Ecologia política como etnografia : um guia teórico e metodológico

Algumas das mais importantes transformações recentes no paradigma ecológico são a elaboração de sínteses transdisciplinares entre as ciências sociais e naturais, a proposta heurística da simetria epistemológica e o diálogo metodológico com os estudos da complexidade. Essas transformações servem como base para discutir os aportes da antropologia ao novo campo de pesquisa da ecologia política. Após a delimitação do subcampo da "etnografia dos conflitos socioambientais", as práticas específicas da etnografia multiator, que identifica e diferencia os agentes sociais e os "agentes naturais", e do uso de múltiplos níveis espaciais e temporais de análise são delineadas. O artigo termina com uma breve discussão dos usos acadêmicos, críticos e públicos da ecologia política. _______________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTSome of the most important recent transformations in the ecological paradigm are the development of transdisciplinary syntheses between the social and natural sciences, the heuristic proposal of epistemological symmetry and the methodological dialogue with complexity studies. These transformations form the groundwork for a discussion of the contributions of anthropology to the new field of study of political ecology. After the delimitation of the sub-field of the "ethnography of socioenvironmental conflicts," the specific practices of multi-actor ethnography, which identifies and differentiates between social and natural agents, and of the use of multiple spatial and temporal levels of analysis are delineated. The article ends with a brief discussion of the academic, critical and policy implications of political ecology research

It’s the way he tells them (and who is listening):men’s dominance is positively correlated with their preference for jokes told by dominant-sounding men

While much research has explored humorous exchange in relation to mate choice, recent perspectives have emphasized the importance of humor for monitoring interest within social partnerships more generally. Indeed, given that similarity is thought to be important in the maintenance of social partnerships, we may expect humor appreciation to vary according to the degree of similarity between humor producers and recipients. In the current study we report evidence for such variation that is specific to men’s judgments of other men’s humor. Here we manipulated voice pitch in a set of ‘one-liner’ jokes to create low-pitched and high-pitched versions of men and women telling jokes. A composite measure of men’s own dominance was positively correlated with their preference for jokes told by other men with lowered voice pitch (a vocal cue to dominance). A follow-up study demonstrated that self-reported dominance was positively related to men’s choice of low-pitch men as friends when judging humorous audio clips but not when judging neutral control audio clips, suggesting that humor may be important in mediating the effect of dominance on friendship choice. These studies indicate systematic variation in humor appreciation related to friendship choices which may function to promote cohesion within male partnerships based on status

Design, analysis and presentation of factorial randomised controlled trials

BackgroundThe evaluation of more than one intervention in the same randomised controlled trial can be achieved using a parallel group design. However this requires increased sample size and can be inefficient, especially if there is also interest in considering combinations of the interventions. An alternative may be a factorial trial, where for two interventions participants are allocated to receive neither intervention, one or the other, or both. Factorial trials require special considerations, however, particularly at the design and analysis stages.DiscussionUsing a 2 × 2 factorial trial as an example, we present a number of issues that should be considered when planning a factorial trial. The main design issue is that of sample size. Factorial trials are most often powered to detect the main effects of interventions, since adequate power to detect plausible interactions requires greatly increased sample sizes. The main analytical issues relate to the investigation of main effects and the interaction between the interventions in appropriate regression models. Presentation of results should reflect the analytical strategy with an emphasis on the principal research questions. We also give an example of how baseline and follow-up data should be presented. Lastly, we discuss the implications of the design, analytical and presentational issues covered.SummaryDifficulties in interpreting the results of factorial trials if an influential interaction is observed is the cost of the potential for efficient, simultaneous consideration of two or more interventions. Factorial trials can in principle be designed to have adequate power to detect realistic interactions, and in any case they are the only design that allows such effects to be investigated

Probiotics for preventing acute otitis media in children

This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (Intervention). The objectives are as follows: to assess the effects of probiotics to prevent the occurrence and reduce the severity of acute otitis media in children.</p

Transformation of a small-to-medium-sized enterprise to a multi-organisation product-service solution provider

This paper aims to: (1) précis the extant literature on servitization and enterprization transformations, focusing on the role of information technology (IT) and information systems (IS) and their inter-relationships; (2) illustrate these interrelationships by showing how a small-to-medium-sized enterprise (SME) can move from being a predominantly independent SME, delivering only products, to become part of a multi-organisation enterprise able to deliver product-service solutions; and (3) provide generic learning by proposing a new integrated business transformation model. The methodology used is abductive action research. A literature review is conducted to provide academically grounded themes to inform and interpret practical actions. An empirical case study is conducted with a UK SME from the construction industry that provides empirical data to illustrate a business transformation. Inductive reasoning is used to propose a new integrated transformation model. Findings show that enterprization and servitization transformation themes are highly interdependent and co-implementable when an IT/IS focus is taken. Furthermore, these transformations can be used as part of a successful strategy for growth by an SME. A new operating structure, labelled a product-service enterprise (PSE), is proposed as part of a business transformation model to assist future deliveries of product-service solutions (PSSns). Actions and findings are based on a single empirical case abducted with academic themes. Whilst it is probable that the themes and actions have contributed towards the organization's successful growth, no absolute deterministic causality is claimed

ANALYSIS OF SOMATIC MUTATION DATA AND CELL TYPE-SPECIFIC EQTL MAPPING

In the first two projects, we focus on analyzing tumor somatic mutations data to study their prognostic values (project 1) and to call somatic mutations without matched normal sample (project 2). In the third project, we study the impact of germline mutations on gene expression. Specifically, to map cell type-specific eQTLs using RNA-seq data. Intra-tumor heterogeneity (ITH) refers to the fact that the tumor sample of a cancer patient is often composed of multiple cell subpopulations or subclones, each characterized by their own set of variants. Although many methods have been developed to characterize ITH, these methods are not ideal for large scale association analysis for different reasons, e.g., requirement/expectation of high sequencing depth or multiple tumor samples per subject. In practice, when DNA sequencing data are collected from a cohort, there is often one sample per subject with medium read-depth. In addition, many existing methods rely on Bayesian MCMC, which is computationally expensive and may fail to generate stable and reproducible results. Given the limitations of the existing methods, we develop a frequentist method to estimate ITH. We apply our method to study the prognostic values of somatic mutation data of 5,898 cancer patients of 14 tumor types. Somatic variant calls (VCs) are often obtained by jointly analyzing sequencing data of a tumor sample and a matched normal (MN) sample. However MNs may not be gathered. With an unmatched normal (UMN) sample serving as a control, germline variants and sequencing artifacts contaminate reported VCs. Increasing the number of UMNs can lead to a higher risk of selecting low quality UMNs and missing real somatic variants. We developed a workflow to call somatic mutations with a practical number of UMNs. We benchmark our workflow by somatic mutations called using 100 tumor and MN samples. With ten UMNs, our workflow achieves an average 94% sensitivity, 99% specificity, and 76% precision. Integrating RNA-seq and SNP genotype data from diploid genomes, we can study and quantify gene expression from each of the two alleles of a diploid genome. Jointly analyzing total expression and allele-specific expression (ASE) can significantly boost the power of expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) mapping. We propose a new method to map cell type-specific eQTLs using both total expression and ASE from tissue samples that are composed of multiple types of cells. We will apply our methods to analyze bulk RNA-seq data from control and schizophrenic human brain samples of the CommonMind Consortium project.Doctor of Philosoph