Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Analyzing Incomplete Categorical Data: Revisiting Maximum Likelihood Estimation (Mle) Procedure, Hoo Ling Ping, M. Ataharul Islam

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Incomplete data poses formidable difficulties in the application of statistical techniques and requires special procedures to handle. The most common ways to solve this problem are by ignoring, truncating, censoring or collapsing those data, but these may lead to inappropriate conclusions because those data might contain important information. Most of the research for estimating cell probabilities involving incomplete categorical data is based on the EM algorithm. A likelihood approach is employed for estimating cell probabilities for missing values and makes comparisons between maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and the EM algorithm. The MLE can provide almost the same estimates as that …

Adaptive Estimation Of Heteroscedastic Linear Regression Model Using Probability Weighted Moments, Faqir Muhammad, Muhammad Aslam, G.R. Pasha

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

An adaptive estimator is presented by using probability weighted moments as weights rather than conventional estimates of variances for unknown heteroscedastic errors while estimating a heteroscedastic linear regression model. Empirical studies of the data generated by simulations for normal, uniform, and logistically distributed error terms support our proposed estimator to be quite efficient, especially for small samples.

Construction Of Insurance Scoring System Using Regression Models, Noriszura Ismail, Abdul Aziz Jemain

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

This study suggests the regression models of Lognormal, Normal and Gamma for constructing insurance scoring system. The main advantage of a scoring system is that it can be used by insurers to differentiate between high and low risks insureds, thus allowing the profitability of insureds to be predicted.

Road Ecology Course And Seminar Series, Mark D. Sytsma

TREC Final Reports

The American road network is a major economic investment that is a major organizing force for human activity. The road system has profoundly altered ecological processes and, as a result, it is also an important organizing force for ecosystems. Understanding the ecological consequences of road system design and use is critical to effective engineering and management of road systems to minimize impacts. I propose a new course within Environmental Science and Resources at PSU that will expose upper division undergraduate and graduate students to the fundamental concepts of road ecology through discussion, guest speakers, and field trips. I propose a …

Critical Junctures? Privatization Policy In Brazil And Argentina At The Start Of The Century, John Hogan

Articles

This paper uses the critical junctures framework developed by Hogan and Doyle (2007) to determine if there were critical junctures in privatization policy in Brazil and Argentina at the start of the 21st century. The framework constitutes a rigorous approach to the identification of crisis, ideational change, and policy change. It is used to examine the economic disasters in Brazil in 1999 and Argentina in 2001. Previously, we would have had to wait decades before making such an assessment, as there were few tools with which to identify critical junctures, and these were usually only effective long after the event.

Myths, Reasonable Disagreement, And A League Of Democracies, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The United States ' election in 2004 was based on a number of foreign policy myths. Three of the most obvious were:

• The war in Iraq was necessary as a response to the threat of international terrorism. As a result, the world is now a safer place;
• The institutions of the UN are corrupt and do nothing but restrict American power;
• Al Qaeda and international terrorism more generally are extremely significant threats to American national security

Human Rights And The 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, Brent J. Steele

Human Rights & Human Welfare

There has been a vivid tendency this year by the conventional keepers of Washington wisdom to explicate the two presidential candidates' foreign policy views using old frameworks of "hawk" and "dove." Not only is this binary wrong, it fundamentally obscures some rather ironic potentials for how each candidate, if elected president, will focus upon human rights in their foreign policy. McCain's neoconservative view of the world is founded upon the Wilsonian call for democratization-culminating in what he terms a "League of Democracies." To use a concept that Arnold Wolfers first coined, and one which Joshua Muravchik has proffered as well, …

Moving Ahead: Five Essential Elements For Working Effectively With Girls, Betsy Mattews, Dana Jones Hubbard

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Quite a bit of literature these days addresses what is believed to be an increase in the frequency and severity of girls' problem behaviors and the need for gender-responsive treatment. The extent to which this literature has been translated into juvenile justice practices, however, appears limited by several factors. This article briefly discusses these impediments, and offers suggestions for five essential elements that reflect the current state of knowledge regarding effective intervention with girls involved in the juvenile justice system.

Advocate, November 2008, Vol. [20], No. [3], Advocate

The Advocate

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

From the Editor's Desk: The Road Ahead (p. 2)

Political Analysis: The Other November Election, Michael Busch (p. 3)

CUNY News in Brief (p. 3)

Adjuncting: Adjunct Project Wants You to Have More Money!, Renee McGarry and Jesse Goldstein (p. 5)

Grad Life: The Long View from the Ivory Tower, Alison Powell (p. 6)

What’s So Democratic about American Democracy?, Advocate Staff (p. 7)

Forgetting Iraq and the Discourse of Responsibility, Steven Pludwin (p. 9)

What’s Happening to America?, Chalmers Johnson, Bill Ayers, and Amiri Baraka (p. 11)

Book Review: Democracy’s Demons: Inside the Mind of the …

Speak Softly...With Everyone You Can, Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

From the Monroe Doctrine to the Bush Doctrine, United States foreign policy has been predicated on the assumption that somehow it knows what is best for the rest of the world. Monroe feared a potential encroachment from Russia and meddling in the "American" Hemisphere by the European powers and issued what originally appeared as a modest statement about resistance to intervention by any other country than the United States . Ironically enforced by the British Navy at that time, the Monroe Doctrine went far beyond its modest beginnings to set a precedent for the development of U.S. foreign policy. The …

Therapeutic Challenges Of Multi-Being, Kenneth J. Gergen

Psychology Faculty Works

This paper emerges from an attempt to shift the locus of understanding human action from the individual to relationship. In doing so we come to see persons as multi-beings, that is, as constituted within multiple relationships from which they emerge with multiple, incoherent, and often conflicting potentials. Therapy, in this context, becomes a collaborative relationship with the aim of transforming the client's broader relational network. In this view, schooling in a singular practice of therapy artificially limits the therapist's potential, and thus the possible outcomes of the client–therapist relationship. Invited, then, is a reflective eclecticism, in which the myriad potentials …

Rod Library Newsletter: Rod Notes, V1n3, November 2008, University Of Northern Iowa. Rod Library.

Rod Library newsletter: Notes for the Stalled

Contents:

-- UNI Campanile
-- ARTstor
-- Career Collection
-- My Library Account
-- Searching for a specific article?

Venture Capital And Sequential Investments, Dirk Bergemann, Ulrich Hege, Liang Peng

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We present a dynamic model of venture capital financing, described as a sequential investment problem with uncertain outcome. Each venture has a critical, but unknown threshold beyond which it cannot progress. If the threshold is reached before the completion of the project, then the project fails, otherwise it succeeds. The investors decide sequentially about the speed of the investment and the optimal path of staged investments. We derive the dynamically optimal funding policy in response to the arrival of information during the development of the venture. We develop three types of predictions from our theoretical model and test these predictions …

Estimation And Model Selection Of Semiparametric Multivariate Survival Functions Under General Censorship, Xiaohong Chen, Yanqin Fan, Demian Pouzo, Zhiliang Ying

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Many models of semiparametric multivariate survival functions are characterized by nonparametric marginal survival functions and parametric copula functions, where different copulas imply different dependence structures. This paper considers estimation and model selection for these semiparametric multivariate survival functions, allowing for misspecified parametric copulas and data subject to general censoring. We first establish convergence of the two-step estimator of the copula parameter to the pseudo-true value defined as the value of the parameter that minimizes the KLIC between the parametric copula induced multivariate density and the unknown true density. We then derive its root–n asymptotically normal distribution and provide a simple …

Havre Community Survey, Christine Oschell

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

The purpose of this case study was to provide Havre community planners with an understanding of their visitors and the money spent by them in Havre, MT.

Venture Capital And Sequential Investments, Dirk Bergemann, Ulrich Hege, Liang Peng

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We analyze sequential investment decisions in an innovative project that depend on the investor’s information about the project failure risk and its potential final value. We consider the feedback effects between learning about the project parameters and the continuous adjustment of the investment strategy. Investors decide sequentially about the speed of investment and the optimal degree of involvement. We develop three types of predictions from our theoretical model and test these predictions in a large sample of venture capital investment in the U.S. for the period of 1987-2002. First, the investment flow starts cautiously if the failure risk is high …

Venture Capital And Sequential Investments, Dirk Bergemann, Ulrich Hege, Liang Peng

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We present a dynamic model of venture capital financing, described as a sequential investment problem with uncertain outcome. Each venture has a critical, but unknown threshold beyond which it cannot progress. If the threshold is reached before the completion of the project, then the project fails, otherwise it succeeds. The investors decide sequentially about the speed of the investment and the optimal path of staged investments. We derive the dynamically optimal funding policy in response to the arrival of information during the development of the venture. We develop three types of predictions from our theoretical model and test these predictions …

Managing Strategic Buyers, Johannes Hörner, Larry Samuelson

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We consider the problem of a monopolist who must sell her inventory before some deadline, facing n buyers with independent private values. The monopolist posts prices but has no commitment power. The seller faces a basic trade-off between imperfect price discrimination and maintaining an effective reserve price. When there is only one unit and only a few buyers, the seller essentially posts unacceptable prices up to the very end, at which point prices collapse in a series of jumps to a “reserve price” that exceeds marginal cost. When there are many buyers, the seller abandons this reserve price in order …

Managing Strategic Buyers, Johannes Hörner, Larry Samuelson

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We consider the problem of a monopolist with an object to sell before some deadline, facing n buyers with independent private values. The monopolist posts prices but has no commitment power. We show that the monopolist can always secure at least the larger of the static monopoly profit and the revenue from a Dutch auction with a zero reserve price. When there are only a few buyers, her profits are higher than this bound, and she essentially posts unacceptable prices up to the very end, at which point prices collapse to a “reservation price” that exceeds marginal cost. When there …

Acute Nicotine Reduces And Repeated Nicotine Increases Spontaneous Activity In Male And Female Lewis Rats, Adam J. Prus, Robert E. Vann, John A. Rosecrans, John R. James, Alan Pehrson, Mary M. O'Connell, Scott D. Philibin, Susan E. Robinson

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The Lewis (LEW) strain of rat appears more sensitive to nicotine than other strains in self-administration, conditioned place preference, and drug discrimination behavioral studies. The present study sought to further evaluate the behavioral effects of chronic nicotine treatment in the LEW strain by assessing spontaneous activity, which has consistently revealed sensitization to chronic nicotine administration in Sprague Dawley (SD) rats. High active and low active male and female LEW rats (N = 8 per group) were treated twice daily with either nicotine (0.4 mg/kg, sc) or vehicle for 14 consecutive days. Regardless of baseline activity level or sex, spontaneous activity …

37 | Paneas Volume I: The Roman To Early Islamic Periods Excavations In Areas A, B, E, F, G And H, Vassilios Tzaferis, Shoshana Israeli

IAA Reports—Monograph Series of the Israel Antiquities Authority

Occupation at the site of Paneas, also known as Caesarea Philippi and Baniyas, spanned some 2300 years, from the establishment of a small sanctuary devoted to the cult of Pan in the Hellenistic period, to the prosperous Roman capital and polis Caesarea Philippi, and becoming a Christian pilgrimage site known as Paneas in the Byzantine period; following the Muslim conquest, a formidable fortress stood here during the Middle Ages, when the site was known as Baniyas, and finally a poor Ottoman village abandoned in modern times.

This is the first volume of a series documenting the large-scale IAA excavations at …

Among The Masses-A Search For Identity, Ashleigh Burtnett

Lake Union Herald

No abstract provided.

Creating An Atmosphere Of Thankfulness, Susan E. Murray

Lake Union Herald

No abstract provided.

Expiration Date?, Beatrice Dolce

Lake Union Herald

No abstract provided.

Collection Development Policy For General Interest Newspapers, Jeanetta Drueke

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Collection Development Policies

General interest newspapers are those that contain news, articles of opinion, features, and advertising. They do not include subject specific periodicals such as W or Barron’s. The audience for newspapers is wide-ranging: undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and community users.

The University Libraries provides newspapers and newspaper articles in a variety of formats: print, microfilm, electronic full facsimile collections (such as ProQuest Historical Newspapers Online), online aggregators (such as LexisNexis), free newspaper websites, and online-only newspapers.

The goal of newspaper collection development is a full and appropriate transition from print to online newspapers.

Corporate Predators Caught In Meltdown, Gil Villagran

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The meltdown of Wall Street's so-called 'investment institutions' where the financial bubble of over-valued assets finally burst is so mind boggling that even economic gurus with PhDs and Nobel Prizes, and CEO billionaires testifying before Congress fail to fully explain what happened. Did the "invisible hand" of the "free market" finally deal America a losing set of cards after years of a winning streak? Is it all due to bad luck? Fate? An unfortunate financial version of a perfect storm, similar to Hurricane Katrina hitting the Gulf Coast?

Academic Achievement Of Students In A Charter Homeschool, Mary A. Leeds Edd

Dissertations

A recent development in education is the public charter school as a homeschool model. In several states across the nation, a child may enroll in an independent study program of a public charter school and base his or her studies in the home. This model in the realm of education is called charter homeschool. The state of California has over 120 operating charter homeschools, also known as independent study programs or non-classroom based charter schools. The delivery of instruction from non-classroom based programs has begun to challenge traditional definitions of public schooling. The increased state accountability demands of student academic …

Data Note: Tracking Employment And Day Support Participation And Outcomes In State Intellectual Disability And Developmental Disability Agencies, Samita Bhattarai, Jean E. Winsor

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

As a part of the FY2007 National Survey of Day and Employment Programs data was requested from state Intellectual Disabilities and Developmental Disabilities (ID/DD) agencies regarding the sources of information used to report the total number of individuals served in the following services categories: integrated employment, facility-based work, community-based non work, and facility-based non work. Data on sources is an important factor to note when comparing each state’s service outcomes over time. Collecting information on the source of the data can help to explain unexpected trends in state service distribution when the state has not implemented changes in policy or …

Fits & Starts: The Difficult Path For Working Single Parents, Rebecca Loya, Ruth J. Liberman, Randy Albelda, Elisabeth Babcock

Center for Social Policy Publications

With dramatic shifts in the economy in recent years, it has become increasingly difficult for families to move into or stay in the middle class without access to higher education and skills training. Government-sponsored work supports help by providing direct assistance to working families to meet basic needs, such as child care, food, and housing. Yet, many supports do not reach low-wage working families in Massachusetts because of low eligibility thresholds, inadequate funding, limited availability, limited awareness, and numerous barriers to accessing such supports. Even for low-wage workers who do receive key work supports, such as subsidized child care and …

Froese's "The Plot To Kill God: Findings From The Soviet Experiment In Secularization" - Book Review, Dr. Joseph A. Loya O.S.A.

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.