Migrant networks and the immigrant professional: An analysis of the role of weak ties

Weak ties, particularly those to potential employers, play a more important role than strong ties in the immigration of professionals to the United States. I operationalize network strength through the class of admission variable in the Immigration and Naturalization Service's public use data files,Immigrants Admitted to the United States, 1972–1992. I also examine the differential impact of legislative measures on the availability of strong versus weak ties for four groups of professionals: physicians, nurses, engineers and scientists. Not only do weak ties figure heavily on the immigration experiences of professionals, but those impacts affect women differently than men. Professional women rely more heavily on strong ties than on weak ties when compared with males in their respective professions, with the exception of nursing. These findings suggests a need for further study into the migration experiences of professionals as well as more research into how gendered networks develop among immigrant professionals and how those networks influence (either positively or negatively) immigrant adaptation to United States' society.     

Rank-based analysis of repeated measures block designs

A rank-based inference is developed for repeated measures balanced incomplete block and randomized complete block designs using a suitable dispersion function. Asymptotic distributions of rank estimators are developed after establishing approximate linearity of the gradient vector of the dispersion function. Unlike available nonparametric procedures for those designs, estimation and testing are tied together. Three different test statistics are developed for testing the linear hypotheses. Friedman's (1937) statistic and Durbin's (1951) statistic are particular cases of one of the three proposed statistics. An estimate of a scale parameter which appears in the ARE expression as well as as in the variences and covariances of the rank estimators is discussed.     

Optimality in the presence of two factor interactions among the nuisance factors

Here we consider an m way heterogeneity settingin the presence of two factor interactions among the heterogeneity directions . The set of experimental units considered do not exhaust all possible level combinations of the heterogeneity directions ; but the set is such that all heterogeneity effects assumed i n the model are orthogonally estmable.In such a setting , calleda doubly balanced m-way setting , the C-matrix of the reduced normal equations for the treatment effects is derived . Universally optimal designs are obtained in the cases where the settingis (i) Completely regular or (ii) partly regular of a special type . An interesting observation is that there are situations where the universally optimal designsin the present setting are totally different from the designs known t o be universally optimal when there is no interaction effect among the heterogeneity directions. This indicates that the usual optimality criteria are sensitive to validity or otherwise of the usual assumptions of lack of interactions among heterogeneity directions.     

On the total sojourn time of particles in semi-markov compartmental system with branching particles

We consider a semi-Markov compartroental system with branching particles, Me study the total sojourn time of all the particles and obtain the asymptotic behaviour of its mean. We also discuss some special systems.     

Speculating with human rights: two South Asian women writers and utopian mobilities

ABSTRACT

Utopian and dystopian fiction are classifiable under the umbrella term speculative fiction, which speculates with or takes risks with the reality it creates in the fiction. My paper investigates speculative writing which is also utopian by South Asian feminist and activist women, comparing creative texts by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, from the first half of the 20^th century, and Vandana Singh, from contemporary times. A selection of their published short fiction are focused on, in particular Hossain’s ‘Sultana’s Dream’ (1905) and Padmarag and the short story ‘Delhi’ by Singh. The article pulls together analysis of different kinds of mobility to argue that both writers, in their imagination of mobile utopia, also further creative speculations round human rights, with special reference to gender and the city. The article analyses how South Asian metropolises, notably Calcutta and Delhi, get reimagined in their writing. Both Hossain and Singh were/are educators in real life. How do their educative and speculative voices come together (or not) in their mobile utopia reimagining human rights? My answer is that the speculative reality-bending mode offers an articulation of the educative in a very different key to the conventionally pedagogic.     

A birth and death process with logistic mean population

An example of density dependent-birth and death process whose mean satisfies the logistic equation as proposed by Gompertz is given. Explicit expressions for the probability generating function and non-trivialstationarydistribution are obtained.     

Laplace approximations to posterior moments and marginal distributions on circles,spheres, and cylinders

We extend recent work on Laplace approximations (Tierney and Kadane 1986; Tierney, Kass, and Kadane 1989) from parameter spaces that are subspaces of R^k to those that are on circles, spheres, and cylinders. While such distributions can be mapped onto the real line (for example, a distribution on the circle can be thought of as a function of an angle θ, 0 ? 0 ? 2π), that the end points coincide is not a feature of the real line, and requires special treatment. Laplace approximations on the real line make essential use of the normal integral in both the numerator and the denominator. Here that role is played by the von Mises integral on the circle, by the Bingham integrals on the spheres and hyperspheres, and by the normal-von Mises and normal-Bingham integrals on the cylinders and hypercylinders, respectively. We begin with a brief introduction to Laplace approximations and to previous Bayesian work on circles, spheres, and cylinders. We then develop the theory for parameter spaces that are hypercylinders, since all other shapes considered here are special cases. We compute some examples, which show reasonable accuracy even for small samples.     

Bayesian assessment of assumptions of regression analysis

Many statistical procedures are based on the models which specify the conditions under which the data are generated. Many applications of linear regression, for example, assume that:(i) the observations are independent; (ii) the errors in the observations are identically distributed; (iii) each error has a normal distribution with mean zero and unknown variance σ²> 0. Previous works have examined individual departures from these assumptions. Here we examine composite departures. It is assumed that the error distribution in a linear model is power-exponential and that the observations are generated via a first order autoregressive model with the possibility of spurious observations. The consequences are illustrated via an example.     

Stochastic compartmental models with birth,death and immigration of particles

A stochastic multi-compartmental system with initial and immigrant particles performing birth and death processes is considered. Moments and approximate solutions for cumulant generating function for the number of particles in various compartments are obtained. Explicit expression have been obtained for the covariance function between the number of particles in any compartment at two different time points. Applications are discussed.     

Sojourn time distribution in a stochastic compartmental system

Sojourn time distribution of an immigrant particle In a multi-compartmental system, total number of particles present in the system at any time and total time spent by all the particles in the system in any interval of time have been studies. Special cases are discussed.