Proposal to encode modern Bamum in the BMP of the UCS

This is a proposal to encode the modern Bamum script in the international character encoding standard Unicode. The script was published in Unicode Standard version 5.2 in October 2009. The script was developed between 1896 and 1910, primarily by King Ibrahim Njoya of the Bamum Kingdom. The script went through six stages; the modern version, contained in this proposal, is a simplified version of the historic script (which was separately proposed in and published in Unicode 6.0)

Mimosa obstrigosa Burkart

Santa AnaFil: Ariza Espinar. Universidad Nacional de Cordoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biologia Vegetal; Argentin

Should We Stay or Should We Go: Lessons from the Trump Administration

After the 2016 election, commentators published a flurry of essays with advice on whether lawyers and federal officials should remain in government during the Trump administration. In this article, I review those essays, includ- ing Professor David Luban’s stern advice about the risk of remaining. I also discuss three key concepts from Professor Luban’s article for this symposium: desk perpetrators, desk mitigators, and operational maneuvering room, and explore how they apply to Trump administration officials who engaged in internal resistance or principled resignation. More than one hundred federal officials in the administration engaged in principled resignation, many acting in concert with each other. The power of concerted action is most evident when a group of powerful officials together threaten to resign as a way of deterring abusive conduct. Many of these officials wrote letters or op-eds explaining their decision to resign, often sounding in the language of morality, emphasizing their disagreement with Trump policies and rhetoric they found repugnant

Analysis of variance for bayesian inference

This paper develops a multi-way analysis of variance for non-Gaussian multivariate distributions and provides a practical simulation algorithm to estimate the corresponding components of variance. It specifically addresses variance in Bayesian predictive distributions, showing that it may be decomposed into the sum of extrinsic variance, arising from posterior uncertainty about parameters, and intrinsic variance, which would exist even if parameters were known. Depending on the application at hand, further decomposition of extrinsic or intrinsic variance (or both) may be useful. The paper shows how to produce simulation-consistent estimates of all of these components, and the method demands little additional effort or computing time beyond that already invested in the posterior simulator. It illustrates the methods using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of the US economy, both before and during the global financial crisis. JEL Classification: C11, C53Analysis of variance, Bayesian inference, posterior simulation, predictive distributions

A novel multifunctional oligonucleotide microarray for Toxoplasma gondii

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Microarrays are invaluable tools for genome interrogation, SNP detection, and expression analysis, among other applications. Such broad capabilities would be of value to many pathogen research communities, although the development and use of genome-scale microarrays is often a costly undertaking. Therefore, effective methods for reducing unnecessary probes while maintaining or expanding functionality would be relevant to many investigators.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Taking advantage of available genome sequences and annotation for <it>Toxoplasma gondii </it>(a pathogenic parasite responsible for illness in immunocompromised individuals) and <it>Plasmodium falciparum </it>(a related parasite responsible for severe human malaria), we designed a single oligonucleotide microarray capable of supporting a wide range of applications at relatively low cost, including genome-wide expression profiling for <it>Toxoplasma</it>, and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based genotyping of both <it>T. gondii </it>and <it>P. falciparum</it>. Expression profiling of the three clonotypic lineages dominating <it>T. gondii </it>populations in North America and Europe provides a first comprehensive view of the parasite transcriptome, revealing that ~49% of all annotated genes are expressed in parasite tachyzoites (the acutely lytic stage responsible for pathogenesis) and 26% of genes are differentially expressed among strains. A novel design utilizing few probes provided high confidence genotyping, used here to resolve recombination points in the clonal progeny of sexual crosses. Recent sequencing of additional <it>T. gondii </it>isolates identifies >620 K new SNPs, including ~11 K that intersect with expression profiling probes, yielding additional markers for genotyping studies, and further validating the utility of a combined expression profiling/genotyping array design. Additional applications facilitating SNP and transcript discovery, alternative statistical methods for quantifying gene expression, etc. are also pursued at pilot scale to inform future array designs.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>In addition to providing an initial global view of the <it>T. gondii </it>transcriptome across major lineages and permitting detailed resolution of recombination points in a historical sexual cross, the multifunctional nature of this array also allowed opportunities to exploit probes for purposes beyond their intended use, enhancing analyses. This array is in widespread use by the <it>T. gondii </it>research community, and several aspects of the design strategy are likely to be useful for other pathogens.</p

On arcs in projective Hjelmslev planes

AbstractA (k,n)-arc in the projective Hjelmslev plane PHG(RR3) is defined as a set of k points in the plane such that some n but no n+1 of them are collinear. In this paper, we consider the problem of finding the largest possible size of a (k,n)-arc in PHG(RR3). We present general upper bounds on the size of arcs in the projective Hjelmslev planes over chain rings R with |R|=q2,R/radR≅Fq. We summarize the known values and bounds on the cardinalities of (k,n)-arcs in the chain rings with |R|⩽25(|R|=q2,R/radR≅Fq)

Econometric analysis of high dimensional VARs featuring a dominant unit

This paper extends the analysis of infinite dimensional vector autoregressive models (IVAR) proposed in Chudik and Pesaran (2010) to the case where one of the variables or the cross section units in the IVAR model is dominant or pervasive. This extension is not straightforward and involves several technical difficulties. The dominant unit influences the rest of the variables in the IVAR model both directly and indirectly, and its effects do not vanish even as the dimension of the model (N) tends to infinity. The dominant unit acts as a dynamic factor in the regressions of the non-dominant units and yields an infinite order distributed lag relationship between the two types of units. Despite this it is shown that the effects of the dominant unit as well as those of the neighborhood units can be consistently estimated by running augmented least squares regressions that include distributed lag functions of the dominant unit. The asymptotic distribution of the estimators is derived and their small sample properties investigated by means of Monte Carlo experiments. JEL Classification: C10, C33, C51Dominant Units, Factor models, IVAR Models, Large Panels, Weak and Strong Cross Section Dependence

The image in the machine: portraiture and the typewriter

Typewriters have been a vehicle for creative image making ever since their invention. Work produced on the machines covers a huge range of themes and styles, including the portrait. Theme: The Form of the Imag