The EU elections on Twitter

Based on an analysis of more than 1.2 million tweets in English, French and German, this report finds mixed sentiment toward the European Union and a general lack of passion about the candidates seeking the European Commission presidency. Summary A new Pew Research Center analysis of the conversation on Twitter leading up to the European Parliament elections suggests mixed sentiment toward the European Union (EU) and a general lack of passion about the candidates seeking the European Commission presidency. In the analysis of more than 1.2 million tweets in English, French and German collected between May 1-14, a decidedly mixed view about the EU emerged. In English, 31% of the  assertions on Twitter about the EU were positive toward the EU (which included the EU directly, its institutions and Europe), compared with 39% that were negative and 30% that were neutral. The Twitter conversation in French broke down the same basic way—33% positive, 39% negative and 28% neutral. And while the German language conversation about the EU on Twitter was much more positive (39%) than negative (5%), these views were embedded in a low intensity conversation that represented a mere fraction of the Twitter activity in French and English. The positive view toward the EU was reflected in a tweet from Finnish minister Alexander Stubb who wrote: “We need the EU for four simple reasons: peace, prosperity, security and stability. We can do more together, than alone.”  The opposite view was voiced in a tweet from @MetManPH noting that, “It’s not racist to believe that membership of the EU is not in Britain’s best interests.” Other elements of the Twitter discussion in the run-up to the May 22-25 balloting for a 751-seat pan-European Parliament reinforce the notion that the 28-nation organization does not provoke particularly strong interest or approval in this corner of the social networking world

The impact of financial incentives on firm behavior

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2006.Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation analyzes the impact of various financial incentives on firm behavior. The first two chapters examine product-market and input-market effects of a firm's capital structure and the incentives they create. The third chapter analyzes how incentives from the tort system affect physician location decisions. Chapter 1 examines the impact of union bargaining on capital structure determination. If a firm maintains a high level of liquidity, workers may be encouraged to raise wage demands. In the presence of external finance constraints, a firm has an incentive to use the cash flow demands of debt service payments to improve its bargaining position. Using both cross-sectional estimates of firm-level collective bargaining coverage and state changes in labor law to identify changes in union bargaining power, I show that firms indeed appear to use financial leverage strategically to influence collective bargaining negotiations. These estimates suggest that strategic incentives from union bargaining have a substantial impact on financing decisions. A firm's financial structure can also impact investments in marketing and operations management. Chapter 2 examines how capital structure affects a firm's provision of product availability - an important dimension of product quality in the retail sector.(cont.) Using U.S. consumer price index microdata to measure the prevalence of out-of-stocks, I find that supermarket leveraged buyouts, which reduce liquidity, increase out-of-stocks by 10 percent. These findings suggest it is important for firms to consider these sorts of real effects on their operations when setting financial policy. Chapter 3 examines financial incentives created by medical malpractice liability. If patients bear the full incidence of cost changes and market demand is inelastic, then marginal changes in malpractice liability will not affect physicians' net income or location decisions. Using county-level, specialty-specific data on physician location from 1970 to 2000, I find that damage caps do not affect physician supply for the average resident of states adopting reforms. On the other hand, caps appear to increase the supply of specialist physicians in the most rural areas by 10 to 12 percent. This is likely because rural doctors face greater uninsured litigation costs and a more elastic demand for medical services.by David Abraham Matsa.Ph.D

Essays on the economics of crime and policing

In this thesis we contribute to the debate on how economic incentives affect crime. As shown by theoretical models, deteriorating labour market opportunities can shift an individual’s incentives to engage in legitimate or illegitimate acts. In the first chapter, using a panel data analysis, we empirically test the relationship between U.S. business cycles and burglary rates. We find that increasing benefits is more effective at reducing countercyclical crime than providing unemployment support for an extended period. The second chapter utilises a novel measure of income inequality and two measures to capture the incentives of the unemployed and low-income earners in a dynamic panel-data model to evaluate their effect on different types of crime in England and Wales. The findings strongly support the pervasive relationship between economic indicators and property crime, both in short- and long-run. Finally, the third chapter builds a predictive solvability model by examining how the presence and absence of factors, during the preliminary phase of the investigation, determine case solvability of fraud and cybercrime. The predictive capabilities of the model are assessed on an external validation sample and the findings show a high degree of accuracy

Digital Advertising and News: Who Advertises on News Sites and How Much Those Ads Are Targeted

Analyzes trends in advertising in twenty-two news operations, including shifts to digital advertising, use of consumer data to target ads, types of ads, and industries represented among advertisers by media type

Circular Evolutions of Imaginative Maturation in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Villette

An exploration into the complex underpinnings of an evolving mind, Jane Eyre is both a literal and metacognitive inquiry into the implications of imagination. Principally dealing with the title character's stepwise assumption of identity, from a reticent orphan to a self-assured and socially empowered woman, Jane's is first and foremost a quest for love and community. However, underlying her linear search for the elusive domestic cornerstones of "family" and "home" is a relentless struggle between reality and imagination. Characterized by two consecutive arcs of imaginative maturation, Jane is presented first as an innocent, reveling immoderately in the novelty of uncharted conceptual possibility, then socialized into a form of self-imposed repression, and finally reintroduced into a subdued, cultivated imaginative landscape. Ultimately, although other Victorian intellects considered love to be the civilizing aspect unifying "intelligence and instinct," Jane Eyre asserts that imagination is yet another definitive inner governor that, able to traverse both extremes, must be similarly reconciled. As such, Jane's recursive travails through the spectrum of imaginative frenzy and suppression are transformed by her romantic indulgence. When requited, Jane and Mr. Rochester's love for one another combines the wish-fulfillment of romantic desires with the realism of a practicable union, thereby effectively distilling imagination into its more productive, governable, and expansive components. On the other hand, Lucy Snowe is a protagonist haunted by the incongruities between imagination and reason. Predisposed to thrive in a realm in which she is both arbitress and editor of these two, inherently contradictory, spheres, she chooses to craft a narrative in which she preferentially favors the real over the ideal, and excises any information that compromises her emotional anonymity, or her self-image as a fully prudent, circumspect, and proper Protestant lady. The account that results is likewise characterized, particularly in its beginnings, by a frustratingly scarce and occasionally incomplete tale that relies heavily upon accounts of the dramas of other characters rather than Lucy's own perspectives. As such, Lucy willfully manufactures the initial narrative so that she is a centrifugal player, interacting crucially with each supporting character, and utilizing the trajectories of their more central stories to reflectively reveal aspects of her own personality. As the story progresses, however, Lucy's imagination begins to increasingly collide with her carefully constructed reality. Her maturation during the course of the book is characterized by three distinct imaginative arcs. Each of these sequences is catalyzed by the intrusion of a particular emotional excess, the surfeit of which causes her to, however briefly, immoderately succumb to the lure of intemperate imagination. In an attempt to compensate, she subsequently reconstructs her psychological boundaries, undergoing a period of self-imposed normativity in which she either symbolically suppresses her desires, or replaces them with domestic pursuits. However, as the sources of her distress begin to increasingly reflect on the incongruities between her expanding desires and the limited social, romantic, and emotional requirements of her gender, she is forced to use the mitigating platform of the arts to safely explore alternatives to conventional womanhood. Ultimately, Lucy uses the guise of performativity to safely fuse the realms of realism and imagination, and manufacture a liminal space in which she can safely reconcile social stricture, independent ambition, and romantic fulfillment.No embargoAcademic Major: Englis

The Effect of EF-P on tRNA Ribosomal P-site Binding

A significant amount of research has been dedicated to characterizing how EF-P is intracellularly modified, as well as how it assists in stabilizing the ribosome during protein synthesis. Both of these functions involve the amino terminal domain of EF-P (also known as Domain I), which not only receives all modifications, but also makes critical positional contacts near the peptidyl transferase center and the aminoacyl acceptor stem of the initiator tRNA. (2) However, in 2009 Blaha, et al. published a structural analysis of EF-P that directed readers’ attention to additional contacts made between the Y180 and R183 residues of Domain III and the small ribosomal subunit. These residues were observed to interact with the A1339 and G1338 nucleotides in the 16S RNA of the 30S small ribosomal subunit of EF-P, which are thought to create a ‘gate’ between the P-site and E-site of the ribosome. They proposed that these interactions could help “prevent premature movement of the initiator tRNA to the E-site” or “enhance the gate [between the E- and the P-sites] and stabilize the fMet-tRNAifMet in the P-site.” (2) Likewise, this thesis is interested in the questions of whether these residues are essential for EF-P functionality in vivo, and whether they enhance EF-P’s function more than just by helping it interact with the ribosomal complex. The purpose of this project is to determine the effect of mutated EF-P residues on rates and success of ribosomal binding and interactions with the P-site tRNA. In order to address this question, we conducted site directed mutagenesis upon the Y180 and R183 residues of EF-P, and performed the following three assays: complementation assays to assess the growth phenotypes of the mutants; modification tests in which cell lysates were run on isoelectric focusing gels to determine whether the mutants were still aminoacylated with BLys; and, fMet puromycin reactivity assays to indirectly gauge the ability of the mutant EF-P to successfully bind to the ribosome.No embargoAcademic Major: Microbiolog

State of the News Media 2016: Network News - Fact Sheet

For audiences of network TV news divisions, the picture over the past year was a mixture of ups and downs. Viewership was stable for evening newscasts and rose for Sunday morning political talk shows, but declined in morning newscasts and news magazine programming. On the financial side, however, a clearer picture of increases emerged: collectively across the three networks, evening and morning newscasts saw their advertising revenue grow substantially in 2015

Beitbridge Minority Farmer Communities and Climate Change: Prospects for Sustainability

Indigenous minority farmer communities in Beitbridge district of Zimbabwe are on the cutting edge of climate change and climate vulnerability. This chapter assesses through questionnaires, interviews and focus group discussions how these communities are triangulating their indigenous knowledge systems, government and NGOs initiatives to achieve sustainability. Results reveal that although the farmers are appreciative of external assistance through government and NGOs assistance, such assistance can only be sustainable provided it is built around their indigenous knowledge systems which they hold sacrosanct. The study therefore recommends more use of the abundant natural resources in Beitbridge and The district’s competitive advantage is a rich livestock district. The community identifies itself with these resources, so all developmental endeavours should coalesce around these resources for sustained social, economic and environmental growth as a cushion against the climate change phenomenon and associated threats. All such efforts should be community driven rather than being imported from central government or NGO headquarters or country offices. The resilient and hardworking qualities of these communities need not be destroyed by food aid and free farming input hand-outs. Instead, these qualities should be utilised to drive community development initiatives for household livelihood sustainability

An Assessment of the land use and land cover changes in Shurugwi district Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe’s fast-track land reform programme and other economic activities have caused considerable land cover /land use changes to the country’s ecological environment and Shurugwi district has been no exception. Most of these changes are yet to be captured and documented as essential baseline information for developmental purposes. This paper seeks to establish the current status of land use and land cover changes for Shurugwi district as well as to determine the extent of these changes using Geographic Information System and remote sensing techniques. Three satellite images for three different years (1991, 2000 and 2009) were used to come up with a land use/land cover map classification for Shurugwi district. Image processing and image classification were done in order to establish the land use /land cover of the district. To determine the extent of land use/land cover changes in the district between 1990 and 2009 Landsat images of the district were downloaded from the Global Land cover Facility as well as from Google Earth Image Domain. The images were analysed using change detection techniques along with Google Earth screen to screen images to come up with the extent of the changes that have occurred. Results show that cultivation and bare land dominate land use/land cover for the district at 53.4% while degraded land covers 26.6% with the rest shared between vegetation (18.1%) and water (2%). There has been considerable land use/land cover change in Shurugwi district between 1990 and 2009.The greatest change occurred to vegetation which experienced a 9.4% decrease between 1991 and 2000 and an even higher decrease of 11.6% between 2000 and 2009.The study recommends that government concludes its land reform and resettlement programme to reduce continued ecological destruction. The Environmental Management Agency should also educate newly resettled farmers and other stakeholders like miners (including gold panners) on the need for proper environmental management essential for sustainable development.Key terms: Geographic Information System, Remote Sensing, Fast-Track Land Reform Programme, Satellite images

Property Rights and Environmental Conflicts in Africa: An Exploration of the Main Issues

Shared resources often engender environmental conflict. This is because the activities of some groups of users of a resource are often detrimental to others. This paper discusses the relationship between property rights and environmental conflicts in Africa. It illustrates this relationship both at intra-state as well as at inter-state levels. Gender relations and property rights are also discussed given that women, who undertake about 80% of farm work on the continent, are not accorded equal say as men in resource ownership and resource management. The paper suggests how the problem of resource ownership can be addressed in order to minimize or preventenvironmental conflicts and promote development at country as well as at continental level