bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The value in ‘value’: An exercise for embedding heterodox economics into sociology and social policy education
Authors: Coombs Nathan , Frawley Ashley
Published: July 2018

With continuing resistance by economics departments to pluralising their curricula, heterodox economists have suggested an alliance with other social sciences. This article suggests the labour theory value (LTV) as an appropriate concept for embedding heterodox ideas into sociology and social policy teaching. While often seen as a relic of nineteenth century political economy, teaching LTV is beneficial as (1) it is one of few economic theories addressing causes of economic inequality and (2) the contrast with neoclassical subjective value theory (STV) facilitates discussion about relationships between different ideas of ‘value’ and conflicting political ideas about social justice. We present a series of exercises designed to introduce students to differences between STV and LTV. After running and modifying exercises over three years, we find the intervention broadly successful in encouraging students to engage with economic ideas and draw connections between personal experience, society, economics and politics.
More than feeling ‘a bit rocky’. Mal de Debarquement Syndrome (MdDS) Australia, quality of life survey 2016.
Authors: Pearce Alan , Daws Chris
Published: July 2018

This report is the first study to investigate quality of life for those suffering with Mal de Debarquement Syndrome (MdDS). In June 2016, members of MdDS Australia were invited to participate in an anonymous online survey investigating their quality of life in regards to general health status; work and social activities; depression and fatigue; life enjoyment; and MdDS inference in daily activities.Sixty-three members (73% response rate) completed the survey over the four-week period. Average age of the respondents was 41 years, with 96% of the respondents being female. Time of onset to official MdDS diagnosis was 2 years. The general health of respondents was fair to good but there was noticeable response regarding the future of their health status in the future. MdDS has a notable effect on activities of daily living, and also the work environment (including housework), where many respondents noted that they have modified their working hours/load to accommodate MdDS. There was almost unanimous agreement that there is significant ignorance or misunderstanding of MdDS by clinicians and allied health workers. Also, the lack of understanding of MdDS in the wider community may also play an effect on the working environment for respondents.Overall, this preliminary survey has found that the multiple variables of ignorance/misunderstanding, modification of the working environment (including housework), and being unsure of the future, collectively contribute to constant anxiety and worry about MdDS which is likely to have an affect on cognitive abilities and the mental health of a majority of respondents. Future research should look at creating an individual quality of life score to understand how MdDS affects each person specifically.
The Old and the New: Qualifying City Systems in the World with Classical Models and New Data
Authors: Cura Robin , Cottineau Clémentine , Swerts Elfie , Ignazzi Cosmo Antonio , Bretagnolle Anne , Vacchiani-Marcuzzo Celine , Pumain Denise
Published: July 2018

Zipf's rank-size rule, lognormal distribution, and Gibrat's urban growth models are considered as summarizing fundamental properties of systems of cities. In this article, they are used as statistical benchmarks for comparing the shapes of urban hierarchies and evolutionary trends of seven systems of cities in the world including BRICS, Europe, and United States. In order to provide conclusions that avoid the pitfalls of too small samples or uncontrolled urban definitions, these models are tested on some 20,000 urban units whose geographically significant delineations were harmonized in each country over 50 years between 1960 and 2010. As a result, if the models appear not always statistically valid, their usefulness is confirmed since the observed deviations from empirical data remain limited and can often be interpreted from the geohistorical context of urbanism proper to each world region. Moreover, the article provides new free software which authorizes the reproducibility of our experiments with our data bases as well as with complementary data.
Formal Comparisons of Legislative Institutions: Comparing ideal points from the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate in Brazil
Authors: McDonnell Robert Myles
Published: July 2018

As the popularity of formal analyses of legislative activity in Latin America grows, so does the importance of understanding the limits of the estimates produced by such analyses and the methodological adaptations necessary when using these measures to make formal comparisons. This research note details the considerations involved and demonstrates their significance with an empirical example using the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate. This empirical analysis leads to conclusions that are the opposite of those in the literature, suggesting that such formal comparisons across institutions need to be made with care.
‘Integrity, Sportsmanship, Character’: Baseball’s Moral Entrepreneurs and the Production and Reproduction of Institutional Autonomy
Authors: Abrutyn Seth
Published: July 2018

Sociologists have long argued that institutions like religion or economy can become relatively distinct spheres that facilitate and constrain action, goal setting, and decision-making. But, few empirical studies have looked closely at how institutions become relatively distinct cultural and structural domains. This paper examines how institutional entrepreneurs—in this case, Major League Baseball (MLB) sportswriters—build and sustain institutional boundaries by considering how they create a distinct cultural discourse that infuses baseball places, times, and events with culturally distinct meanings. Drawing from sportswriters’ columns, documentaries, and monographs written on baseball, we show that MLB entrepreneurs have developed and disseminated a discourse oriented around the generalized medium of sport exchange, interaction, and communication: competitiveness. Using these data, the paper below examines how this medium becomes quantified and embodied in tangible and intangible forms. Additionally, the paper draws on sports columns that illustrate how MLB entrepreneurs protect the autonomy of a sacred core (the Hall of Fame) from internal threats (gambling and performance-enhancement drugs) and external corruption (the influence of money). The paper ends with a discussion of implications for the applicability of the findings to other sports and institutional domains.
The Origin and Scale of Gender Inequality: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
Authors: Radford Jason
Published: July 2018

In the United States, women make roughly 75% of what men make. This inequality is reduced to roughly 92% once factors like occupation and job performance are controlled. The central debate over which number is correct has been whether these occupational and behavioral inequalities are related to gender or incidental to it. This study uses a natural experiment from a crowdfunding website for public school teachers to answer this question. The study shows there is no occupational and behavioral inequality in the likelihood of funding when teachers are anonymous. Yet, there is substantial inequality after they are identified as “Mr. Smith” or “Ms. Jones.” These results indicate gender gaps by occupation and behavior only occur as a result of exposure to gender and that estimates of gender inequality are likely under-inflated by thirty percent.
Yet Another Statistical Analysis of Bob Ross Paintings
Authors: Marcum Christopher Steven
Published: July 2018

In this paper, we analyze a sample of clippings from paintings by the lateartist Bob Ross.Previous work focused on the qualitative themes of his paintings (Hickey,2014); here, we expand on that line of research by considering thecolorspace and luminosity values as our data. Our results demonstrate thesubtle aesthetics of the average Ross painting, the common variation sharedby his paintings, and the structure of the relationships between eachpainting in our sample. We reveal, for the first time, renderings of theaverage paintings and introduce “eigenross” components to identify andevaluate shared variance. Additionally, all data and code are embedded inthis document to encourage future research, and, in the spirit of Bob Ross,to teach others how to do so.
Social vulnerability projections improve sea-level rise risk assessments
Authors: Hardy Dean , Hauer Mathew
Published: July 2018

Rising seas will impact millions of coastal residents in coming decades. The vulnerability of coastal populations exposed to inundation will be greater for some sub-populations due to differences in their socio-demographic characteristics. Many climate risk and vulnerability assessments, however, model current populations against future environments. We advance sea-level rise risk assessments by dynamically modeling environmental change and socio-demographic change. We project three scenarios of inundation exposure due to future sea-level rise in coastal Georgia from 2010 to 2050. We align the sea-level rise projections with five population projection scenarios of socially vulnerable sub-populations via the Hamilton-Perry method and the theory of demographic metabolism. Our combined fast sea-level rise and middle population scenarios project a near doubling of the population exposed, and a more than five-fold increase for those at risk (i.e., residing in a census tract with high social vulnerability) and most at risk (i.e., high social vulnerability and high exposure) compared to the same estimate based on 2010 population data. Of vulnerable sub-populations, women had the largest absolute increase in exposure for all scenario combinations. The Hispanic/Latinx population’s exposure increased the largest proportionally under the fast and medium sea-level rise projections and elderly people’s (65+) under the slow sea-level rise scenario. Our findings suggest that for coastal areas experiencing rapid growth (or declines) in more socially vulnerable sub-populations, estimates based on current population data are likely to underestimate (or overestimate) the proportion of such groups’ risk to inundation from future sea-level rise.
A novel method for modelling interaction between categorical variables
Authors: Nieuwenhuis Rense
Published: July 2018

Sweeney and Ulveling (1972) introduced weighted effect coding, where the estimates for categories of nominal and ordinal variables are deviations from the arithmetic mean, typically from a sample. This somewhat neglected parameterization is preferred over the well-known effect coding (ANOVA) if the data are unbalanced (i.e., when categories hold different numbers of observations) and was recently revived in this journal (te Grotenhuis et al. 2016). In this paper, we show that weighted effect coding can also be applied to regression models with interaction effects. The weighted effect coded interactions represent the additional effects over and above the main effects obtained from the model without these interactions. This is a useful alternative to effect coding when the data are unbalanced as in most observational data. In this contribution, we describe this novel parameterization and provide syntax, data, and examples in SPSS, R, and Stata on http://www.ru. nl/sociology/mt/wec/downloads. For didactical reasons we apply OLS regression models, but weighted effect coded interactions can be used in any generalized linear model. Throughout this text we use the word ‘interaction’, while other researchers prefer ‘moderation’.
Exploring Authenticity and Playfulness in Teacher Practice Spaces
Authors: Reich Justin , Kim YJ , Robinson Kevin , Roy Dan , Thompson Meredith
Published: July 2018

Teacher practice spaces are learning experiences, inspired by games and simulations, that allow novice teachers to rehearse for and reflect on important decisions in teaching. Practice-based teacher educators use various approaches to simulation in methods courses, and these simulations often attempt to holistically replicate the complexity of teaching conditions. In this research, we present a range of practice spaces that don’t attempt to replicate teaching, but explore design spaces with varying levels of authenticity. We define four dimensions of authenticity in teaching simulations: authenticity of complexity, of situation, of role, and of task. We discuss how these different dimensions of authenticity intersect with playfulness in the examination of five case studies of teacher practice spaces. We hypothesize that authenticity of task is essential to most teacher practice spaces, but interesting new design spaces can be found by moving away from other dimensions of authenticity.
[Supplementary material to book chapter] Google Scholar as a data source for research assessment
Authors: López-Cózar Emilio Delgado , Orduna-Malea Enrique , Martín-Martín Alberto
Published: July 2018

The launch of Google Scholar (GS) marked the beginning of a revolution in the scientific information market. This search engine, unlike traditional databases, automatically indexes information from the academic web. Its ease of use, together with its wide coverage and fast indexing speed, have made it the first tool most scientists currently turn to when they need to carry out a literature search. Additionally, the fact that its search results were accompanied from the beginning by citation counts, as well as the later development of secondary products which leverage this citation data (such as Google Scholar Metrics and Google Scholar Citations), made many scientists wonder about its potential as a source of data for bibliometric analyses. The goal of this chapter is to lay the foundations for the use of GS as a supplementary source (and in some disciplines, arguably the best alternative) for scientific evaluation. First, we present a general overview of how GS works. Second, we present empirical evidences about its main characteristics (size, coverage, and growth rate). Third, we carry out a systematic analysis of the main limitations this search engine presents as a tool for the evaluation of scientific performance. Lastly, we discuss the main differences between GS and other more traditional bibliographic databases in light of the correlations found between their citation data. We conclude that Google Scholar presents a broader view of the academic world because it has brought to light a great amount of sources that were not previously visible.
Biotechnology's Uncertainty Principle
Authors: Lemley Mark
Published: July 2018

In theory, we have a unified patent system that provides technology-neutralprotection to all kinds of technologies. However, we have recently noticedan increasing divergence between the rules actually applied to differentindustries. Biotechnology provides one of the best examples. Inbiotechnology cases, the Federal Circuit has repeatedly held thatuncertainty in predicting the structural features of biotechnologicalinventions renders them nonobvious, even if the prior art demonstrates aclear plan for producing the invention. At the same time, the court claimsthat the uncertain nature of the technology requires imposition ofstringent patent enablement and written description requirements that arenot applied to patents in other disciplines. Thus, as a practical matter itappears that although patent law is technology-neutral in theory, it istechnology-specific in application. Much of the variance in patentstandards is attributable to the use of a legal construct, the "personhaving ordinary skill in the art" (PHOSITA), to determine obviousness andenablement. We do not challenge the idea that the standards in eachindustry should vary with the level of skill in that industry. We think theuse of the PHOSITA provides needed flexibility for patent law, permittingit to adapt to new technologies without losing its essential character. Wefear, however, that the Federal Circuit has not applied that standardproperly in biotechnology. The court has a static perception of the fieldthat was set in its initial analyses of biotechnology inventions, but whichdoes not reflect the realities of the industry. In the final part of thepaper, we offer a very preliminary policy assessment of theseindustry-specific patent cases. We suggest that the special rules theFederal Circuit has constructed for biotech cases are rather poorly matchedto the specific needs of the industry. Indeed, in some ways the FederalCircuit cases have it exactly backwards. We offer a few suggestions as towhat a consciously designed biotechnology patent policy may look like.
A New Balance Between IP and Antitrust
Authors: Lemley Mark
Published: July 2018

In this article, I introduce the interaction between intellectual property(IP) and antitrust law. I describe the ways in which these two importantareas of government regulation are and are not in tension, and discuss thehistory of the relationship between these laws. I argue that IP andantitrust have cycled between over- and under-protection, and that we arecurrently (and mistakenly) conditioned to think of private property andprivate ordering as efficient in and of themselves, rather than asefficient only in the context of robust market competition. Further, Iargue that antitrust can serve the goals of innovation and dynamicefficiency directly in circumstances in which competition, not monopoly,serves as a spur to innovation. The goal of the IP and antitrust lawsshould be to seek a robust balance between competition and monopoly in theservice of dynamic efficiency. When IP laws are strong, antitrust lawsshould also be strong, and vice versa.
A Standard for the Scholarly Citation of Archaeological Data as an Incentive to Data Sharing
Authors: Marwick Ben , Birch Suzanne E Pilaar
Published: July 2018

How do archaeologists share their research data, if at all? We review what data are, according to current influential definitions, and previous work on the benefits, costs and norms of data sharing in the sciences broadly. To understand data sharing in archaeology, we present the results of three pilot studies: requests for data by email; review of data availability in published articles, and analysis of archaeological datasets deposited in repositories. We find that archaeologists are often willing to share, but discipline-wide sharing is patchy and ad hoc. Legislation and mandates are effective at increasing data-sharing, but editorial policies at journals lack adequate enforcement. Although most of data available at repositories are licensed to enable flexible reuse, only a small proportion of the data are stored in structured formats for easy reuse. We present some suggestions for improving the state of date sharing in archaeology, among these is a standard for citing data sets to ensure that researchers making their data publicly available receive appropriate credit.
Fansubbing in the Arab World: Modus Operandi and Prospects
Authors: Studies AWEJ-tls for Translation & Literary , Eldalees Hani Abdulla , Al-Adwan Amer , Yahiaoui Rashid
Published: July 2018

This paper analyzes the subtitles generated by Arab amateur subtitlers, who are commonly known as fansubbers. The study is based on scrutinizing two copies of the film The Wolf of Wall Street which has been subtitled by fans in two different Arab countries, Jordan and Lebanon. The study is designed to analyze the Arabic subtitles generated in each DVD to understand how subtitlers from each country deal with different problematic issues and distasteful topics in the film, including utterances related to sexuality, swear words andreferences to embarrassing bodily functions. The study applies the model of euphemisation in subtitling proposed by Al-Adwan(2015) which has beenderived primarily from two existing models of euphemisation presented by Williams (1975) and Warren (1992). The applied model has managed to address the majority of the problematic instances and has also identified strategies adopted to tackle them in the Arabic subtitles. However, the model has not been able to account for other instances found in both DVDs where subtitlers also used dysphemism as a translation strategy. The analysis reveals that fansubbers do not only use euphemism but also dysphemism in their Arabic subtitles when translating certain problematic utterances.
Open Smart Cities in Canada: Assessment Report
Authors: Lauriault Tracey P. , Bloom Rachel , Landry Jean-Noé
Published: July 2018

This assessment report communicates the state of smart city initiatives in four cities in Canada (Edmonton, Guelph, Montréal, and Ottawa) by reporting on how these cities are developing and rolling out their smart city plans. In order to capture the complexity of inter-jurisdictional processes and coordination related to smart cities in Canada, we have provided an additional case study about the governance and management of Ontario’s electricity grid and smart meter data.
Demand Estimation with Availability Variation
Authors: Hickman William , Mortimer Julie Holland
Published: July 2018

Estimates of demand are identified from variation in the choice sets that consumers face and the corresponding purchase probabilities for individual products. Retail settings often provide an opportunity to observe variation in consumer choice sets that arises not only through changes in observable product characteristics, such as price, but also through changes in product availability. We review the literature that develops methods for estimating demand in these settings, with emphasis on two mechanisms through which product availability may vary: product assortment decisions, and stockout events. We also briefly discuss variation in availability that may arise from limited consumer information.
Social Media and Democracy: Assessing the State of the Field and Identifying Unexplored Questions
Authors: Trump Kris-Stella , Rhody Jason , Edick Cole , Weber Penelope
Published: July 2018

This report summarizes the highlights of a discussion that took place at Stanford University on April 19-20, 2018. The conference, titled “Social Media and Democracy: Assessing the State of the Field and Identifying Unexplored Questions,” convened leading social scientists to discuss the state of the field with regard to research on social media and democracy.
Perceived Effectiveness of Social Media as an English Language Learning Tool
Authors: Journal Arab World English , Alsaied Hanan Ismail K Kutubkhanah
Published: July 2018

Little is known about the potential effects of social media usage on the learning performance of undergraduates, especially female students in some Arab/Islamic cultures, where sex-segregated education is the norm, and the freedom of expression of women may be suppressed. The purpose of the current study was to test the correlation between the independent variables (including, level of social media use, interactivity with peers, interactivity with teachers, active cooperative learning, engagement) and the dependent variable (i.e., learning performance) of female Saudi students in a sex-segregated educational system. A cross-sectional survey was administered to 283 participants, representing 15.8% of the target population of female Saudi students enrolled on a distance learning course at King Abdulaziz University. The data were analyzed by partial least squares structural equation modeling, to generate and validate the Social Media-Learning Performance (SM-LP) model. The SM-LP model predicted with a substantial effect size (R2 = 67.7%) that female Saudi students perceived that they could potentially improve their learning performance, in a sex-segregated education system, through high levels of social media use, stimulating inter activity with peers and teachers, as well as active collaborative learning, and engagement. All the path coefficients were statistically significant (p < .05) reflecting a strong endorsement of the use of social media as an effective learning tool. The findings have important implications for sex-segregated educational context.
Caste, Class, and Urbanization: The Shaping of Religious Community in Contemporary India
Authors: Stroope Samuel
Published: July 2018

AbstractBuilding on the implications of qualitative work from India and urbanism theories, I aim to understand whether religious bonding social capital in contemporary India increases with greater urbanization and whether such increases are moderated by caste or social class position. Results from multinomial logistic regression on 1,417 Hindu respondents in a nationally representative sample of India (World Values Survey-India 2001) indicate that religious bonding is fostered by urbanism and that this association is stronger for upper castes. But there is little evidence that social class similarly moderates the association between urbanism and religious bonding. In light of these findings, religious bonding might be better understood as rooted in the interaction of caste dynamics and changes in the urban environment, rather than as a result of greater affluence. The data are also consistent with work underscoring the importance of disentangling social class and caste among Hindus in contemporary India.
Meritocracia y desigualdad económica: Percepciones, preferencias e implicancias
Authors: Castillo Juan Carlos , Torres Alex , Atria Jorge , Maldonado Luis
Published: July 2018

The idea of meritocracy is related to the distribution of goods and rewards based on individual talent and effort, being a principle that legitimizes the unequal distribution of resources in modern societies. Despite the constant references to meritocracy in inequality and stratification research, there are still few conceptual and empirical attempts to understand to what extent individuals perceive and prefer meritocracy, as well as their consequences. The present research proposes a conceptual and empirical framework for studying meritocratic perceptions and preferences, which is then related with economic inequality variables. Using data from the Chilean survey “Social justice and citizenship participation”, the analyses suggest that meritocratic perceptions and preferences are different constructs and that those perceiving an adequate functioning of meritocracy also perceive less economic inequality.
Beyond notification: Filling gaps in peer production projects
Authors: Ford Heather , Pensa Iolanda , Devouard Florence , Pucciarelli Marta , Botturi Luca
Published: July 2018

In order to counter systemic bias in peer production projects like Wikipedia, a variety of strategies have been used to fill gaps and improve the completeness of the archive. We test a number of these strategies in a project aimed at improving articles relating to South Africa’s primary school curriculum and find that many of the predominant strategies are insufficient for filling Wikipedia’s gaps. Notifications that alert users to the existence of gaps including incomplete or missing articles, in particular, are found to be ineffective at improving articles. Only through the process of trust-building and the development of negotiated boundary objects, potential allies (institutional academics in this case) can be enrolled in the task of editing the encyclopaedia. Rather than a simple process of enrolment via notification, this project demonstrated the principles of negotiation required for engaging with new editor groups in the long-term project of filling Wikipedia’s gaps.
ASA 2016 Media Pre-Conference: Anointing Credible Knowledge Producers: Newspapers and Sources in Africa
Authors: Wahutu Siguru james
Published: July 2018

*Pre-print Abstract *Using a combination of content analysis and interviews, this chapter of mydissertation analyses who African media houses anoint as credible knowledgecarriers when covering mass atrocities. It analyses news reports on Darfurfrom Rwanda, South Africa and Kenya between 2004 and 2008 and argues thatAfrican media fields are engaging in pushing to the periphery Africanvoices in the narrative construction about atrocities. This chapteremphasizes not only a different approach when studying representations ofAfrica but also poses challenges to scholarship on media representations ofAfrica that have focused on critiquing western representation on Africawhile not turning their gaze towards African media fields.
The Food Regime in Late Colonial Philippines
Authors: Camba Alvin
Published: July 2018

I argue that food regimes need to take into account the production relations of paid and unpaid work. As an angle of vision, I use the historical geography of late colonial Philippines (1901–1941) to show how paid and unpaid work in food production was not discrete and separated processes but rather conjoined moments of capital accumulation. The colonial regime—in this context, American colonial government, U.S. agribusinesses, and Filipino landed elites—utilized state power, customary land relations, and commodity‐specific characteristics to appropriate vast amounts of unpaid work from agrarian classes of Philippine labour and draft animals towards the exploitation of commodified labour power. These processes not only produced considerable quantities of coconut and sugar products that were exported to the American consumer market, sold at cheaper prices, and contributed to the profitability of U.S. agribusiness elites but also allowed the colonial regime to efficiently expand commodity production across the islands. The more the American capitalists and Philippine elites invested in Philippine agriculture, the more they appropriated unpaid work from the agrarian classes of labour.
The UK’s tax treaties with developing countries during the 1970s
Authors: Hearson Martin
Published: July 2018

Tax treaties between developed and developing countries impose considerable costs on the latter, in the form of curbs on their right to tax investment from the former. Existing research assumes that such restrictions are accepted as a quid pro quo for resolving the problem of double taxation, which might act as an obstacle to inward investment. This paper uses archival documents to examine treaty negotiations between the United Kingdom (UK) and developing countries during the 1970s, focusing on contentious provisions concerning ‘tax sparing’, the taxation of shipping, and withholding taxes. Consistent with critical literature on tax treaties, it finds that neither side was concerned about the double taxation problem, which was resolved unilaterally by the UK’s tax credit. Rather, developing countries were primarily focused on obtaining matching tax credits in the UK to maximise the benefits to investors from their tax incentives. UK priorities, meanwhile, were to bind developing countries into OECD-type tax treatment of British firms. Negotiated outcomes did not reflect the true balance of costs and benefits to each side, but their different negotiating capacities, the political salience of particular taxes, and the precedent certain concessions might set for future negotiations
On the Sociodynamics of Choice and Group Stability: A Bridge Over the Micro/Macro Divide
Authors: Graham Andrew
Published: July 2018

This paper explores a sociological problem born of the following axioms:1) Individuals, their circumstances and their interactions are heterogeneous and subject to constant change;2) Individuals and their interactions make up groups;3) Groups are normally very stable, lacking change.After defining social stability and reviewing current rational choice theorizing, this paper contends that neither past nor current sociological thinking sufficiently explains how social stability can come from the arbitrariness of individual interactions. It then posits that all choices have accompanying ‘entrained' choices, subsumed to conscious decision-making, one being for ‘predictability’; a ubiquitous yet useful characteristic of sociodynamics that addresses the problem above in a testable, falsifiable way, and could be a sociological ‘constant’ for use in further research.
A Human-Computer Interaction Approach for Integrity in Economics
Authors: Opoku-Agyemang Kweku A.
Published: July 2018

Emerging data science platforms using simplified and automated user interfaces can help research become significantly more transparent and ethical. By depending on standard human-generated code, many statistical software programs commonly used in economics and the social sciences inadvertently rely on the human willpower of scientists, and inspite of an assumed invincibility, such individuals are nearly necessarily prone to errors and research integrity compromises, as is increasingly clear. Removing the vast majority of arbitrary and subjective data judgments, including the generation of code, from researcher control would free behavioural and social scientists from human limitations. Automating the text annotations that accompany data visualizations in figures and diagrams using emerging natural language processing tools can also free scientists from overconfidence or the temptation to embellish findings. Scientific communities across economics as well as other social science fields should embrace such systems to enhance the integrity and transparency of the next-generation of research.
Make America Christian Again: Christian Nationalism and Voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election
Authors: Whitehead Andrew L , Perry Samuel , Baker Joseph O.
Published: July 2018

Why did Americans vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election? Social scientists have proposed a variety of explanations, including economic dissatisfaction, sexism, racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. The current study establishes that, independent of these influences, voting for Trump was, at least for many Americans, a symbolic defense of the United States’ perceived Christian heritage. Data from a national probability sample of Americans surveyed soon after the 2016 election shows that greater adherence to Christian nationalist ideology was a robust predictor of voting for Trump, even after controlling for economic dissatisfaction, sexism, anti-black prejudice, anti-Muslim refugee attitudes, and anti-immigrant sentiment, as well as measures of religion, sociodemographics, and political identity more generally. These findings indicate that Christian nationalist ideology—although correlated with a variety of class-based, sexist, racist, and ethnocentric views—is not synonymous with, reducible to, or strictly epiphenomenal of such views. Rather, Christian nationalism operates as a unique and independent ideology that can influence political actions by calling forth a defense of mythological narratives about America’s distinctively Christian heritage and future.
Coleridge’s “Ballad of the Dark Ladie”: The Story between the Lines
Authors: Journal Arab World English , Sadiq Ebtisam Ali
Published: July 2018

The focus of this article is “The Ballad of the Dark Ladie,” a short fragment by the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Critics often overlook the piece in their reading of Coleridge although it has an interesting story between the lines. Besides enriching the unfinished surface one, the submerged tale carries significant revelations about Coleridge’s literary relationship with foreign cultures and elements, the Dark Lady in this particular case. The present study intends to divulge the hidden tale in the text and to use its revealed construct to throw light on Coleridge’s engagement with the Other in his literary experience. It employs a formalist reading of the text and pays attention to point of view. It also invokes culture and allegory in the process of eliciting the significance of the embedded tale. My reading intimates that Coleridge’s imaginative aspiration towards the exotic Other is more congenial to his poetic creativity than other modes of the imagination. It also suggests that this Other might as well be the Orient. However, despite such harmony, Coleridge has his own personal concerns about his romantic quest of the Orient.
Do Patent Licensing Demands Mean Innovation?
Authors: Lemley Mark
Published: July 2018

A commonly offered justification for patent trolls or non-practicingentities (NPEs) is that they serve as a middleman, facilitating innovationand bringing new technology from inventors to those who can implement it.We survey those involved in patent licensing to see how often patentlicense demands actually led to innovation or technology transfer. We findthat very few patent license demands actually lead to new innovation; mostsimply involve payment for the freedom to keep doing what the licensee wasalready doing. Surprisingly, this is true not only of NPE licenses but evenof licenses from product-producing companies and universities. Our resultscast significant doubt on one common justification for patent trolls.
What do we learn from an equivalence study without statistical power?
Authors: Peyton Kyle , Solnick Rachel
Published: July 2018

A recent randomized trial claims to provide evidence supporting the safety of omitting pelvic examinations for women with confirmed intrauterine pregnancies. In light of previous studies questioning the utility of the pelvic exam, this trial addresses a critical question for patients with threatened abortion. We identify methodological issues that raise questions about whether emergency clinicians can make reliable inferences from this study.
Testing the Great Lakes Compact: Administrative Politics and the Challenge of Environmental Adaptation
Authors: Merriman Ben
Published: July 2018

This article examines public involvement in the six-year administrative review process of Waukesha, Wisconsin’s application to draw water from Lake Michigan to replace its radium-contaminated local water supply. The article shows that public positions on the proposal inverted the typical relationship between partisanship and environmental attitudes, prompting both supporters and opponents to ignore scientific evidence and the central matter of water safety. In successive rounds of state and regional administrative review, these political stances induced administrators to engage in increasingly legalistic forms of assessment. Although Waukesha’s application was approved in 2016, these administrative dynamics may limit the ability of the recently-enacted Great Lakes Compact to address current and prospective water safety problems in the region. The case typifies an emerging pattern in water governance in the United States: contentious administrative politics drive cooperative agreements to resemble adversarial proceedings, in turn limiting their ability to adapt to new environmental problems.Citation: Merriman, Ben. 2017. “Testing the Great Lakes Compact: Administrative Politics and the Challenge of Environmental Adaptation.” Politics & Society 45(3): 441-466.
Anticipating Infertility: Egg Freezing, Genetic Preservation, and Risk
Authors: Martin Lauren Jade
Published: July 2018

This article discusses the new reproductive technology of egg freezing in the context of existing literature on gender, medicalization, and infertility. What is unique about this technology is its use by women who are not currently infertile but who may anticipate a future diagnosis. This circumstance gives rise to a new ontological category of “anticipated infertility.” The author draws on participant observation and a qualitative analysis of scientific, mainstream, and marketing literature to identify and compare the representation of two different candidates for egg freezing: women with cancer and healthy young women. Although both populations experience anticipated infertility, their dichotomous portrayals as appropriate candidates are demonstrative of gender norms linking women to motherhood. Egg freezing is a concise illustration of how the medicalization of women’s bodies and bodily processes masks a host of cultural anxieties about aging, illness, reproduction, and risk.
Slow computing
Authors: Fraser Alistair , Kitchin Rob
Published: July 2018

In this short position paper we examine some of the dimensions and dynamics of the algorithmic age by considering three broad questions. First, what are the problematic consequences of life mediated by ‘algorithm machines’? Second, how are individuals or groups and associations resisting the problems they encounter? Third, how might the algorithmic age be re-envisioned and re-made in more normative terms? We focus on two key aspects of living with ubiquitous computing, ‘acceleration’ and ‘data grabbing,’ which we contend are two of the most prominent and problematic features of the algorithmic age. We then begin to shed light on the sorts of practices that constitute slow computing responses to these issues. In the conclusion, we make the case for a widescale embrace of slow computing, which we propose is a necessary step for society to make the most of the undeniable opportunities for radical social change emerging from contemporary technological developments.
Concepts of illicit drug quality among darknet market users: purity, embodied experience, craft and chemical knowledge
Authors: Bancroft Angus , Reid Peter Scott
Published: July 2018

Background Users of darknet markets refer to product quality as one of the motivations for buying drugs there, and vendors present quality as a selling point. However what users understand by quality and how they evaluate it is not clear. This paper investigates how users established and compared drug quality. MethodsWe used a two-stage method for investigating users' assessments. The user forum of a darknet market that we called 'Merkat' was analysed to develop emergent themes. Qualitative interviews with darknet users were conducted, then forum data was analysed again. To enhance the applicability of the findings, the forum was sampled for users who presented as dependent as well as recreational.ResultsQuality could mean reliability, purity, potency, and predictability of effect. We focused on the different kinds of knowledge users drew on to assess quality. These were: embodied; craft; and chemical. Conclusion.Users’ evaluations of quality depended on their experience, the purpose of use, and its context. Market forums are a case of indigenous harm reduction where users share advise and experiences and can be usefully engaged with on these terms.
Legal Implications of Network Economic Effects
Authors: Lemley Mark
Published: July 2018

Economic scholarship has recently focused a great deal of attention on thephenomenon of network externalities, or network effects: markets in whichthe value that consumers place on a good increases as others buy the good.Though the economic theory of network effects is less than fifteen yearsold, and is still not thoroughly understood, network effects areincreasingly playing a role in legal argument. Judges, litigators andscholars have suggested that antitrust law, intellectual property,telecommunications law, Internet law, corporate law, contract law and eventhe law of racial discrimination need to be modified to take account ofnetwork effects. Their arguments reflect a wide range of views about whatnetwork effects are and how courts should react to them. In this Article,we explore the application of network economic theory in each of thesecontexts. We suggest ways in which particular legal rules should -- andshould not -- be modified to take account of network effects. We alsoattempt to draw some general conclusions about the role of network economictheory in the legal enterprise, and about the way in which courts shouldrevise legal doctrines in response to theories from fields outside the law.
An Information-Theoretic Foundation for the Weighted Updating Model
Authors: Zinn Jesse Aaron
Published: July 2018

Weighted Updating generalizes Bayesian updating, allowing for biased beliefs by weighting the likelihood function and prior distribution with positive real exponents. I provide a rigorous foundation for the model by showing that transforming a distribution by exponential weighting (and normalizing) systematically affects the information entropy of the resulting distribution. For weights greater than one the resulting distribution has less information entropy than the original distribution, and vice versa. As the entropy of a distribution measures how informative a decision maker is treating the underlying observation(s), this result suggests a useful interpretation of the weights. For example, a weight greater than one on a likelihood function models an individual who is treating the associated observation(s) as being more informative than a perfect Bayesian would.
Growing Wealth Gaps in Education
Authors: Pfeffer Fabian T.
Published: July 2018

Prior research on trends in educational inequality has focused chiefly on changing gaps in educational attainment by family income or parental occupation. In contrast, this contribution provides the first assessment of trends in educational attainment by family wealth and suggests that we should be at least as much concerned about growing wealth gaps in education. Despite overall growth in educational attainment and some signs of decreasing wealth gaps in high school attainment and college access, I find a large and rapidly increasing wealth gap in college attainment between cohorts born in the 1970 and 1980s, respectively. This growing wealth gap in higher educational attainment co-occurred with a rise in inequality in children’s wealth backgrounds, though the analyses also suggest that the latter does not fully account for the former. Nevertheless, the results reported here raise concerns about the distribution of educational opportunity among today’s children who grow up in a context of particularly extreme wealth inequality.
The "Creating Around" Paradox
Authors: Burk Dan
Published: July 2018

In his article on Creating Around Copyright, Joseph Fishman argues that the constraints imposed by copyright law promote the creativity of subsequent follow-on authors. He suggests that by limiting creative choices, copyright exclusivity may actually enhances the output of follow-on authors by requiring them to "create around" existing works. Yet embedded in Professor Fishman's theory is a paradox that threatens to disable the putative benefits of creating around. Specifically, the conditions that are necessary for creating around are the same conditions that we would expect to lead to licensing of previously existing works, rather than to the creation of new ones. In other words, it appears that creating around can only occur when we would expect it not to occur. In this essay I illuminate this problem, showing how the logic of Fishman's argument leads inevitably to this paradox, and I offer several suggestions as to how one might escape the creating around paradox.
Estimates of excess deaths in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria
Authors: Santos-Lozada Alexis R , Howard Jeffrey T.
Published: July 2018

BACKGROUND: This descriptive finding examines excess deaths following Hurricane María, in Puerto Rico for September and October 2017. OBJECTIVE: We seek to determine the degree of excess deaths in Puerto Rico based on historical patterns of variability in deaths by month for the 2010-2016 period and using estimation techniques. METHODS: Data for this study come from death records from the Puerto Rico Vital Statistics system. We aggregated data by month and year (2010-2016) and produced means (expected deaths) and 95% confidence intervals (C.I., or patterns of variability) for each month. Using public statements from the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety, we estimate the number of deaths for September and October 2017 and compare it to the level of expected deaths considering the pattern of variability. RESULTS: Expected deaths for September and October were 2,383 (95% C.I. 2,296-2,469) and 2,428 (95% C.I. 2,380 - 2,476), respectively. Estimates for total deaths, for September and October 2017 were 2,987 (95% CI 2,900-3,074) and 3,043 (95% C.I. 2,995-3,091), respectively. The difference between our estimates and the upper 95% CI for the average deaths is 518 deaths for September and 567 deaths for October. CONCLUSIONS: The mortality burden may higher than official counts, and may exceed the current official death toll by a factor of 10 or more.