‘Dominant ethnicity’ and the ‘ethnic-civic’ dichotomy in the work of A. D. Smith

This article considers the way in which the work of Anthony Smith has helped to structure debates surrounding the role of ethnicity in present-day nations. Two major lines of enquiry are evident here. First, the contemporary role of dominant ethnic groups within 'their' nations and second, the interplay between ethnic and civic elements in nationalist argument. The two processes are related, but maintain elements of distinctiveness. Smith's major contribution to the dominant ethnicity debate has been to disembed ethnicity from the ideologically-charged and/or anglo-centric discourse of ethnic relations and to place it in historical context, thereby opening up space for dominant group ethnicity to be considered as a distinct phenomenon. This said, Smith's work does not adequately account for the vicissitudes of dominant ethnicity in the contemporary West. Building on the classical works of Hans Kohn and Friedrich Meinecke, Anthony Smith has also made a seminal contribution to the debate on civic and ethnic forms of national identity and nationalist ideology. As well as freeing this debate from the strong normative overtones which it has often carried, he has continued to insist that the terms civic and ethnic should be treated as an ideal-typical distinction rather than a scheme of classification

Approximate Bias Correction in Econometrics

This paper discusses ways to reduce the bias of consistent estimators that are biased in finite samples. It is necessary that the bias function, which relates parameter values to bias, should be estimable by computer simulation or by some other method. If so, bias can be reduced or, in some cases that may not be unrealistic, even eliminated. In general, several evaluations of the bias function will be required to do this. Unfortunately, reducing bias may increase the variance, or even the mean squared error, of an estimator. Whether or not it does so depends on the shape of the bias functions. The techniques of the paper are illustrated by applying them to two problems: estimating the autoregressive parameter in an AR(1) model with a constant term, and estimation of a logit model.bias function, mean squared error, simulation, finite samples

Enhanced online course design and its effect on the perceived level of community of inquiry

Academic institutions increasingly have adopted the online platform due to its low delivery cost and ease of scalability to large numbers of students. The pressure to increase enrollment numbers without enhancements to online course design have created the problem of lower retention and completion rates which can effect institutional funding. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of enhancements to course design as well as class size on the level of perceived Community of Inquiry (CoI) experienced by college students. The primary research question was; what effect does enhanced online course design have on the perceived level of CoI among college students? A secondary research question was; what effect does class size have on the perceived level of CoI among online college students? The theoretical framework that informed this study was Community of Inquiry developed by Garrison (2000). This study employed a quasi-experimental research design since subjects were already enrolled in course sections. Cluster random sampling method was employed to select both the non-enhanced and enhanced class sections. The researcher surveyed subjects using a 34 question 5-scale summated CoI instrument including teacher, social, and cognitive presence. The population from which the sample was derived consisted of undergraduate college students over the age of 18 years old of any gender enrolled in at least one completely online 16-week class at the OSU-OKC campus. The researcher employed One-Way MANOVA and Pearson r correlation inferential statistical analysis to test all research hypotheses. The findings indicate that there is no evidence of significant effect between enhanced course design and the perceived level of CoI among college students. The findings regarding correlation of CoI scores and class size however showed there was a strong negative correlation between teaching presence, a moderate positive correlation between social presence, and a weak negative correlation between cognitive presence and class size. Other factors such as teacher training, facilitation by the instructor, student readiness, and the type of course taught and its effect to perceived levels of CoI might be considered for future research

Multiscale probability mapping: groups, clusters and an algorithmic search for filaments in SDSS

We have developed a multiscale structure identification algorithm for the detection of overdensities in galaxy data that identifies structures having radii within a user-defined range. Our "multiscale probability mapping" technique combines density estimation with a shape statistic to identify local peaks in the density field. This technique takes advantage of a user-defined range of scale sizes, which are used in constructing a coarse-grained map of the underlying fine-grained galaxy distribution, from which overdense structures are then identified. In this study we have compiled a catalogue of groups and clusters at 0.025 < z < 0.24 based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Data Release 7, quantifying their significance and comparing with other catalogues. Most measured velocity dispersions for these structures lie between 50 and 400 km/s. A clear trend of increasing velocity dispersion with radius from 0.2 to 1 Mpc/h is detected, confirming the lack of a sharp division between groups and clusters. A method for quantifying elongation is also developed to measure the elongation of group and cluster environments. By using our group and cluster catalogue as a coarse-grained representation of the galaxy distribution for structure sizes of <~ 1 Mpc/h, we identify 53 filaments (from an algorithmically-derived set of 100 candidates) as elongated unions of groups and clusters at 0.025 < z < 0.13. These filaments have morphologies that are consistent with previous samples studied.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures and 6 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Data products, three-dimensional visualisations and further information about MSPM can be found at http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/sifa/Main/MSPM/ . v2 contains two additional references. v3 has a slightly altered title and updated reference

Appendices for "Revisiting the Welfare Effects of Eliminating Business Cycles"

This paper offers several appendices for the article: the integration principle applied to the baseline model, the computational algorithm for the baseline model, calculating the welfare gain, algorithm for the model with short- and long-term unemployment, as well as additional result tables.

Associations between religiosity and sexuality in a representative sample of Australian adults

Many studies have examined the influence on sexual attitudes and behavior of religious belief (i.e., religious denomination) or religiosity (e.g., attendance at services, subjective importance of religion). However, few studies have examined the combined effects of religion and religiosity on sexual attitudes and behavior. This study examined such effects in a representative sample of 19,307 Australians aged 16–59 years (response rate, 73.1%). The study compared members of four religious groups (Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim) and two levels of frequency of attendance at religious service (less than monthly, at least monthly). Religious participants were compared to their non-religious peers in analyses adjusted for potential confounding by demographic variables. The outcomes were five sexual behaviors and five corresponding measures of sexual attitudes. The study revealed inconsistent patterns of association between religion/religiosity and a range of sexual behaviors and attitudes. In general, greater attendance at religious services was associated with more conservative patterns of behavior and attitudes. However, religious people who attended services infrequently were more similar to their non-religious peers than their more religious peers. The results of this study highlight the importance of considering not only religion or religiosity, but the intersection between these two variables

Stars that Move Together Were Born Together

It is challenging to reliably identify stars that were born together outside of actively star-forming regions and bound stellar systems. However, co-natal stars should be present throughout the Galaxy, and their demographics can shed light on the clustered nature of star formation and the dynamical state of the disk. In previous work we presented a set of simulations of the Galactic disk that followed the clustered formation and dynamical evolution of 4 billion individual stars over the last 5 Gyr. The simulations predict that a high fraction of co-moving stars with physical and 3D velocity separation of $\Delta r < 20$ pc and $\Delta v < 1.5$ km s$^{-1}$ are co-natal. In this \textit{Letter}, we use \textit{Gaia} DR2 and LAMOST DR4 data to identify and study co-moving pairs. We find that the distribution of relative velocities and separations of pairs in the data is in good agreement with the predictions from the simulation. We identify 111 co-moving pairs in the Solar neighborhood with reliable astrometric and spectroscopic measurements. These pairs show a strong preference for having similar metallicities when compared to random field pairs. We therefore conclude that these pairs were very likely born together. The simulations predict that co-natal pairs originate preferentially from high-mass and relatively young ($< 1$ Gyr) star clusters. \textit{Gaia} will eventually deliver well-determined metallicities for the brightest stars, enabling the identification of thousands of co-natal pairs due to disrupting star clusters in the solar neighborhood.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Submitted to ApJL. Catalog here: http://harshilkamdar.github.io/2019/04/03/pairs.htm