628 research outputs found

    The Full Value of the Nobel Prize - Part 1: Mining “Data Without Theory”

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    This paper comes in two parts, this being the first. Part 1 is not a research paper in the sense of the Scientific Method; it is rather unsophisticated data mining - a cheap data mining exercise for that matter, because it does not follow any received economic, or other, theory. In the sense of Ed E. Leamer, it is “data without theory,” and data without theory does not speak for itself, despite the common cliché of “letting the data speak for itself.” The objective here is to adjust the money value of the Nobel Prize to include the values of the Nobel Prize medal and diploma. It is an arithmetic exercise that reveals that Alfred Nobel’s monetary contribution to humanity is huge. More importantly, the calculations generate data that make it possible to focus on the economic implications of Nobel’s bequest for human capital accumulation, technological progress, and long-run economic growth, which are subjects of a separate effort in Part 2. In this “paper” I indicate some basic relationships among and between key variables in Section 4, and remark in the last section that the Nobel Prize is a massive contribution, even without taking into account the time value of money. For instance, the unadjusted value of the Economics Nobel Prize in 1969 awarded to Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen was only 2.92 million SEK (US0.57million),butadjustedforthemedalanddiplomavaluestheawardwas5.85millionSEK(US0.57 million), but adjusted for the medal and diploma values the award was 5.85 million SEK (US1.14 million).Nobel Prize full value, Nobel Prize and human development, nobel prize and human capital, Nobel Prize and technological change, Nobel Prize and economic performance

    Expression of oestrogen receptors, ERα, ERβ, and ERβ variants, in endometrial cancers and evidence that prostaglandin F may play a role in regulating expression of ERα

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    <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Endometrial cancer is the most common gynaecological malignancy; risk factors include exposure to oestrogens and high body mass index. Expression of enzymes involved in biosynthesis of oestrogens and prostaglandins (PG) is often higher in endometrial cancers when compared with levels detected in normal endometrium. Oestrogens bind one of two receptors (ERα and ERβ) encoded by separate genes. The full-length receptors function as ligand-activated transcription factors; splice variant isoforms of ERβ lacking a ligand-binding domain have also been described. PGs act in an autocrine or paracrine manner by binding to specific G-protein coupled receptors.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We compared expression of ERs, progesterone receptor (PR) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) in stage 1 endometrial adenocarcinomas graded as well (G1), moderately (G2) or poorly (G3) differentiated (n ≥ 10 each group) using qRTPCR, single and double immunohistochemistry. We used endometrial adenocarcinoma cell lines to investigate the impact of PGF2α on expression of ERs and PR.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Full length ERβ (ERβ1) and two ERβ variants (ERβ2, ERβ5) were expressed in endometrial cancers regardless of grade and the proteins were immunolocalised to the nuclei of cells in both epithelial and stromal compartments. Immunoexpression of COX-2 was most intense in cells that were ERα<sup>neg/low</sup>. Expression of PR in endometrial adenocarcinoma (Ishikawa) cell lines and tissues broadly paralleled that of ERα. Treatment of adenocarcinoma cells with PGF2α reduced expression of ERα but had no impact on ERβ1. Cells incubated with PGF2α were unable to increase expression of PR mRNA when they were incubated with E2.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We have demonstrated that ERβ5 protein is expressed in stage 1 endometrial adenocarcinomas. Expression of three ERβ variants, including the full-length protein is not grade-dependent and most cells in poorly differentiated cancers are ERβ<sup>pos</sup>/ERα<sup>neg</sup>. We found evidence of a link between COX-2, its product PGF2α, and expression of ERα and PR that sheds new light on the cross talk between steroid and PG signalling pathways in this disease.</p

    Education on the Underground Railroad: A Case Study of Three Communities in New York State (1820-1870)

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    In the mid-nineteenth century a compulsory education system was emerging that allowed all children to attend public schools in northern states. This dissertation investigates school attendance rates among African American children in New York State from 1850-1870 by examining household patterns and educational access for African American school-age children in three communities: Sandy Ground, Syracuse, and Watertown. These communities were selected because of their involvement in the Underground Railroad. I employed a combination of educational and social history methods, qualitative and quantitative. An analysis of federal census reports, state superintendent reports, city directories, area maps, and property records for the years 1820-1870 yielded comparative data on households, African American and European American, in which African American school-age children resided. The nature of schooling and the manner in which the household and community advocated for school attendance during this period are also described and compared. Between the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 and the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, advocates were preparing African Americans for full citizenship (suffrage rights, educational access, and home ownership) in these three communities and throughout New York State. Using Pearson\u27s correlational coefficient, the data reveal that before the U.S. Civil War there was a significant correlation between African American school-age children\u27s attendance in school, the head of household\u27s literacy, and the head of household home ownership. In Sandy Ground the significance level was .05; in Syracuse the significance level was .05; and in Watertown the significance level was .01. This study reveals that African American children in the communities under study, whether they attended school or not, had access to literate adults. The dominant discourse on African American education in the United States is oftentimes told through the lens of post-Civil War emancipation in the South. In New York State, slavery was abolished in 1827, and the children identified in this study were the first generation of free-born African Americans in the state

    Local Extinction in the Bird Assemblage in the Greater Beijing Area from 1877 to 2006

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    Recent growth in industrialization and the modernization of agricultural activities, combined with human population growth, has greatly modified China’s natural environment, particularly in the vicinity of large cities. We compared avifauna checklists made between 1877 and 1938 with current checklists to determine the extent of local bird extinctions during the last century in the greater Beijing area. Our study shows that of the 411 bird species recorded from 1877–1938, 45 (10.9%) were no longer recorded from 2004–2006. Birds recorded as ‘rare’ in 1938 were more likely to have disappeared in subsequent years. Migrant status also influenced the probability of local bird extinction with winter migrants being the most affected class. Moreover, larger birds were more likely to have disappeared than smaller ones, potentially explained by differential ecological requirements and anthropogenic exploitation. Although our habitat descriptions and diet classification were not predictors of local bird extinction, the ecological processes driving local bird extinction are discussed in the light of historical changes that have impacted this region since the end of the 1930 s. Our results are of importance to the broader conservation of bird wildlife

    Black US Army Bands and Their Bandmasters in World War I (Version of 07/29/2016)

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    This essay sketches the story of the bands and bandmasters of the twenty seven new black army regiments which served in the U.S. Army in World War I. The new bands underwent rapid mobilization and demobilization over 1917-1919. They were for the most part unconnected by personnel or traditions to the long-established bands of the four black regular U.S. Army regiments that preceded them and that continued to serve outside Europe during and after the Great War. Pressed to find sufficient numbers of willing and able black band leaders for the new regiments, the army turned to schools and the entertainment industry for the necessary talent. The newly formed bands entertained servicemen and civilians in Europe and America not only with traditional military marches and concert band fare, but also with minstrel shows and revues, and with the latest flavor of ragtime music, which they called jazz. The most important aspect of this story is that it provides a context--- including colleagues and competitors---for the wartime and immediate postwar accomplishments of James Reese (Jim) Europe. The story of how James Reese Europe and the “Harlem Hell Fighters Band introduced jazz to Europeans during World War I is one of the most famous set pieces in American music history, and his murder shortly after their return to the states is one of its great tragedies. There is no denying his fame and accomplishments, but Jim Europe was not an isolated figure. Rather, he was first among equals. He was one of a number of freshly minted black U.S. Army band leaders, some of whom who also had been famous civilian musicians in their own right, who took jazz to England and France. A small number of these new black bands, after the Armistice, toured the States to capitalize swiftly on their moment of fame and the surging popularity of the new jazz music

    Columbus, New Mexico, and Palomas, Chihuahua: Transnational Landscapes of Violence, 1888-1930

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    In examining the area surrounding Columbus, New Mexico, and Palomas, Chihuahua, as a landscape of violence, this dissertation historicizes the process by which violent actions create a sense of place. Although neither town is considered large enough to be of much consequence, both were targeted by bellicose campaigns that sought to destabilize the Mexican state during the Porfiriato and the Mexican Revolution. Raids on the Palomas customs house were, at least in part, responses to the drive of the Mexican government under Porfirio Díaz to create modern progress and order in Mexico. For many inhabitants of rural northwestern Chihuahua, the imposition of capitalist modes of land and resource ownership, delineation, and exchange deprived them of access to a livelihood. The dissertation, therefore, considers as violence the reallocation of resources under the modern capitalist notion of law and order. By employing a broad definition of violence, seemingly disparate actions, such as land surveys and insurgencies, are juxtaposed in order to highlight the connections between them. The dissertation shows the various ways in which violence was at once a destructive as well as creative force along the New Mexico-Chihuahua border between 1888 and 1930. The violence of new legal and land regimes that left colonists and settlers of northwestern Chihuahua without access to land and resources was answered through the violence of armed movements that specifically targeted the towns of Palomas, La Ascensión, and Columbus—sites of intensified development efforts around the turn of the century. By drawing on geographers and sociologists\u27 theories of legal and spatial violence, this dissertation places these actions in their proper context as localized movements for social and economic justice, rather than haphazard precursors to the subsequent Mexican Revolution. In this context, Pancho Villa\u27s Raid on Columbus is not simply an isolated incident that spilled over from the larger struggle of the Mexican Revolution. It is part of a dialectic of violence specific to the New Mexico-Chihuahua border region

    Towards Measuring the Maxwell–Boltzmann Distribution of a Single Heated Particle

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    The Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution is a hallmark of statistical physics in thermodynamic equilibrium linking the probability density of a particle’s kinetic energies to the temperature of the system that also determines its configurational fluctuations. This unique relation is lost for Hot Brownian Motion, e.g., when the Brownian particle is constantly heated to create an inhomogeneous temperature in the surrounding liquid. While the fluctuations of the particle in this case can be described with an effective temperature, it is not unique for all degrees of freedom and suggested to be different at different timescales. In this work, we report on our progress to measure the effective temperature of Hot Brownian Motion in the ballistic regime. We have constructed an optical setup to measure the displacement of a heated Brownian particle with a temporal resolution of 10 ns giving a corresponding spatial resolution of about 23 pm for a 0.92 μm PMMA particle in water. Using a goldcoated polystyrene (AuPS) particle of 2.15 μm diameter we determine the mean squared displacement of the particle over more than six orders of magnitude in time. Our data recovers the trends for the effective temperature at long timescales, yet shows also clear effects in the region of hydrodynamic long time tails

    Black US Army Bands and Their Bandmasters in World War I

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    This essay sketches the story of the bands and bandmasters of the twenty seven new black army regiments which served in the U.S. Army in World War I. The new bands underwent rapid mobilization and demobilization with their regiments over 1917-1919. They were for the most part unconnected by personnel or traditions to the long-established bands of the four black regular U.S. Army regiments that preceded them and that continued to serve outside Europe during and after the Great War. Pressed to find sufficient numbers of willing and able black band leaders for these new regiments, the Army turned to schools and the entertainment industry for the necessary talent. The newly formed bands entertained servicemen and civilians in Europe and America not only with traditional military marches and concert band fare, but also with minstrel shows and revues, and with the latest flavor of ragtime music, which they called jazz. The most important aspect of this story is that it provides a context---including colleagues and competitors---for the wartime and immediate post-war accomplishments of James Reese (Jim) Europe. The story of how Jim Europe and the “Harlem Hell Fighters Band introduced jazz to Europeans during World War I is one of the most famous set pieces in American music history, and his murder shortly after their return to the states is one of its great tragedies. There is no denying his fame and accomplishments, but Lieutenant Europe was not an isolated figure. Rather, he was first among equals. He was one of a number of freshly minted black U.S. Army band leaders, some of whom who also had been famous civilian musicians in their own right, who brought large and small ensemble jazz to England and France in 1918-1919. A small number of these new black bands, after the Armistice, toured the States to capitalize swiftly on their moment of fame and the surging popularity of the new jazz music

    Overview of 345 Supplements published 1934-2011.

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