925 research outputs found

    The Rubidge Collection of fossil Karroo vertebrates

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    Main articleWherever palaeontologists interested in fossils from the strata of the Karroo system discuss the systematics and evolutionary importance of Permian and Triassic vertebrates they perforce have to consider the facts that have been revealed by studies of the hundreds of specimens forming what is known as the "Rubidge Collection".Non

    Note on the distribution of fossil Reptilia of Karroo age

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    Main articleReviews briefly the geographical and stratigraphical distribution of reptilia of Karroo age, both within and beyond the confines of the southern hemishpere. Draws attention to the need for further environmental and population studies.Non

    UK Black Hair Matters: A Thematic Analysis exploring Afro-Caribbean women’s hair as representations of the socially constructed knowledge of identity and identity threats

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    Hair has the ability to visibly define ethnic difference, determine identity and impact self-esteem. Although empirical research has explored the hair texture altering behaviours of African American women, the experiences of Afro-caribbean women in the UK have been under-investigated despite being shaped by distinct cultural and historical contexts. Guided by the theoretical explanations of identity processes theory and situational identity and threats, semi-structured interviews of UK Afro-Caribbean women were used to investigate intergroup factors which affect their responses to intergroup relations and the salience of personal and social identity. Through the social constructionist epistemological approach, thematic analysis suggested that Afro-Caribbean women’s hair was subjectively positioned as a source of everyday subtle racism. The findings differ from American studies as UK Afro-Caribbean women describe the threat to identity as not only pervasive but endemi

    There are such people:the role of corruption in the 2021 parliamentary elections in Bulgaria

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    Voters often express a dislike for corruption, yet on election day, they still vote for corrupt politicians. While existing research highlights the impact of information and concern about corruption on voter behavior, our novel theoretical approach integrates three elements–dislike, knowledge, and care–to better understand corruption's role in parliamentary elections. We test this framework on Bulgaria, a nation grappling with pervasive corruption. Using a commissioned survey from Alpha Research, we discover that voters who have a dislike for corruption, can identify a party as corrupt, and consider corruption when voting are significantly less likely to support a corrupt party

    Exploring break-points and interaction effects among predictors of the international digital divide

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    Cataloged from PDF version of article.The deepening of the digital divide between countries has prompted international organizations and governments to work together toward reducing the problem over the next 15 years. However, such efforts will likely succeed only if they are based on a firm grasp of the divide's underlying causes. In this paper we report the results of a comprehensive analysis of the determinants of the international digital divide. Our results confirm many findings of past research, but also extend existing knowledge in important ways. By employing Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS), we discover non-linearities and interaction effects among the predictors. We then articulate significant policy implications based upon these findings

    Model selection in High-Dimensions: A Quadratic-risk based approach

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    In this article we propose a general class of risk measures which can be used for data based evaluation of parametric models. The loss function is defined as generalized quadratic distance between the true density and the proposed model. These distances are characterized by a simple quadratic form structure that is adaptable through the choice of a nonnegative definite kernel and a bandwidth parameter. Using asymptotic results for the quadratic distances we build a quick-to-compute approximation for the risk function. Its derivation is analogous to the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), but unlike AIC, the quadratic risk is a global comparison tool. The method does not require resampling, a great advantage when point estimators are expensive to compute. The method is illustrated using the problem of selecting the number of components in a mixture model, where it is shown that, by using an appropriate kernel, the method is computationally straightforward in arbitrarily high data dimensions. In this same context it is shown that the method has some clear advantages over AIC and BIC.Comment: Updated with reviewer suggestion

    Derek Mahon's Seascapes Mediated through Greece: Antiquity in Modernity, Nature in Abstraction.

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    The article investigates various approaches to seascape in selected poems of the contemporary Irish poet, Derek Mahon, set against the background of references to Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney or Odysseus Elytis. The sea provides a perspective that cannot be overestimated in trying to get an insight into the communication and the clash between the culture of the South and the North. The two nations have often glimpsed at their reflection in the mirror of the surrounding seas, their history and mentality determined by their geographical position and largely insular experience. Elements such as the isolation from the mainland; the perception of the sea as a personification of the force ruling over life and death, as a threat and a promise; or the focus on some characteristic natural phenomena such as light or surface dominate the seascape imagery both in Greek and Irish literature. The sea often constitutes a border of antagonistic and complementary worlds: dream and reality, light and darkness, male and female, the real world and the underworld – and the vantage point of the poet changes accordingly. Some poems under discussion also explore a series of myths linked with the sea, the best known of which, the Odyssey, has remained a frame of reference for numerous contemporary Greek and Irish poets. Elytis's Cyclades or Longley's Mayo provide us with examples of 'private homelands'. As Longley once observed, “his part of Mayo” reminds him of Ithaca (sandy and remote) and of Greece in general: “I’ve often thought that that part of Ireland . . . looks like Greece. Or Greece looks like a dust-bowl version of Ireland,” which triggers further deliberations on seascape as the common ground for the two countries. Just as Elytis's Cyclades or Longley's Mayo, Mahon’s Cyclades provide us with examples of 'private homelands'. The focus of this article is Derek Mahon’s seascapes: purely Greek (‘Aphrodite’s Pool’), Irish seen through the prism of the Greek ones (‘Achill’) and purely Irish (‘Recalling Aran’). The level of abstraction in the last category is compared with Odysseus Elytis’s imagery of the Cyclades, while the first poem demystifies a practice which I termed as ‘myth trading’, one of consumerist tourism techniques
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