The Effects of Property Rights Violations on Economic Independence of Widows in Rarieda Sub-County

The right of women to possess, enjoy and dispose of their property is a universal human right recognized by international human rights treaties, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, among many other regional and national instruments. Even with the enactment of laws protecting women's property rights, widows' deprivation has continued unabated. Most widows live in conditions out of the need to conform to social norms demands and meet the most basic of their needs and that of their children. The study determined a) factors influencing property rights violations b) effects of property rights on the economic independence of widows. This study employed a cross-sectional descriptive research design, and semi-structured and unstructured questionnaires were used to collect data. This design helped collect accurate data on property rights violations faced by the study population and how they influenced their economic independence. The study population consisted of widows in Rarieda Sub County. Systematic random sampling technique was used to obtain the 230 respondents to whom questionnaires were administered to obtain quantitative and qualitative data. The study found that major causes of these violations included customs and traditions, poverty, lack of knowledge of laws governing property ownership, and lack of proper enforcement of these laws by the government. 76.5% (176) of the widows were found to have not gained any property post losing their husbands. These widows indicated to have relied on aid from the government, NGOs, and willing family members to make ends meet. The study findings showed clearly that most widows suffer property rights violations in Rarieda sub-county, Siaya County. This, in turn, affects their economic independence. Cultural norms and traditions were found to be among the major factors which influence property rights violations among widows. Traditions do not allow women to inherit their father's or father-in-law's property; hence they are always left at the mercy of the husband's family. The study recommends that the community be encouraged to rethink their customary laws and align this to the provisions of various statutes/laws that grant women the right to inherit property. Keywords: Economic Independence, Property Rights, Widow, Inheritance

Characterizations of monadic NIP

We give several characterizations of when a complete first-order theory T T is monadically NIP, i.e. when expansions of T T by arbitrary unary predicates do not have the independence property. The central characterization is a condition on finite satisfiability of types. Other characterizations include decompositions of models, the behavior of indiscernibles, and a forbidden configuration. As an application, we prove non-structure results for hereditary classes of finite substructures of non-monadically NIP models that eliminate quantifiers.

Independence-aware Advantage Estimation

Most of existing advantage function estimation methods in reinforcement learning suffer from the problem of high variance, which scales unfavorably with the time horizon. To address this challenge, we propose to identify the independence property between current action and future states in environments, which can be further leveraged to effectively reduce the variance of the advantage estimation. In particular, the recognized independence property can be naturally utilized to construct a novel importance sampling advantage estimator with close-to-zero variance even when the Monte-Carlo return signal yields a large variance. To further remove the risk of the high variance introduced by the new estimator, we combine it with existing Monte-Carlo estimator via a reward decomposition model learned by minimizing the estimation variance. Experiments demonstrate that our method achieves higher sample efficiency compared with existing advantage estimation methods in complex environments.

Regression conditions that characterize free-Poisson and free-Kummer distributions

We find the asymptotic spectral distribution of random Kummer matrix. Then we formulate and prove a free analogue of HV independence property, which is known for classical Kummer and Gamma random variables and for Kummer and Wishart matrices. We also prove a related characterization of free-Kummer and free-Poisson (Marchenko–Pastur) non-commutative random variables.

Mobile Robotic Sensors for Environmental Monitoring using Gaussian Markov Random Field

SUMMARY This paper addresses the issue of monitoring spatial environmental phenomena of interest utilizing information collected by a network of mobile, wireless, and noisy sensors that can take discrete measurements as they navigate through the environment. It is proposed to employ Gaussian Markov random field (GMRF) represented on an irregular discrete lattice by using the stochastic partial differential equations method to model the physical spatial field. It then derives a GMRF-based approach to effectively predict the field at unmeasured locations, given available observations, in both centralized and distributed manners. Furthermore, a novel but efficient optimality criterion is then proposed to design centralized and distributed adaptive sampling strategies for the mobile robotic sensors to find the most informative sampling paths in taking future measurements. By taking advantage of conditional independence property in the GMRF, the adaptive sampling optimization problem is proven to be resolved in a deterministic time. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is compared and demonstrated using pre-published data sets with appealing results.

Using the Extremal Index for Value-at-Risk Backtesting*

We introduce a set of new Value-at-Risk independence backtests by establishing a connection between the independence property of Value-at-Risk forecasts and the extremal index, a general measure of extremal clustering of stationary sequences. For this purpose, we introduce a sequence of relative excess returns whose extremal index is to be estimated. We compare our backtest to both popular and recent competitors using Monte Carlo simulations and find considerable power in many scenarios. In an applied section, we perform realistic out-of-sample forecasts with common forecasting models and discuss advantages and pitfalls of our approach.

The Impact of Governance Rules on Earnings Management: Applied Study on Industrial and Service Companies Listed on Palestine Stock Exchange

The aim of the study is to analyze the impact of corporate governance rules on earnings management for companies listed on Palestine Exchange. A number of corporate governance variables was selected to achieve this aim, including size of board of directors, CEO duality, board of director’s independence, property rights, number of board directors’ meetings. Modified Jones Model has been used to detect earnings management. Panel Data Model has also been involved in the study, where the population study consists of the 48 companies listed on Palestine Exchange, and which are distributed across five main sectors. The study sample included 13 industrial and services companies listed on Palestine Exchange. This study found that there was a negative influence between board size and CEO duality, and between earnings management. The study also showed that there is a positive influence between board independence and earnings management. Moreover, it showed that no relationship between board directors meetings and internal ownership with earnings management. The study stressed on the need for continued reinforcement of the governance rules, in order to avoid the negative impacts resulted from failure to apply these rules, taking into consideration the support of board independence in their relationship with areas of executive work to avoid taking decision that may affect earnings management. It also recommended that doing other researches on the same subject should be continued, taking into account the examination of variables other than those in this study to get to the variables that have the greatest impact on earnings management for companies listed on Palestine Exchange.

UNDECIDABILITY OF THE FIRST ORDER THEORIES OF FREE NONCOMMUTATIVE LIE ALGEBRAS

Let R be a commutative integral unital domain and L a free noncommutative Lie algebra over R. In this article we show that the ring R and its action on L are 0-interpretable in L, viewed as a ring with the standard ring language $+ , \cdot ,0$. Furthermore, if R has characteristic zero then we prove that the elementary theory $Th\left( L \right)$ of L in the standard ring language is undecidable. To do so we show that the arithmetic ${\Bbb N} = \langle {\Bbb N}, + , \cdot ,0\rangle $ is 0-interpretable in L. This implies that the theory of $Th\left( L \right)$ has the independence property. These results answer some old questions on model theory of free Lie algebras.