Opposition Parties and Anti-Government Protests in Comparative Perspective

My dissertation adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine the relationship between political parties and social movements in democratic countries. This work touches on the debates about why protest movements emerge and the literature on the consequences of party politics. It draws on rational choice and political process theories to explain the variation in anti-government protests in the context of democracies. I argue that the mobilization capacity of opposition parties matters for understanding the differing levels of protests. Specifically, focusing on the size and unity of the opposition camp as two unique dimensions of mobilization capacity, I contend that a larger opposition camp should encourage more anti-government protests only if the camp is more united. Moreover, I argue that, because of the differences in socio-economic backgrounds, political development trajectories, and the role of parties as mobilization agents, the effects of opposition mobilization capacity should work differently in developed countries and developing countries. My research methodology includes work with both quantitative and qualitative data sources. I test my arguments empirically using statistical analyses of an original dataset incorporating protest event data and electoral data in 107 democratic countries. The analyses demonstrate that when opposition parties are strong and united, they are more able to mobilize large-scale collective protest actions. Moreover, I find that a higher level of mobilization capacity of opposition parties matters more to encourage anti-government protests in developing countries than in developed countries. Drawing on the interviews that I conducted during field trips in Peru and Taiwan, the qualitative case studies further illustrate why opposition mobilization capacity matters for the developing countries. Overall, my research contributes to the literature on political behavior and enriches institutional theories by providing an innovative theoretical perspective and rigorous empirical analyses. More importantly, my research is relevant to more than political scientists and sociologists: the quantitative and qualitative data will help researchers understand the extent to which the dynamics of party/movement interactions vary across different regions, a necessary advance in a literature that has been dominated by single case studies

The Theory of Partisan Alignments and an Empirical Exploration of Latin America

[ES] En este trabajo ofrecemos una evaluación teórica y empírica de la evolución de los alineamientos partidarios en América Latina desde el comienzo de la tercera ola de democratización. En primer lugar, identificamos una serie de limitaciones en la literatura existente sobre alineamientos partidarios, en particular su desinterés por los sistemas de partidos no institucionalizados. En segundo lugar, proponemos un marco teórico diferente que es más universalmente aplicable. Luego, operacionalizamos nuestros indicadores y aplicamos nuestro nuevo marco teórico a todos los países latinoamericanos. Esto nos permite generar un mapa de la evolución de las lealtades partidarias en América Latina en el período 1980-2012. Nuestro análisis revela que la visión que afirma que hay un desalineamiento partidario en toda la región es incorrecta.[EN] In this paper we provide a theoretical and empirical evaluation of the evolution of partisan alignments in Latin America since the beginning of the Third Wave of democratization. We first point to a series of limitations of the conventional framework of partisan alignments, namely their disregard of party systems that are only partially or non-institutionalized. Second, we propose a refined framework that is more universally applicable. We then operationalize our indicators and apply our new framework to every democratic country in Latin America to generate a map of the evolution of partisan loyalties in Latin America in the period 1980-2012. Our analysis reveals that the conventional view of widespread partisan dealignment in Latin America is largely inaccurate

Using the CVP Traffic Detection Model at Road-Section Applies to Traffic Information Collection and Monitor - the Case Study

This paper proposes a using Cellular-Based Vehicle Probe (CVP) at road-section (RS) method to detect and setup a model for traffic flow information (info) collection and monitor. There are multiple traffic collection devices including CVP, ETC-Based Vehicle Probe (EVP), Vehicle Detector (VD), and CCTV as traffic resources to serve as road condition info for predicting the traffic jam problem, monitor and control. The main project has been applied at Tai # 2 Ghee-Jing roadway connects to Wan-Li section as a trial field on fiscal year of 2017-2018. This paper proposes a man-flow turning into traffic-flow with Long-Short Time Memory (LTSM) from recurrent neural network (RNN) model. We also provide a model verification and validation methodology with RNN for cross verification of system performance

Association between Self-Reported Survey Measures and Biomarkers of Second-Hand Tobacco Smoke Exposure in Non-Smoking Pregnant Women

Second-hand tobacco smoke (SHS) causes adverse health outcomes in adults. Further studies are needed to evaluate psychosocial SHS exposure measures in comparison to SHS exposure biomarkers, particularly in pregnant women. This study aimed to compare self-reported SHS exposure to urinary cotinine levels in pregnant women. A cross-sectional correlation design was conducted using a convenience sample of 70 non-smoking pregnant women. Measures included self-reported questionnaires and laboratory confirmation of cotinine levels in the urinary samples. Multiple regression analysis was used to assess the correlation after controlling for potential confounding variables. The average level of urinary cotinine among non-smoking pregnant women was 6.77 ng/mL. Medium-strength correlations were found among psychosocial SHS exposure measures and urine cotinine levels. Questions regarding ‘instances of smoking in front of the individual’ and ‘subjective perceived frequency of SHS exposure in past 7 days’ are feasible items for pregnant women in clinics (particularly the first question). Hence, we suggest that these simple questions should be used to assist pregnant women in reducing the harm associated with SHS exposure

Factors Affecting Daughter Cells' Arrangement during the Early Bacterial Divisions

On agar plates, daughter cells of Escherichia coli mutually slide and align side-by-side in parallel during the first round of binary fission. This phenomenon has been previously attributed to an elastic material that restricts apparently separated bacteria from being in string. We hypothesize that the interaction between bacteria and the underneath substratum may affect the arrangement of the daughter bacteria. To test this hypothesis, bacterial division on hyaluronic acid (HA) gel, as an alternative substratum, was examined. Consistent with our proposition, the HA gel differs from agar by suppressing the typical side-by-side alignments to a rare population. Examination of bacterial surface molecules that may contribute to the daughter cells' arrangement yielded an observation that, with disrupted lpp, the E. coli daughter cells increasingly formed non-typical patterns, i.e. neither sliding side-by-side in parallel nor forming elongated strings. Therefore, our results suggest strongly that the early cell patterning is affected by multiple interaction factors. With oscillatory optical tweezers, we further demonstrated that the interaction force decreased in bacteria without Lpp, a result substantiating our notion that the side-by-side sliding phenomenon directly reflects the strength of in-situ interaction between bacteria and substratum

Certified Robustness of Quantum Classifiers against Adversarial Examples through Quantum Noise

Recently, quantum classifiers have been known to be vulnerable to adversarial attacks, where quantum classifiers are fooled by imperceptible noises to have misclassification. In this paper, we propose one first theoretical study that utilizing the added quantum random rotation noise can improve the robustness of quantum classifiers against adversarial attacks. We connect the definition of differential privacy and demonstrate the quantum classifier trained with the natural presence of additive noise is differentially private. Lastly, we derive a certified robustness bound to enable quantum classifiers to defend against adversarial examples supported by experimental results.Comment: Submitted to IEEE ICASSP 202

Introduction of a strong temperature-sensitive phenotype into enterovirus 71 by altering an amino acid of virus 3D polymerase

AbstractIn 1998, an enterovirus 71 (EV71) epidemic in Taiwan resulted in 78 deaths; however, the molecular basis of EV71 pathogenicity remains poorly understood. Comparison of the deduced amino acid sequences in 3D polymerases of EV71clinical isolates showed the T251V or T251I substitution from 1986 and 1998 outbreaks. An EV71 replicon system showed that introducing an I251T mutation did not affect luciferase activities at 35 °C when compared with wild type; however, lower luciferase activities were observed when they were incubated at 39.5 °C. In addition, the I251T mutation in the EV71 infectious clone not only reduced viral replication at 39.5 °C in vitro but also decreased the virulence of the mouse adaptive strain MP4 in neonatal mice in an i.p. infection model. Therefore, these results suggested that the threonine at position 251 results in a temperature sensitivity phenotype of EV71 which may contribute to the attenuation of circulating strains

Distinct functional defect of three novel Brugada syndrome related cardiac sodium channel mutations

The Brugada syndrome is characterized by ST segment elevation in the right precodial leads V1-V3 on surface ECG accompanied by episodes of ventricular fibrillation causing syncope or even sudden death. The molecular and cellular mechanisms that lead to Brugada syndrome are not yet completely understood. However, SCN5A is the most well known responsible gene that causes Brugada syndrome. Until now, more than a hundred mutations in SCN5A responsible for Brugada syndrome have been described. Functional studies of some of the mutations have been performed and show that a reduction of human cardiac sodium current accounts for the pathogenesis of Brugada syndrome. Here we reported three novel SCN5A mutations identified in patients with Brugada syndrome in Taiwan (p.I848fs, p.R965C, and p.1876insM). Their electrophysiological properties were altered by patch clamp analysis. The p.I848fs mutant generated no sodium current. The p.R965C and p.1876insM mutants produced channels with steady state inactivation shifted to a more negative potential (9.4 mV and 8.5 mV respectively), and slower recovery from inactivation. Besides, the steady state activation of p.1876insM was altered and was shifted to a more positive potential (7.69 mV). In conclusion, the SCN5A channel defect related to Brugada syndrome might be diverse but all resulted in a decrease of sodium current

Clonal dissemination of invasive and colonizing clonal complex 1 of serotype VI group B Streptococcus in central Taiwan

Background/PurposeThe aim of this study was to investigate clinical presentation, serotype distribution and genetic correlation of group B streptococcus (GBS) diseases. Since serotype VI prevalence far exceeded that reported in prior studies, genetic relationship of isolates was further analyzed.MethodsGBS isolates obtaining from patients with invasive diseases and pregnant women with colonization between June 2007 and December 2010 were analyzed. All isolates were tested for serotypes by multiplex PCR assay and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Serotype VI isolates were further analyzed by multilocus sequence typing (MLST).ResultsA total of 134 GBS isolates were recovered from blood of 126 patients with invasive disease (94.0%) and anogenital swabs of 8 pregnant women (6.0%). Most common serotype was Ib (21.6%), followed by V (20.1%), VI (18.7%), III (15.7%), II (11.9 %), Ia (11.2%), and IX (0.7%). Serotype VI was also the leading type in infants with early onset disease (EOD; 3/8, 37.5%) and colonizing pregnant women (3/8, 37.5%). PFGE distinguished 33 pulsotypes, reflecting genetic diversity among GBS isolates. Among 25 serotype VI isolates tested, 14 were ST-1, seven were ST-679, three were ST-678, one was ST-681, and distributed into four PFGE pulsotypes. ST-678, ST-679, and ST-681 were novel sequence types; ST-678 and ST-679 are single-locus variants of ST-1 that belongs to clonal complex (CC) 1.ConclusionCC1 dissemination of serotype VI GBS thus emerges as an important invasive pathogen in infants and nonpregnant adults in central Taiwan. Serotype prevalence of GBS must be continuously monitored geographically to guide prevention strategy of GBS vaccines