Disproportionality and Risk of High School Students Suspensions due to Non-parental Involvement

A recent study (Bryant & Wilson, 2020) investigates disproportionality of Charter High School students’ suspensions due to students’ ethnicity, socioeconomic status and gender, and it concludes that ethnicity and social status significantly affect students’ suspension. Many researches argue that parental activity is significantly related to improved students’ outcome (e.g., see Liu et al., 2020). However, the parental and family involvement activities have not been investigated in relation to the high school students’ suspension. The purpose of this study is to investigate high school students’ suspension due to ethnicity, socioeconomic status and gender adjusted for the parental and family involvement factors in education and vice versa, by employing the data from the United States National Household Education Surveys. Bivariate analyses suggest that six out of the eight parental factors are significantly related to high school students’ suspension (chi-squared p-value<0.05). Adjusted multiple logistic regression analyses suggest that four out of the eight parental involvement factors significantly (p-value<0.05) affect high school students’ suspension with non-parental involvement showing higher odds of suspension. Our findings have significant implications for practicing and policymaking, as educators and policymakers seek to reduce students’ suspension in the face of adverse students’ outcomes. Keywords: Highschool students’ suspension, Parental involvement, Adjusted analysis, Multiple logistic regression. DOI: 10.7176/MTM/11-4-03 Publication date:September 30th 202

On Performance of Confidence Interval Estimate of Mean for Skewed Populations: Evidence from Examples and Simulations

The performances of confidence interval (CI) estimates of mean for skewed distributions are compared for three traditional methods and two newly proposed methods using coverage probability and confidence length for varying levels of skewness via simulations. Two real-life examples are incorporated to justify the applicability of the two newly proposed methods (trimmed t and modified trimmed t CIs), compared to the traditional methods (Student’s t mad t and median t CIs). From the results of examples and simulation study, it appears that with skewed distribution, the proposed trimmed t and modified trimmed t CIs are as good as mad t or median t CIs in coverage probability consideration. With lower % trimmed, trimmed and modified trimmed t CIs are identical or close to the Student’s t CI, and with increased % trimmed, they are identical or close to the median t CI. Keywords: Student’s t, Mad t, Median t, Modified trimmed t, Coverage probability, Length of confidence interval.

A New Computational Methodology to Find Appropriate Solutions of Fuzzy Equations

In this paper, a new computational methodology to get an appropriate solution of a fuzzy equation of the form. In support of that some propositions with proofs and theorems are presented. A different approach of the definition of positive fuzzy number and negative fuzzy number have been focused. Also, the concept of half-positive and half-negative fuzzy number has been introduced. The solution of the fuzzy equation can be positive fuzzy number or negative fuzzy number or half positive or half negative fuzzy number which is computed by using the methodology focused in the proposed propositions. Keywords: Fuzzy number, Fuzzy equation, Positive fuzzy number, Negative fuzzy number, half positive and half negative fuzzy number, a fuzzy number

On the Efficient Estimator of Exponential Parameter

Exponential distribution plays an important role in modeling real-life data relating to the continuous waiting time. In this article, a new estimator of the exponential parameter has been proposed. Some statistical properties of the proposed estimator have been studied. The performance of the new estimator has been compared theoretically, and empirically with the maximum likelihood estimator. Simulation and examples to real-life data reveal that the new estimator has higher relative efficiency as compared to the maximum likelihood estimator. The R program utilized in this study has also been provided. Keywords: Moment generating function; method of moments; exponential parameter; relative efficiency; simulation.

Tailoring FPOX enzymes for enhanced stability and expanded substrate recognition

Abstract Fructosyl peptide oxidases (FPOX) are deglycating enzymes that find application as key enzymatic components in diabetes monitoring devices. Indeed, their use with blood samples can provide a measurement of the concentration of glycated hemoglobin and glycated albumin, two well-known diabetes markers. However, the FPOX currently employed in enzymatic assays cannot directly detect whole glycated proteins, making it necessary to perform a preliminary proteolytic treatment of the target protein to generate small glycated peptides that can act as viable substrates for the enzyme. This is a costly and time consuming step. In this work, we used an in silico protein engineering approach to enhance the overall thermal stability of the enzyme and to improve its catalytic activity toward large substrates. The final design shows a marked improvement in thermal stability relative to the wild type enzyme, a distinct widening of its access tunnel and significant enzymatic activity towards a range of glycated substrates

Inference of Attributable Risk for Multiple ExposureLevels Under Cross-sectional Sampling Design

Attributable risk (AR) plays an important role in assessing the relationship between the risk factor and the disease in public health and biomedical sciences. This research is intended to develop point and interval estimation procedures for the inference of the attributable risk when the data set is obtained by means of a cross-sectional sampling design. In this thesis, we develop a novel approach for estimating the variance of the Maximum Likelihood Estimate of AR for a dichotomous risk factor by using the Delta method. The new method is computationally much easier than the existing method using the Fisher Information Matrix. This method has also been extended for a risk factor with multiple exposure levels without and with confounders. The performance of the new method has been justified with real life examples and by the Monte Carlo simulation. The simulation shows that the confidence interval estimator performs very well in terms of the coverage probability and the average length of the interval estimated. For small sample case where large sample approximation theory can not be applied, we develop inference procedure for a dichotomous risk factor using exact test regarding positive association between the risk factor and disease outcome which has never been considered before for attributable risk. This procedure has been extended for a risk factor with multiple exposure levels. The attributable risk has also been studied for intermediate base-level which is useful for detecting the significance of a particular level of risk factor with multiple exposure levels. This technique can be used to amalgamate some of the insignificant exposure levels and hence reduce the exposure levels of the undertaken risk factor. Statistical properties of attributable risk have been explored under certain conditions on the cell probabilities. The behavior of the test of positive dependence using the test statistics based on the estimate of AR and logarithm of the odds ratio, log OR has been studied. It has been shown that in some subsets of the alternative, the test using the test statistic based on the estimate of AR is better than the test using the test statistic based on the estimate of log OR, and in some other subsets, the conclusion is in converse direction. In an exact test for small sample, it has been shown that the two statistics based on the estimates of AR and log OR are equivalent

The significance of parental involvements in reducing K-12 students absenteeism

Absenteeism is of great concern for K-12 school students in the United States. The aim of this study is to evaluate effects of parental participation types in absenteeism of Elementary and Secondary Education (K-12) students in the United States. We analyze the data of the U.S. Department of Education (Hanson et al., 2019), in relation to students, schools and parents\u27 characteristics, along with various parental involvement activities, for exploring how these factors influence K-12 students\u27 absenteeism in the United States. We employ Chi-square tests for the significance of relationships between parental involvement types and absenteeism of K-12 students. We also undertake multiple logistic regression analyses to evaluate the significance and odds of K-12 students\u27 absenteeism due to parental involvement activities and other underlying factors. The results of bivariate analyses suggest that parental involvement types are significantly associated with K-12 absenteeism (chi-squared p-value\u3c0.05). Multiple logistic regression analysis reveals that only a subset of underlying parental activities is significantly related to higher odds of absenteeism as measured by estimates of odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence interval estimates. It also suggests that parental education, ethnicity and poverty adjusted for other factors also significantly affect absenteeism

Technology and leadership styles: a review of trends between 2003 and 2021

Purpose: Leadership style denotes the behavioural pattern of a leader, which bears on employee's attitude, perception about organization, manager and job satisfaction. The existence of different styles has presented leadership from diverse perspectives related to individuals' personality and behaviour. The main objective of this article is to explore the association between leadership styles and technology, major themes in this area and what can be the future research directions of this work. Design/methodology/approach: Leadership style denotes the behavioural pattern of leader, which bears on employee's attitude, perception about organization, manager and job satisfaction. The existence of different styles has presented leadership from diverse perspectives related to individuals' personality and behaviour. The present article aims to review significant work by eminent researchers towards technology and leadership styles in the form trends, annual scientific production; popular affiliations and sources, a three-field plot of countries, scholars and themes, most cited references, trending keywords, thematic analysis of leadership styles and technology research by taking insights from situational leadership theory. Findings: The findings indicate connections between various keywords and provide interesting themes like transformational leadership style is connected to knowledge management, transactional leadership, empowering leadership, psychological capital and e-leadership. Similarly, leadership is connected to leadership development, gender stereotypes, emotional exhaustion, innovative leadership and organizational performance. Originality/value: This review analysis of leadership styles and technology is in itself a novice contribution and first of its nature. The identified themes are presenting good knowledge and food for thought for future researches. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited

Language mixing of a Bangla-English learning bilingual child

The present study investigates the mixed utterances produced by a mono-ethnic simultaneous bilingual child receiving Bangla and English as his two first languages, a phenomenon referred to as Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA). The form and structural patterns of the mixed utterances produced by the bilingual child with both his Bangla and English speaking caregivers are explored. This investigation examines three months of naturalistic data which has been extracted from a longitudinal research from the age of two years till the child attained the age of two years eight months. The data reveals that Bangla was the child’s dominant language at that stage which is also explicit in the Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) count. There is evidence of both “intra-” and “inter-” utterance language mixing with a greater proportion of such cases with the English speaking interlocutor than with the Bangla speaking interlocutor. The relationship between parental input and the child’s output is discussed focusing on lexical and grammatical categories present in the corpus of the child’s mixed utterances. The study also discusses whether parental strategies have an influence on the child’s language choices and mixed utterances and examines whether there are more significant factors other than parental strategies, such as typological differences between the two languages, which may have led to cross-linguistic influences affecting the child’s language mixing patterns

Impact of Bee Venom Enzymes on Diseases and Immune Responses

Bee venom (BV) is used to treat many diseases and exhibits anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, antimutagenic, radioprotective, anti-nociceptive immunity promoting, hepatocyte protective and anti-cancer activity. According to the literature, BV contains several enzymes, including phospholipase A2 (PLA2), phospholipase B, hyaluronidase, acid phosphatase and α-glucosidase. Recent studies have also reported the detection of different classes of enzymes in BV, including esterases, proteases and peptidases, protease inhibitors and other important enzymes involved in carbohydrate metabolism. Nevertheless, the physiochemical properties and functions of each enzyme class and their mechanisms remain unclear. Various pharmacotherapeutic effects of some of the BV enzymes have been reported in several studies. At present, ongoing research aims to characterize each enzyme and elucidate their specific biological roles. This review gathers all the current knowledge on BV enzymes and their specific mechanisms in regulating various immune responses and physiological changes to provide a basis for future therapies for various diseases