Big News Research Articles

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note Carolyn Kuebler When something is created in one context but presented in one that feels profoundly changed, it makes us uneasy. We lose confidence. Does it still make sense, does it still matter? The 24/7 news cycle, which can age a piece of writing beyond recognition over the course of a day, and which seems to speed up and slow down according to each day’s anxiety level, has been operating at a ferocious clip these past few months. How can something that seemed important last winter, when it was possible to make plans, when certain expectations were in place, still matter this summer? Writers who dedicated their full attention and imagination to the work now at hand are faced with the effects of that strange passage of time. Now that all the words and pages are assembled and ready for print, ready for readers online, do they mean the same thing as when they first came together over the past months, the past year? During the winter, and looking ahead to this issue’s release, I had some idea in mind about what NER 41.2 would be about. For once, I thought, I can predict what theme will arise when it’s finally complete. With Marilyn Hacker finalizing her selection of contemporary UK poets, with permissions solidifying around a Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen collage/essay, with Brexit finally taking place, and, on a personal level, with a trip to London planned and partly paid for, I felt a kind of convergence. A theme pertaining to Britain, or maybe to our shared language and historical differences, was sure to arise, and all the poems and stories that are decidedly about something else would find a place in that context, reverberating with that theme, as so often happens as an issue of this magazine takes shape. And while the UK poets feature did come together, and the Brexit referendum was big news early this year, Britishness does not in the end feel like the theme here. Not even for the British poets. The idea that a “British theme” would emerge began to seem as short-sighted as expecting any other issue to have an “American theme.” What would that even mean? Instead of having something to reveal about the UK in particular, what this issue seems instead to reveal is something about persistence—the persistence of each individual piece, over time, over place, over context—and the resilience of the literary creation in general. While it’s only been several months or at most a year since the pieces here were selected, 2020 already feels very different from, and much later and darker than, any date in 2019. While it’s true that certain pieces play a little differently now than they did a few months ago, and that different images and details stand out, sometimes even feeling prescient, overall there’s persistence: their images are still vivid, their humor is still funny, and their truths are still true. [End Page 6] One thing that a magazine like this can do that’s even more pronounced now that our physical spaces are so fraught is to bring dozens of writers together in one place in a meaningful way. Bringing in a troupe of British poets, who themselves are not a coherent group with similar aesthetic or linguistic preferences, opens up borders that are now attempting to close. Their work can travel in a way that we can’t and suggests an alliance, or an affiliation, between contemporary England and our “New England.” Marilyn Hacker, who edited this feature, is a poet who crosses plenty of borders. While our readers will be familiar with her for her own poetry and translations—she has published fourteen books, winning the National Book Award and Lambda Literary Award among others, and first appeared in NER in 1979 and as recently as 2019—editorial work has also long been part of her mission as a literary citizen. She was the first full-time editor of Kenyon Review in 1990 to 1994, served twice as guest editor of Ploughshares, and more recently was, for ten years, part of the editorial...

Three Wound Care Quality Performance Measures Are Now Public: Why It Matters

Three Wound Care Quality Performance Measures Are Now Public: Why It Matters

Technology stands out at SynBioBeta

SynBioBeta is a hodgepodge of a conference. The annual gathering of synthetic biology devotees in San Francisco is filled with start-ups touting wares such as ski jackets made from spider silk and services like customized protein engineering. The speakers hail from industries as diverse as cosmetics and cannabis. What unites the attendees is their shared love of tinkering with biology via genetic engineering. One of the conference’s regular headliners is the Harvard University geneticist and entrepreneur George Church. This year he was joined onstage by the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, a pairing that highlighted tech leaders’ growing fascination with ways to control biology. Although personalized medicines and engineered superfoods are the kinds of applications that the synthetic biologists at SynBioBeta are after, the tools they need to carefully manipulate cells and their genes are a work in progress. This year the biggest news during SynBioBeta came from start-ups that

Central bank announcements: Big news for little people?

Little is known on how and whether central bank announcements affect consumers’ beliefs about policy-relevant economic figures. This paper focuses on consumers’ perceptions and expectations of inflation and interest rates and confidence therein. Based on a sound identification (running surveys shortly before and after communication events), and relying on above 15,000 observations, spanning over 12 FOMC press conferences between December 2015 and June 2018, we document the impact of the central bank communication on the general public. While announcement events have no measurable direct effect on average beliefs, they make people more likely to receive news about the central bank’s policy. In general, informed consumers tend to have lower perceptions and expectations, higher confidence and, at least for perceived inflation, smaller errors.

Comment on “Central Bank announcements: Big news for little people?” by Michael Lamla and Dmitri Vinogradov

Lamla and Vinogradov study the causal effect of central bank announcements on consumers' expectations and perceptions by conducting a new series of surveys. I discuss the key empirical results of the paper, supplement their results with evidence of news coverage patternssurrounding Federal Open Market Committee meetings, and provide suggestions for future research using the authors' novel dataset.

Corporate Governance, Profitability, And Liquidity Against Tax Avoidance in Mining Companies Registered On The Indonesia Stock Exchange In 2012-2016

This research was motivated by the big news of tax evasion cases in the world including Indonesia, of course, namely Panama Papers and Paradise Papers. Many mining companies in Indonesia avoid taxes. Based on these tax avoidance issues, this study examines using mining companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) as a sample, because mining companies in Indonesia have a high enough potential to practice tax avoidance. Company data were sampled in this study from 2012-2016. This study seeks to find empirical evidence regarding the effect of corporate governance projected in the number of audit committees, the composition of independent commissioners and audit quality also by adding variable profitability and liquidity. Keywords: corporate governance, profitability, liquidity, tax avoidance. DOI : 10.7176/RJFA/10-11-08 Publication date :June 30 th 2019

Big News in Environmental & Ecology Studies

Environmental Analysis & Ecology Studies Big News in Environmental & Ecology Studies Zhongsheng Guo* Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Northwestern A & F University, China *Corresponding author: Zhongsheng Guo, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Northwestern A & F University, CAS & MWR, China Submission: December 19, 2018;Published: April 23, 2019 DOI: 10.31031/EAES.2019.05.000614 ISSN 2578-0336 Volume5 Issue3

In Case You Haven't Heard…

The STR grant program administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) got a clean bill of health from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services last month. This audit should be big news, because there have been so many questions about where the grants are going. But nobody reported it — because it was good news? So, in case you didn't hear, the conclusion of the OIG: SAMHSA followed both grant regulations and the 21st Century Cures Act, which authorized the grants, in administering the grants. “We often hear about the problems federal agencies encounter as opposed to the good work moving forward in Washington, D.C.,” Rob Morrison, executive director of the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors, whose members received the STR grants, told ADAW last week. “It is nice for the public to see the good work taking place at SAMHSA on one of the most high‐profile issues facing the country at this time.” For the report, go to https://oig.hhs.gov/oas/reports/region3/31703302.asp.

The Politics of Economic LiberalizationWueest, BrunoCham, Palgrave Macmillan (2018), 169 p., ISBN 978‐3‐319‐62321‐4

The Politics of Economic LiberalizationWueest, BrunoCham, Palgrave Macmillan (2018), 169 p., ISBN 978‐3‐319‐62321‐4

Welcome to AI matters 4(4)

Welcome to the fourth issue of the fourth volume of the AI Matters Newsletter! Our biggest news is that we would like to extend a big welcome to our new co-editor! Iolanda Leite is an Assistant Professor at the School of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. Iolanda is excited to join the AI Matters team and to help to continue to grow the newsletter for ACM SIGAI. She is also our guest for the interview this month so please go to our interview and learn more about our new co-editor!

Micro‐Scale Medical Devices Were Big News at MD&M East

One big theme at MD&M East this year: SmallThe Medical Device and Manufacturing Show, co‐located with Plastec East and four other shows at the Javits Center in New York City between June 12 and 14, offered a slew of plastics‐related innovations amid the 3D printers, laser markers, metrology equipment, and collaborative robots (cobots)

Discovering the relationship of disasters from big scholar and social media news datasets

ABSTRACTThe construction method for chains of disasters or events is still one of the core scientific questions in studying the common rules of disaster’s evolution. Especially when dealing with the complexity and diversity of disasters, it is critical to make a further investigation on reducing the dependency of prior knowledge and supporting the comprehensive chains of disasters. This paper tries to propose a novel approach, through collecting the big scholar and social news data with disaster-related keywords, analysing the strength of their relationships with the co-word analysis method, and constructing a complex network of all defined disaster types, in order to finally intelligently extract the unique disaster chain of a specific disaster type. Google Scholar, Baidu Scholar and Sina News search engines are employed to acquire the needed data, and the respectively obtained disaster chains are compared with each other to show the robustness of our proposed approach. The achieved disaster chains are also compared with the ones concluded from existing research methods, and the very reasonable result is demonstrated. There is a great potential to apply this novel method in disaster management domain to find more secrets about disasters.

Big-data mining predicts toxicity better than animals

Algorithms derived from large databases of chemical structure and toxicity relationships may be better at predicting the toxicity of chemicals than individual animal tests, according to a study by scientists at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (Toxicol. Sci. 2018, DOI: 10.1093/toxsci/kfy152). The study relies on the world’s largest machine-readable chemical database, created by the team two years ago. The researchers used machine-learning algorithms to read across structure and toxicity information for about 10,000 chemicals from 800,000 toxicology tests. They then created software to predict whether any given chemical is likely to cause skin irritation, DNA damage, or other toxic effects. The software was on average about 87% accurate in predicting consensus results for nine common toxicity tests that use animals. The actual animal tests averaged only about 81% accuracy, the authors report. This is “big news for toxicology,” principal investigator Thomas Hartung, a professor in the Departm...

A Critical Evaluation of Impact of Human Error: In Rail System Failure with a View to Enhance Safety

Modern Transportation is a 24x7 industry, fraught with the risk of occasional accidents/incidents. This makes every mode of transport a risky business. With perennial pressure for becoming faster, safer & better with every passing day, greatest challenge for the industry is to eliminate & manage all possible risks to ensure an incident/accident free operation to meet the growing demand of the society. Modern society cannot be conceived without an efficient & safe transport system. Amongst all modes of transport, rail transportation occupies a unique place being the bulk carrier of people & cargo at an affordable cost with least adverse impact on environment.Despite massive modernization & induction of state of are technology, the safety of rail-road transportation depends largely on the operator. A railway accident always makes a big news across societies & has a particular impact on the psyche of public. There is always a cause most of the time trivial.The bright side of railway accidents that all misfortune has been turned to profit with evolution of technology based on the lessons learnt. In fact, the modernization of railways so far has greatly depended & progressed on the accident investigation knowledge. Railways growth since its evolution almost two centuries ago is nothing short of a revolutionary technical adventure unique in human history.In the paper a comprehensive study of all human factor issues involved in working of employees at sharp end of safety has been attempted with critical analysis of more than 1200 incidents/accidents over a period of decades in Indian Railways.The study revealed many hidden areas & contributing factors in lowering the human performance limit, leading to unsafe acts & unpredicted tragic accidents/incidents. Many findings have belied the traditional knowledge, belief & logic.The knowledge emerging from this study may help develop counter measures against risks in all transport sectors which may accrue immense societal benefit. Further study could be undertaken by researchers, academician, administrators and regulators in greater public interest.

Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women's Right to Vote by Johanna Neuman

Reviewed by: Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women's Right to Vote by Johanna Neuman Karen Pastorello Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women's Right to Vote. By Johanna Neuman. New York: New York University Press, 2017. 240 pages. $24.95 Cloth. Gilded Suffragists is exactly what Johanna Neuman intends it to be—an informative and compelling narrative about the fight to win woman's suffrage. Neuman successfully chronicles the lives of white elite New York City women who arrived at their place of power and privilege by marrying well and who supported suffrage for women. Women with surnames such as Astor, Belmont, Vanderbilt, and Whitney achieved celebrity status for their activism. They did not hesitate to dirty their hems on the streets of the city in the name of this important turn of the century social and political movement. As compelling as this story may be, it has been told before. One of the highlights of the book describes the 1907 establishment of the seven-hundred member Colony Club by Florence "Daisy" Harriman. Hailing from a privileged and politically well-connected family, Harriman founded the city's first exclusive women's social club and guided its evolution into a space for civic engagement. Although all club members could afford the annual $100 dues, they did not all agree with Harriman's suffrage sentiments. Harriman and the other suffragists viewed club debates as opportunities to win reluctant members over to the side of suffrage. While elite women's suffrage activities fascinated observers, gossip often focused on the women themselves rather than suffrage issues. One convert [End Page 484] to suffrage, novelist Katherine Duer Mackay, became the archetypical club member as she vied to "leverage [her] social status for political power." The descendant of a prominent New York family and the wife of a postal telegraph and cable magnate, Mackay used her flair for fashion to attract the attention of reporters whom she hoped would print her pro-suffrage proclamations in their newspapers. Mackay's eminence did not last long. An adulterous affair with her husband's doctor culminated in Mackay abandoning her family to follow her lover to Europe in the midst of the First World War. Neuman notes that renowned suffrage advocate Alva Belmont compiled over fifty suffrage scrapbooks but not one contained a single mention of the scandal involving Mackay. For publishers of New York's more than twenty dailies however, Mackay's exploits meant "big news." In the interest of promoting the cause (and thus an untarnished historical memory), Belmont chose to ignore the negative publicity. The strength of Neuman's study lies in her claim that virtually all New York City suffrage elites recognized the value of public appeal and effectively used it to convince others (primarily other elites) to support women's suffrage. They directed their activism toward collecting signatures on petitions, welcoming audiences into their private parlors, parading, stumping from soapboxes and automobiles, and hosting costume balls. With their motives for involvement in the suffrage cause running the gamut from sincere political conviction to having "fun," wealthy suffragists craved attention. Much of the publicity these media celebrities generated had to do with the clothes they wore. Neuman contends that the activists' appearance meant as much as their arguments. Delighting in challenging the suffragist reputation for dressing like "frumps," early twentieth century suffragists prioritized fashion as put their campaign strategies into effect. In the process of incorporating modern notions of beauty and glamour by wearing lacey dresses with shorter hemlines and feathery hats into their campaign, they appealed to more men but also subjected themselves to harsh criticism. Antisuffragist women such as Josephine Jewell Dodge, president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, virulently objected to the suffragists' use of fashion because of what she perceived as their overt promiscuity. Regardless of the controversy that these fashionable displays caused, Neuman concurs with Margaret Finnegan's assessment [End Page 485] that supporters (in this case "gilded" supporters) sold suffrage by making it fashionable. Fashion sense aside, according to Neuman, involvement in the suffrage movement often came at a price. Tensions erupted over campaign tactics between the moderate...

A Targeted Minimum Benefit Plan: A New Proposal to Reduce Poverty among Older Social Security Recipients

In recent years, the big news in Social Security reform has been the program’s fiscal concerns. In light of concerns about both program costs and benefit adequacy, we propose an effective and relatively inexpensive targeted program to provide a minimally adequate floor to old-age income through the Social Security system. This minimum benefit plan would provide a cost-effective method for reducing elder poverty to very low levels. A key element is that the benefit would not count toward income eligibility thresholds for other social programs. Other aspects include an income-tested benefit that would bring beneficiaries to 100 percent of the poverty threshold; application by filing of a 1040 income tax return; and setting of benefit levels and distribution through the Social Security Administration.

Death by a Thousand Cuts? Western Canadaas Oil and Natural Gas Policy Competitiveness Scorecard

Pipelines face delays or are not built at all. Governments are adding greenhouse gas emissions prices. Provinces have introduced higher corporate income taxes. Property and other municipal taxes on energy producers have also been on the rise. Taken together, what are the costs of these recent policies for the western Canadian energy sector? And how does each compare in its effect on the competitiveness of Canadian provinces, both in relation to each other and to US energy-producing states? To assess the effect of policy-induced competitiveness costs on energy producers, this Commentary calculates the cumulative change in profitability that energy producers would face for an otherwise identical well because of government policies that affect taxes and pipeline access. In the first of what will be an annual series – updated as policymakers change the policy-induced costs on conventional oil and natural gas producers – this Commentary finds that: • pipeline constraints have greatly reduced the price that oil producers receive. This effect is by far the largest competitiveness cost on energy producers; • corporate taxes and provincial royalties are major policy costs for producers. Canadian provinces have historically been competitive with the US on taxes, but recent changes in the US highlight the need to examine the cost of taxation – the outcome of Alberta’s recent royalty review was a step in the right direction; • greenhouse gas emission taxes have been big news politically and publicly, but so far have not been economically important for energy producers. Further, the Alberta (and similar federal) system gives companies a strong incentive to reduce their emissions with little competitiveness cost. Indeed, companies with below-average emissions are better off under the current system; and • finally, property and municipal taxes have enormous variation across Canada and the US. There is room for provinces to reduce the cost of both provincial and municipal property taxes on energy producers. Policymakers now need to take steps to ensure that approved new pipelines get built and to reduce the burden of corporate income, royalty, property and greenhouse gas emissions taxes.

Enlist campus community to notify your unit of possible weapons on campus

Recently, there have been a few incidents of violence on college campuses in the United States that I believe everyone should be made aware of. Unfortunately, these incidents are not big news, and they disappeared from the news after a day or so.

Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Elements in Detecting (Hungarian) Fake News

Abstract Fake news texts often show clear signs of the deceptive nature; still, they are shared by many users on Facebook. What could be the reason for this? The paper tries to answer the question by collecting the linguistic and non-linguistic characteristics of fake news. Linguistic characteristics include among others the exaggerating, sensational title, the eye-catching, tabloid-style text, the correct or incorrect use of terms, and the fake URLs imitating real websites; non-linguistic characteristics are expressive pictures often featuring celebrities, the use of all caps, excessive punctuation, and spelling mistakes. The corpus was compiled using snowball sampling: manipulative news not originating from big news portals were collected from the social networking website Facebook. The aim of the study is to identify the characteristics of Hungarian fake news in comparison to the English ones and to elaborate a system of aspects which help identify fake news.

Much Activity, Uncertainty Remains.

Bipartisan market stabilization negotiations gave way to a last-gasp attempt at repeal and replace; the ACA emerged intact but buffeted by uncertainty.