Stein Estimation for Spherically Symmetric Distributions: Recent Developments

This paper reviews advances in Stein-type shrinkage estimation for spherically symmetric distributions. Some emphasis is placed on developing intuition as to why shrinkage should work in location problems whether the underlying population is normal or not. Considerable attention is devoted to generalizing the "Stein lemma" which underlies much of the theoretical development of improved minimax estimation for spherically symmetric distributions. A main focus is on distributional robustness results in cases where a residual vector is available to estimate an unknown scale parameter, and, in particular, in finding estimators which are simultaneously generalized Bayes and minimax over large classes of spherically symmetric distributions. Some attention is also given to the problem of estimating a location vector restricted to lie in a polyhedral cone.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-STS323 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

A Moon with a View

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91019/1/jbrandwe_1334776359.pd

Creating Accessibility in Museums for Visitors with Visual Impairments: Teaching Museum Educators How to Write Verbal Descriptions of Artifacts to Create a Meaningful Museum Experience

This Integrative Masters Project is a professional development workshop that was created to teach museum educators, staff, and Gallery Educators (the museum\u27s docents) at the Museum of Jewish Heritage -A Living Memorial to the Holocaust how to create accessibility for visitors with visual impairments to increase the richness of the museum\u27s artifacts within the collection

Constitutional Doctrine as Paring Tool: The Struggle for Relevant Evidence in \u3cem\u3eUniversity of Alabama v. Garrett\u3c/em\u3e

This Article examines the difficulties involved in translating the social model of disability into the idiom of constitutional law. The immediate focus is University of Alabama v. Garrett. Both parts of this Article consider how disability rights claims collide with a discourse of legitimacy in constitutional law. Part I focuses on the arguments presented in several major Briefs filed in support of Garrett. Constitutional doctrines are conceived as paring tools and it is shown how the Court used these doctrines to easily pare down the body of evidence Garrett\u27s lawyers sought to claim as relevant in justifying the ADA as Section 5 legislation. Among these doctrines are state sovereign immunity, state action, and disparate treatment. Part II examines how the language of equality, rights, and discrimination is used in a segment of the pre-Garrett disability literature. A contrast in the work of legal and non-legal academics is identified, namely, that legal academics tend to identify, to a much greater extent, the elements of the constitutional landscape that are inhospitable to constitutional claims to reasonable accommodation

Coping with verbal and social bullying in middle school

Becoming a victim of verbal and social bullying in middle school can lead to illness, psychological stress, and maladjustment. The coping strategies that students utilize when they are bullied may influence the likelihood and severity of these negative effects. In this study, we examined the predictions made by students in two middle schools about the ways that they would cope with becoming a victim of verbal and social bullying. We also analyzed influences for coping strategies and student willingness to seek help with bullying at school. The results show that middle school students generally expect that they will utilize adaptive approach strategies in trying to solve the problem or obtain support from others, but those who had been victimized in the last month were more likely than those not involved in bullying, to predict that they would engage in maladaptive avoidance coping strategies if victimized in the future. Willingness to seek help was found to be enhanced by approach coping strategies, less aggressive attitudes, and lower perceptions of school bullying. Policy implications for efforts to encourage approach coping strategies in middle school students through educational interventions and school counseling are discussed.peer-reviewe

Women, Work and Welfare

The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.Keynote Address. Keynote Speaker: Ruth A. Brandwein, Ph.D., State University of New York at Stony Brook, School of Social Welfare - "Women, Work, and Welfare".The Ohio State University College of Social Wor

The Neurodevelopment Of Basic Sensory Processing And Integration In Autism Spectrum Disorder

This thesis presents three studies that together explore the neurophysiological basis for the sensory processing and integration abnormalities that have been observed in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) since the disorder was first described over half a century ago. In designing these studies we seek to fill a hole that currently exists in the research community‟s knowledge of the neurodevelopment of basic multisensory integration -- both in children with autism and as well as in those with typical development. The first study applied event related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral measures of multisensory integration to a large group of healthy participants ranging in age from 7 to 29 years, with the goal of detailing the developmental trajectory of basic audiovisual integration in the brain. Our behavioral results revealed a gradual fine-tuning of multisensory facilitation of reaction time which reached mature levels by about 14 years of age. A similarly protracted period of maturation was seen in the brain processes thought to underlie to multisensory integration. Using the results of this cross-sectional study as a guide, the second study employed a between groups design to assess differences in the neural activity and behavioral facilitation associated with integrating basic audiovisual stimuli in groups of children and adolescents with ASD and typical development (aged 7-16 years). Deficits in basic audiovisual integration were seen at the earliest stages of cortical sensory processing in the ASD groups. In the concluding study we assessed whether neurophysiological measures of sensory processing and integration predict autistic symptom severity and parent-reported visual/auditory sensitivities. The data revealed that a combination of neural indices of auditory and visual processing and integration were predictive of severity of autistic symptoms in a group of children and adolescents with ASD. A particularly robust relationship was observed between severity of autism and the integrity of basic auditory processing and audiovisual integration. In contrast, our physiological indices did not predict visual/auditory sensitivities as assessed by parent responses on a questionnaire

A Multicultural Grassroots Effort to Reduce Ethnic and Racial Social Distance among Middle School Students

Raising tolerance for people of different ethnic and racial groups is the goal of the Multicultural Mosaic program, a grass-roots multicultural education effort initiated by a small group of middle school teachers in a private school in the northeast. After years of enjoying the comforts of a modern, but European-based, curriculum, these teachers took the initiative to pursue an ambitious transformation of their entire school\u27s approach to pedagogy. Not only would the English teachers introduce new texts by foreign authors and the social studies teachers introduce new materials on the history of non-Western cultures, but also the teachers of mathematics and physical education would integrate specific foreign cultures to their teaching in the classroom and on the playground. Extracurricular activities, many of which rely upon the support of parents and volunteers, would be changed also to reflect specific themes in the multicultural movement at the school

Improved estimates of location in the presence of an unknown scale

AbstractWe investigate conditions under which estimators of the form X + aU′Ug(X) dominate X when X, a p × 1 vector, and U, an m × 1 vector, are distributed such that [X1, X2,…, Xp, U1, U2,…, Up]′σ has a spherically symmetric distribution about [θ1, θ2,…, θp, 0, 0,…, 0]′, where σ is an unknown scale. Brandwein and Strawderman [2] have results for quadratic loss and we extend these results to concave functions of quadratic loss and to general quadratic loss