Household Survey Panels: How Much Do Following Rules Affect Sample Size?

In household panels, typically all household members are surveyed. Because household composition changes over time, so-called following rules are implemented to decide whether to continue surveying household members who leave the household (e.g. former spouses/partners, grown children) in subsequent waves. Following rules have been largely ignored in the literature leaving panel designers unaware of the breadth of their options and forcing them to makead hoc decisions. In particular, to what extent various following rules affect sample size over time is unknown. From an operational point of view such knowledge is important because sample size greatly affects costs. Moreover, the decisionof whom to follow has irreversible consequences as finding household members who moved out years earlier is very difficult. We find that household survey panels implement a wide variety of following rules but their effect on sample size is relatively limited. Even after 25 years, the rule "follow only wave 1 respondents" still captures 85% of the respondents of the rule "follow everyone who can be traced back to a wave 1 household through living arrangements". Almost all of the remaining 15% live in households of children of wave 1 respondents who have grown up (5%) and in households of former spouses/partners (10%). Unless attrition is low, there is no danger of an ever expanding panel because even wide following rules do not typically exceed attrition.Survey panels, Survey methodology

The Sublime as Model: Formal Complexity in Joyce, Eisenstein and Stockhausen

The Sublime as Model: Formal Complexity in Joyce, Eisenstein and Stockhausen, undertakes an investigation of three paradigmatic late-modernist works in three mediums James Joyces novel, Finnegans Wake, Sergei Eisensteins film, Ivan the Terrible I & II, and Karlheinz Stockhausens orchestral work, Gruppen for Three Orchestras with an aim to demonstrating cross-media similarities, and establishing a model for examining their most salient trait: formal complexity. This model is based on a reading of the Kantian mathematical sublime as found in his Critique of the Power of Judgment, as well as borrowing vocabulary from phenomenology, particularly that of Edmund Husserl. After establishing a critical vocabulary based around an analysis of the mathematical sublime and a survey of the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger, the dissertation investigates each of the three works and many of their attendant critical works with an aim to illuminate the ways in which their formal complexity can be described, how this type of complexity is particular to late-modernism in general, and these works in particular, and what conclusions can be drawn about the structure and meaning of the works and the critical analyses they accrue. Much of this analysis fits into the rubric of the meta-critical, and there is a strong focus on critical surveys, as the dissertation attempts to provide cross-media models for critical vocabulary, and drawing many examples from extant criticism. The dissertation concludes with reflections on the concept of models for criticism, their construction and their value

Surface Interactions of Mercury on Gold Foil Electrodes in Electrodeposition and Stripping and ; An Investigation of Free Thiolate Ions from Metal-Thiolate Chalcogenides

Mercury, a highly toxic metal, whose environmental concentration magnifies with ascension of the food chain, is monitored in our waters, food and air. Monitoring mercury is generally done by sample collection, transport to the laboratory; followed by: digestion of the sample, separation of the mercury and detection of the mercury: mostly by cold vapor atomic absorption or, cold vapor atomic fluorescence. These monitoring methods, preclude, routine, in-the-field mercury determination. New analytical techniques have been proposed for in the field determination of mercury. They consist of mercury adsorption onto a sensor or electrode and measuring how much is there either as the adsorbate or, as the analate being removed from the detection device. Many employ gold as an accumulation substrate because of its affinity for mercury. One group of proposed techniques, requires that mercury be reduced electrochemically onto a gold electrode and then removed by anodic current oxidation. The determination of mercury is made from measurements of: the current, or the frequency shift of a surface acoustic wave due to the mass of the accumulated mercury. Our research focused on the electrodepositon and stripping of mercury on gold foil electrodes. We demonstrated by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy that electrodeposited mercury cannot be completely removed by electrochemical stripping and that with many repetitive deposition and stripping cycles, there is a progressive accumulation of mercury on the gold electrodes which continues to manifest even in mercury free electrolyte solution. The latter was demonstrated by linear sweep voltammetry and temperature programmed desorption of the accumulated mercury. Mercury\u27s toxicity is based on its formation of relatively non-polar complexes and its high affinity for thiol and sulfide functional groups (i.e. the amino acid cysteine). Our electrochemical and conductivity studies of nine metal-thiolate chalcogenides indicated that some form free thiolate ions at high concentrations rather than low ones

Use of AlInN layers in optical monitoring of growth of GaN-based structures on free-standing GaN substrates

When lattice matched to GaN, the AlInN ternary alloy has a refractive index ~7% lower than that of GaN. This characteristic can be exploited to perform in situ reflectometry during epitaxial growth of GaN-based multilayer structures on free-standing GaN substrates, by insertion of a suitable Al0.82In0.18N layer. The real-time information on growth rates and cumulative layer thicknesses thus obtainable is particularly valuable in the growth of optical resonant cavity structures. We illustrate this capability with reference to the growth of InGaN/GaN multiple quantum-well structures, including a doubly periodic structure with relatively thick GaN spacer layers between groups of wells. Al0.82In0.18N insertion layers can also assist in the fabrication of resonant cavity structures in postgrowth processing, for example, acting as sacrificial layers in a lift-off process exploiting etch selectivity between Al0.82In0.18N and GaN

Pairing Bluetooth Devices via QR Code

The out-of-band pairing of Bluetooth devices utilizing a quick response code provides a novel method for pairing Bluetooth devices. Pairing two devices over Bluetooth can be challenging for a user and presents security issues. The utilization of out-of-band Bluetooth pairing via a quick response code overcomes security problems presented by in-band pairing and does not require internet connectivity or an established server infrastructure to accomplish the Bluetooth pairing, providing a user-friendly experience over traditional pairing techniques