Strategic Positioning and the Financing of Nonprofit Organizations: Is Efficiency Rewarded in the Contributions Marketplace?

This article addresses the question of whether operational efficiency is recognized and rewarded by the private funders that support nonprofit organizations in fields ranging from education to social service to arts and beyond. Looking at the administrative efficiency and fundraising results of a large sample of nonprofit organizations over an 11 year period, we find that nonprofits that position themselves as cost efficient reporting low administrative to total expense ratios fared no better over time than less efficient appearing organizations in the market for individuals, foundations, and corporate contributions. From this analysis, we suggest that economizing may not always be the best strategy in the nonprofit sector. This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 2. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Central Higgs Production at LHC from Single-Pomeron-Exchange

Contrary to common perceptions about systems produced in Single-Pomeron-Exchange (SPE) pp interactions, the hard diffractive process discovered at the CERN SPS-Collider leads to dominant central production of Higgs bosons at the LHC. The rate for SPE production of Higgs bosons is calculated to be 7-9 % of the total inclusive Higgs rate. In addition, an SPE measurement program of dijet events is outlined for the early days of LHC running which should answer many fundamental questions about the Pomeron structure and its effective flux factor in the proton.Comment: 14 pages, 7 Encapsulated Postscript figures, LaTex, submitted to European Phisical Journal

A statistical approach to persistent homology

Assume that a finite set of points is randomly sampled from a subspace of a metric space. Recent advances in computational topology have provided several approaches to recovering the geometric and topological properties of the underlying space. In this paper we take a statistical approach to this problem. We assume that the data is randomly sampled from an unknown probability distribution. We define two filtered complexes with which we can calculate the persistent homology of a probability distribution. Using statistical estimators for samples from certain families of distributions, we show that we can recover the persistent homology of the underlying distribution.Comment: 30 pages, 2 figures, minor changes, to appear in Homology, Homotopy and Application

Intra-accumbens baclofen, but not muscimol, increases second order instrumental responding for food reward in rats

Stimulation of either GABA(A) or GABA(B) receptors within the nucleus accumbens shell strongly enhances food intake in rats. However the effects of subtype-selective stimulation of GABA receptors on instrumental responses for food reward are less well characterized. Here we contrast the effects of the GABA(A) receptor agonist muscimol and GABA(B) receptor agonist baclofen on instrumental responding for food using a second order reinforcement schedule. Bilateral intra-accumbens administration of baclofen (220-440 pmol) stimulated responding but a higher dose (660 pmol) induced stereotyped oral behaviour that interfered with responding. Baclofen (220-660 pmol) also stimulated intake of freely available chow. Muscimol (220-660 pmol) was without effect on responding for food on this schedule but did stimulate intake of freely available chow. Unilateral administration of either baclofen or muscimol (220 pmol) induced similar patterns of c-fos immunoreactivity in several hypothalamic sites but differed in its induction in the central nucleus of the amygdala. We conclude that stimulation of GABA(A) or GABA(B) receptors in the nucleus accumbens shell of rats produces clearly distinguishable effects on operant responding for food

Evaluating duration of response to treatment in systemic lupus erythematosus clinical trials.

ObjectiveTo evaluate response duration and identify predictors of transitioning into and out of the response state in patients with SLE receiving standard of care (SoC) in 52-week clinical trials.MethodsA multistate model (MSM) allowing for bidirectional transitions between response and non-response states was fit to data on 759 patients with SLE with active disease randomised to SoC. The probability of being in response at 52 weeks, average duration of response (sojourn time) and mean total time in response for SLE Responder Index (SRI-4, SRI-5, SRI-6) and BILAG-based Composite Lupus Assessment (BICLA) were estimated. Predictors of attainment and loss of SRI-5 response were also assessed.ResultsThe MSM estimated probability of being in response at 52 weeks ranged from 42% (SRI-6) to 61% (SRI-4). Mean duration of response ranged from 20.4 weeks (BICLA) to 31.5 weeks (SRI-4). Mean total time in response was 16.4-24.8 weeks. Baseline characteristics predictive of shorter SRI-5 response duration were African descent (p=0.005), longer history of disease (p=0.03), higher anti-dsDNA antibody titres (p=0.039), lower lymphocyte count (p=0.008) and lower haemoglobin (p=0.006). Younger age (p<0.001) and higher protein/creatinine ratio (p<0.001) were associated with higher likelihood of achieving SRI-5 but also shorter response duration.ConclusionFactors associated with disease severity were more predictive of shorter response duration than of 52-week response status. Analysing landmark response rates and response duration using MSM may be a more powerful way to distinguish effective investigational treatments from background SoC, although this remains to be evaluated in future trials

M\"{o}bius deconvolution on the hyperbolic plane with application to impedance density estimation

In this paper we consider a novel statistical inverse problem on the Poincar\'{e}, or Lobachevsky, upper (complex) half plane. Here the Riemannian structure is hyperbolic and a transitive group action comes from the space of $2\times2$ real matrices of determinant one via M\"{o}bius transformations. Our approach is based on a deconvolution technique which relies on the Helgason--Fourier calculus adapted to this hyperbolic space. This gives a minimax nonparametric density estimator of a hyperbolic density that is corrupted by a random M\"{o}bius transform. A motivation for this work comes from the reconstruction of impedances of capacitors where the above scenario on the Poincar\'{e} plane exactly describes the physical system that is of statistical interest.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOS783 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

The Combined Effect of Individualism – Collectivism on Conflict Styles and Satisfaction: An Analysis at the Individual Level

This research examines the relationships among individualism-collectivism (IND-COL), conflict management styles and conflict satisfaction. The authors aim to explain some of the inconclusive findings in the literature related to IND-COL and conflict styles by studying IND-COL as states, rather than dispositional traits. By taking a dynamic approach to conceptualizing IND-COL and measuring IND-COL over time, we investigate how different ratios of individualistic-to-collectivistic orientations are associated with different conflict management styles. Results show that individuals who employed a balanced focus (1:1 ratio) of both individualistic and collectivistic orientations utilized an integrative style in conflict more than individuals with either a strong individualistic or collectivistic orientation. Integrative style was associated with higher levels of satisfaction with conflict outcomes, processes, relationships, goal attainment and job satisfaction at work. Individuals with predominant focus on individualism utilized a dominating style more, whereas individuals with predominant focus on collectivism utilized obliging and avoiding styles. Furthermore, results show that state-level IND-COL is a better predictor of conflict management styles than trait-level IND-COL. Past research has focused on studying IND-COL primarily as a trait variable at the individual level, but we examine IND-COL as states in relation to conflict management styles. In addition, we investigate the combined and optimal effects of both individualism and collectivism value-orientations on conflict management styles

High-throughput three-dimensional lithographic microfabrication

A 3D lithographic microfabrication process has been developed that is high throughput, scalable, and capable of producing arbitrary patterns. It offers the possibility for industrial scale manufacturing of 3D microdevices such as photonic crystals, tissue engineering scaffolds, and microfluidics chips. This method is based on depth-resolved wide-field illumination by temporally focusing femtosecond light pulses. We characterized the axial resolution of this technique, and the result is consistent with the theoretical prediction. As proof-of-concept experiments, we demonstrated photobleaching of 3D resolved patterns in a fluorescent medium and fabricating 3D microstructures with SU-8 photoresist.Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation (Massachusetts Institute of Technology. School of Engineering)Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART