A functional connectivity approach for modeling cross-sectional dependence with an application to the estimation of hedonic housing prices in Paris

This paper proposes a functional connectivity approach, inspired by brain imaging literature, to model cross-sectional dependence. Using a varying parameter framework, the model allows correlation patterns to arise from complex economic or social relations rather than being simply functions of economic or geographic distances between locations. It nests the conventional spatial and factor model approaches as special cases. A Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo method implements this approach. A small scale Monte Carlo study is conducted to evaluate the performance of this approach in finite samples, which outperforms both a spatial model and a factor model. We apply the functional connectivity approach to estimate a hedonic housing price model for Paris using housing transactions over the period 1990–2003. It allows us to get more information about complex spatial connections and appears more suitable to capture the cross-sectional dependence than the conventional methods.     

Benevolence-dominant,authoritarianism-dominant,and classical paternalistic leadership: Testing their relationships with subordinate performance

We propose a new typology of paternalistic leadership styles based on how leaders demonstrate authoritarianism and benevolence, the two essential components of this type of leadership. Benevolence-dominant paternalistic leadership refers to leaders' sole dependence on the use of benevolence without their strong assertion of authority, whereas authoritarianism-dominant paternalistic leadership is based mainly on authoritarianism itself; classical paternalistic leadership, which best fits early observations of paternalistic leaders, refers to the salient combination of both leadership components. We used two distinct samples and methods to test this typology and the association with subordinate performance. Across the two studies, a field investigation with Taiwanese military supervisor-subordinate dyads and a hypothetical scenario experiment with U.S. working adults, we found a positive relationship between classical paternalistic leadership and subordinate performance as strong as that between benevolence-dominant paternalistic leadership and performance. Our findings echo the phenomenon that paternalistic leaders tend to combine benevolence with authoritarianism to affect subordinate performance.     

Contagion of Anxiety Symptoms Among Adolescent Siblings: A Twin Study

This study examined whether social contagion of anxiety symptoms is present between siblings during early adolescence and whether this process is moderated by sex, relationship quality, and zygosity. Based on 634 monozygotic and dizygotic twins (336 females) assessed in Grades 6 and 7, anxiety symptoms and sibling relationship quality were measured with self‐report questionnaires. The predictive association of the co‐twin's level of anxiety with adolescents' own increased anxiety 1 year later was only observed in same‐sex twin dyads (monozygotic and dizygotic) and was higher for those who perceived a higher level of relationship quality with their co‐twin. Raising awareness of a possible sibling contagion of anxiety may be useful for preventing the development of anxiety symptoms in youth.     

Food in a row: urban trees offer valuable floral resources to pollinating insects

Urbanization affects the availability and diversity of floral resources (pollen and/or nectar) for wild pollinating insects. For example, urban green areas are characterized by an abundance of ornamental plant species. Increasingly, trees are planted to improve the aesthetics of urban streets and parks. These urban trees might offer important floral resources to pollinating insects. To examine the suitability of urban trees as resources for pollinating insects, we investigated the chemical composition of pollen and nectar as well as the amount of nectar produced by the nine major insect-pollinated tree species planted in cities of Western Europe, namely Acer pseudoplatanus, Aesculus carnea, A. hippocastanum, Robinia pseudoacacia, Tilia cordata, T. x euchlora, T. x europaea, T. platyphyllos and T. tomentosa. The analyses revealed that globally the Tilia trees provide pollen with lower contents of polypeptides, amino acids and phytosterols compared with the other species. Urban tree flowers offer abundant nectar with relatively high sugar contents (0.16–1.28 mg/flower); sucrose was the predominant sugar in all nectars. The investigated tree species could therefore be considered in future city plantings.     

Urban hazards: spatial ecology and survivorship of a turtle in an expanding suburban environment

Urban Ecosystems - Urbanization poses a threat to long-lived vertebrates, particularly from road mortalities that can threaten population persistence. We studied movements, behavior and...     

Evaluation of strategies to mitigate contagion spread using social network characteristics

Computer simulation is an effective tool for assessing mitigation strategies, with recent trends concentrating on agent-based techniques. These methods require high computational efforts in order to simulate enough scenarios for statistical significance. The population individuals and their contacts determined by agent-based simulations form a social network. For some network structures it is possible to gain high accuracy estimates of contagion spread based on the connection structure of the network, an idea that is utilized in this work. A representative social network constructed from the 2006 census of the Greater Toronto Area (Ontario, Canada) of 5 million individuals in 1.8 million households is used to demonstrate the efficacy of our approach. We examine the effects of six mitigation strategies with respect to their ability to contain disease spread as indicated by pre- and post-vaccination reproduction numbers, mean local clustering coefficients and degree distributions. One outcome of the analysis provides evidence supporting the design of mitigation strategies that aim to fragment the population into similarly sized components. While our analysis is framed in the context of pandemic disease spread, the approach is applicable to any contagion such as computer viruses, rumours, social trends, and so on.