Opening Closed Regimes: What was the Role of Social Media during the Arab Spring?

Social media played a central role in shaping political debates in the Arab Spring. A spike in online revolutionary conversations often preceded major events on the ground. Social media helped spread democratic ideas across international borders.National Science Foundationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117568/1/2011_Howard-Duffy-Freelon-Hussain-Mari-Mazaid_PITPI.pd

Paths to a Reserve Currency: Internationalization of the Renminbi and Its Implications

In this paper we try to address the question of what could help make the renminbi a reserve currency. In recent years, the authorities in the People's Republic of China (PRC) have made efforts to internationalize its currency through a two-track strategy: promotion of the use of the renminbi in the settlement of cross-border trade and investment, and liberalization of the capital account. We find that if we use only the quantitative measures of the economy, the predicted share of the renminbi in global reserves could reach 12%. However, if institutional and market variables are included, the predicted share comes down to around 2%, which is a more realistic prediction. By reviewing experiences of other reserve currencies, we propose a three-factor approach for the PRC authorities to promote the international role of the renminbi: (i) increasing the opportunities of using renminbi in the international community, which requires relatively rapid growth of the PRC economy and continuous liberalization of trade and investment; (ii) improving the ease of using renminbi, which requires depth, sophistication, and liquidity of financial markets; and (iii) strengthening confidence of using renminbi, which requires more transparent monetary policy making, a more independent legal system, and some political reforms. In general, we believe that the renminbi's international role should increase in the coming years, but it will take a relatively long period before it plays the role of a global reserve currency

The Benefits and Costs of Renminbi Internationalization

Despite the increasing recognition that the renminbi (RMB) may eventually become a key global currency, several important questions remain to be answered. This paper analyzes the benefits and costs of the RMB becoming an international currency. The benefits include reduced exchange risk, promotion of the development of the financial market, and expansion of firms in the People's Republic of China. The costs include general costs, which complicate monetary policy and exchange rate policy, and several transitional risks. We argue that the benefits of RMB internationalization should surpass its costs, particularly in the long run, and provide comprehensive policy choices for a sustainable process of RMB internationalization

Beyond Bacteria: A Study of the Enteric Microbial Consortium in Extremely Low Birth Weight Infants

Extremely low birth weight (ELBW) infants have high morbidity and mortality, frequently due to invasive infections from bacteria, fungi, and viruses. The microbial communities present in the gastrointestinal tracts of preterm infants may serve as a reservoir for invasive organisms and remain poorly characterized. We used deep pyrosequencing to examine the gut-associated microbiome of 11 ELBW infants in the first postnatal month, with a first time determination of the eukaryote microbiota such as fungi and nematodes, including bacteria and viruses that have not been previously described. Among the fungi observed, Candida sp. and Clavispora sp. dominated the sequences, but a range of environmental molds were also observed. Surprisingly, seventy-one percent of the infant fecal samples tested contained ribosomal sequences corresponding to the parasitic organism Trichinella. Ribosomal DNA sequences for the roundworm symbiont Xenorhabdus accompanied these sequences in the infant with the greatest proportion of Trichinella sequences. When examining ribosomal DNA sequences in aggregate, Enterobacteriales, Pseudomonas, Staphylococcus, and Enterococcus were the most abundant bacterial taxa in a low diversity bacterial community (mean Shannon-Weaver Index of 1.02±0.69), with relatively little change within individual infants through time. To supplement the ribosomal sequence data, shotgun sequencing was performed on DNA from multiple displacement amplification (MDA) of total fecal genomic DNA from two infants. In addition to the organisms mentioned previously, the metagenome also revealed sequences for gram positive and gram negative bacteriophages, as well as human adenovirus C. Together, these data reveal surprising eukaryotic and viral microbial diversity in ELBW enteric microbiota dominated bytypes of bacteria known to cause invasive disease in these infants