DePaul University

About: DePaul University is a education organization based out in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 5658 authors who have published 11562 publications receiving 295257 citations.

The role of close friends in African American adolescents' dating and sexual behavior.

Abstract: This study examined the role of close friends in the sexual lives of African American adolescents. Fifteen African American adolescents residing in an urban neighborhood participated in individual in-depth qualitative interviews. The findings suggest that close friends play a critical role in the dating and sexual behaviors of inner-city African American adolescents, as they appear to serve as socializing agents that impact how adolescents conceptualize and socially construct dating and sexual roles and behaviors. Close friends also play a significant role in acquiring new dating and sexual partners and in determining the course of dating and sexual relationships. Although females and males expressed similar expectations regarding sexual fidelity and condom use, they differed with regard to their method and process of talking with friends about dating and sex, their shared social constructions about dating and sexual roles and expectations, and their perceptions of the meaning of dating. We discuss the implications of the findings in terms of involving close friends in interventions focused on improving the sexual health of African American adolescents. Future directions for research with African American adolescents and sexuality are also discussed.

Beyond 'trees are good': Disservices, management costs, and tradeoffs in urban forestry.

Abstract: The provision of ecosystem services is a prominent rationale for urban greening, and there is a prevailing mantra that ‘trees are good’. However, understanding how urban trees contribute to sustainability must also consider disservices. In this perspective article, we discuss recent research on ecosystem disservices of urban trees, including infrastructure conflicts, health and safety impacts, aesthetic issues, and environmentally detrimental consequences, as well as management costs related to ecological disturbances and risk management. We also discuss tradeoffs regarding species selection and local conservation concerns, as well as the central role of human perception in the interpretation of ecosystem services and disservices, particularly the uncritical assertion that ‘everybody loves trees’. Urban forestry decision-making that fails to account for disservices can have unintended negative consequences for communities. Further research is needed regarding life cycle assessments, stakeholder decision-making, return-on-investment, and framings of services and disservices in urban forestry.

Banded and tapered estimates for autocovariance matrices and the linear process bootstrap

Abstract: Author(s): McMurry, Timothy L; Politis, D N | Abstract: We address the problem of estimating the autocovariance matrix of a stationary process. Under short range dependence assumptions, convergence rates are established for a gradually tapered version of the sample autocovariance matrix and for its inverse. The proposed estimator is formed by leaving the main diagonals of the sample autocovariance matrix intact while gradually down-weighting o�-diagonal entries towards zero. In addition we show the same convergence rates hold for a positive de�nite version of the estimator, and we introduce a new approach for selecting the banding parameter. The new matrix estimator is shown to perform well theoretically and in simulation studies. As an application we introduce a new resampling scheme for stationary processes termed the linear process bootstrap (LPB). The LPB is shown to be asymptotically valid for the sample mean and related statistics. The e�ectiveness of the proposed methods are demonstrated in a simulation study.

The Effects of Short-Selling Threats on Incentive Contracts: Evidence from an Experiment

Abstract: This paper examines the effects of a shock to the stock-price formation process on the design of executive incentive contracts. We find that an exogenous removal of short-selling constraints causes firms to convexify compensation payoffs by granting relatively more stock options to their managers. We also find that treated firms adopt new anti-takeover provisions. These results suggest that when firms face the threat of bear raids, they incentivize managers to take actions that mitigate the adverse effects of unrestrained short selling. Overall, this paper provides causal evidence that financial markets affect incentive contract design.

In the Contact Zone: Code-switching Strategies by Latino/a Writers

Abstract: The fact that I am writing to you in English already falsifies what I wanted to tell you My subject: how to explain to you that I don't belong to English though I belong nowhere else --Gustavo Perez Firmat 3 The Rise of New "Englishes" In Weird English, Evelyn Nien-Ming Ch'ien examines the innovative renditions of English produced by immigrant and postcolonial writers. She argues that writers such as Arundhati Roy, Maxine Hong Kingston, Salman Rushdie, and Junot Diaz share a desire to create a new English that represents their "third-world" perspective in a world that seeks to marginalize the voices of these writers' communities. She states, "Weird English wants to do more with English than communicate what the subject is; it also wants to show who the speaker is and how the speaker can appropriate the language" (8). While she studies a disparate group of writers, she argues that the new Englishes they produce destabilize the established standard language and permit other languages to share the status enjoyed by English; these writers also unapologetically break the rules of English. Their reworked varieties of English often implicate other languages by incorporating elements from their structure and sound system, if not the "foreign" words themselves. By producing a "balancing act of intelligibility and experiment" (Ch'ien 11), immigrant and postcolonial writers create a new variety without completely assimilating the norms and conventions of the dominant language. As outsiders, such writers appropriate English from a novel perspective. Much of the Latino/a literature written in English in the US incorporates Spanish at some level. Code-switching, the alternation of two languages in a verbal or written text, is often featured in poetry, drama, and performance art, particularly work that is published by Latino/a presses. Many analyses of code-switching in Chicano/a and Nuyorican poetry discuss the significance of this practice. Critics such as Keller, Lipski, and Aparicio agree that code-switching is an artistic choice with political ramifications. Using Spanish in an English language text serves to legitimize the much-maligned practice of mixing codes in vernacular speech. (1) In the United States, the presence of large and small Latino/a communities across the country, increasing numbers of Latino/a immigrants, and the US/Mexican border means that code-switching in literature is not only metaphorical, but represents a reality where segments of the population are living between cultures and languages; literary language actualizes the discourse of the border and bilingual/bicultural communities. In this essay, I focus on one mainstream space where Spanish and English are in contact; specifically, I analyze the use of Spanish in Latino/a literary texts written since the 1990s in the United States. Through strategies that range from very infrequent and transparent use of Spanish to prose that requires a bilingual reader, Latino/a authors negotiate their relationships to homelands, languages, and transnational identifications. The strategies they use lend themselves to multiple readings and differing levels of accessibility. While the united States is a hostile climate for multilingualism and diverse cultures, Latino/a prose writers who use Spanish in their work continue to impact the literary sphere and to a lesser or greater extent insist on documenting and textualizing the reality of a multilingual America. These strategies that I discuss are manifest in most Latino/a prose fiction published in the last few decades. The specific examples come from a range of recently published Latino/a texts (1990 to 2004); I also choose texts from Latino/a writers who have publicly discussed their use of Spanish in prose writing. Strategies for Inclusion of Spanish in Latino/a Texts Divergent opinions concerning the inclusion and function of Spanish in the works of Latino/a writers suggests they choose a variety of strategies to portray a bicultural and bilingual world and that they may have different readers in mind as they craft their texts. …