghana. The findings provide support for the hypotheses by showing that: (1) IVs positively influence the use of government research and development (R&D) support; (2) the use of government R&D support mediates the relationship between IVs and inter‐firm cooperation; and (3) economic adversity positively moderates the relationship between IVs and the use of government R&D support. The findings contribute to understanding the role of IVs in inter‐firm cooperation. The wider implications for theory and practice are examined.     

Measurement and determinants of socioeconomic development: A critical conspectus

The study evaluates the progress made in the past decades on the measurement of socioeconomic performance. Both income and social indicators approaches are thoroughly surveyed and an additional contribution is made to the latter by undertaking a large-scale correlation study. The results of the correlation analysis indicate a high level of correspondence between per capita GNP and various composite social indices constructed by an aggregation procedure called the Wroclaw Taxonomic Method. On the determinants of socioeconomic progress, the study examines two well-known development strategies, equity and basic needs. Besides, it suggests few other policy instruments which might influence the level of socioeconomic development. Finally, some new areas are identified for future research in this subject.     

Snake parasitism in an urban old-growth forest

Urban-associated changes can have immediate or long-term consequences on animal populations. Such changes may be assessed through parasite prevalence and abundance in wildlife hosts, as urbanization can influence parasitism and disease transmission in wildlife. Snakes are widespread and diverse vertebrates that often persist in urban environments; however, parasitism of snakes in urban environments has yet to be studied, leaving the roles of snakes in parasite transmission uncharacterized. Field ecology, microscopy, molecular techniques, and geographic information science (GIS) were integrated to characterize parasitism of snakes in an urban old-growth forest park. The species, sex, mass, length, location, and prevalence of ecto-, hemo-, and fecal parasites were determined for 34 snakes of 6 species. Ectoparasites (mite), hemoparasites (Hepatozoon spp.), and fecal parasites (Entamoeba spp., Trichomonas spp., Strongloides spp., and an unidentified helminth) were detected in snakes and 64.7?% of snakes were infected by at least one of these parasites. Parasite infections were generally not related to the sex, age, or body condition of snakes. The locations of infected snakes were used to produce risk maps indicating where parasite prevalence is predicted to be greatest. The analysis of these maps indicated that snakes with fecal parasites were closer than non-infected snakes to the edge of the forest. This study confirms that snakes may be important parasite hosts or reservoirs in parasite transmission pathways in urban environments and it provides an integrative multidisciplinary approach that may be used to monitor parasitism dynamics in other urban wildlife areas.     

Bayesian and Robust Bayesian analysis under a general class of balanced loss functions

For estimating an unknown parameter θ, we introduce and motivate the use of balanced loss functions of the form L_{r, w, d0}(q, d)=wr(d₀, d)+ (1-w) r(q, d){L_{\rho, \omega, \delta_0}(\theta, \delta)=\omega \rho(\delta_0, \delta)+ (1-\omega) \rho(\theta, \delta)}, as well as the weighted version q(q) L_{r, w, d0}(q, d){q(\theta) L_{\rho, \omega, \delta_0}(\theta, \delta)}, where ρ(θ, δ) is an arbitrary loss function, δ ₀ is a chosen a priori “target” estimator of q, w ? [0,1){\theta, \omega \in[0,1)}, and q(·) is a positive weight function. we develop Bayesian estimators under L_{r, w, d0}{L_{\rho, \omega, \delta_0}} with ω > 0 by relating such estimators to Bayesian solutions under L_{r, w, d0}{L_{\rho, \omega, \delta_0}} with ω = 0. Illustrations are given for various choices of ρ, such as absolute value, entropy, linex, and squared error type losses. Finally, under various robust Bayesian analysis criteria including posterior regret gamma-minimaxity, conditional gamma-minimaxity, and most stable, we establish explicit connections between optimal actions derived under balanced and unbalanced losses.     

The Assessment of Quality of Life in Transitional Neighborhoods

Quality of life (QoL) is being considered as one of the fundamental concepts in contemporary era. It tries to assess the level of general welfare of the communities. Urban transitional neighborhoods possess specific situation and as a result present distinctive QoL. The major objective of this study is to identify and measure the QoL dimensions in urban transitional neighborhoods using both objective and subjective indices pertaining to Darvazeshemiran neighborhood of Tehran. In order to accomplish this and gather needed data, 244 questionnaires were distributed among Darvazeshemiran’s residents. This study suggests that there exists low level of QoL in the study area. That is 64.3 % of the residents were dissatisfied with the prevailing level of QoL. This in turn is associated with the transitional nature of this neighborhood. The residents were strongly dissatisfied with regard to the environmental qualification as opposed to accessibility status. Furthermore, this study identified five objective factors respectively regarding QoL. There exists low correlation between subjective and objective dimensions. That demands simultaneous consideration of both objective and subjective dimensions. It is argued that individual treatments of each could not accurately represent the QoL of residents.     

Global Governance,neoliberalism and national responses: The case of Bangladesh’s ready‐made garment (RMG) sector

This article on the ready‐made garment (RMG) sector of Bangladesh shows how over‐reliance on foreign capital for development financing and deregulated investment—a hallmark of neoliberal economic arrangements—undermines the incorporation of SDGs’ and INGOs’ equity principles, contributing to biased policy responses yielding unequal outcomes. The article cautions that while countries prioritize economic growth over social and environmental nourishment and continue to adopt neoliberal economic policies to promote economic growth, inequity is unavoidable, if not inevitable. Thus, the way forward may be to shift the focus of ‘development’ from the economy to society, to building ‘good societies’ where institutions and strategies, including those that contribute to economic growth, are organized such that these complement not compromise the evolution of such societies.