bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hidden Markov Processes: The Complete Realization Problem
Authors: Vidyasagar M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers hidden Markov processes (HMPs), focusing on the so-called complete realization problem. It is quite easy to prove a universal necessary condition for the given process to have a hidden Markov model (HMM). However, this condition is not sufficient in general. In principle, one can derive a “necessary and sufficient condition,” but the “necessary and sufficient condition” is virtually a restatement of the problem to be solved and does not shed any insight into the solution. The chapter first introduces a very useful matrix known as the “Hankel” matrix before discussing the nonsufficiency of the finite Hankel rank condition, an abstract necessary and sufficient condition, and the existence of regular quasi-realizations. It also describes the spectral properties of alpha-mixing processes and goes on to analyze ultra-mixing processes and a sufficient condition for the existence of HMMs.
Some Applications to Computational Biology
Authors: Vidyasagar M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers some applications of Markov processes and hidden Markov processes to computational biology. It introduces three important problems, namely: sequence alignment, the gene-finding problem, and protein classification. After providing an overview of some relevant aspects of biology, the chapter examines the problem of optimal gapped alignment between two sequences. This is a way to detect similarity between two sequences over a common alphabet, such as the four-symbol alphabet of nucleotides, or the 20-symbol alphabet of amino acids. The chapter proceeds by discussing some widely used algorithms for finding genes from DNA sequences (genomes), including the GLIMMER algorithm and the GENSCAN algorithm. Finally, it describes a special type of hidden Markov model termed profile hidden Markov model, which is commonly used to classify proteins into a small number of groups.
Gender Role Attitudes since 1972
Authors: Campbell Karen E. , Marsden Peter V.
Published: November 2017

Several previous General Social Survey-based studies have revealed increasing acceptance of nontraditional gender roles. This chapter builds upon and extends these findings. It shows that adults became less predisposed toward a “separate spheres” conception holding that women should specialize in caring for children and households while men predominate in the more public arenas of employment and politics. Most growth in acceptance of broadened women's roles took place by the mid-1990s, however, mirroring trends in women's labor force participation and their representation in political office. The chapter then illustrates the regional convergence noted by Fischer and Hout (2006), showing that southerners continue to espouse more traditional views about gender, but less so over time.
Population Trends in Verbal Intelligence in the United States
Authors: Alwin Duane F. , Pacheco Julianna
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines trends in adults' performance on a 10-item vocabulary battery administered within the General Social Survey (GSS). Measured ability remained relatively steady over time. This stability reflects the confluence of two offsetting trends: lower baseline vocabulary knowledge among adults in post-World War II birth cohorts counterbalances achievement gains attributable to their greater schooling. The intricate analysis here assesses two explanations for apparent cohort-related drops in verbal knowledge—that the GSS vocabulary test became more difficult because its words grew obsolete and that the drops reflect population aging rather than cohort-related differences. The chapter concludes that little evidence supports either account and suggests that vocabulary declines in postwar cohorts reflect their family and school experiences as well as the selective survival of higher-ability adults.
Harnessing the Revolution?
Authors: Mickey Robert
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how the southern authoritarian enclaves experienced different modes of democratization in light of the deathblows of federal legislation, domestic insurgencies, and National Democratic Party reform in the 1960s and early 1970s. As enclave rulers came to believe that change was inevitable, most sought to harness the revolution, striking a fine balance between resisting federal intervention without appearing too defiant, and accepting some change without appearing too quiescent. Pursuing a “harnessed revolution” meant influencing the pace of seemingly inevitable change; it served the overarching goals of protecting the political careers of enclave rulers and the interests of many of their political-economic clients. The chapter considers how prior responses to democratization pressures, factional conflict, and party–state institutions shaped modes of democratization. It shows that the growth of Republicans in the Deep South was to varying degrees both consequence and cause of rulers' responses to democratization pressures.
Definitions
Authors: Lee Ruben
Published: November 2017

For many people, the “infrastructure institutions” in financial markets are the exchanges, central counterparties (CCPs), and central securities depositories (CSDs) that provide the trading, clearing, settlement, and sometimes other core functions for cash and derivative markets. There are, however, also many reasons why the definitions of an infrastructure, an exchange, a CCP, and CSD are all quite opaque. This is important, as the identification of a particular organization as one of these types of institutions can have significant commercial, regulatory, and policy consequences. This chapter aims to provide some basic insights into the definitions and nature of an infrastructure, an exchange, a CCP, and a CSD; and explores the reasons why these concepts are sometimes ambiguous and controversial. The first section considers the meaning and nature of what is an infrastructure. The second provides some comments on the definitions and nature of exchanges, CCPs, and CSDs, and on the functions they deliver. Brief conclusions are offered in the last section.
Governance of Market Infrastructure Institutions: A Snapshot
Authors: Lee Ruben
Published: November 2017

The chapter provides an overview of how market infrastructure institutions in the cash equity markets around the world were governed as of September 2006. The 90 member exchanges of the World Federation of Exchanges, and their associated clearing and settlement entities, were examined. For exchanges, the dominant control model, at 40 percent of the population, was that of a private company; 27.8 percent of the population were under mutual control, 16.7 percent were listed, and 15.6 percent were government controlled. For clearing institutions, the dominant control models were exchange control at 37.9 percent of the population and user control at 40.2 percent. Government control was low at 13.8 percent, as was control by independent entities at 7.8 percent. For settlement entities, user control was the dominant model at 45.1 percent of the population, with exchange control still common at 28.1 percent, although less important than for clearing entities.
What Is the Most Efficient Governance Structure?
Authors: Lee Ruben
Published: November 2017

This chapter analyzes what is the optimal governance model for market infrastructure institutions using the broad goal of efficiency as the main yardstick to compare different models. Three fundamental elements of governance are examined: an organization's ownership structure, its profit mandate, and its board composition. The chapter is composed of four sections. The first section outlines the archetypal ownership and mandate models that may be adopted by a market infrastructure institution. The second section identifies and discusses the pivotal factors that affect the relative efficiency of the different ownership and mandate models. The third section discusses two issues of fundamental importance to market infrastructure institutions' boards: the roles such boards should undertake, and the merits and difficulties of having independent directors or user directors on these boards. The last section encapsulates these discussions and presents key lessons about how to choose the optimal ownership structure and mandate for a market infrastructure institution.
The Free Germany Manifesto and the German People
Authors: Neumann Franz
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the significance of the Free Germany Manifesto to the German people. Three facts made the Free Germany Manifesto significant: the backing it apparently received from the Soviet Union; the revolutionary implication of the manifesto; and its appeal to the desire for national self-preservation. The chapter first provides an overview of the content of the Free Germany Manifesto before discussing its target groups, which included workers, peasants, those strata of the middle classes which have been proletarized in the process of total mobilization, and a large part of the intelligentsia. It then considers National Bolshevism and its two origins, one in the Communist Party of Germany and the other in the nationalistic organizations, especially the Free Corps. It also analyzes the strength of communism and of other anti-Nazi groups in Germany.
The Revival of German Political and Constitutional Life Under Military Government
Authors: Neumann Franz
Published: November 2017

This chapter offers suggestions for the revival of German political and constitutional life under military government, with a view to providing an environment in which cooperation of the United States, United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union could be maximized. It examines a number of issues, such as the dismissal or retention of an existing German government; the appointment of a temporary central German authority by military government; the political, social, and economic policies to be pursued in Germany; the time and conditions under which local and national elections are to be held; and the time and method of the disestablishment of military government. The chapter considers the legal continuity of a German government existing at the time of occupation, the policy of military government toward a German government, and the establishment of a central German administrative authority. It also discusses basic issues in German politics under military government and the problem of elections.
Nazi Plans for Dominating Germany and Europe: Domestic Crimes
Authors: Kircheimer Otto
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the criminal responsibility of the Nazis for their violations of German domestic law, including the suppression of labor organizations and political parties. It first considers the expected plea by the Nazi Defense that the war crimes of which the prisoners are accused were in fact authorized by the laws of the Third Reich. It then shows how—and under what pretexts—the Nazis went about the organization of their system of terror. In particular, it emphasizes the role of the police as an instrument of repression and notes that the opposition parties were driven underground, the elections were rigged, and the trade unions were taken over. The chapter examines two types of agencies employed by Nazi Germany: the “legal terror,” which operated by way of the courts and the application of Nazi laws, and the police and organizational terror, which applied force directly.
Analytical Chemical Methods and Instrumentation
Authors: Bianchi Thomas S. , Canuel Elizabeth A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter provides a background on the important role technology has played in the study of chemical biomarkers, and the many advances in the field that have resulted from the development of new analytical tools. It introduces some of the classic analytical tools used in organic geochemistry, including gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), pyrolysis GC-MS, direct temperature-resolved MS, compound-specific isotope analysis, high-performance liquid chromatography, and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Additionally, characterization of dissolved organic matter (DOM) and chromophoric DOM by fluorescence, use of pulsed amperometric detector (PAD) detectors in the analysis of sugars, and capillary electrophoresis are introduced. Recent advances in the following areas are also covered: (1) analysis of polar organic compounds utilizing liquid chromatography mass spectrometry, (2) multidimensional NMR, and (3) Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance MS.
Food Webs (MPB-50)
Authors: McCann Kevin S.
Published: November 2017

Human impacts are dramatically altering our natural ecosystems but the exact repercussions on ecological sustainability and function remain unclear. As a result, food web theory has experienced a proliferation of research seeking to address these critical areas. Arguing that the various recent and classical food web theories can be looked at collectively and in a highly consistent and testable way, this book synthesizes and reconciles modern and classical perspectives into a general unified theory. The book brings together outcomes from population-, community-, and ecosystem-level approaches under the common currency of energy or material fluxes. It shows that these approaches—often studied in isolation—all have the same general implications in terms of stability of the population dynamics. Specifically, increased fluxes of energy or material tend to destabilize populations, communities, and whole ecosystems. With this understanding, stabilizing structures at different levels of the ecological hierarchy can be identified and any population-, community-, or ecosystem-level structures that mute energy or material flow also stabilize systems dynamics. The book uses this powerful general framework to discuss the effects of human impact on ecological stability and sustainability, and it demonstrates that there is clear empirical evidence that the structures supporting ecological systems have been dangerously eroded. Uniting the latest research on food webs with classical theories, this book will be a standard source in the understanding of natural food web functions.
A Primer for Dynamical Systems
Authors: McCann Kevin S.
Published: November 2017

This chapter introduces the reader to some of the main conceptual ideas behind dynamical systems theory from the perspective of an experimentalist. It first considers the qualitative approaches used to study complex problems before discussing dynamical systems and bifurcations. In particular, it examines the use of time series to represent solutions and dynamics in the phase space, phase space respresentations of equilibrium and nonequilibrium steady states, the qualitative analysis of steady states, and some of the mechanics of local stability analysis for an equilibrium using the Lotka–Volterra model for an equilibrium steady state. It also explores the relationship between the type of model dynamics and the geometry of the underlying mathematical functions. Finally, it presents an empirical example from ecology, Hopf bifurcation in an aquatic microcosm, to illustrate the main concepts of dynamical systems theory and shows that the mathematics of dynamical systems underlies the dynamics of real ecological systems.
Food Chains and Omnivory
Authors: McCann Kevin S.
Published: November 2017

This chapter extends the consumer–resource theory to include simple but common three-species modules behind the construction of whole food webs, with particular emphasis on food chains and omnivory. It first considers some common simple modular food web structures and whether the dynamics of subsystems can be seen using the framework laid out in previous chapters. Specifically, it asks when common food web structure increases or weakens the relative interaction strengths and/or when a food web structure modifies flux between consumers and resources in a density-dependent manner such that the food web tends to increase flux rates in some situations and decrease the coupling in other situations. The chapter also explores how stage structure can influence food chain stability before concluding with a review of empirical evidence on the dynamical implications of omnivory for food webs.
Classic Food Web Theory
Authors: McCann Kevin S.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the basic assumptions of classic food web theory. It first considers the classic whole-community approach, which assumes that any specific matrix represents a sample from a “statistical universe” of interaction strengths for a given set of n species. It then describes some matrix approaches to see if context-dependent techniques can be applied to matrix theory, along with the simple graphical techniques of Gershgorin discs employed as an intuitive approach to eigenvalues. It argues that there are some rather intriguing “gravitational-like” properties of Gershgorin discs for some important biologically motivated matrices. The chapter proceeds by discussing some classic whole-matrix results that highlight the connections between the stability of lower-dimensional modules and whole food webs. Finally, it shows how the ideas derived from classic whole-system matrix approaches generally agree with the results of modular theory.
Adding the Ecosystem
Authors: McCann Kevin S.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how nutrient recycling and decomposition affect the dynamics and stability of food webs. It first reviews some of the existing theory on detritus and food web dynamics before discussing the basics of a model that takes into account grazing food webs and whole ecosystems. It then describes the N-R-D (nutrient pool, resource, detritus) submodule as well as the full N-C-R-D (nutrient pool, consumer, resource, detritus) model. It also explores how detritus may act to distribute nutrients by considering a model that begets nonequilibrium dynamics. It shows that detritus tends to stabilize consumer–resource interactions relative to the purely community module (no recycling) because the detritus tends to fall out of phase with the resource–nutrient interaction. The addition of a consumer–resource incteraction to the N-R-D module, even in a closed system, eventually can drive overshoot dynamics and destabilization by increased production, coupling, or interaction strength.
Coordinating Interests
Authors: Sabl Andrew
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines a neglected precondition for coordination problems' existing in the first place: the actors involved must share a common interest in coordinating their actions that outweighs whatever interest they have in not coordinating them. This condition is often taken for granted but is in the real world not trivial. Historically, the process involved great bloodshed, multiple reversals, and lots of politics: a mix of strategy, seduction, rhetoric, and above all a “great mixture of accident, which commonly concurs with a small ingredient of wisdom and foresight, in erecting the complicated fabric of the most perfect government.” The chapter also explores how Hume's approach to coordination avowedly requires seeking out innovative sources of common interest that might not at first appear.
Convention and Allegiance
Authors: Sabl Andrew
Published: November 2017

This chapter deals with some neglected implications of viewing political power in terms of coordination, focusing on how essential it is, on a coordination view, to regard governmental authority and citizen allegiance not as two different things but as two different ways of viewing the same thing. The chapter makes explicit the fact that no government is “legitimate” and no citizen is “law-abiding” in a vacuum, but that all authority and allegiance bind particular citizens to particular governments. It also discusses how the mutual dependence or mirror-image quality of allegiance and authority helps explain Hume's theory of legitimate rebellion and legitimate emergency powers.
Conclusion
Authors: Sabl Andrew
Published: November 2017

This concluding chapter considers the larger implications of the Humean account of politics generally and authority in particular, and explores the consequences for political theory of a set of Humean theses that cross the boundary between political theory and political science. It continues the suggestion that Humean liberalism may be superior to the Kantian kind. It is empirically superior at describing how human beings actually act, but also morally superior in attempting to further all human endeavors and projects, as opposed to arbitrarily elevating one—the desire for dignity or recognition—above all others. The chapter also shows how Hume's conventional approach to virtue and authority has the crucial advantage of letting political theory and ethics change as political possibilities change.
Party Competition
Authors: Bendor Jonathan , Diermeier Daniel , Siegel David A. , Ting Michael M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on Downsian party competition, a behavioral model of elections based on satisficing coupled to the Schattschneider-Schumpeter-Downs macrohypothesis that major parties in vigorous democracies are structured to win elections. The discussion is based on central premises about decision making that closely follow Simon’s analysis: winners satisfice while losers search. After a review of relevant literature, the chapter describes the model and several implications. It then models political parties as adaptive organizations that compete in a sequence of elections. It also considers alternative specifications of the challenger’s search behavior by endowing him with different degrees of sophistication and certain kinds of knowledge about the political terrain. Finally, it examines whether the results are sensitive to changes in key assumptions.
Conclusions Bounded Rationality and Elections
Authors: Bendor Jonathan , Diermeier Daniel , Siegel David A. , Ting Michael M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter summarizes the book’s major findings regarding party location, turnout, voter choice, and voter participation. First, the simple party competition model suggests that in unidimensional policy spaces, satisficing by winners plus search by losers produces a string of governmental policies that converges to the median voter’s ideal point when citizens always vote for the party that will better serve their interests. Second, turnout responds in intuitive ways to changes in parameter values. Average participation is higher the further apart the parties, in both two-component models with fixed platforms and in the simple turnout model. Third, voters learn to support parties that better serve their interests. Fourth, voter coordination is usually successful: the Condorcet loser is almost never selected. The behavioral theory of elections based on bounded rationality is formulated in the languages of dynamic systems and stochastic processes.
Rights on the Other Side of the Cold War Divide
Authors: Neier Aryeh
Published: November 2017

This chapter illustrates that many Americans took part in struggles for rights during the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. Though it was a fertile period for those promoting rights within the United States, few Americans were concerned in those years with efforts to secure rights in other parts of the world. The emergence of a rights movement in the Soviet Union in the 1960s was little noted, and relatively few in the United States joined Amnesty International, which developed far more rapidly in Europe. Americans concerned about rights in that era could be mobilized to deal with American violations of rights, but not with rights abuses by other governments. Inattention to such matters by those deeply engaged in domestic rights struggles was, in a way, a counterpart to the disdain for international law frequently expressed by partisans of American exceptionalism.
Big Business and American Wine: The California Wine Association
Authors: Simpson James
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at how the Californian wine industry developed. It first shows how producers adapted grape growing and wine making to local conditions; the chapter then considers the relationship between growers, winemakers, and San Francisco's merchants that led to the creation of the California Wine Association (CWA). Finally, the chapter examines the difficulties in selling to consumers accustomed to drinking beer and whisky rather than wine. Despite the success of the CWA, consumption of dry wines was strictly limited outside the small group of immigrants from southern Europe, and it was dessert wines that proved to be the most dynamic sector in the decade or two prior to Prohibition.
The Evolution of a Nation
Authors: Berkowitz Daniel , Clay Karen B.
Published: November 2017

Although political and legal institutions are essential to any nation's economic development, the forces that have shaped these institutions are poorly understood. Drawing on rich evidence about the development of the American states from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century, this book documents the mechanisms through which geographical and historical conditions—such as climate, access to water transportation, and early legal systems—impacted political and judicial institutions and economic growth. The book shows how a state's geography and climate influenced whether elites based their wealth in agriculture or trade. States with more occupationally diverse elites in 1860 had greater levels of political competition in their legislature from 1866 to 2000. The book also examines the effects of early legal systems. Because of their colonial history, thirteen states had an operational civil-law legal system prior to statehood. All of these states except Louisiana would later adopt common law. By the late eighteenth century, the two legal systems differed in their balances of power. In civil-law systems, judiciaries were subordinate to legislatures, whereas in common-law systems, the two were more equal. Former civil-law states and common-law states exhibit persistent differences in the structure of their courts, the retention of judges, and judicial budgets. Moreover, changes in court structures, retention procedures, and budgets occur under very different conditions in civil-law and common-law states. This book illustrates how initial geographical and historical conditions can determine the evolution of political and legal institutions and long-run growth.
Symmetric Hunt Processes and Regular Dirichlet Forms
Authors: Chen Zhen-Qing , Fukushima Masatoshi
Published: November 2017

This chapter studies a symmetric Hunt process associated with a regular Dirichlet form. Without loss of generality, the majority of the chapter assumes that E is a locally compact separable metric space, m is a positive Radon measure on E with supp[m] = E, and X = (Xₜ, Pₓ) is an m-symmetric Hunt process on (E,B(E)) whose Dirichlet form (E,F) is regular on L²(E; m). It adopts without any specific notices those potential theoretic terminologies and notations that are formulated in the previous chapter for the regular Dirichlet form (E,F). Furthermore, throughout this chapter, the convention that any numerical function on E is extended to the one-point compactification E
∂ = E ∪ {∂} by setting its value at δ‎ to be zero is adopted.
Hemispheric Parallax: South America and the American South
Authors: Giles Paul
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how the contours of American literature have changed over time by focusing on the shifting geospatial dynamics associated with the American South. In particular, it juxtaposes South America with the American South in order to highlight the historically variable nature of their interrelationship and the complicated ways in which these domains have intersected over time. The chapter first considers how the American South was imagined in the writings of William Bartram, William Gilmore Simms, and José Martí before discussing the notions of southern “regionalism” and pseudo-geography in the works of Zora Neale Hurston and Elizabeth Bishop. It also analyzes the fiction of William Faulkner and Frederick Barthelme.
He Became His Admirers
Authors: Wasley Aidan
Published: November 2017

Auden's death on September 29, 1973 prompted an enormous range of poetic responses from younger American poets, many of them following Auden's example as Auden had followed Yeats, both in using the poet's own language in their memorials for him and in turning the moment, and their readings of the meaning of Auden's life and work, toward their own individual artistic arguments and purposes. Indeed, no twentieth-century poet has spawned as many elegies, eulogies, and remembrances from as wide a range of practicing poets as Auden. This chapter surveys a few of these poetic farewells to Auden, from across a broad spectrum of American verse, which provide a compelling testimonial to, and concluding perspective on, his impact on an entire generation—and beyond—of American poetry. These include the work of James Schuyler, John Hollander, Richard Howard, Louis Simpson, Irving Feldman, and Derek Walcott.
How Many Languages Do We Need?
Authors: Ginsburgh Victor , Weber Shiomo
Published: November 2017

In the global economy, linguistic diversity influences economic and political development as well as public policies in positive and negative ways. It leads to financial costs, communication barriers, divisions in national unity, and, in some extreme cases, conflicts and war—but it also produces benefits related to group and individual identity. What are the specific advantages and disadvantages of linguistic diversity and how does it influence social and economic progress? This book examines linguistic diversity as a global social phenomenon and considers what degree of linguistic variety might result in the greatest economic good. The book looks at linguistic proximity between groups and between languages. It describes and uses simple economic, linguistic, and statistical tools to measure diversity's impact on growth, development, trade, the quality of institutions, translation issues, voting patterns in multinational competitions, and the likelihood and intensity of civil conflicts. The book addresses the choosing of core languages in a multilingual community, such as the European Union, and argues that although too many official languages might harm cohesiveness, efficiency, and communication, reducing their number brings about alienation and disenfranchisement of groups. Demonstrating that the value and drawbacks of linguistic diversity are universal, the book suggests ways for designing appropriate linguistic policies for today's multilingual world.
Distances Matter
Authors: Ginsburgh Victor , Weber Shlomo
Published: November 2017

The linguistic, genetic, and cultural distances discussed in Chapter 3 have important applications, and many economists have shown that they matter greatly. This chapter focuses on inter-country differences and their impact on trade, migration, translations, and certain aspects of voting behavior. Most applications of intercountry linguistic differences are based on what is now known as the gravity model, whose name comes from its analogy with Newton's 1687 law of universal gravitation. Section 1 is devoted to the best-known and most frequent application of the gravitational analogy: international trade flows. Section 2 discusses migrational flows. Section 3 analyzes the number of translations of literary works into and from various languages, whereas section 4 is devoted to a description of countries' voting patterns in the annual international Eurovision Song Contest.
Individual Communicative Benefits
Authors: Ginsburgh Victor , Weber Shlomo
Published: November 2017

This chapter begins with a discussion of the incentives to learn foreign languages, ranging from an expected increase in earnings, to the pleasure it can provide through immersion in a different culture, and having the ability to speak, read, or at least understand the language. Section 1 covers the theoretical models of learning a foreign language. Section 2 gives an example of estimating the resulting demand equations for foreign languages. Section 3 is devoted to the private monetary benefits resulting from the use of the native language of a country to which one migrates to, or the use of foreign languages for those citizens who know the language of their native country. Most econometric results point to relatively large returns on knowing non-native languages in firms that employ these workers.
Diversity and Disenfranchisement: Applications
Authors: Ginsburgh Victor , Weber Shlomo
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses applications of the fractionalization, polarization, and disenfranchisement indices introduced in Chapter 6. Fractionalization and polarization indices are used in more and more econometric studies to check how diversity affects economic outcomes. A rather large number of studies show that diversity exerts negative effects, though this also depends on whether countries are more or less democratic. Negative effects are more likely in dictatorial regimes. Recent papers point to the fact that distance-based indices often have more explanatory power than size-based indices. Disenfranchisement indices are used to examine outcomes of linguistic standardization. These were applied to examine the consequences of restricting the number of languages in some uses in the European Union.
Multilingualism in the European Union: A Case Study in Linguistic Policy
Authors: Ginsburgh Victor , Weber Shlomo
Published: November 2017

This chapter presents a case study of linguistic policies in the European Union. Linguistic policies should achieve a delicate balance, taking into account efficiency considerations without forgetting the will of the people. It suggests that although the English-only solution may yield greater efficiency and reduce costs, it could generate a substantial degree of disenfranchisement that leads to less political unity and citizens' loss of interest in a true European Union. The chapter presents alternative solutions that include the political feasibility of altering the extent of translation to some core languages; the provision of compensating transfers for countries that would be ready to cover their own translation needs'; and some fair methods of sharing the global cost of translation and interpretation, which could be of use in other parts of the world.
Using Other Metrics of Effect Size in Meta-analysis
Authors: Mengersen Kerrie , Gurevitch Jessica
Published: November 2017

The interests of ecologists and evolutionary biologists are very diverse, as are the organisms and systems that they study. Given the complexity of the world around them and of the problems that they are tackling, it is no surprise that ecologists and evolutionary biologists sometimes need to combine effects that do not conveniently fall under the range of common measures obtained from standard experimental studies or that are commonly employed in ecological and evolutionary meta-analyses. This chapter focuses on some of the other effect size metrics that might be of interest to a meta-analyst in these fields. Some of these are quite standard in the particular discipline in which they arise, but may be nonstandard to others. The chapter discusses a range of approaches to combining these different measures of effects, in the hope that this will broaden the options available for meta-analysis and motivate prospective analysts to search their own literature for relevant ideas and approaches.
Maximum Likelihood Approaches to Meta-analysis
Authors: Mengersen Kerrie , Schmid Christopher H.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses an alternative, more general approach based on maximizing the likelihood of the data; that is, for a model with unknown parameters, finding the parameter values that are “most likely” to generate the observed data set. For example, suppose that we are interested in the overall age of a population of people, and we have only two options: 30 years and 100 years. Now suppose that we observe a random sample of people with average age of 20 years. Then this sample is more likely to have been observed if the overall age of the population is 30 years as opposed to 100 years. Of course, we have made many assumptions in this example, and in practice there is more information about parameter values and the observed sample. The chapter describes this more general setup in the context of meta-analysis and then gives some worked examples.
Recovering Missing or Partial Data from Studies: a Survey of Conversions and Imputations for Meta-analysis
Authors: Lajeunesse Marc J.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses possible solutions for dealing with partial information and missing data from published studies. These solutions can improve the amount of information extracted from individual studies, and increase the representation of data for meta-analysis. It begins with a description of the mechanisms that generate missing information within studies, followed by a discussion of how gaps of information can influence meta-analysis and the way studies are quantitatively reviewed. It then suggests some practical solutions to recovering missing statistics from published studies. These include statistical acrobatics to convert available information (e.g., t-test) into those that are more useful to compute effect sizes, as well as a heuristic approaches that impute (fill gaps) missing information when pooling effect sizes. Finally, the chapter discusses multiple-imputation methods that account for the uncertainty associated with filling gaps of information when performing meta-analysis.
Statistical Models for the Meta-analysis of Nonindependent Data
Authors: Mengersen Kerrie , Jennions Michael D. , Schmid Christopher H.
Published: November 2017

In many meta-analyses, independence is questionable because there are several effect estimates per study and/or some of the individual studies included in the meta-analysis might not provide independent estimates of the effect. Within-study nonindependence can arise due to multiple measures of the same effect on the same experimental units being made over time, multiple treatments being compared to the same set of control individuals, or different measures being taken (e.g., plant height, dry weight, and photosynthesis rate) from the same experimental units to generate several different effect size estimates. This chapter discusses nonindependence among effect sizes both within and among studies. It focuses on four commonplace situations where nonindependence can occur in ecology and evolution meta-analyses. Each of these four situations is illustrated with a single case study.
Role of Meta-analysis in Interpreting the Scientific Literature
Authors: Jennions Michael D. , Lortie Christopher J. , Koricheva Julia
Published: November 2017

This chapter begins with a brief review of why effect sizes and their variances are more informative than P-values. It then discusses how meta-analysis promotes “effective thinking” that can change approaches to several commonplace problems. Specifically, it addresses the issues of (1) exemplar studies versus average trends, (2) resolving “conflict” between specific studies, (3) presenting results, (4) deciding on the level at which to replicate studies, (5) understanding the constraints imposed by low statistical power, and (6) asking broad-scale questions that cannot be resolved in a single study. The chapter focuses on estimating effect sizes as a key outcome of meta-analysis, but acknowledges that other outcomes might be of more interest in other situations.
Biomass Overcompensation
Authors: de Roos André M. , Persson Lennart
Published: November 2017

This chapter investigates the necessary conditions for the biomass in particular size ranges of a population to increase in response to an increase in mortality, and how the overcompensation comes about through a change in the population energetics. Ultimately, this overcompensation in stage-specific biomass solely results from the interplay between mortality and intraspecific, exploitative competition for resources among consumers. As a direct effect, mortality decreases overall density, but indirectly benefits survivors through the relaxation of competition for resources. This change in resource use by the consumer population may lead to biomass overcompensation, even in the absence of any increase in resource productivity.
Ontogenetic Niche Shifts
Authors: de Roos André M. , Persson Lennart
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers the consequences for community structure of ontogenetic diet shifts that involve the use of different resources in different life history stages, whereby these resources are in limited supply and are hence competed for by all individuals foraging on them. It explores the consequences of ontogenetic diet shifts using stage-structured biomass models that account for two basic resources, a stage-structured consumer population, for which we distinguish between juveniles and adults, and up to two unstructured predator populations. The most extended model is therefore closely related to the model analyzed in Chapter 5, except for the inclusion of an additional basic resource. The equations of the full model are summarized and default parameter values are listed.
Dynamics of Consumer-Resource Systems with Discrete Reproduction
Authors: de Roos André M. , Persson Lennart
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers models where processes like foraging, metabolism, and mortality are continuous, whereas reproduction is assumed to take place as a discrete event at the start of the growth season. The assumption of discrete reproduction is relevant for many organisms living in seasonal environments (winter/summer, dry/wet seasons). The use of several time scales means that the analysis of the dynamics in this chapter will be restricted to simulations using the Escalator Boxcar Train (EBT) framework. The EBT is specifically designed to handle the numerical integration of the equations that occur in physiologically structured models using ordinary differential equations and is particularly well suited for systems with discrete reproduction.
Cannibalism in Size-Structured Systems
Authors: de Roos André M. , Persson Lennart
Published: November 2017

The previous two chapters discussed how the size scaling of foraging and metabolic rates affected the dynamics of consumer-resource systems. Using different modeling approaches, it was shown that stage-dependent competitive ability was the main predictor of population dynamics; that is, it largely set the conditions for different types of cycles to occur. This chapter adds another intraspecific interaction on top of the consumer-resource system, namely, cannibalism. It uses a discrete-continuous population-level model based on individual-level net-production energetics to investigate the effects of cannibalism. The focus will be on the effects of cannibalism on population dynamics related to four processes that have been discussed in the literature regarding cannibalism: effects on mortality, competition, energy gain, and the size dependence of interactions.
What Does a Democratic Army Look Like?
Authors: Barany Zoltan
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses some of the useful theoretical contributions that inform the study of civil–military relations and democratization in different political environments. The course of democratic transition and consolidation is unique to the country that is experiencing it. There are many different political, economic, and social tasks to accomplish, and how they are approached is inevitably affected by country-specific factors. As such, three things ought to be kept in mind. First, democratization in general and the democratization of civil–military relations, in particular, are always gradual processes. Second, the conception of the ideal democracy and that of the ideal civil–military relations change as societies change. Third, democracy is not some ultimate and clearly defined end result but an elusive goal that can only be approximated, constantly pondered, debated, and enhanced.
After Military Rule in Europe: Spain, Portugal, and Greece
Authors: Barany Zoltan
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the cases of Spain and Portugal. After decades of authoritarianism, placing the Spanish military under civilian control proved to be a relatively straightforward and brief process. The transformation of Portuguese civil–military relations, on the other hand, was more contentious, took far longer, and did not succeed as completely as Spain's. Greece, the secondary case in this chapter, had a much shorter but more intense experience with praetorianism; its return to democracy and democratic civil–military relations was quick albeit not without some shortcomings. The chapter then assesses the influence of international organizations, particularly NATO, on the democratization of the three states and their defense establishments.
Nasser’s Dramatic Imagination, 1952–64
Authors: Litvin Margaret
Published: November 2017

This chapter explains that much of what matters for Arab Hamlet appropriation in the postcolonial period—the international sources, the way they were absorbed, and the concerns they help express—was shaped by the legacy of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser's geopolitical and cultural priorities made a range of Hamlets available and conditioned how intellectuals received them. Beyond this, from the moment in 1954 when he declared to his people, “All of you are Gamal Abdel Nasser,” the Egyptian leader personally embodied his country's identity and acted out its drama of historical agency. Beyond Egypt's borders, he became (like his radio station) “the voice of the Arabs.”
Bringing Policy Issue Substance Back In
Authors: Lapinski John S.
Published: November 2017

This chapter explains how policy issue substance could play a revitalizing role for multiple subfields in American politics, particularly congressional studies and American political development. It argues that there are three factors combined to lessen interest in the study of policy substance: the rise of deductive theory within congressional studies, which led scholars to believe that this earlier behavior-based work was limited to descriptive objectives; the findings of Poole and Rosenthal (1985, 1991, 1997), who demonstrated empirically that roll call voting in the U.S. Congress appears to be largely unidimensional and not policy-specific; and policy classification schemas that were not theoretically grounded and suffered from being period-bound. The chapter also introduces a new coding schema to parse policy.
Status in Classical Athens
Authors: Kamen Deborah
Published: November 2017

Ancient Greek literature, Athenian civic ideology, and modern classical scholarship have all worked together to reinforce the idea that there were three neatly defined status groups in classical Athens—citizens, slaves, and resident foreigners. But this book—the first comprehensive account of status in ancient democratic Athens—clearly lays out the evidence for a much broader and more complex spectrum of statuses, one that has important implications for understanding Greek social and cultural history. By revealing a social and legal reality otherwise masked by Athenian ideology, the book illuminates the complexity of Athenian social structure, uncovers tensions between democratic ideology and practice, and contributes to larger questions about the relationship between citizenship and democracy. Each chapter is devoted to one of ten distinct status groups in classical Athens (451/0–323 BCE): chattel slaves, privileged chattel slaves, conditionally freed slaves, resident foreigners (metics), illegitimate children, privileged metics, disenfranchised citizens, naturalized citizens, female citizens, and male citizens. Examining a wide range of literary, epigraphic, and legal evidence, as well as factors not generally considered together, such as property ownership, corporal inviolability, and religious rights, the book demonstrates the important legal and social distinctions that were drawn between various groups of individuals in Athens. At the same time, it reveals that the boundaries between these groups were less fixed and more permeable than Athenians themselves acknowledged. The book concludes by trying to explain why ancient Greek literature maintains the fiction of three status groups despite a far more complex reality.