Racial Bias in Expert Quality Assessment: A Study of Newspaper Movie Reviews

Newspaper critics' movie reviews are often used by potential movie viewers as signals of expert quality assessment. In this paper, we assess if there is any racial bias in these critics' reviews, and if so, what impact these biases have on viewer demand. To do this, we develop a dataset that tracks ratings from 68 popular movie critics for 566 movies released in the U.S. between 2003 and 2007. The data also include measures of movie production costs, marketing expenditures, type of movie (i.e. genre, MPAA rating, etc.), actor and director quality measures, audience tastes and critics' gender, experience and race. Despite inclusion of all these controls for movie quality and other drivers of critic ratings, we find that ratings for movies with a black lead actor and all white supporting cast are approximately 6% lower than for other racial compositions. These results appear consistent with implicit discrimination. Using estimates of the impact of critics' ratings on movie revenues, we find that lower critic ratings for black lead-white support movies translate into lost revenues of up to 4% or about $2.57 million on average. In sum, prejudice concerning race roles (e.g., the race of the leader versus supporters/followers) can have a direct impact on critic quality assessment, and thereby alter market outcomes.racial bias, quality assessment, expert ratings, movies

Attitudes toward feminism : the development of a measurement scale

The purposes of this study were: (a) to develop a valid and reliable instrument designed to measure attitudes toward feminism, that is, women's rights; (b) to investigate the prevalent attitudes toward feminism; and (c) to explore the relationship between the level of education, occupational status, career plans, hopes to marry, mother's employment status, number of children, number of children desired, and the sex and birth order of siblings and the subjects' attitudes toward feminism. The subjects were 477 females, of which 215 were undergraduates at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and 262 were non-college females who were members of various clubs and special interest groups which met in the Greensboro, North Carolina area. Each of these 477 subjects responded to the Feminism Attitude Scale and a biographical data sheet. The validity of the scale was established through interjudge agreement and supported by the results of a factor analysis. The corrected odd even split-half reliability for the scale was .87. A factor analysis identified 16 variables within the scale. An analysis of variance was used to explore the relationship between the mean feminism scores and the biographical data groupings. The hypothesis that a scale designed to measure attitudes toward feminism would show significant differences in the scores between feminist and non-feminist attitudes was supported

SNS programming environment user's guide

The computing environment is briefly described for the Supercomputing Network Subsystem (SNS) of the Central Scientific Computing Complex of NASA Langley. The major SNS computers are a CRAY-2, a CRAY Y-MP, a CONVEX C-210, and a CONVEX C-220. The software is described that is common to all of these computers, including: the UNIX operating system, computer graphics, networking utilities, mass storage, and mathematical libraries. Also described is file management, validation, SNS configuration, documentation, and customer services

PENGENDALIAN WAKTU DAN BIAYA PEKERJAAN KONSTRUKSI SEBAGAI DAMPAK DARI PERUBAHAN DESAIN

The purpose of this study is to describe the effect of changing control of the design that have an impact on the time and cost of construction work that affects the performance of construction work Embung Irrigation Oenaem. This study used two methods of controlling the Earned Value Analysis (EVA) and integrated method of shortening the duration of the critical path (Crashing Length) at Critical Path Method (CPM) using the application as an alternative to controlling overtime. To use of the two methods mentioned above it can be seen and obtained alternative pengedalian time and construction costs as a result of design changes that occurred in the Irrigation Development Project Embung Oenaem. Based on the analysis that had been done when a deviation occurs at 7 weeks, the total work period to 37 weeks from 30 weeks the amount of time a plan with estimated cost is Rp. 9,489,206,129.03. Then controlled using the method of shortening the duration (Crashing Length) with future application of the overtime work to 35 weeks (5 weeks delay) with the amount of the cost of Rp. 9.458.239.978,70 (excluding VAT) of the total contract value of Rp. Rp. 8.563.635.912,98 (excluding VAT 10%)

A Lean Six Sigma framework for the reduction of ship loading commercial time in the iron ore pelletising industry

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Abstract: Evidence suggests that specifically designed frameworks to implement Lean Six Sigma (LSS) projects to tackle particular problems are more effective than ‘generic’ versions. This paper proposes an implementation framework to effectively deploy LSS to improve a key operation and performance indicator, i.e. ship loading commercial time, of one of the largest world producer of iron ore. This article therefore contributes with a refined framework to effectively implement LSS, and documents its successful application and effectiveness within the context of the case organisation. The LSS framework and project contributed in helping the studied organisation to improve both the capability of its ship loading process and commercial time by more than 30%, resulting in operational savings in the range of $300,000 USD per year. The systematic nature of the framework proposed also helped the organisation to establish a standardised routine to improve its operations. Managerial implications exposing the challenges faced during the implementation of LSS are also discussed to serve as lessons learnt to be considered in other LSS projects. Managers and engineers incharge of improving operations and processes can benefit from this paper as it can be used as a guide to direct the conduction of LSS projects and the empirical application of its principles and tools

Neuroinflammation and Tau Interact with Amyloid in Predicting Sleep Problems in Aging Independently of Atrophy

Sleep problems relate to brain changes in aging and disease, but the mechanisms are unknown. Studies suggest a relationship between β-amyloid (Aβ) accumulation and sleep, which is likely augmented by interactions with multiple variables. Here, we tested how different cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers for brain pathophysiology, brain atrophy, memory function, and depressive symptoms predicted self-reported sleep patterns in 91 cognitively healthy older adults over a 3-year period. The results showed that CSF levels of total- and phosphorylated (P) tau, and YKL-40—a marker of neuroinflammation/astroglial activation—predicted poor sleep in Aβ positive older adults. Interestingly, although brain atrophy was strongly predictive of poor sleep, the relationships between CSF biomarkers and sleep were completely independent of atrophy. A joint analysis showed that unique variance in sleep was explained by P-tau and the P-tau × Aβ interaction, memory function, depressive symptoms, and brain atrophy. The results demonstrate that sleep relates to a range of different pathophysiological processes, underscoring the importance of understanding its impact on neurocognitive changes in aging and people with increased risk of Alzheimer's disease

Haploid genetic screens identify SPRING/C12ORF49 as a determinant of SREBP signaling and cholesterol metabolism

The sterol-regulatory element binding proteins (SREBP) are central transcriptional regulators of lipid metabolism. Using haploid genetic screens we identify the SREBPRegulating Gene (SPRING/C12ORF49) as a determinant of the SREBP pathway. SPRING is a glycosylated Golgi-resident membrane protein and its ablation in Hap1 cells, Hepa1-6 hepatoma cells, and primary murine hepatocytes reduces SREBP signaling. In mice, Spring deletion is embryonic lethal yet silencing of hepatic Spring expression also attenuates the SREBP response. Mechanistically, attenuated SREBP signaling in SPRING(KO) cells results from reduced SREBP cleavage-activating protein (SCAP) and its mislocalization to the Golgi irrespective of the cellular sterol status. Consistent with limited functional SCAP in SPRING(KO) cells, reintroducing SCAP restores SREBP-dependent signaling and function. Moreover, in line with the role of SREBP in tumor growth, a wide range of tumor cell lines display dependency on SPRING expression. In conclusion, we identify SPRING as a previously unrecognized modulator of SREBP signaling

Functional upgrading in China’s export processing sector

Functional upgrading occurs when a firm acquires more sophisticated functions within an existing value chain. In this paper, we analyze if there is evidence of this type of upgrading in China’s export processing regime by investigating dynamics in the relative prevalence of Import & Assembly (IA) versus Pure Assembly (PA) processing trade over the period 2000-2013. Firms in both regimes provide similar manufacturing services to foreign companies, but IA firms also conduct the sophisticated tasks of quality control, searching, financing and storing imported materials. Consistent with a trend of functional upgrading, we show that the share of IA trade in total processing trade has increased rapidly during the period 2000-2006, both overall and within product categories. Furthermore, we find that this trend has gone hand in hand with improvements in a sector’s labor productivity and unit values. Against expectations, we find that this process has slowed down notably during the period 2006-2013.status: publishe

Mentally Disordered Firesetters: An Examination of Risk Factors

Objective: In this study, we examined the risk-related characteristics of mentally disordered patients who had either been (1) involved in a firesetting incident, or (2) involved in a non-firesetting comparison incident whilst under the care of the National Health Service. Method: One hundred and thirty-two participants were recruited within an NHS Care Group in England (66 mentally disordered firesetters, 66 mentally disordered comparisons). Logistic regression was used to model the ability of static, dynamic, and incident-related factors in predicting whether or not a patient had set a fire (including gender-sensitive sub-analyses), and whether a patient firesetter was male or female, or a one-time or repeat firesetter. Results: We identified a cluster of variables that predicted firesetting status. We also identified key factors that predicted female patient firesetters relative to female patient controls who engaged in other undesirable behaviours and male patient firesetters. A cluster of variables predictive of repeat versus one-time firesetting also emerged. Conclusions: Findings are discussed in relation to further development of risk-related firesetting theory