bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Applicability of Bolton’s Analysis: A Study on Tibetan Community
Authors: Sajal K. K. , Gupta Rishabh , Pai Vikram , Desai Pooja , Mishra Sudhir K. , Hosamani Jagadish
Published: December 2018

Aim

This study aimed to evaluate the anterior and overall ratios of Tibetan population residing at Mundgod and to compare the obtained ratios to the ratios available from Bolton’s study.

Materials and Methods

The study consists of randomly selected 120 samples of Tibetan population ranging in age from 15 to 25 years, residing at Mundgod, Karnataka (60 males and 60 females). After measuring the width of each tooth, overall and anterior ratios were measured using formula proposed by Bolton.

Statistical Analysis

Anterior and overall tooth ratios obtained from the study were compared to standard Bolton’s ratio by one-sample t-test. The differences between males and females were compared by independent samples t-test.

Results

The overall ratio was significantly lower for both males (P = 0.03) and females (P = 0.001) at 90.20 and 88.93, respectively, when compared to the Bolton’s value of 91.3, whereas anterior ratio for males (P = 0.001) was significantly higher at 77.9 when compared to Bolton’s value of 77.2. The combined values of males and females when compared to Bolton’s value, i.e., the combined overall ratio (P = 0.001) was significantly lower at 89.5 and the combined anterior ratio (P = 0.016) was significantly higher at 78.7.

Conclusion

In the present study, significant difference was observed between the overall and anterior ratios in Tibetan population as compared to the Bolton’s value. Therefore, Bolton’s original data cannot be applied for Tibetan population.
Treating Bimaxillary Protrusion and Crowding with the Invisalign G6 First Premolar Extraction Solution and Invisalign Aligners
Authors: Lie Ken Jie Ronny K. P.
Published: December 2018

In cases requiring extraction of four first premolars, ensuring maintenance of adequate posterior anchorage and proper inclination of the teeth adjacent to the extraction sites during space closure can be difficult. The Invisalign G6 first premolar extraction solution has been developed to specifically address these problems. This case report describes the treatment of a 30-year-old woman whose main concerns were related to her protrusive and malaligned anterior teeth. Clinical findings revealed, among others, bimaxillary anterior protrusion and moderate-to-severe anterior crowding. A treatment approach involving extraction of the four first premolars was chosen, followed by orthodontic treatment with the Invisalign G6 first premolar extraction solution and Invisalign aligners. At the completion of 19.5 months of aligner treatment, the patient’s anterior teeth were retracted and uprighted, resulting in an improvement in her lip profile. Normal overjet and overbite were also achieved along with alleviation of the anterior crowding. The patient was extremely happy with the treatment results.
Determinación de calidad de agua en el Lago Vichuquén, con imágenes de satélite Landsat 8, sensor OLI, año 2016, Chile
Authors: Briceño I. , Pérez W. , San Miguel D. , Ramos S.
Published: December 2018

Trophic structure deterioration in continental water bodies (lakes and damps) has been a growing problem during the last years. Numerous factors, either natural or man-made contribute in value increments of various water quality indexes ranging toward eutrophication. Our study had objective to use remote sensing as complementary tool to study the spatial distribution and dynamics of Lake Vichuquén water quality parameters in two seasons of 2016 through the use of two satellite images of the Landsat 8 OLI sensor, with in situ and laboratory data. The Chl-a and ZSD parameters were estimated from multiple linear regression models. The results indicate that the trophic state of Lake Vichuquén corresponds to a eutrophic level in summer and mesotrophic in autumn. The laboratory analyzes establish for the summer and autumn season that the Chl-a data oscillate between 14.1 and 5.5 μg/l and for the ZSD between 3.7 and 2.5 m respectively. The increase in the levels of eutrophication of Lake Vichuquén is influenced in the first place by the seasonality and secondly by the different land uses that accelerate this type of processes; such as the plantations of radiata pine and eucalyptus, the agricultural activities and the urban areas surrounding the lake. The mean square error for each variable and each season varied in Chl-a in summer and another year 0.74 and 0.01 µg/l and ZSD 0.16 m respectively.
Phonological Errors on Impaired Language Modality Produced by Individuals with Broca’s Aphasia
Authors: Wardana I Ketut , Suparwa I Nyoman , Budiarsa Made
Published: December 2018

Nearly all of Broca's aphasic patients have the tendency to produce phonological errors in their non-fluent speech output. The grade of errors may vary depending on the severity of brain pathology, affected language area, and the scope of impaired sounds. Any types of the phonological process might be found in their weakening language modalities. So, the present study investigates the severity of the aphasics’ language modality, phonemic and phonetic errors of the impaired speech. This descriptive study analyzes Balinese speech produced by three individuals who suffer from Broca’s aphasia. To find out, they were requested to repeat words, name pictures, answer questions and read short text orally. As the result, their language modalities were categorized severe. The listeners required some hard efforts to conclude, question and predict what the informants said and further communication was impossible on more complex words. They produce not only distortions as phonetic errors but also substitutions, deletions, insertions, and metatheses as phonemic errors. Sound substitutions mostly appeared in a greater percentage for every phonological task given. By analyzing the errors with generative phonology, the findings suggest that the PND can lead a better phonetic realization, one of which is by substituting the target sounds in terms of their phonological features similarity. Though phonemic processing is more common in fluent aphasia, non-fluent aphasics also produced sonority substitutions. Furthermore, there was not synchronous coordination between the underlying form in the posterior region and phonetic representation in the anterior region due to the loss of the linguistic message.
The Minimum Agriculture-Chunk as an Elementary Data Science Component in ADAM, a Micro Targeted, Trainable, Modular, Multipurpose System for Land Farming
Authors: Serdaris Panagiotis , Spinthiropoulos Konstantinos , Agrafiotis Michael , Zisopoulos Athanasios
Published: December 2018

The poor Data Science support of agriculture brought us to our main idea of the research is to analyze all micro-works for every plant or tree. Then we proceed to specify targeted actions for harvest collection, micro spraying and hundreds similar simple actions. Initially we collect data from the farm. The airborne, land and underwater unmanned vehicles scan the field area with customized various sensors and cameras in various multi spectral modes. The result is minimum agro-chunk Four-Dimensional model. The unmanned vehicle on the field area receives target data. It is equipped with a general-purpose robotic arm, an absorbing bellow, a robotic pruner, a liquid spraying pipe, an underwater robotic arm and hundreds of others. It moves there and performs the commanded action. Action is flower or nuts collection, insect suction pruning and hundred more. All operations are high trainable by human intervention and the system stores its approach and logic for future action correction.
Ubiquitous Flipped Classroom Instructional Model with Learning Process of Scientific to Enhance Problem-Solving skills for Higher Education (UFC-PS Model)
Authors: Srilaphat Ekkharin , Jantakoon Thada
Published: December 2018

This research aimed at proposing an ubiquitous flipped classroom instructional model with learning process of scientific to enhance problem-solving skills for higher education (UFC-PS model). The UFC-PS model was developed based on the review of the literature, the expert’s interview and evaluated by five experts. The research results were found that the UFC-PS model consists of three components were (1) Ubiquitous Learning Environment, (2) Ubiquitous Scaffolding, and (3) flipped classroom through scientific inquiry. The experts also evaluated which step of the UFC-PS model was most suitable for the development of the respective aspects of problem-solving skills.
Sequential Testing in Reliability and Validity Studies With Repeated Measurements per Subject
Authors: Kim Steven B. , Wand Jeffrey O.
Published: December 2018

In medical, health, and sports sciences, researchers desire a device with high reliability and validity. This article focuses on reliability and validity studies with n subjects and m ≥2 repeated measurements per subject. High statistical power can be achieved by increasing n or m, and increasing m is often easier than increasing n in practice unless m is too high to result in systematic bias. The sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) is a useful statistical method which can conclude a null hypothesis H0 or an alternative hypothesis H1 with 50% of the required sample size of a non-sequential test on average. The traditional SPRT requires the likelihood function for each observed random variable, and it can be a practical burden for evaluating the likelihood ratio after each observation of a subject. Instead, m observed random variables per subject can be transformed into a test statistic which has a known sampling distribution under H0 and under H1. This allows us to formulate a SPRT based on a sequence of test statistics. In this article, three types of study are considered: reliabilityof a device, reliability of a device relative to a criterion device, and validity of a device relative to a  criterion device. Using SPRT for testing the reliability of a device, for small m, results in an average sample size of about 50% of the fixed sample size for a non-sequential test. For comparing a device to criterion, the average sample size approaches to 60% approximately as m increases. The SPRT tolerates violation of normality assumption for validity study, but it does not for reliability study.
De toepassing van de klachtplicht bezien vanuit het Wetsvoorstel kwaliteitsborging voor het bouwen
Authors: van Gulijk S.
Published: December 2018

De toepassing van de klachtplicht bezien vanuit het Wetsvoorstel kwaliteitsborging voor het bouwen

In deze bijdrage wordt ingegaan op de klachtplichtregeling, waarvoor de algemene wettelijke grondslag in artikel 6:89 BW is neergelegd. Specifiek voor de consumentenkoop en de aanneming van werk zijn daarvan afwijkende regelingen opgenomen, respectievelijk in artikel 7:23 en artikel 7:758 lid 3 BW. De klachtplichtregeling van artikel 7:758 lid 3 BW zal gaan wijzigen. De regering is immers voornemens in titel 7.12 BW (aanneming van werk) drie privaatrechtelijke wijzigen door te voeren in het kader van het Wetsvoorstel kwaliteitsborging voor het bouwen. Aan artikel 7:758 BW zal een nieuw lid 4 worden toegevoegd. In deze bijdrage wordt allereerst de klachtplichtregeling van artikelen 6:89, 7:23 en 7:758 lid 3 BW toegelicht. Vervolgens wordt ingegaan op de gevolgen van het voorgestelde nieuwe lid 4 voor de toepassing van de klachtplicht in de praktijk.
A World to Live In
Authors: Woodwell George M.
Published: December 2018

A scientist makes a powerful case that preservation of the integrity of the biosphere is a necessity and an inviolable human right.

A century of industrial development is the briefest of moments in the half billion years of the earth's evolution. And yet our current era has brought greater changes to the earth than any period in human history. The biosphere, the globe's life-giving envelope of air and climate, has been changed irreparably. In A World to Live In, the distinguished ecologist George Woodwell shows that the biosphere is now a global human protectorate and that its integrity of structure and function are tied closely to the human future.

The earth is a living system, Woodwell explains, and its stability is threatened by human disruption. Industry dumps its waste globally and makes a profit from it, invading the global commons; corporate interests overpower weak or nonexistent governmental protection to plunder the planet. The fossil fuels industry offers the most dramatic example of environmental destruction, disseminating the heat-trapping gases that are now warming the earth and changing the climate forever. The assumption that we can continue to use fossil fuels and “adapt” to climate disruption, Woodwell argues, is a ticket to catastrophe.

But Woodwell points the way toward a solution. We must respect the full range of life on earth—not species alone, but their natural communities of plant and animal life that have built, and still maintain, the biosphere. We must recognize that the earth's living systems are our heritage and that the preservation of the integrity of a finite biosphere is a necessity and an inviolable human right.
The Environmental Humanities
Authors: Emmett Robert S. , Nye David E.
Published: December 2018

A concise overview of this multidisciplinary field, presenting key concepts, central issues, and current research, along with concrete examples and case studies.

The emergence of the environmental humanities as an academic discipline early in the twenty-first century reflects the growing conviction that environmental problems cannot be solved by science and technology alone. This book offers a concise overview of this new multidisciplinary field, presenting concepts, issues, current research, concrete examples, and case studies. Robert Emmett and David Nye show how humanists, by offering constructive knowledge as well as negative critique, can improve our understanding of such environmental problems as global warming, species extinction, and over-consumption of the earth's resources. They trace the genealogy of environmental humanities from European, Australian, and American initiatives, also showing its cross-pollination by postcolonial and feminist theories.

Emmett and Nye consider a concept of place not synonymous with localism, the risks of ecotourism, and the cultivation of wild areas. They discuss the decoupling of energy use and progress, and point to OECD countries for examples of sustainable development. They explain the potential for science to do both good and harm, examine dark visions of planetary collapse, and describe more positive possibilities—alternative practices, including localization and degrowth. Finally, they examine the theoretical impact of new materialism, feminism, postcolonial criticism, animal studies, and queer ecology on the environmental humanities.
The Dash—The Other Side of Absolute Knowing
Authors: Comay Rebecca , Ruda Frank
Published: December 2018

An argument that what is usually dismissed as the “mystical shell” of Hegel's thought—the concept of absolute knowledge—is actually its most “rational kernel.”

This book sets out from a counterintuitive premise: the “mystical shell” of Hegel's system proves to be its most “rational kernel.” Hegel's radicalism is located precisely at the point where his thought seems to regress most. Most current readings try to update Hegel's thought by pruning back his grandiose claims to “absolute knowing.” Comay and Ruda invert this deflationary gesture by inflating what seems to be most trivial: the absolute is grasped only in the minutiae of its most mundane appearances. Reading Hegel without presupposition, without eliminating anything in advance or making any decision about what is essential and what is inessential, what is living and what is dead, they explore his presentation of the absolute to the letter.

The Dash is organized around a pair of seemingly innocuous details. Hegel punctuates strangely. He ends the Phenomenology of Spirit with a dash, and he begins the Science of Logic with a dash. This distinctive punctuation reveals an ambiguity at the heart of absolute knowing. The dash combines hesitation and acceleration. Its orientation is simultaneously retrospective and prospective. It both holds back and propels. It severs and connects. It demurs and insists. It interrupts and prolongs. It generates nonsequiturs and produces explanations. It leads in all directions: continuation, deviation, meaningless termination. This challenges every cliché about the Hegelian dialectic as a machine of uninterrupted teleological progress. The dialectical movement is, rather, structured by intermittency, interruption, hesitation, blockage, abruption, and random, unpredictable change—a rhythm that displays all the vicissitudes of the Freudian drive.
Panpsychism in the West
Authors: Skrbina David
Published: December 2018

An updated edition of a comprehensive study of the theory that mind exists, in some form, in all living and nonliving things.

In Panpsychism in the West, the first comprehensive study of the subject, David Skrbina argues for the importance of panpsychism—the theory that mind exists, in some form, in all living and nonliving things—in consideration of the nature of consciousness and mind. Panpsychism, with its conception of mind as a general phenomenon of nature, uniquely links being and mind. More than a theory of mind, it is a meta-theory—a statement about theories of mind rather than a theory in itself. Panpsychism can parallel almost every current theory of mind; it simply holds that, no matter how one conceives of mind, such mind applies to all things. After a brief discussion of general issues surrounding philosophy of mind, Skrbina examines the panpsychist views of philosophers from the pre-Socratics to the post-structuralists.

The original edition of Panpsychism in the West helped to reinvigorate a neglected and important aspect of philosophic thinking. This revised edition offers expanded and updated material that reflects the growth of panpsychism as a subdiscipline. It covers the problem of emergence of mind from a non-mental reality and the combination problem in greater detail. It offers expanded coverage of the pre-Socratics and Plato; a new section on Augustine; expanded discussions of Continental panpsychism, scientific arguments, Nietzsche, and Whitehead; and a new section on Russellian monism. With this edition, Panpsychism in the West will be continue to be the standard work on the topic.
Liquidation World
Authors: Kukuljevic Alexi
Published: December 2018

An examination of the disoriented subject of modernity: a dissolute figure who makes an makes an object of its absence; from Baudelaire to Broodthaers.

In Liquidation World, Alexi Kukuljevic examines a distinctive form of subjectivity animating the avant-garde: that of the darkly humorous and utterly disoriented subject of modernity, a dissolute figure that makes an art of its own vacancy, an object of its absence. Shorn of the truly rotten illusion that the world is a fulfilling and meaningful place, these subjects identify themselves by a paradoxical disidentification—through the objects that take their places. They have mastered the art of living absently, of making something with nothing. Traversing their own morbid obsessions, they substitute the nonsensical for sense, the ridiculous for the meaningful.

Kukuljevic analyzes a series of artistic practices that illuminate this subjectivity, ranging from Marcel Duchamp's Three Standard Stoppages to Charles Baudelaire's melancholia. He considers the paradox of Duchamp's apparatus in the Stoppages and the strange comedy of Marcel Broodthaers's relation to the readymade; the comic subject in Jacques Vaché and the ridiculous subject in Alfred Jarry; the nihilist in Paul Valéry's Monsieur Teste; Oswald Wiener's interpretation of the dandy; and Charles Baudelaire as a happy melancholic. Along the way, he also touches on the work of Thomas Bernhard, Andy Kaufman, Buster Keaton, and others. Finally, he offers an extended analysis of Danny's escape from his demented father in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

Each of these subjects is, in Freud's terms, sick—sick in the specific sense that they assume the absence of meaning and the liquidation of value in the world. They concern themselves with art, without assuming its value or meaning. Utterly debased, fundamentally disoriented, they take the void as their medium.
The Eugenic Mind Project
Authors: Wilson Robert A.
Published: December 2018

An examination of eugenic thinking past and present, from forced sterilization to prenatal screening, drawing on experience with those who survived  eugenics.

Part science and part social movement, eugenics emerged in the late nineteenth century as a tool for human improvement. In response to perceived threats of criminality, moral degeneration, feeble-mindedness, and “the rising tide of color,” eugenic laws and social policies aimed to better the human race by regulating reproductive choice through science and technology. In this book, Rob Wilson examines eugenic thought and practice—from forced sterilization to prenatal screening—drawing on his experience working with eugenics survivors.  Using the social sciences' standpoint theory as a framework to understand the intersection of eugenics, disability, social inclusiveness, and human variation, Wilson focuses on those who have lived through a eugenic past and those confronted by the legacy of eugenic thinking today.  By doing so, he brings eugenics from the distant past to the ongoing present.

 

Wilson discusses such topics as the conceptualization of eugenic traits; the formulation of laws regulating immigration and marriage and requiring sexual sterilization; the depiction of the targets of eugenics as “subhuman”;  the systematic construction of a concept of normality; the eugenic logic in prenatal screening and contemporary bioethics; and the incorporation of eugenics and disability into standpoint theory. 

Individual purchasers of this book will receive free access to the documentary Surviving Eugenics, available at EugenicsArchive.ca/film.
Norbert Wiener—A Life in Cybernetics
Authors: Wiener Norbert
Published: December 2018

Norbert Wiener's celebrated autobiography, available for the first time in one volume.

Norbert Wiener—A Life in Cybernetics combines for the first time the two volumes of Norbert Wiener's celebrated autobiography. Published at the height of public enthusiasm for cybernetics—when it was taken up by scientists, engineers, science fiction writers, artists, and musicians—Ex-Prodigy (1953) and I Am a Mathematician (1956) received attention from both scholarly and mainstream publications, garnering reviews and publicity in outlets that ranged from the New York Times and New York Post to the Virginia Quarterly Review.

Norbert Wiener was a mathematician with extraordinarily broad interests. The son of a Harvard professor of Slavic languages, Wiener was reading Dante and Darwin at seven, graduated from Tufts at fourteen, and received a PhD from Harvard at eighteen. He joined MIT's Department of Mathematics in 1919, where he remained until his death in 1964 at sixty-nine. In Ex-Prodigy, Wiener offers an emotionally raw account of being raised as a child prodigy by an overbearing father. In I Am a Mathematician, Wiener describes his research at MIT and how he established the foundations for the multidisciplinary field of cybernetics and the theory of feedback systems. This volume makes available the essence of Wiener's life and thought to a new generation of readers.
The Complementary Nature
Authors: Kelso J. A. Scott , Engstrom David A.
Published: December 2018

Why do we divide our world into contraries? Why do we perceive and interpret so many of life's contraries as mutually exclusive, either/or dichotomies such as individual~collective, self~other, body~mind, nature~nurture, cooperation~competition? Throughout history, many have recognized that truth may well lie in between such polar opposites. In The Complementary Nature, Scott Kelso and David Engstrøm contend that ubiquitous contraries are complementary and propose a comprehensive, empirically based scientific theory of how the polarized world and the world in between can be reconciled. They nominate the tilde, or squiggle (~), as the symbolic punctuation for reconciled complementary pairs.

Experiments show that the human brain is capable of displaying two apparently contradictory, mutually exclusive behaviors at the same time. Coordination dynamics—a mathematically expressed theory that reconciles the scientific language of "states" with the novel dynamical language of "tendencies"—attests to the complementary nature inherent in human brains and behavior. It may explain, Kelso and Engstrøm argue, why we (and nature) appear to partition things, events, and ideas into pairs. Kelso and Engstrøm's account is not just metaphorical; the reconciliations they describe are grounded in the principles and mathematical language of the theory of coordination dynamics. The Complementary Nature provides a clear-cut methodology for this evolving theory of brain and behavior that can also be applied to areas and developments outside the neurosciences, hence aiding reconciliations within and between disparate fields.

Bradford Books imprint
Exploring the Thalamus and Its Role in Cortical Function
Authors: Sherman S. Murray , Guillery R. W.
Published: December 2018

Examines the two-way relationships between the thalamus and the cerebral cortex; with updated material and a new chapter on the link between perception and action.

The thalamus plays a critical role in perceptual processing, but many questions remain about what thalamic activities contribute to sensory and motor functions. In this book, two pioneers in research on the thalamus examine the close two-way relationships between thalamus and cerebral cortex and look at the distinctive functions of the links between the thalamus and the rest of the brain. Countering the dominant "corticocentric" approach to understanding the cerebral cortex—which does not recognize that all neocortical areas receive important inputs from the thalamus and send outputs to lower motor centers—S. Murray Sherman and R.W. Guillery argue for a reappraisal of the way we think about the cortex and its interactions with the rest of the brain.

The book defines some of the functional categories critical to understanding thalamic functions, including the distinctions between drivers (pathways that carry messages to the cortex) and modulators (which can change the pattern of transmission) and between first-order and higher-order thalamic relays—the former receiving ascending drivers and the latter receiving cortical drivers. This second edition further develops these distinctions with expanded emphasis throughout the book on the role of the thalamus in cortical function. An important new chapter suggests a structural basis for linking perception and action, supplying supporting evidence for a link often overlooked in current views of perceptual processing.
The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization
Authors: Svenonius Elaine , Arms William Y.
Published: December 2018

Integrating the disparate disciplines of descriptive cataloging, subject cataloging, indexing, and classification, the book adopts a conceptual framework that views the process of organizing information as the use of a special language of description called a bibliographic language.

Instant electronic access to digital information is the single most distinguishing attribute of the information age. The elaborate retrieval mechanisms that support such access are a product of technology. But technology is not enough. The effectiveness of a system for accessing information is a direct function of the intelligence put into organizing it. Just as the practical field of engineering has theoretical physics as its underlying base, the design of systems for organizing information rests on an intellectual foundation. The subject of this book is the systematized body of knowledge that constitutes this foundation.

Integrating the disparate disciplines of descriptive cataloging, subject cataloging, indexing, and classification, the book adopts a conceptual framework that views the process of organizing information as the use of a special language of description called a bibliographic language. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is an analytic discussion of the intellectual foundation of information organization. The second part moves from generalities to particulars, presenting an overview of three bibliographic languages: work languages, document languages, and subject languages. It looks at these languages in terms of their vocabulary, semantics, and syntax.

The book is written in an exceptionally clear style, at a level that makes it understandable to those outside the discipline of library and information science.
Layered Learning in Multiagent Systems
Authors: Stone Peter
Published: December 2018

This book looks at multiagent systems that consist of teams of autonomous agents acting in real-time, noisy, collaborative, and adversarial environments.

This book looks at multiagent systems that consist of teams of autonomous agents acting in real-time, noisy, collaborative, and adversarial environments. The book makes four main contributions to the fields of machine learning and multiagent systems. First, it describes an architecture within which a flexible team structure allows member agents to decompose a task into flexible roles and to switch roles while acting. Second, it presents layered learning, a general-purpose machine-learning method for complex domains in which learning a mapping directly from agents' sensors to their actuators is intractable with existing machine-learning methods. Third, the book introduces a new multiagent reinforcement learning algorithm—team-partitioned, opaque-transition reinforcement learning (TPOT-RL)—designed for domains in which agents cannot necessarily observe the state-changes caused by other agents' actions. The final contribution is a fully functioning multiagent system that incorporates learning in a real-time, noisy domain with teammates and adversaries—a computer-simulated robotic soccer team. Peter Stone's work is the basis for the CMUnited Robotic Soccer Team, which has dominated recent RoboCup competitions. RoboCup not only helps roboticists to prove their theories in a realistic situation, but has drawn considerable public and professional attention to the field of intelligent robotics. The CMUnited team won the 1999 Stockholm simulator competition, outscoring its opponents by the rather impressive cumulative score of 110-0.

Bradford Books imprint
The Making of Economic Policy
Authors: Dixit Avinash K.
Published: December 2018

The Making of Economic Policy begins by observing that most countries' trade policies are so blatantly contrary to all the prescriptions of the economist that there is no way to understand this discrepancy except by delving into the politics. The same is true for many other dimensions of economic policy.

Avinash Dixit looks for an improved understanding of the politics of economic policy-making from a transaction cost perspective. Such costs of planning, implementing, and monitoring an exchange have proved critical to explaining many phenomena in industrial organization. Dixit discusses the variety of similar transaction costs encountered in the political process of making economic policy and how these costs affect the operation of different institutions and policies.

Dixit organizes a burgeoning body of research in political economy in this framework. He uses U.S. fiscal policy and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) as two examples that illustrate the framework, and show how policy often deviates from the economist's ideal of efficiency. The approach reveals, however, that some seemingly inefficient practices are quite creditable attempts to cope with transaction costs such as opportunism and asymmetric information.

Copublished with the Center for Economic Studies and the Ifo Institute
The Seasoned Schemer
Authors: Friedman Daniel P. , Felleisen Matthias , Bibby Duane
Published: December 2018

The notion that "thinking about computing is one of the most exciting things the human mind can do" sets both The Little Schemer (formerly known as The Little LISPer) and its new companion volume, The Seasoned Schemer, apart from other books on LISP. The authors' enthusiasm for their subject is compelling as they present abstract concepts in a humorous and easy-to-grasp fashion. Together, these books will open new doors of thought to anyone who wants to find out what computing is really about. The Little Schemer introduces computing as an extension of arithmetic and algebra; things that everyone studies in grade school and high school. It introduces programs as recursive functions and briefly discusses the limits of what computers can do. The authors use the programming language Scheme, and interesting foods to illustrate these abstract ideas. The Seasoned Schemer informs the reader about additional dimensions of computing: functions as values, change of state, and exceptional cases. The Little LISPer has been a popular introduction to LISP for many years. It had appeared in French and Japanese. The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer are worthy successors and will prove equally popular as textbooks for Scheme courses as well as companion texts for any complete introductory course in Computer Science.
Wage Dispersion
Authors: Mortensen Dale T.
Published: December 2018

Why are workers with identical skills found in both "good" jobs and "bad" jobs? Why are workers who do similar jobs paid differently, contrary to standard competitive theory? Observable differences in workers doing the same job account for only 30 percent of wage variation. In Wage Dispersion, Dale Mortensen examines the reasons for pay differentials in the other 70 percent. He finds that these differentials, or wage dispersion, are largely the result of job search friction (which arises when workers do not know the wages offered by all employers) and cross-firm differences in wage policy and productivity.

Mortensen examines previous theoretical explanations for wage dispersion, testing them against data from a Danish matched employer-employee database. He begins by offering a simple one-period model of the problem, then expands this basic model intertemporally to include the role of on-the-job worker search behavior. Following this, he discusses theoretical modifications that offer an explanation for the nature of observed wage dispersion, particularly the shape of cross-firm wage distribution. He then examines the hypothesis that wage policies are determined by profit-maximizing behavior and finds that the Danish data do not support it; he argues that bilateral wage bargaining is the more likely determinant. Finally, he reviews recent work that extends the basic theoretical framework to explain wage dispersion within firms.
Democracy's Arsenal
Authors: Gansler Jacques S.
Published: December 2018

An expert explains why the security needs of the twenty-first century require a transformation of the defense industry of the twentieth century.

New geopolitical realities—including terrorism, pandemics, rogue nuclear states, resource conflicts, insurgencies, mass migration, economic collapse, and cyber attacks—have created a dramatically different national-security environment for America. Twentieth-century defense strategies, technologies, and industrial practices will not meet the security requirements of a post-9/11 world. In Democracy's Arsenal, Jacques Gansler describes the transformations needed in government and industry to achieve a new, more effective system of national defense. Drawing on his decades of experience in industry, government, and academia, Gansler argues that the old model of ever-increasing defense expenditures on largely outmoded weapons systems must be replaced by a strategy that combines a healthy economy, effective international relations, and a strong (but affordable) national security posture. The defense industry must remake itself to become responsive and relevant to the needs of twenty-first-century security.
Concepts, Syntax, and Their Interface
Authors: Reinhart Tanya
Published: December 2018

A systematic exposition of Reinhart's Theta System, with extensive annotations and essays that capture subsequent developments.

One of Tanya Reinhart's major contributions to linguistic theory is the development of the Theta System (TS), a theory of the interface between the system of concepts and the linguistic computational system. Reinhart introduced her theory in a seminal paper, “The Theta System: Syntactic Realization of Verbal Concepts” (2000) and subsequently published other papers with further theoretical development. Although Reinhart continued to work on the Theta System, she had not completed a planned Linguistic Inquiry volume on the topic before her untimely death in 2007. This book, then, is the first to offer a systematic exposition of Reinhart's Theta System. The core of the book is Reinhart's 2000 paper, accompanied by substantial endnotes with clarifications, summaries, and links to subsequent modifications of the theory, some in Reinhart's unpublished work. An appendix by Marijana Marelj discusses the domain of Case, based on an LSA course she taught with Reinhart in 2005. Two additional essays by Reinhart's linguistic colleagues discuss the division of labor between the lexicon and syntax and the apparent conflict between the Theta System and Distributed Morphology.
Spreadsheet Implementation Technology
Authors: Sestoft Peter
Published: December 2018

A guide to innovative spreadsheet implementation technology, accompanied by a free software platform for experimentation.

Spreadsheets are used daily by millions of people for tasks that range from organizing a list of addresses to carrying out complex economic simulations. Spreadsheet programs are easy to learn and convenient to use because they have a clear visual model and a simple efficient underlying computational model. Yet although the basic spreadsheet model could be extended, improved, or otherwise experimented with in many ways, there is no coherently designed, reasonably efficient open source spreadsheet implementation that is a suitable platform for such experiments. This book fills the gap, teaching users how to experiment with and implement innovative spreadsheet functionality and introducing two software platforms for doing so. Along the way, it draws on and illustrates software technologies and computer science topics that range from object-oriented programming to compiler technology.

Spreadsheet Implementation Technology surveys a wide range of information about spreadsheets drawn from user experience, the scientific literature, and patents. After summarizing the spreadsheet computation model and the most important challenges for efficient recalculation, the book describes Corecalc, a core implementation of essential spreadsheet functionality suitable for practical experiments, and Funcalc, an extension of Corecalc that allows users to define their own functions without extraneous programming languages or loss of efficiency. It also shows the advantages of automatic function specialization and offers a user's manual for Funcalc. The Corecalc and Funcalc software is downloadable free of charge.
Pirate Politics
Authors: Burkart Patrick
Published: December 2018

An examination of the Pirate political movement in Europe analyzes its advocacy for free expression and the preservation of the Internet as a commons.

The Swedish Pirate Party emerged as a political force in 2006 when a group of software programmers and file-sharing geeks protested the police takedown of The Pirate Bay, a Swedish file-sharing search engine. The Swedish Pirate Party, and later the German Pirate Party, came to be identified with a “free culture” message that came into conflict with the European Union's legal system. In this book, Patrick Burkart examines the emergence of Pirate politics as an umbrella cyberlibertarian movement that views file sharing as a form of free expression and advocates for the preservation of the Internet as a commons. He links the Pirate movement to the Green movement, arguing that they share a moral consciousness and an explicit ecological agenda based on the notion of a commons, or public domain. The Pirate parties, like the Green Party, must weigh ideological purity against pragmatism as they move into practical national and regional politics.

Burkart uses second-generation critical theory and new social movement theory as theoretical perspectives for his analysis of the democratic potential of Pirate politics. After setting the Pirate parties in conceptual and political contexts, Burkart examines European antipiracy initiatives, the influence of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and the pressure exerted on European governance by American software and digital exporters. He argues that pirate politics can be seen as “cultural environmentalism,” a defense of Internet culture against both corporate and state colonization.
Hermeneutica
Authors: Rockwell Geoffrey , Sinclair Stéfan
Published: December 2018

An introduction to text analysis using computer-assisted interpretive practices, accompanied by example essays that illustrate the use of these computational tools.

The image of the scholar as a solitary thinker dates back at least to Descartes' Discourse on Method. But scholarly practices in the humanities are changing as older forms of communal inquiry are combined with modern research methods enabled by the Internet, accessible computing, data availability, and new media. Hermeneutica introduces text analysis using computer-assisted interpretive practices. It offers theoretical chapters about text analysis, presents a set of analytical tools (called Voyant) that instantiate the theory, and provides example essays that illustrate the use of these tools. Voyant allows users to integrate interpretation into texts by creating hermeneutica—small embeddable “toys” that can be woven into essays published online or into such online writing environments as blogs or wikis. The book's companion website, Hermeneuti.ca, offers the example essays with both text and embedded interactive panels. The panels show results and allow readers to experiment with the toys themselves.

The use of these analytical tools results in a hybrid essay: an interpretive work embedded with hermeneutical toys that can be explored for technique. The hermeneutica draw on and develop such common interactive analytics as word clouds and complex data journalism interactives. Embedded in scholarly texts, they create a more engaging argument. Moving between tool and text becomes another thread in a dynamic dialogue.
Emil du Bois-Reymond
Authors: Finkelstein Gabriel
Published: December 2018

A biography of an important but largely forgotten nineteenth-century scientist whose work helped lay the foundation of modern neuroscience.

Emil du Bois-Reymond is the most important forgotten intellectual of the nineteenth century. In his own time (1818–1896) du Bois-Reymond grew famous in his native Germany and beyond for his groundbreaking research in neuroscience and his provocative addresses on politics and culture. This biography by Gabriel Finkelstein draws on personal papers, published writings, and contemporary responses to tell the story of a major scientific figure. Du Bois-Reymond's discovery of the electrical transmission of nerve signals, his innovations in laboratory instrumentation, and his reductionist methodology all helped lay the foundations of modern neuroscience.

In addition to describing the pioneering experiments that earned du Bois-Reymond a seat in the Prussian Academy of Sciences and a professorship at the University of Berlin, Finkelstein recounts du Bois-Reymond's family origins, private life, public service, and lasting influence. Du Bois-Reymond's public lectures made him a celebrity. In talks that touched on science, philosophy, history, and literature, he introduced Darwin to German students (triggering two days of debate in the Prussian parliament); asked, on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War, whether France had forfeited its right to exist; and proclaimed the mystery of consciousness, heralding the age of doubt. The first modern biography of du Bois-Reymond in any language, this book recovers an important chapter in the history of science, the history of ideas, and the history of Germany.
Rail and the City
Authors: Warren Roxanne
Published: December 2018

An architect makes the case for rail transit as the critical infrastructure for a fluidly functioning and environmentally sustainable urban society.

The United States has evolved into a nation of twenty densely populated megaregions. Yet despite the environmental advantages of urban density, urban sprawl and reliance on the private car still set the pattern for most new development. Cars guzzle not only gas but also space, as massive acreage is dedicated to roadways and parking. Even more pressing, the replication of this pattern throughout the fast-developing world makes it doubtful that we will achieve the reductions in carbon emissions needed to avoid climate catastrophe. In Rail and the City, architect Roxanne Warren makes the case for compact urban development that is supported by rail transit.

Calling the automobile a relic of the twentieth century, Warren envisions a release from the tyrannies of traffic congestion, petroleum dependence, and an oppressively paved environment. Technical features of rail are key to its high capacities, safety at high speeds, and compactness—uniquely qualifying it to serve as ideal infrastructure within and between cities. Ultimately, mobility could be achieved through extensive networks of public transit, particularly rail, supplemented by buses, cycling, walking, car-sharing, and small, flexible vehicles. High-speed rail, fed by local transit, could eliminate the need for petroleum-intensive plane trips of less than 500 miles.

Warren considers issues of access to transit, citing examples from Europe, Japan, and North America, and pedestrian- and transit-oriented urban design. Rail transit, she argues, is the essential infrastructure for a fluidly functioning urban society.
SIRNA-ОПОСРЕДОВАННЫЙ НОКДАУН ГЕНОВ В ПЕРВИЧНЫХ КЛЕТКАХ МЛЕКОПИТАЮЩИХ И ЧЕЛОВЕКА, "Успехи современной биологии"
Authors: Филатова Е.Н. , Преснякова Н. Б. , Уткин О.В.
Published: December 2018

Малые интерферирующие РНК (siRNA) применяют для специфического подавления экспрессии генов в клетках млекопитающих и человека различного происхождения. Перспективным является использование siRNA для терапии некоторых инфекционных заболеваний. На сегодня основным препятствием для применения генного нокдауна в медицинской практике является недостаточная эффективность и безопасность метода в отношении первичных клеток млекопитающих и человека. Изложены современные представления о методах трансфекции siRNA в отношении первичных клеток млекопитающих, об их преимуществах и ограничениях. Приведены результаты собственных исследований возможности липофекции siRNA в первичные иммунокомпетентные клетки крови человека. Описаны основные принципы подбора нуклеотидных последовательностей siRNA, обеспечивающие повышение эффективности и снижение выраженности побочных эффектов генного нокдауна.