Comparing population distributions from bin-aggregated sample data: An application to historical height data from France

This paper develops a methodology to estimate the entire population distributions from bin-aggregated sample data. We do this through the estimation of the parameters of mixtures of distributions that allow for maximal parametric flexibility. The statistical approach we develop enables comparisons of the full distributions of height data from potential army conscripts across France's 88 departments for most of the nineteenth century. These comparisons are made by testing for differences-of-means stochastic dominance. Corrections for possible measurement errors are also devised by taking advantage of the richness of the data sets. Our methodology is of interest to researchers working on historical as well as contemporary bin-aggregated or histogram-type data, something that is still widely done since much of the information that is publicly available is in that form, often due to restrictions due to political sensitivity and/or confidentiality concerns.Health, health inequality, aggregate data, 19th-century France, welfare

The Interactional Production of Race and Religious Identity in an Urban Catholic School

This paper describes how students in an urban Catholic school draw on racial and religious categories to construct classroom-specific identities during coursework. When students engage with each other in classroom discussions, they use broadly circulating, institutional, and event-level categories to position one another, and in doing so articulate who may speak and participate in class talk. This paper draws from interactional ethnographic data, showing how Vietnamese American and African American students used different religious and racial categories to delimit the interactional floor during class time and in the process exclude speakers. La producción de las interacciones de la identidad racial y religiosa en una escuela católica urbana Este artículo describe cómo los estudiantes de una escuela católica urbana esbozan categorías raciales y religiosas para construir identidades específicas del aula durante el trabajo escolar. Cuando los estudiantes se relacionan en las discusiones del aula, utilizan categorías ampliamente utilizadas, institucionales y relacionadas con el evento para posicionarse entre ellos, y al hacerlo, articulan quién puede hablar y participar en la conversación del aula. El presente artículo utiliza datos etnográficos y de interacción que muestran cómo los estudiantes estadounidenses de origen vietnamita y afroamericanos utilizan distintas categorías religiosas y raciales para delimitar la interacción durante la clase y, en el proceso, excluyen a hablantes. Palabras clave: interacción católica, discusión en el aula, católico, urbano La production interactionnelle d\u27une identité raciale et religieuse dans une école catholique en milieu urbain Cet article décrit la manière dont une école catholique en milieu urbain tire parti des catégories raciales et religieuse pour élaborer des identités propres à la salle de classe peandant les cours. Lorsque les élèves interagissent pendant les discussions en classe, ils ont recours à des catégories largement utilisées, institutionnelles et liées à un évènement pour se positionner les uns par rapport aux autres, exprimant ainsi qui peut parler et participer à la conversation en classe. L\u27article tire parti de données ethnographiques, montrant comment les élèves vietnamiens-américains et africains-américains se sont servis de catégories raciales et religieuses différentes pour délimiter le plan interactionnel pendant la classe et, en même temps, exclure des orateurs. Mots-clés : catholique, interaction, discussion en classe, catholique, milieu urbai

Introductory Chapter: Vitamin C

The word vitamin was originally coined to describe amines that are essential for life. It is now know that although not all vitamins are amines, the are organic micronutrients that mean that they must be consumed in small quantities for the adequate growth and are required in numerous metabolic reactions to maintain homeostasis. There are 13 vitamins that are recognized by all researchers, and these can be classified as either being soluble in fats (fat-soluble) (including vitamins A (retinols and carotenoids), D (cholecalciferol), E (tocopherols and tocotrienols), and K (quinones)), or soluble in water (water-soluble) (including vitamin C (ascorbic acid) and the B group vitamins). B-group vitamins include the following: vitamin B1 (thiamine), vitamin B2 (riboflavin), vitamin B3 (niacin), vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid), vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), vitamin B7 (biotin), vitamin B9 (folic acid or folate) and vitamin B12 (cobalamins).Fil: Leblanc, Jean Guy Joseph. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucumán. Centro de Referencia para Lactobacilos; Argentin

Teaching While Praying, Praying While Teaching: An Interactional Sociolinguistics of Educational Prayer

What are the linguistic resources for teachers who pray in contemporary Catholic school classrooms? This article considers the intersections of prayer and language practice, and I make central two arguments. The first is that educational prayer—a particular type of teacher-led extemporaneous prayer in Catholic schools—is a linguistic phenomenon, a highly-flexible set of linguistic resources, captured within a special interactional frame marked by ambiguous boundaries which contains both prescribed formulaic linguistic properties and those which allow the performer to attend to real time classroom contingencies. Drawing on interactional data from a Catholic school classroom, this article delimits the contextualization of linguistic signs during prayer: how teachers indicate the connection between their words and the sociocultural frameworks which are relevant for that action. The second is that both interactional sociolinguists and Catholic school researchers would greatly benefit from attending to these linguistic features, from seeing prayer unfold in real-time

Cross-validation and Peeling Strategies for Survival Bump Hunting using Recursive Peeling Methods

We introduce a framework to build a survival/risk bump hunting model with a censored time-to-event response. Our Survival Bump Hunting (SBH) method is based on a recursive peeling procedure that uses a specific survival peeling criterion derived from non/semi-parametric statistics such as the hazards-ratio, the log-rank test or the Nelson-Aalen estimator. To optimize the tuning parameter of the model and validate it, we introduce an objective function based on survival or prediction-error statistics, such as the log-rank test and the concordance error rate. We also describe two alternative cross-validation techniques adapted to the joint task of decision-rule making by recursive peeling and survival estimation. Numerical analyses show the importance of replicated cross-validation and the differences between criteria and techniques in both low and high-dimensional settings. Although several non-parametric survival models exist, none addresses the problem of directly identifying local extrema. We show how SBH efficiently estimates extreme survival/risk subgroups unlike other models. This provides an insight into the behavior of commonly used models and suggests alternatives to be adopted in practice. Finally, our SBH framework was applied to a clinical dataset. In it, we identified subsets of patients characterized by clinical and demographic covariates with a distinct extreme survival outcome, for which tailored medical interventions could be made. An R package `PRIMsrc` is available on CRAN and GitHub.Comment: Keywords: Exploratory Survival/Risk Analysis, Survival/Risk Estimation & Prediction, Non-Parametric Method, Cross-Validation, Bump Hunting, Rule-Induction Metho

Introductory Chapter: B-Group Vitamins

Vitamins are organic micronutrients which are substances that must be present in small quantities and that are essential for the growth and development of the human body and are required in numerous metabolic reactions to maintain homeostasis. The 13 vitamins that are required by human metabolisms are divided as being either fat-soluble (such as vitamins A (retinols and carotenoids), D (cholecalciferol), E (tocopherols and tocotrienols), and K (quinones)), or water soluble (that include vitamin C (ascorbic acid) and the B group vitamins). In the latter group (B-group) these include: vitamin B1 (thiamine), vitamin B2 (riboflavin), vitamin B3 (niacin), vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid), vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), vitamin B7 (biotin), vitamin B9 (folic acid or folate) and vitamin B12 (cobalamins).Fil: Leblanc, Jean Guy Joseph. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucumán. Centro de Referencia para Lactobacilos; Argentin

Lactic fermentation as a strategy to improve the nutritional and functional values of pseudocereals

One of the greatest challenges is to reduce malnutrition worldwide while promoting sustainable agricultural and food systems. This is a daunting task due to the constant growth of the population and the increasing demands by consumers for functional foods with higher nutritional values. Cereal grains are the most important dietary energy source globally; wheat, rice, and maize currently provide about half of the dietary energy source of humankind. In addition, the increase of celiac patients worldwide has motivated the development of gluten-free foods using alternative flour types to wheat such as rice, corn, cassava, soybean, and pseudocereals (amaranth, quinoa, and buckwheat). Amaranth and quinoa have been cultivated since ancient times and were two of the major crops of the Pre-Colombian cultures in Latin-America. In recent years and due to their well-known high nutritional value and potential health benefits, these pseudocereals have received much attention as ideal candidates for gluten-free products. The importance of exploiting these grains for the elaboration of healthy and nutritious foods has forced food producers to develop novel adequate strategies for their processing. Fermentation is one of the most antique and economical methods of producing and preserving foods and can be easily employed for cereal processing. The nutritional and functional quality of pseudocereals can be improved by fermentation using Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB). This review provides an overview on pseudocereal fermentation by LAB emphasizing the capacity of these bacteria to decrease antinutritional factors such as phytic acid, increase the functional value of phytochemicals such as phenolic compounds, and produce nutritional ingredients such as B-group vitamins. The numerous beneficial effects of lactic fermentation of pseudocereals can be exploited to design novel and healthier foods or grain ingredients destined to general population and especially to patients with coeliac disease.Fil: Rollan, Graciela Celestina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucumán. Centro de Referencia para Lactobacilos; ArgentinaFil: Gerez, Carla Luciana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucumán. Centro de Referencia para Lactobacilos; ArgentinaFil: Leblanc, Jean Guy Joseph. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucumán. Centro de Referencia para Lactobacilos; Argentin