University of San Diego News Print Media Coverage 2001.02

Printed clippings housed in folders with a table of contents arranged by topic.https://digital.sandiego.edu/print-media/1286/thumbnail.jp

Aeronautical Engineering: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 175)

This bibliography lists 467 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in May 1984. Topics cover varied aspects of aeronautical engineering, geoscience, physics, astronomy, computer science, and support facilities

An unlikely hero: the origins of affirmative action during the Nixon administration

The dissertation builds upon the question of why Nixon, a Republican, implemented the first affirmative action programs. It is divided into three parts. The first charts the liberal approach to race relations and the crisis that attended its collapse. As Habermas noted, a "legitimation crisis" affected private institutions necessitating a new round of government intervention. This section explores the idea that affirmative action was part of this legitimation crisis, an administrative replacement for the failure of the post-war hope that racism would disappear after the destruction of formal barriers to black equality. The second looks at the interventions of the Nixon administration. It argues that the Philadelphia Plan was less important in terms of later affirmative action than is usually thought. Other programs (such as the OMBE) developed around the same time became more significant. 1970 became the year that programs aimed at reforming ghettos transformed into programs aimed at strengthening the black middle-class. Nixon, though often characterised as "aprincipled," had what Garry Wills termed "the right to earn" in mind when pushing through the Philadelphia Plan in Congress. All Americans - black and white - should have this right, he reasoned. The present-day sides of the argument had yet to be formed and in 1972 Nixon saw no fundamental contradiction in insisting that quotas not curtail the rights of white workers. The third section examines why the issue of affirmative action seemed to follow the implementation of affirmative action programs. Here, it is suggested that the changing intellectual climate surrounding the introduction of the first affirmative action programs transformed piecemeal civil rights programs into a broad policy model and ensured that controversy followed. Early affirmative action policies, this section demonstrates, caused little controversy before (at least) 1973. The sides of the debate had yet to be formed. John Rawls' work is examined as an expression of the need to replace liberal institutions - such as the allocation of resources on the basis of merit. The Club of Rome's The Limits to Growth similarly focussed attention onto the realm of distribution rather than that of production, moving from Kennedy's perspective" a rising tide lifts all boats" - to one of affirmative action. Affirmative action measures were both necessary as a mechanism of distribution and a constant focus of complaint as different groups argued over relative shares

The Measurement of Adolescent Depression

Very broadly the general aims of this study are: to examine whether the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) measures depressive symptomatology equivalently across adolescent boys and girls; and to examine whether schools exert effects on student levels of depressive symptomatology independently of individual level characteristics. In the course of this study quite a number of subsidiary questions are also addressed. Most of these questions centre around the psychometric properties of the CES-D scale when used with adolescent samples.https://research.acer.edu.au/saier/1012/thumbnail.jp

Extended discrete choice models : integrated framework, flexible error structures, and latent variables

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 199-209).Discrete choice methods model a decision-maker's choice among a set of mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive alternatives. They are used in a variety of disciplines (transportation, economics, psychology, public policy, etc.) in order to inform policy and marketing decisions and to better understand and test hypotheses of behavior. This dissertation is concerned with the enhancement of discrete choice methods. The workhorses of discrete choice are the multinomial and nested logit models. These models rely on simplistic assumptions, and there has been much debate regarding their validity. Behavioral researchers have emphasized the importance of amorphous influences on behavior such as context, knowledge, and attitudes. Cognitive scientists have uncovered anomalies that appear to violate the microeconomic underpinnings that are the basis of discrete choice analysis. To address these criticisms, researchers have for some time been working on enhancing discrete choice models. While there have been numerous advances, typically these extensions are examined and applied in isolation. In this dissertation, we present, empirically demonstrate, and test a generalized methodological framework that integrates the extensions of discrete choice. The basic technique for integrating the methods is to start with the multinomial logit formulation, and then add extensions that relax simplifying assumptions and enrich the capabilities of the basic model. The extensions include: - Specifying factor analytic (probit-like) disturbances i order to provide a flexible covariance structure, thereby relaxing the IIA condition and enabling estimation of unobserved heterogeneity through techniques such as random parameters. - Combining revealed and stated preferences in order to draw on the advantages of both types of data, thereby reducing bias and improving efficiency of the parameter estimates. - Incorporating latent variables in order to provide a richer explanation of behavior by explicitly representing the formation and effects of latent constructs such as attitudes and perceptions. - Stipulating latent classes in order to capture latent segmentation, for example. in terms of taste parameters, choice sets, and decision protocols. The guiding philosophy is that the generalized framework allows for a more realistic representation of the behavior inherent in the choice process, and consequently a better understanding of behavior, improvements in forecasts, and valuable information regarding the validity of simpler model structures. These generalized models often result in functional forms composed of complex multidimensional integrals. Therefore a key aspect of the framework is its 'logit kernel' formulation in which the disturbance of the choice model includes an additive i.i.d Gumbel term. This formulation can replicate all known error structures (as we show here) and it leads to a straightforward probability simulator (of a multinomial logit form) for use in maximum simulated likelihood estimation. The proposed framework and suggested implementation leads to a flexible, tractable, theoretically grounded, empirically verifiable. and intuitive method for incorporating and integrating complex behavioral processes in the choice model. In addition to the generalized framework, contributions are also made to two of the key methodologies hat make up the framework. First, we present new results regarding identification and normalization of he disturbance parameters of a logit kernel model. n particular, we show that identification is not always intuitive, it is not always analogous to the systematic portion. and it is not necessarily like probit. Second. we present a general framework and methodology for incorporating latent variables into choice models via the integration of choice and latent variable models and the use of psychometric data (for example. responses to attitudinal survey questions). Throughout the dissertation, empirical results are presented to highlight findings and to empirically demonstrate and test the generalized framework. The impact of the extensions cannot be known a priori. and the only way to test their value (as well as the validity of a simpler model structure) is to estimate the complex models. Sometimes the extensions result in large improvements in fit as well as in more satisfying behavioral representations. Conversely, sometimes the extensions have marginal impact. thereby showing that the more parsimonious structures are robust. All methods are often not necessary. and the generalized framework provides an approach for developing the best model specification that makes use of available data and is reflective of behavioral hypotheses.by Joan Leslie Walker.Ph.D

Assessing for the volatility of the Saudi, Dubai and Kuwait stock markets: time series analysis (2005-2016)

The Kuwait, UAE and Saudi stock markets, alongside five specific firms from the latter, provided the indicator data for analysing market volatility. Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), Bayesian and Akaike analysis, Ljung-Box Q test, Partial autocorrelation function (PAC) and autocorrelation were the unit root tests applied, alongside matrix error, in this quantitative research. The study aims were to: assess weak-natured efficiency; contrast stock markets’ efficiency; explore market efficiency changes as time progresses. Statistics regarding matrices errors enabled variables influencing market efficiency to be established. Agreement on market efficiency has not been reached by researchers, with one shortcoming of EMH being lack of acknowledgement that an explored time frame may be characterised by varying efficiency levels. Consequently, the EMH and financial conduct have been subject to historiography, yet the connection between EMH and the financial behaviour model has not been the focus of studies using historical data. Accordingly, this research shortcoming tackled through this study, with the company-linked variables influencing stock market efficiency being identified through a literature review. Further, this study prospects identified, with the ongoing development of market efficiency and acceptance of inefficiency and efficiency’s simultaneous presence being the outcome. Finally, liberalisation, financial crises and reform in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is a focus lacking in the extant research, with this study offering a further contribution in this regard. The study reveals that, with five companies and all countries characterised by market inefficiencies, which also changed as time progressed. Foremost efficiency characterised DSM, with SSM second, based on contrasting the obtained data’s random walk. The overall index had less efficiency than the specific firms. Concerning variables, SSM mark efficiency was not enhanced via crises or liberalisation, although it was by reform. Further, the research explains the results’ implications

Winona Daily News

https://openriver.winona.edu/winonadailynews/1688/thumbnail.jp

Personality, dominance experience, and the development of social behaviour in laboratory stumptail macaques (Macaca arctoides)

The utility of the concepts of personality and social dominance for the explanation of the development of social behaviour in laboratory stumptail macaques was examined. A peer-rearing paradigm was used. Infants were separated from their mothers at eight days of age, reared in social isolation until three months of age, then given experimentally-controlled dominance experience with peers until fifteen months of age. It was found that socially-isolated infant stumptails were capable of exhibiting all of the communication signals examined in this study; they exhibited them in appropriate affective contexts; and they appeared capable of recognizing specific stumptail communication signals. In addition, they seemed capable of combining the units of communication into meaningful higher-order behaviour patterns, e.g., to enlist help in multi-animal agonistic interactions. It was found that individual stumptail macaques could be reliably ordered on each of Eysenck's three dimensions of personality, i.e., neuroticism, extraversion, and psychoticism; and that knowledge about these personality characteristics may enable the prediction of certain of the individual's behavioural characteristics. Furthermore, it was found that the personality characteristics of the individual at four months of age may be useful in predicting its personality characteristics at fifteen months of age, and also its future dominance status. It was found that if experimentally-manipulated dominance experience thwarted the attainment of this "predicted" dominance status, this led to specific changes in the personality characteristics of the individual in novel situations; if experimentally- manipulated dominance experience supported the attainment of "predicted" status, then the personality characteristics of individuals in novel situations did not change. Finally, dominance experience was found to affect the frequency with which dominance strategy behaviour was exhibited in newly-formed triads; but it was not found to affect the probability of dominance, submission, play, sex, or affiliation, in novel situations. It was concluded that the data supported a transactional model of causation

Winona Daily News

https://openriver.winona.edu/winonadailynews/1517/thumbnail.jp