Dispersion Of Ideas Research Articles

Ancient Mitochondrial Genomes Reveal Extensive Genetic Influence of the Steppe Pastoralists in Western Xinjiang.

The population prehistory of Xinjiang has been a hot topic among geneticists, linguists, and archaeologists. Current ancient DNA studies in Xinjiang exclusively suggest an admixture model for the populations in Xinjiang since the early Bronze Age. However, almost all of these studies focused on the northern and eastern parts of Xinjiang; the prehistoric demographic processes that occurred in western Xinjiang have been seldomly reported. By analyzing complete mitochondrial sequences from the Xiabandi (XBD) cemetery (3,500–3,300 BP), the up-to-date earliest cemetery excavated in western Xinjiang, we show that all the XBD mitochondrial sequences fall within two different West Eurasian mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) pools, indicating that the migrants into western Xinjiang from west Eurasians were a consequence of the early expansion of the middle and late Bronze Age steppe pastoralists (Steppe_MLBA), admixed with the indigenous populations from Central Asia. Our study provides genetic links for an early existence of the Indo-Iranian language in southwestern Xinjiang and suggests that the existence of Andronovo culture in western Xinjiang involved not only the dispersal of ideas but also population movement.

Making The Best Idea Better: The Role of Idea Pool Structure

In any pool of ideas that is developed in a multistage process, it is often the case that only a small fraction of top ideas are exceptional. This study formulates a model of multistage development of idea pools, and examines the impact of the “structure” of idea pools and of learning across stages on the extent to which the top ideas in the pool are exceptional. Our key descriptive results demonstrate that the dispersion of ideas in the pool (defined in terms of the dissimilarity between ideas) has a positive impact on the value derived from the top ideas, especially so when learning across stages is limited. Subsequently, the study examines the normative question of optimal design of idea pools, and managerial rules‐of‐thumb are derived for the optimal choice of the number and dispersion of ideas within the pool.

Glocalisation, Cultural Identity, and the Political Economy of Indian Television

From its Delhi moorings in the late 1950's till date, the Indian television has gone through steady evolution marked by phases of silent or radical revolution. Born with a political agenda of national reconstruction and turning out to be an ideological hegemony, its course has been redefined by absorbing transnational media participation and the dispersion of ideas in regional channels. It is to be noted that the Indian media market has shown resistance to both global as well as national cultural hegemony. While large scale glocalisation by the transnational media networks these days is the recognition that Indian market and culture cannot be radically colonised, the expansion of regional language channels later has weakened the hegemonic authority of national networks. The Indian market today is defined by the simultaneous presence of the global, the local, the regional, and the glocal media signifiers. Taken together, these significations point at a larger picture of glocalisation of market culture, especially, where the consumer agency consists of participants across space, class, gender, and generation.

Evaluating the “geographical awareness” of individuals: an exploratory analysis of twitter data

A major theme in the geographical studies of social media content such as tweets from Twitter is to extract the locations of content providers (e.g., Twitter users) in order to track their movements or activity patterns. This framework also has been used to detect the dispersion of ideas over space and time. Another theme is to assess how the interaction of these providers may vary between the physical and virtual spaces. However, few geographical studies have explored if social media content can be used to examine the relationship between the characteristics of content providers and their geographical knowledge at different spatial scales. We expected that in general, one's awareness of the local geography should be higher than that of places farther away. In this paper, we explored if such pattern of geographical awareness in the physical space is reflected in the social media content. We reported our detailed examinations of tweets from a set of individuals who have provided substantial information in their profiles. Using text-mining methods, including natural language processing (NLP) techniques, we identified place names mentioned in the tweets and geocoded them. These locations were analyzed in a geographical-hierarchical manner to build a geographical awareness profile for each individual. While these geographical awareness profiles vary quite dramatically, their variations can be explained by the users’ characteristics, which were interpreted from their tweet content. This study demonstrates how social media content may be used to assess the geographical awareness characteristics of a biased sample population.

Making the Best Even Better: How Idea Pool Structure can make the Top Ideas Exceptional

In any pool of ideas, it is often the case that a small fraction of top ideas have significantly higher quality, both in absolute terms and relative to other ideas in the pool. This study formulates a model of idea pools, and examines the impact of the “structure” of idea pools on the extent to which the top ideas in an idea pool are exceptional. Our results demonstrate that the dispersion of ideas in the pool (defined in terms of the dissimilarity between ideas in the pool) has a positive impact on the value derived from the top ideas. The empirical content of the model is assessed by examining the citations received by top patents in a patent pool, and results consistent with the theoretical model are found. Finally, the study examines the optimal design of idea pools, and managerial rules-of-thumb are derived for the optimal choice of idea pool size, and the dispersion of ideas within the pool.

New evidence for Bronze Age agricultural settlements in the Zhunge’er (Junggar) Basin, China

The Zhunge’er (Junggar) Basin in northern Xinjiang was a key crossroads in antiquity for the dispersal of ideas and technological innovations from the Eurasian steppe into the heartland of central China. The Bronze Age chronology of the Zhunge’er Basin is chiefly based on relative dating and little is known about subsistence strategies, although the strong tradition of nomadic and transhumant pastoralism among modern populations suggests that there may have been a high degree of mobility. The visibility of ancient cemeteries and the need to salvage graves before they are looted have resulted in a lack of focus on settlements, with a consequent assumption that in antiquity agriculture played a limited role. This assumption has been challenged by rescue excavations at the Jimusa’er (Jimsar) Luanzagangzi site, which indicate that agriculture may have been a significant component of Bronze Age subsistence strategies. Small-scale soundings at settlement sites provide well-stratified sequences of material for absolute dating which can be used to place the artifacts recovered from graves in a more secure chronological context.