Franklin’s Claims to Greatness with Remarks on the Religious Aspects of Patriotism

An Address before The Rhode Island Society of Colonial Wars, December 30, 1922 by Harry Lyman Koopman. Issued by the courtesy of Henry Dexter Sharpe, Esquire, in the administration of William Bates Greenough, Governor, 1923. Koopman argues that in the past religion was closely linked with national identity, but with the founding of the nation – which Benjamin Franklin helped facilitate – such a connection no longer existed or was needed. And that Franklin’s greatness came at a unique moment in history and that his lifetime of accomplishments sets him apart from the other founding fathers.https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/ri_history/1006/thumbnail.jp

Casimir-Based Control Beyond the Dissipation Obstacle

A prevailing trend in the stabilization of port-Hamiltonian systems is the assumption that the plant and the controller are both passive. In the standard approach of control by interconnection based on the generation of Casimir functions, this assumption leads to the dissipation obstacle, which essentially means that dissipation is admissible only on the coordinates of the closed-loop Hamiltonian that do not require shaping and thus severely restricts the scope of applications. In this contribution, we show that we can easily go beyond the dissipation obstacle by allowing the controller to have a negative semi-definite resistive structure, while guaranteeing stability of both the closed-loop and the controller

Teaching teachers in effectual entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education is seen by all kind of people to be important for economic growth. Teaching entrepreneurship needs another approach. Active learning and the constructivism is mostly seen as essential. Other elements that are influencing the teaching process are the competences, the culture and the teacher. So the teacher must be capable of using other methods and theory as he is used to. Effectuation, constructivism and andragogy are the key elements for the training of entrepreneurial teachers. From that perspective there has been made an education program that will start in September 2013 for teachers at universities of applied science. Until that time there are being held some minor experiments on parts of the program

Fast Filtering and Smoothing for Multivariate State Space Models

This paper gives a new approach to diffuse filtering and smoothing for multivariate state space models. The standard approach treats the observations as vectors while our approach treats each element of the observational vector individually. This strategy leads to computationally efficient methods for multivariate filtering and smoothing. Also, the treatment of the diffuse initial state vector in multivariate models is much simpler than existing methods. The paper presents details of relevant algorithms for filtering, prediction and smoothing. Proofs are provided. Three examples of multivariate models in statistics and economics are presented for which the new approach is particularly relevant.Diffuse initialisation;Kalman filter;multivariate models;smoothing;state space;time series

Adolescent Marijuana Use and Co-Occurrence with Tobacco Use: Implications for Tobacco Regulation

Background: Marijuana use among high school youth has been declining over the past two decades. However, there has been a notable shift in the national landscape with regards to social norms and marijuana legalization that could allow marijuana to become more available and may compete against prevention efforts among youth. Further, youth continue to utilize innovative ways to consume marijuana. There is a documented relationship between marijuana and tobacco use, particularly with the use of blunts. Despite the documented relationship between tobacco and marijuana use, little is known about the modes of marijuana use in relation to different tobacco products. With the recent FDA changes bringing cigars under the purview of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), there may be an opportunity for CTP regulations of cigar products to impact youth use of both marijuana and tobacco. Methods: This study used data from the 2015 Cleveland Youth Risk Behavior Survey (n=6197) conducted as a census administration in 26 high schools; overall response rate was 66.5%. Youth were asked “During the past 30 days, how did you usually use marijuana?”. Responses were coded as a blunt; in a joint, bong, or pipe (JBP); or some other way. The standard CDC response categories for this item were altered to allow us to specifically examine blunt use. Analyses were restricted to those who smoked marijuana in the past 30 days and were conducted using SPSSv24. Demographic and tobacco use characteristics were examined for each mode of marijuana use. Result: Overall, 74.6% of past 30-day marijuana users reported usually smoking marijuana as a blunt, 15.1% smoked as a JBP, and 10.4% reported using in some other way. Females were more likely to smoke a blunt (79.5% v 71.1%) and less likely to use some other way (6.7% v 13.1%). Blacks were more likely to smoke a blunt compared to Whites and Hispanics (80.8% v 62.3% and 67.0% respectively); Whites were more likely to smoke a JBP compared to Black and Hispanics (33.8% v. 8.9% and 20.1% respectively). Past 30-day cigarette smokers were more likely to have smoked a JBP and less likely to have smoked a blunt compared to non-cigarette smokers. Conversely, past 30-day cigar smokers were more likely to have smoked a blunt and less likely to have smoked a JBP than non-cigar smokers. Youth who vaped in the past 30-days were more likely to use a JBP and use marijuana in some other way compared to youth who had not vaped. In a multivariable logistic regression predicting blunt use or JBP use, cigar product use increased odds of blunting (OR: 1.98) while hookah use was associated with increased odds of JBP. Conclusion: Cigar products are an easily accessible vehicle for smoking marijuana. Federal regulations to restrict youth access to cigar products could have significant impact on adolescent marijuana use, particularly among females and Black youth

Testing the Assumptions Behind the Use of Importance Sampling

Importance sampling is used in many aspects of modern econometrics to approximate unsolvable integrals. Its reliable use requires the sampler to possess a variance, for this guarantees a square root speed of convergence and asymptotic normality of the estimator of the integral. However, this assumption is seldom checked. In this paper we propose to use extreme value theory to empirically assess the appropriateness of this assumption. We illustrate this method in the context of a maximum simulated likelihood analysis of the stochastic volatility model.Extreme value theory; Importance sampling; Simulation; Stochastic Volatility.