ECONOMIC DISADVANTAGES OF BLACKS IN HIGH BLACK PROPORTION CITIES

This paper proposes wage premiums for jobs in high black proportion cities as a source of the continuing economic disadvantages for poor blacks. The estimated hedonic model of individual wages confirms the presence of such wage premiums which result in high labor costs and economic stagnation in a black-concentrated region, while the regional black ratio regression indicates a significant statistical correlation between a region¡¯s black ratio and its disamenities. From the empirical results emerge the following conclusions: First, the equality of the estimated wage premiums for high black ratio between blacks and whites precludes direct prejudice-based discrimination. A caveat, however, is that the full wage premiums are conferred upon workers moving freely across regions in search of better wages and amenities, not applying to the mobility-restricted or the non-employed. Second, the wage premiums for high black ratio, causing economic stagnation of a black- concentrated region, constitute a statistical discrimination against blacks. This is because, given the pre-existing poverty among inner city blacks, the victims of the regional economic decline are mainly those unskilled, poor blacks who suffer non-employment due to inadequate resources for job search and mobility.Wage Premium, Black-concentrated Region, Statistical Discrimination

A Test of the Martingale Hypothesis

This paper proposes a statistical test of the martingale hypothesis. It can be used to test whether a given time series is a martingale process against certain non-martingale alternatives. The class of alternative processes against which our test has power is very general and it encompasses many nonlinear non-martingale processes which may not be detected using traditional spectrum-based or variance-ratio tests. We look at the hypothesis of martingale, in contrast with other existing methods which test for the hypothesis of martingale difference. Two different types of test are considered: one is a generalized Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and the other is a Cramer-von Mises type test. For the processes that are first order Markovian in mean, in particular, our approach yields the test statistics that neither depend upon any smoothing parameter nor require any resampling procedure to simulate the null distributions. Their null limiting distributions are nicely characterized as functionals of a continuous stochastic process so that the critical values are easily tabulated. We prove consistency of our tests and further investigate their finite sample properties via simulation. Our tests are found to be rather powerful in moderate size samples against a wide variety of non-martingales including exponential autoregressive, threshold autoregressive, markov switching, chaotic, and some of nonstationary processes.

China¡¯s Economic Reform and Regional Productivity Differentials

Reform of Chinese economy, especially the Urban Reform announced in 1984, has decentralized government control over the economy and encouraged freer trade, domestic as well as international. Consequently, strengths and weaknesses of geographic regions emerge and each region may specialize according to its comparative advantage. The abandonment of hitherto regional equality policy produces an anxiety over worsening regional disparity especially between the Coastal East and the Interior West. The reform policy is based on the Chinese leaders¡¯ belief that allowing some areas to get rich ahead of others produces a trickle-down of prosperity to less developed interior regions. Is the trickle-down consistent with the reality, especially with the phenomenon of the Coastal-led development triggered by the ¡°Open Door¡± policy for foreign investment and trade? This paper examines the pattern of changes in total factor productivity differentials in industry across regions of China during 1986-1991, a period posterior to initiation of the industrial reform. The estimates of the panel data production function model, with regional and temporal variations in levels of productivity, confirm regional convergence of total factor productivity over the post reform period.

Kaons in Dense Half-Skyrmion Matter

Dense hadronic matter at low temperature is expected to be in crystal and at high density make a transition to a {\em chirally restored but color-confined} state which is a novel phase hitherto unexplored. This phase transition is predicted in both skyrmion matter in 4D and instanton matter in 5D, the former in the form of half-skyrmions and the latter in the form of half-instantons or dyons. We predict that when $K^-$'s are embedded in this half-skyrmion or half-instanton (dyonic) matter which may be reached not far above the normal density, there arises an enhanced attraction from the soft dilaton field figuring for the trace anomaly of QCD and the Wess-Zumino term. This attraction may have relevance for a possible strong binding of anti-kaons in dense nuclear matter and for kaon condensation in neutron-star matter. Such kaon property in the half-skyrmion phase is highly non-perturbarive and may not be accessible by low-order chiral perturbation theory. Relevance of the half-skyrmion or dyonic matter to compact stars is discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

DETERMINANTS OF CLERGY BEHAVIORS PROMOTING SAFETY OF BATTERED KOREAN IMMIGRANT WOMEN

Studies have shown that not only are clergy members the first persons from whom battered women seek help, but also a great number of clergy counsel battered women every year (Martin, 1989; Rotunda, Williamson, & Penfold, 2004). The role of the church and clergy are especially critical for the Korean immigrant community in the U.S. because Korean immigrants greatly underutilize existing services and rely heavily on their respective churches for assistance with various issues, including domestic violence (Boodman, 2007; Kim, 1997). Korean churches and clergy members have the potential to be active partners in providing intervention services and to serve as a major force for preventing domestic violence, yet there is no study that directly examines Korean clergy’s responses to domestic violence in their congregations and the factors related to their responses. Recognizing this gap in knowledge, this study was designed to examine how patriarchal, religious, and cultural values of Korean clergy members affect their responses to domestic violence in their congregations. Based on the radical feminist theory and intersectionality theory, it was hypothesized that younger clergy, clergy that have lived longer in the U.S., clergy with more pastoral counseling education, clergy with less religious fundamentalist beliefs, clergy with more egalitarian gender role attitudes, and clergy who do not adhere strongly to Korean cultural values will indicate more behaviors that promote safety of Korean battered women. A cross-sectional survey design utilizing mixed methods was used in this study with data collection through mail and online surveys. The sample was drawn from the Korean Business Directory (The Korea Times Washington D.C., 2010) that includes mailing addresses and phone numbers of 388 Korean American churches in Virginia and Maryland. A total of 152 Korean American ministers participated in this study by completing and returning a self-administered mail survey or accessing a web-based survey, yielding a 40.5% return rate. Results from both quantitative and qualitative analyses indicated that many Korean American clergy are torn between safety of battered women and sacredness of marriage in responding to domestic violence cases in their church. They first try to work toward reconciliation of couples through couples counseling and marriage enrichment seminars, and when this effort is not successful, then they refer to other resources such as domestic violence programs and therapists. Younger Korean American ministers, ministers who have lived in the U.S. longer, and ministers who adhere to Korean cultural values less were more likely to endorse behaviors that promote safety of Korean battered women. Religious fundamentalist beliefs, pastoral counseling education, and gender role attitudes did not account for a significant amount of variance associated with Korean clergy responses to domestic violence. Many Korean American clergy considered themselves as important figures who are best suited to deal with cases of domestic violence in their churches and recognized the need to work and build collaborative relationships with other professionals. Only small number of Korean American clergy felt well prepared to deal with domestic violence cases; however, they are willing to attend training on domestic violence, and many of them stressed the importance of clergy training on domestic violence in ensuring safety of battered women. Implications for social work practice and research are discussed

Photoacoustic imaging using nanoclusters

Advances in novel imaging techniques and molecular probes are now extending the opportunity of visualizing molecular targets of disease. Molecular imaging provides anatomic as well as functional and pathological information to sense the expression of molecular biological events. In general, molecular imaging aims to target a specific cell type or tissue and visualize biological events in vivo at the molecular or cellular levels through specific probes. Molecular imaging is usually performed in conjunction with probes for specific targets. The objective of this dissertation is to explore molecular imaging by providing highly efficient photoacoustic nanocluster contrast agents to further validate in vivo molecular imaging, improve the therapeutic procedure, and study fundamental photoacoustic signal processes from cluster of nanoparticles. Initially, a photothermal stimuli-responsive photoacoustic nanocluster was designed and synthesized to provide highly sensitive dynamic contrast within tissue samples. The photoacoustic signal enhancement from clustering of nanoparticles was demonstrated by characterizing the photoacoustic signal from photothermal stimuli-responsive nanoclusters. After characterization, photothermal stimuli-responsive nanoclusters were injected into a mouse tissue and the dynamic photoacoustic response from the nanoclusters activated by an external laser source was observed. This activation can be repeatedly turned on by modulating input laser signals, suggesting a new route for dynamic photoacoustic contrast imaging that will further improve the imaging contrast and more accurately guide the drug release process. Despite tremendous advantages of using these nanoparticles, their safety in a biological environment could be a major hurdle for their in vivo utilization. In order to avoid accumulation and long-term toxicity of nanoparticles, biodegradable nanoclusters consisting of sub-5 nm primary gold particles stabilized by a weakly adsorbed biodegradable polymer were introduced. The photoacoustic signal from biodegradable nanoclusters was quantitatively characterized. In addition, photothermal stability of different sizes of biodegradable nanoclusters was investigated. These nanoclusters were then intravenously injected into mice and biodistribution of nanoparticles was observed. Finally, in vivo spectroscopic photoacoustic imaging was performed on tumor-bearing mice with antibody conjugated biodegradable nanoclusters. This research may provide a new opportunity for molecular imaging to help diagnose tumors at an early stage and promote clinical translation of these techniques.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Sparse-Coding-Based Computed Tomography Image Reconstruction

Computed tomography (CT) is a popular type of medical imaging that generates images of the internal structure of an object based on projection scans of the object from several angles. There are numerous methods to reconstruct the original shape of the target object from scans, but they are still dependent on the number of angles and iterations. To overcome the drawbacks of iterative reconstruction approaches like the algebraic reconstruction technique (ART), while the recovery is slightly impacted from a random noise (small amount of ℓ2 norm error) and projection scans (small amount of ℓ1 norm error) as well, we propose a medical image reconstruction methodology using the properties of sparse coding. It is a very powerful matrix factorization method which each pixel point is represented as a linear combination of a small number of basis vectors

The Impact of an Epidemic: An Analysis of HIV and Early Marriage for Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper studies the relationship between HIV prevalence and marriage in Sub-Saharan Africa. We use repeated cross-sectional data from the Demographic and Health Surveys for Sub-Saharan Africa from 2003-2013 and find that the HIV epidemic is associated with higher likelihood of marriage. For young women, especially adolescent girls, the findings imply an important consequence of the HIV epidemic: its negative effect on educational attainment of girls through early marriage. Furthermore, the impact of the HIV epidemic on marriage, which varies from region to region, is shown to be weakest in Southern Africa, the region with the highest degree of HIV prevalence