Pao-Lu Hsu (Xu, Bao-lu): The Grandparent of Probability and Statistics in China

The years 1910-1911 are auspicious years in Chinese mathematics with the births of Pao-Lu Hsu, Luo-Keng Hua and Shiing-Shen Chern. These three began the development of modern mathematics in China: Hsu in probability and statistics, Hua in number theory, and Chern in differential geometry. We here review some facts about the life of P.-L. Hsu which have been uncovered recently, and then discuss some of his contributions. We have drawn heavily on three papers in the 1979 Annals of Statistics (volume 7, pages 467-483) by T. W. Anderson, K. L. Chung and E. L. Lehmann, as well as an article by Jiang Ze-Han and Duan Xue-Fu in Hsu's collected papers.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/12-STS387 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

A new species of gastrodia (gastrodieae, epidendroideae, orchidaceae) from the Maliau Basin Conservation Area, Sabah, Borneo

Gastrodia Brown (1810: 330; Gastrodieae, Epidendroideae) comprises mycoheterotrophic orchids from throughout the temperate and tropical regions of Asia, Oceania, Madagascar and Africa (Chung & Hsu 2006, Cribb et al. 2010, Tan et al. 2012). The genus is characterized by fleshy tubers, as well as the absence of normal leaves, union of sepals and petals and two mealy pollinia that lack caudicles. Furthermore, many Gastrodia species within section Codonanthus (Schlechter 1911, Tuyama 1967) produce inflorescences that are only 3–15 cm in length at flowering (Chung & Hsu 2006) and, owing to their short flowering seasons and dwarf habits, are seldom noticed when flowering (Tuyama 1982, Suetsugu et al. 2012). The identification of Gastrodia species requires detailed observation of floral features, such as lip and column morphology, that are hidden within the perianth tube

Review of \u3cem\u3eChinese Americans and the Politics of Race and Culture.\u3c/em\u3e Sucheng Chan and Madeline Y Hsu (Eds). Reviewed by Julian Chun-Chung Chow.

Book review of Sucheng Chan and Madeline Y. Hsu (Eds.), Chinese Americans and the Politics of Race and Culture. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2008. $27.95 papercover

INFANT HEALTH SERVICES UTILIZATION AND UNMET HEALTH CARE NEEDS

Objectives.- To describe maternal and infant health services utilization (HSU), to investigate determinants of infant HSU, to test the hypothesis that maternal depression and anxiety influence infant HSU, and to investigate unmet health care needs. Methods: A cross-sectional follow-up of the Prenatal Health Project cohort was conducted by telephone interviews with mothers of 655 infants aged 2-12 months. Using the Andersen Behavioral Model as a framework, multivariable linear regressions of infant primary care provider (PCP) visits and logistic regressions of infant emergency room (ER) and walk-in clinic (WIC) utilization were performed. Exploratory analyses were conducted to investigate the relationships between mothers’ and infants’ HSU. Results: A response rate of 75% was achieved. The mean number of PCP visits per month for infants \u3c6 months was 1.27 and 0.77 for infants 6-12 months. 25% of infants had visited the ER since birth and 24% of infants had visited a WIC. Mothers had a mean number of 1.86 family physician visits, 10% visited the ER and 15% visited the WIC since their infant’s birth. No associations were found between infants’ HSU and maternal depressive symptoms or anxiety. Number of PCP visits for infants \u3c6 months was positively associated with small for gestational age (SGA) and preterm birth and negatively associated with infant age. No variables were associated with PCP visits for infants \u3e 6 months of age. ER use was positively associated with infant age, access difficulties and unmarried mother. WIC use was positively associated with infant age, SGA, access difficulties and unmarried mother, and negatively associated with less maternal education. Mothers’ HSU was positively associated with infant PCP visits and WIC utilization. Fewer than 1% of mothers had perceived unmet health care needs related to their infant but 13% of mothers reported access difficulties and 10% desired additional health services. Conclusion: Infants utilize a wide range of health services in the first year of life. Predisposing characteristics, including maternal mental health, were not important determinants of infants’ HSU. Enabling resources and need factors were found to be more important determinants of infants’ HSU

Is admiration a source of indeterminacy when the speed of habit formation is finite?

In an economy where the time preference rate is sufficiently decreasing in individual consumption, Chen and Hsu (2007) find that a consumption admiration effect can be a source of local indeterminacy, whereby average consumption flows exert a positive external effect on an individual's utility. In our paper, average consumption habits externally increase an individual's utility. The increase in average consumption habits is the difference between average consumption flows and existing average consumption habits adjusted for by the speed of the consumption habit formation. The model in Chen and Hsu (2007) is a special case that emerges only when the speed of habit formation is infinite. In our general model, an admiration effect is no longer a source of equilibrium indeterminacy unless the speed of consumption habit formation is infinite.Neoclassical growth model, consumption habit externalities, indeterminacy

Convergence rate of the dependent bootstrapped means

In this paper, a Baum–Katz, Erdos, Hsu–Robbins, Spitzer type complete convergence result is obtained for the dependent bootstrapped means.National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canad

The Transformation of Urban Vegetable Retail in China: Wet Markets, Supermarkets, and Informal Markets in Shanghai

Singapore Management University Office of ResearchThis research is supported by a research grant from the Singapore Management University’s Office of Research to the first author. We thank Professor JIANG Changjian of Fudan University and Ms. Lu Zhihua of Wujiaochang Town Government for facilitating the fieldwork. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the Sixth Annual Workshop of the Asian Network of Scholars of Local China (ANSLoC). We are grateful to participants of the workshop, including Professors Jae Ho Chung, Tse-Kang Leng, John DONALDSON, Hongyi Lai, Phil Hsu, Wai-Keung Chung, Eric Mobrand, and James Tang, for their valuable comments and suggestions. The authors are solely responsible for any errors.</p

Re-evaluation of the surface ruptures of the November 1951 earthquake series in eastern Taiwan, and its neotectonic implications

The earthquakes of November 1951 constitute the most destructive seismic episode in the recorded history of the Longitudinal Valley, eastern Taiwan. However, information about their source parameters is sparse. To understand the relationship between the 1951 ruptures and new interpretations of the regional neotectonic architecture of the Longitudinal Valley, we re-evaluated the November 1951 ruptures by analyzing old documents, reports and photographs, and by interviewing local residents who experienced the earthquake. As a result, we have revised significantly the rupture map previously published. We divide the surface ruptures from south to north into the Chihshang, Yuli, and Rueisuei sections. The first shock of the 1951 series probably resulted from the Chihshang rupture, and the second shock probably resulted from the Yuli and Rueisuei ruptures. The lengths of these ruptures indicate that the two shocks had similar magnitudes. The Chihshang and Rueisuei ruptures are along segments of the Longitudinal Valley fault, a left-lateral oblique fault along which the Coastal Range thrusts westward over the Longitudinal Valley. The Yuli rupture, on the other hand, appears to be part of a separate, left-lateral strike-slip Yuli fault, which traverses the middle of the Longitudinal Valley. The complex behavior of these structures and interaction between them are important in understanding the future seismic hazard of the area

Anomaly Detection on Graph Time Series

In this paper, we use variational recurrent neural network to investigate the anomaly detection problem on graph time series. The temporal correlation is modeled by the combination of recurrent neural network (RNN) and variational inference (VI), while the spatial information is captured by the graph convolutional network. In order to incorporate external factors, we use feature extractor to augment the transition of latent variables, which can learn the influence of external factors. With the target function as accumulative ELBO, it is easy to extend this model to on-line method. The experimental study on traffic flow data shows the detection capability of the proposed method