26,733 research outputs found
Content, Context, Reflexivity and the Qualitative Research Encounter: Telling Stories in the Virtual Realm
The arrival of the virtual realm and computer-mediated communication (CMC) has attracted considerable interest within the discipline. However, the full potential of computer-mediated conversation as both a research resource and medium of communication within the qualitative research encounter awaits further exploration. In this paper, I discuss the dimensions of the qualitative \'tradition\', the recent burgeoning interest in biographical methods shaping the research agenda and the significance of the virtual realm as a locus of communication. In so doing, I draw from my recent research exploring 15 women\'s accounts of their experiences of infertility and assisted reproductive procedures. Often, the qualitative encounter becomes a shared medium of trust, reciprocity and revelation. This research highlights the importance of not just making \'space\' for participants voices and words but of acknowledging the significance of the context of communication itself â paying attention to \'where\' and \'how\' we speak is as critical as paying attention to what might be said. Participants within this study used and translated virtual text and virtual participation into a sense-making vehicle. In this respect, the virtual space offers a new dimension to the qualitative research encounter and we need to remain aware of the opportunities this affords.Qualitative Methodology; Computer-Mediated Communication; Biographical Methods; Reflexivity
Global temperatures and sunspot numbers. Are they related? Yes, but non linearly. A reply to Gil-Alana et al. (2014)
Gil-Alana et al. (Physica A: 396, 42-50, 2014) compared the sunspot number
record and the temperature record and found that they differ: the sunspot
number record is characterized by a dominant 11-year cycle while the
temperature record appears to be characterized by a singularity or pole in the
spectral density function at the zero frequency. Consequently, they claimed
that the two records are characterized by substantially different statistical
fractional models and rejected the hypothesis that sun influences significantly
global temperatures. I show that: (1) the "singularity" or "pole" in the
spectral density function of the global surface temperature at the "zero"
frequency does not exist - it is a typical misinterpretation that discrete
power spectra of non-stationary signals can suggest; (2) appropriate continuous
periodograms clarify the issue and also show a signature of the 11-year solar
cycle (amplitude <0.1 K), which since 1850 has an average period of about 10.4
year, and of many other natural oscillations; (3) the solar signature in the
surface temperature record can be recognized only using specific techniques of
analysis that take into account non-linearity and filtering of the multiple
climate change contributions; (4) the post 1880-year temperature warming trend
cannot be compared or studied against the sunspot record and its 11-year cycle,
but requires solar proxy models showing short and long scale oscillations plus
the contribution of anthropogenic forcings, as done in the literature. Multiple
evidences suggest that global temperatures and sunspot numbers are quite
related to each other at multiple time scales through complex and non-linear
processes. Finally, I show that the prediction of a semi-empirical model for
the global temperature based on astronomical oscillations and anthropogenic
forcing proposed by Scafetta since 2009 has up to date been successful.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure
Supersymmetric hadronic bound state detection at colliders
We review the possibility of formation for a bound state made out of a stop
quark and its antiparticle. The detection of a signal from its decay has been
investigated for the case of a collider.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figure
Stella Benson: a life of reading, writing and publishing
Stella Benson â feminist, diarist, novelist and travel writer â published her first novel, I Pose, in 1915. Her last book, a collection of short stories, was published posthumously in 1936. Although her diaries might suggest some reservations about the reception of her earlier novels, in a letter to Marie Belloc Lowndes, Bensonâs husband James OâGorman Anderson said of her work: âStella was quite happy about her writing, was sure of herself there, and had no thought of not being sufficiently appreciated.â Others shared that opinion; for example, her 1932 novel Tobit Transplanted (titled The Far-Away Bride in America) won the Femina-Vie Heureuse Prize and the silver medal of the Royal Society of Literature.
Bensonâs writing was informed by her reading; she was an avid reader throughout her life and talked at length in her diaries about books that she enjoyed. She often read a book in a day and it is evident from her diaries that she was always keen to read contemporary, Modernist and avant-garde poets and authors such Sturge Moore, Dorothy Richardson and Ford Maddox Ford (reading, for example, The Good Soldier in just one day on 3rd January 1918). Her diaries, for the most part unpublished, provide a rich source of material, detailing both her reading and her writing.Â
Drawing extensively on those diaries, this paper discusses the connections between Bensonâs reading, her writing and the subsequent publication of her early novels. It will explore her relationship with her publishers and will also, as a postscript, consider the role of the recent republication of her fiction by Michael Walmer in a possible reclamation and re-examination of Bensonâs work in the twenty first century.
Poissonian statistics in the extremal process of branching Brownian motion
As a first step toward a characterization of the limiting extremal process of
branching Brownian motion, we proved in a recent work [Comm. Pure Appl. Math.
64 (2011) 1647-1676] that, in the limit of large time , extremal particles
descend with overwhelming probability from ancestors having split either within
a distance of order 1 from time 0, or within a distance of order 1 from time
. The result suggests that the extremal process of branching Brownian motion
is a randomly shifted cluster point process. Here we put part of this picture
on rigorous ground: we prove that the point process obtained by retaining only
those extremal particles which are also maximal inside the clusters converges
in the limit of large to a random shift of a Poisson point process with
exponential density. The last section discusses the Tidal Wave Conjecture by
Lalley and Sellke [Ann. Probab. 15 (1987) 1052-1061] on the full limiting
extremal process and its relation to the work of Chauvin and Rouault [Math.
Nachr. 149 (1990) 41-59] on branching Brownian motion with atypical
displacement.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-AAP809 the Annals of
Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Infrared and Ultraviolet Finiteness of Topological BF Theory in Two Dimensions
The two--dimensional topological BF model is considered in the Landau gauge
in the framework of perturbation theory. Due to the singular behaviour of the
ghost propagator at long distances, a mass term to the ghost fields is
introduced as infrared regulator. Relying on the supersymmetric algebraic
structure of the resulting massive theory, we study the infrared and
ultraviolet renormalizability of the model, with the outcome that it is
perturbatively finite.Comment: 26 pages, GEF-TH-11/199
The impact of pro-vulnerable income transfers : Leisure, dependency and a distribution hypothesis
This paper studies a transmission mechanism through which pro-vulnerable income transfers may affect individual decision-making of non-beneficiaries in an extreme poverty context, leading to labor supply contraction and the so-called dependency syndrome. The argument is based on the distributional distortion this transfer may provoke to the relative quality of leisure, enjoyed by the population in an extreme poverty scenario. Assuming the existence of vulnerable individuals and different income groups based on certain physical, economic, or social characteristics, the author studies their decision processes and, in particular, their reactions to the aid program. The results of this theoretical research provide some insights on the conditions that an optimal pro-poor income transfer should present. A literature review is presented in support of the arguments made in the theoretical part.Labor Policies,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Economic Theory&Research,Services&Transfers to Poor,Food&Beverage Industry
The Cournot-Bertrand profit differential in a differentiated duopoly with unions and labour decreasing returns
This paper compares Cournot and Bertrand equilibria in a differentiated duopoly, total wage bill maximizing unions and labour decreasing returns. It is shown that the standard result, that equilibrium profits are always higher under Cournot, may be reversed even for a fairly low degree of product differentiation. Moreover, the presence of diminishing returns to labour tends to reinforce the mechanisms that contribute to the reversal result, making this event possible for a wider range of situations, with respect to those identified by the earlier literature.Cournot-Bertrand profit differential, unions, labour decreasing returns
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