The Canary in the Mine: Anti-Black Violence and the Paradox of Brazilian Democracy

Latin American Studie

Mukurtu Mobile: Empowering Knowledge Circulation Across Cultures

This project will implement Mukurtu Mobile (mukurtumobile.org), an innovative iPhone application that empowers indigenous communities to collect, share and preserve their cultural and environmental resources. Mukurtu Mobile provides a platform for individuals to bring their own knowledge base to the common concerns of local, traditional and indigenous communities worldwide. With an interface directly to Mukurtu CMS, Mukurtu Mobile will link the power of a robust, culturally responsive CMS to the direct collection of knowledge on-the-ground. Adopted by communities globally, Mukurtu CMS (mukurtu.org) was built to address the specific needs of indigenous communities to manage, share and preserve their digital heritage. From citizen archivists to citizen scientists Mukurtu Mobile will enable the connection of local sets of knowledge and data to fuel research hubs and educational environments that unite local communities around global issues such as natural and cultural resource management

A Comparison of Blocking Methods for Record Linkage

Record linkage seeks to merge databases and to remove duplicates when unique identifiers are not available. Most approaches use blocking techniques to reduce the computational complexity associated with record linkage. We review traditional blocking techniques, which typically partition the records according to a set of field attributes, and consider two variants of a method known as locality sensitive hashing, sometimes referred to as "private blocking." We compare these approaches in terms of their recall, reduction ratio, and computational complexity. We evaluate these methods using different synthetic datafiles and conclude with a discussion of privacy-related issues.Comment: 22 pages, 2 tables, 7 figure

Quantitative exponential bounds for the renewal theorem with spread-out distributions

We establish explicit exponential convergence estimates for the renewal theorem, in terms of a uniform component of the inter arrival distribution, of its Laplace transform which is assumed finite on a positive interval, and of the Laplace transform of some related random variable. Our proof is based on a coupling construction relying on discrete-time Markovian structures that underly the renewal processes and on Lyapunov-Doeblin type arguments.Comment: Accepted for publication in Markov Processes and Related Field

Evaluating the relevance (importance) of strategy in controlling business operation costs

Operations and project cost overrun is one of the many challenges faced by businesses in this current global market. The effects of cost overrun are numerous ranging from loss of profit, threat to business competitiveness and survival and many others. Therefore, the need a strategy that incorporates cost control cannot be over emphasized. This article discusses the different cost control techniques that can be employed when drawing a business strategy. Expert judgements from professionals in the oil and gas industry was gathered using a semi structured interview technique for the purposes of analysis for this structure. The findings revealed that one cost control method cannot be used to manage project cost overrun and hence integration of several cost control techniques relevant to a business is the way forward

Charge injection instability in perfect insulators

We show that in a macroscopic perfect insulator, charge injection at a field-enhancing defect is associated with an instability of the insulating state or with bistability of the insulating and the charged state. The effect of a nonlinear carrier mobility is emphasized. The formation of the charged state is governed by two different processes with clearly separated time scales. First, due to a fast growth of a charge-injection mode, a localized charge cloud forms near the injecting defect (or contact). Charge injection stops when the field enhancement is screened below criticality. Secondly, the charge slowly redistributes in the bulk. The linear instability mechanism and the final charged steady state are discussed for a simple model and for cylindrical and spherical geometries. The theory explains an experimentally observed increase of the critical electric field with decreasing size of the injecting contact. Numerical results are presented for dc and ac biased insulators.Comment: Revtex, 7pages, 4 ps figure

Blockade but not overexpression of the junctional adhesion molecule C influences virus-induced type 1 diabetes in mice

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) results from the autoimmune destruction of insulin-producing beta-cells in the pancreas. Recruitment of inflammatory cells is prerequisite to beta-cell-injury. The junctional adhesion molecule (JAM) family proteins JAM-B and JAM–C are involved in polarized leukocyte transendothelial migration and are expressed by vascular endothelial cells of peripheral tissue and high endothelial venules in lympoid organs. Blocking of JAM-C efficiently attenuated cerulean-induced pancreatitis, rheumatoid arthritis or inflammation induced by ischemia and reperfusion in mice. In order to investigate the influence of JAM-C on trafficking and transmigration of antigen-specific, autoaggressive T-cells, we used transgenic mice that express a protein of the lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) as a target autoantigen in the β-cells of the islets of Langerhans under the rat insulin promoter (RIP). Such RIP-LCMV mice turn diabetic after infection with LCMV. We found that upon LCMV-infection JAM-C protein was upregulated around the islets in RIP-LCMV mice. JAM-C expression correlated with islet infiltration and functional beta-cell impairment. Blockade with a neutralizing anti-JAM-C antibody reduced the T1D incidence. However, JAM-C overexpression on endothelial cells did not accelerate diabetes in the RIP-LCMV model. In summary, our data suggest that JAM-C might be involved in the final steps of trafficking and transmigration of antigen-specific autoaggressive T-cells to the islets of Langerhans

ERBlox: Combining Matching Dependencies with Machine Learning for Entity Resolution

Entity resolution (ER), an important and common data cleaning problem, is about detecting data duplicate representations for the same external entities, and merging them into single representations. Relatively recently, declarative rules called matching dependencies (MDs) have been proposed for specifying similarity conditions under which attribute values in database records are merged. In this work we show the process and the benefits of integrating three components of ER: (a) Classifiers for duplicate/non-duplicate record pairs built using machine learning (ML) techniques, (b) MDs for supporting both the blocking phase of ML and the merge itself; and (c) The use of the declarative language LogiQL -an extended form of Datalog supported by the LogicBlox platform- for data processing, and the specification and enforcement of MDs.Comment: To appear in Proc. SUM, 201