Idiosyncratic Choices Research Articles

MeltR software provides facile determination of nucleic acid thermodynamics

Thermodenaturation (melting) curves of macromolecules are used to determine folding thermodynamic parameters. Notably, this insight into RNA and DNA stability underlies nearest neighbor theory and diverse structure prediction tools. Analysis of UV-detected absorbance melting curves is complex and multivariate, requiring many data preprocessing, regression, and error analysis steps. The absorbance melting curve-fitting software MeltWin, introduced in 1996, provided a consistent and facile melting curve analysis platform used in a generation of folding parameters. Unfortunately, MeltWin software is not maintained and relies on idiosyncratic choices of baselines by the user. Herein, we provide MeltR, an open-source, curve-fitting package for analysis of macromolecular thermodynamic data. The MeltR package provides the facile conversion of melting curve data to parameters provided by MeltWin while offering additional features including global fitting of data, auto-baseline generation, and two-state melting analysis. MeltR should be a useful tool for analyzing the next generation of DNA, RNA, and nonnucleic acid macromolecular melting data.

The silent reception of Kristina Chew’s Georgics

Abstract This article examines Chew’s translation of the Georgics within the context of a wave of classical reception that is witnessing an unusual number of female-authored translations. I explore the reasons why Chew’s work failed to attract the recognition and attention of other translations, such as Janet Lembke’s Georgics or Sarah Ruden’s Aeneid, and suggest that Chew’s status of outsider has influenced the reception of her translation. The article also analyses the idiosyncratic and daring choices made by Chew in her translation and considers the impact that this has on refashioning the Georgics for twenty-first century America.

‘Politics is Game’: An Analysis of Cricket Language Used as Metaphors in Imran Khan’s Political Speeches

The dexterous use of language is crucial to convey feelings, emotions, likes, dislikes, or to emphasize an idea. Politicians are known for exercising their power through discourse, which is mostly carried out through the tool of persuasion which is the central key of political discourse that attracts the audience. Persuasion can be carried out through the use of figurative language that is used for expressing complex ideas. The interesting use of figurative language in political discourse has become the center of attention due to the vast implications of political discourse. This study analyses the metaphorical use of cricket language in the domain of politics in the political speeches of Imran Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan. The whole attention was gathered around the specific parts of the political speeches delivered by him. For analyzing the data, the researchers applied Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) work ‘Metaphor We Live By’ as the theoretical framework. The finding of the study showed that Imran Khan constantly uses cricket language in his political speeches for different purposes like positivity, negation, tribute/praising, patriotism, emphasizing rules, and boasting/power showing. The results show his preoccupation with idiosyncratic language choices as it seems he considers politics as a game of choosing words. He specifically uses cricket language when he addresses the public and wants to recall his past, criticizes someone, shows his love towards the motherland, emphasizes his fairness and impartiality. Along with this, he also uses cricket language for pursuing foreigners. The study is significant for students of language as well as politics as it uncovers mapping of various domains to express a phenomenon. Keywords: Cricket Language; Political Discourse; Metaphors; Political Speeches

On old Olympus? Oliver Wendell Holmes and the origin and evolution of a mnemonic couplet for the cranial nerves

ABSTRACT A mnemonic couplet to help students learn the names of the cranial nerves has been in use in the United States since the mid-nineteenthth century. The original in iambic tetrameter is attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Using a systematic search, more than 40 variants have been identified and, where possible, ordered in time. Variations depended in part on evolving preferred names for individual cranial nerves, regional geographic features, and idiosyncratic choices. Some inferior variants ignored critical features of the original (e.g., meter, number of poetic feet, or even the rhyme). Others strove to have a memorable couplet with the basic features of the original but without resorting to disparaging phrases. However, with the modern names for the cranial nerves, few of the extant versions of the mnemonic make sense, or preserve iambic tetrameter and rhyme, while avoiding derogatory or lewd expressions. Two new versions are suggested that meet these constraints.

Bioethics After the Death of God

In After God: Morality & Bioethics in a Secular Age, Professor H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. argues that the now dominant intellectual culture of the West actively shuns any transcendent point of orientation, such as an appeal to God or to a God’s eye perspective on reality. Instead, it seeks to frame its understanding of reality and morality, and thus its bioethics, without reference to any foundation outside of particular human concerns. This article explores the implications of living in a secular culture that eschews any appeal to a fully objective perspective on reality. Drawing on Engelhardt’s analysis, it argues that absent access to a binding moral standpoint that is not already conditioned by a particular society, culture, or place in history, all moral and bioethical commitments are merely contingent, subject to particular human interests, aesthetic inclinations, personal intuitions, idiosyncratic choices, and political objectives.

As Hill seems to suggest: Variability in formulaic sequences with interpersonal functions in L1 novice and expert academic writing

Formulaic sequences (FSs) are pervasive in natural language use and play an important role in differentiating socially-situated practices. The predominant trend in this research area is to take a frequency-based approach, relying on the computer to identify frequent recurrent forms in a given corpus, at the expense of disregarding their structural and semantic unity and multifunctionality, as well as overlooking discontinuous and infrequent sequences. Through careful manual identification and annotation of FSs in context, the present study provides additional insights into the use of interpersonal FSs that distinguish L1 novice and expert academic writing. The results show that the novice writers actually produced a wider range of FSs with interpersonal functions than did the expert writers. It is argued that less frequent FSs cannot be dismissed in FL research simply because of their low frequencies. Taken together, these seemingly idiosyncratic choices may reveal important functional and formulaic features that characterise a particular community. The main differences between the two groups of writers pinpoint areas (e.g., genre- and discpline-specific conventions, register awareness) that need further investigation and specific attention in the training of novice writers.

Constructing a Long-Term Investment Portfolio (Part I)

A practical guide to our view of the current state-of-the-art in constructing and scaling a diversified, long-term investment portfolio. The goal of this note is not to break any new theoretical ground, but rather to choose the best out of many frameworks available, and delve into the key practical issues involved with solutions which are both theoretically and practically sound. In Part I, we begin by constructing a growth- and inflation-neutral beta portfolio in the spirit of Dalio et. al., but with a number of idiosyncratic implementation choices. Then we apply the Merton Portfolio Problem to chose optimal levels of consumption and leverage based on the investor's level of risk aversion. In Part II, we will discuss and work through the issues involved in overlaying alpha strategies.

The Ethics of Risk in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South : The Role of Capital in an Industrial Romance

The Ethics of Risk in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South:The Role of Capital in an Industrial Romance Eleanor Reeds (bio) The cultural shift in attitudes toward risk in the 1850s—specifically, the emergent need to avoid risk—is marked by the passage of limited-liability legislation such as the Joint Stock Companies Act of 1856 and the continuing rise of the insurance industry.1 Individual investors were no longer required to bear the losses of corporate failure, while insurance companies relied on the aggregation of both capital and information to calculate and compensate risk for the individual. Risk was to be managed by an impersonal collective in order to protect the individual from bearing any of its damaging consequences. Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South (published serially in Household Words from September 1854 to January 1855) enters the discourse of mid-Victorian risk by articulating a vision of economic activity that takes the acceptance of risk rather than risk management as its central ethical precept. Margaret Hale’s and John Thornton’s decisions regarding whether or not to invest their capital in particular enterprises demonstrate the persistence of an older understanding of ethical financial practice in which individuals must be willing to risk loss and bear the responsibility for such risk rather than asking others to do so for them. Influential critical readings of North and South from the 1980s and 1990s do not consider Margaret’s and Thornton’s attitudes toward investment capital to be important in understanding how Gaskell presents her social critique. Such readings argue that Gaskell’s critique fails due to her inability to reconcile the private and public spheres of action in both her plot and choice of generic conventions. More recently, readers of the novel (Dredge; Longmuir) have addressed this perceived failure by focusing on women’s potential to traverse the public and private spheres in the novel. However, while critics such as Mary Poovey have begun to draw the scholarly community’s attention to finance in the Victorian novel, there has not yet been an extended examination of finance in North and South. This essay argues that the distinct and competing ethical claims of industry and capital meaningfully structure the ethical system of Gaskell’s novel and thus help to explain and define the generic contours of what I call, following Jerome Meckier’s coinage, the industrial romance.2 Such a term replaces the categorization of North and South, and potentially other novels, as social problem novels in order [End Page 55] to demonstrate—by looking at questions raised by financial risk—how a realistic depiction of industrial society can be reconciled with a romantic presentation of its impact on domestic, private, and individual concerns. Margaret’s and Thornton’s idiosyncratic choices when deploying financial capital reject the science of probability and its dependence on the aggregate. Whereas political economists in the mid-nineteenth century proposed a model of human behaviour governed by self-interest, Gaskell offers her readers a hero and heroine who embrace the intimate and affective aspects of economic decision-making, and thus asks them to recognize the significance of traditionally feminine sentiments in the pursuit of ethical financial action. ethics and finance: from anti-usury tracts to the precepts of political economy The significance of risk in articulating an ethics of economics has a long and distinguished intellectual genealogy.3 For Martin Luther in 1524, “lending without risk” was one of the “sinful faults of trade” (260). His treatise “Trade and Usury” notes, “it is decreed according to Scripture that no one shall become surety for another, unless he is able and entirely willing to assume the debt and pay it himself” (253). In a later British context, Robert Bolton’s A Short and Private Discourse betweene Mr. Bolton and one M.S. concerning Usury (1637) presents the usurer as unethical because he undertakes a “covenant for certaine gaine, where it is uncertaine, whether the Borrower shall gaine at all or loose” (61). This early Protestant resistance to the economic practice of risk avoidance filters down to the Victorian period through such figures as John Ruskin, who, as Daniel Wong argues, “created a counter-politico...

Dynamic Quality Signaling with Hidden Actions

Asymmetric information is an important source of inefficiency when an asset (such as a firm) is transacted. The two main sources of this asymmetry are the unobserved idiosyncratic characteristics of the asset (such as future profitability) and unobserved idiosyncratic choices (like secret price cuts). Buyers may use noisy signals (such as sales) in order to infer actions and characteristics. In this situation, does the seller prefer to release information fast or slowly? Is it incentive compatible? When the market is pessimistic, is it better to give up or keep signaling? We introduce hidden actions in a dynamic signaling model in order to answer these questions. Separation is found to be fast in equilibrium when sending highly informative signals is more efficient than sending lowly informative signals. When the market is pessimistic about the quality of the asset, depending on the cost structure, the seller either “gives-up” by stopping signaling, or the seller “rushes-out” by increasing the informativeness of the signal. We find that the unobservability of the action causes equilibrium effort to be too low and the seller to stop signaling too early. The model can be applied to education where grades depend on students’ effort, which is endogenously related to their skills.

Dynamics of Persistent Heterogeneity in the Global Configuration of Business Services Value Chains

The paper develops an integrative framework that identifies, describes and links the firm –specific and non-firm-specific factors that co-evolve and mutually influence the changes in configurations of global business services value chains over time. We focus on the heterogeneity of configurations resulting from idiosyncratic choices regarding what processes to unbundle, what activities to locate where, and what control mechanisms to use. Expanding current models and empirical studies in International Business, we argue in particular in favour of a behavioural approach that gives more room to decision makers and the decision making process to explain changing but persistent heterogeneity in ALC configuration (Activity-Location-Control mechanisms) of business services global value chains.

What do Natural Categorization Studies Tell us about the Concepts of Apes and Bears?

To properly test hypotheses about the emergence of cognitive capacities in humans and other animals, it is important to test species that differ in morphology and ecology. One of the most notable aspects of animal ecology that has been championed as a factor in the evolution of cognitive skills is social complexity. However, to determine the significance of social lifestyle on an organisms cognitive abilities, it is important to test both social and less social species in similar tasks. We have conducted a series of natural categorization studies with three great ape species and recently extended this program of research to include American black (Ursus Americanus). Here we analyze the bears choices of stimuli from our previously published categorization experiments and compare the pattern of their choices to that of apes tested previously. Like the apes, the individual show idiosyncratic choices that do not clearly differentiate between conceptual and perceptual strategies in performing categorization tasks. Despite their relatively asocial lifestyles, thus far appear to display cognitive abilities commiserate with those of the great apes. We suggest that researchers broaden their approach to study more diverse species in analogous tasks and make a concerted effort to view experimental tasks from the animals perspectives.

Dynamic Quality Signaling with Hidden Actions, Second Version

Asymmetric information is an important source of inefficiency when an asset (such as a firm) is transacted. The two main sources of this asymmetry are the unobserved idiosyncratic characteristics of the asset (such as future profitability) and unobserved idiosyncratic choices (like secret price cuts). Buyers may use noisy signals (such as sales) in order to infer actions and characteristics. In this situation, does the seller prefer to release information fast or slowly? Is it incentive compatible? When the market is pessimistic, is it better to give up or keep signaling? We introduce hidden actions in a dynamic signaling model in order to answer these questions. Separation is found to be fast in equilibrium when sending highly informative signals is efficient. When the market is pessimistic about the quality of the asset, depending on the cost structure, the seller either “gives-up” by stopping signaling, or the seller “rushes-out” by increasing the informativeness of the signal. We find that the unobservability of the action causes equilibrium effort to be too low and the seller to stop signaling too early. The model can be applied to education where grades depend on students’ effort, which is endogenously related to their skills.

Dynamic Quality Signaling with Moral Hazard

Asymmetric information is an important source of inefficiency when assets (like firms) are transacted. The two main sources of this asymmetry are unobserved idiosyncratic characteristics of the asset (for example, quality) and unobserved idiosyncratic choices (actions done by the current owners). We introduce moral hazard in a dynamic signaling model where heterogeneous sellers exert effort to affect the distribution of a stochastic signal (for example sales or profits) of their firms. Buyers observe the signal history and make price offers to the sellers. High-quality sellers try to separate themselves from the less quality ones in order to receive high price offers, while the latter try to pool with the first group to avoid receiving a low price. We characterize the competitive equilibria of the model, and we propose an adaptation of existing refinements to the incorporation of moral hazard in dynamic signaling that implies uniqueness of equilibria. We find that similar individual characteristics across types of sellers make everyone worse off, since competition increases signaling waste. Also, due to the new intensive margin (effort), non-trivial signaling will take place even when the cost of signaling is large. In particular cases, we find analytical solutions, that allow transparent comparative statics analysis. The model can be applied to education where grades depend not only on the students’ skills, but also on their effort.

Publication bias in psychological science: Comment on Ferguson and Brannick (2012).

It is well documented that studies reporting statistically significant results are more likely to be published than are studies reporting nonsignificant results--a phenomenon called publication bias. Publication bias in meta-analytic reviews should be identified and reduced when possible. Ferguson and Brannick (2012) argued that the inclusion of unpublished articles is ineffective and possibly counterproductive as a means of reducing publication bias in meta-analyses. We show how idiosyncratic choices on the part of Ferguson and Brannick led to an erroneous conclusion. We demonstrate that their key finding--that publication bias was more likely when unpublished studies were included--may be an artifact of the way they assessed publication bias. We also point out how the lack of transparency about key choices and the absence of information about critical features of Ferguson and Brannick's sample and procedures might have obscured readers' ability to assess the validity of their claims. Furthermore, we demonstrate that many of the claims they made are without empirical support, even though they could have tested these claims empirically, and that these claims may be misleading. With their claim that addressing publication bias introduces subjectivity and bias into meta-analysis, they ignored a large body of evidence showing that including unpublished studies that meet the inclusion criteria of a meta-analysis decreases (rather than increases) publication bias. Rather than exclude unpublished studies, we recommend that meta-analysts code study characteristics related to methodological quality (e.g., experimental vs. nonexperimental design) and test whether these factors influence the meta-analytic results.

Stock Price Idiosyncratic Information and Merger Financing Choices

Stock Price Idiosyncratic Information and Merger Financing Choices

Climate Change: A Multidisciplinary Approach, Second Edition

William Burroughs, who died in November 2007, was a wonderfully clear and evocative writer. Chapter 3 of his last work, Climate Change: A Multidisciplinary Approach, begins with the loveliest four‐paragraph description of the general circulation of the Earth's atmosphere I have ever encountered. His writing also shines in his descriptions of the climate record of the past few thousand years, and in his introduction to the measurement of climate change. Unfortunately, the book is marred by inconsistencies in its treatment of climate dynamics, as well as by a number of idiosyncratic choices of emphasis that detract from the book's quality as a general introduction to the science of climate change.

“Are You Talking to Me?”—New York and the Cinema of Urban Alienation

ABSTRACT New York is a city in which a substantial number of films depicting urban alienation have been set and filmed, although New York films are neither exclusively nor exhaustive of such films. The conditions for alienation derive from several aspects of urbanism also addressed in this essay. This subject deals with the social and psychological estrangement that is often reflected in antisocial behavior in the City, but may also be an expression of idiosyncratic and esoteric lifestyle choices that result in an urban menagerie of rich and varied social types and groups, among them rogues and loners, and urban cowboys. The deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the individual to maintain the independence and individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society, against the weight of the historical heritage and the external culture and technique of life. Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Modern Life [1903]

Review article: the sociology of dying, death and bereavement.

Cobb, M., 'The Dying Soul: Spiritual Care at the End of Life' (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001 £16.99 (pbk) vii + 145pp) Currer, C., 'Responding to Grief: Dying, Bereavement and Social Care' (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001 £14.50 (pbk) v + 181pp) Field, D., Clark, D., Corner, J. and Davis, C. (eds), 'Researching Palliative Care' (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001 £22.50 (pbk) vii + 198pp) Hockey, J., Katz, J. and Small, N. (eds), 'Grief, Mourning and Death Ritual' (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001 £19.99 (pbk) vii + 286pp) McNamara, B., 'Fragile Lives: Death, Dying and Care' (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001 £17.99 (pbk) v + 165pp) Seymour, J., 'Critical Moments – Death and Dying in Intensive Care' (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001 £17.99 (pbk) xiii + 185pp) The sociological study of dying, death and bereavement is a relatively recent field of research interest. In 1958, Faunce and Fulton wrote a paper entitled ‘the sociology of death: a neglected area of research’, their argument being that the lack of sociological research in this area was probably attributable to a wider reluctance within society to contemplate dying and death. However, despite Walter’s (1993) claim that (with the exception of medical sociology) British sociologists had been notably quiet in this topic, it would seem from the research literature that the number of sociologists researching in the area of dying, death and bereavement has increased significantly, particularly in the last 10 to 15 years. The aim of this review is to outline the work that sociologists have conducted with regard to dying, death and bereavement. Within this discussion, I locate and review the six books listed above, ending by reflecting on what sociological research related to dying, death and bereavement might explore in the future. Reviewing the work of sociologists in this field is no small task given the diversity of research that has been, and continues to be, conducted. Indeed, it is testament to the wealth of material published by social scientists that I have such a broad range of books to review. The six books cover topics that include the experiences of dying and death in the high-tech world of Intensive Therapy Units (ITUs), a reflection on the difficulties of providing ‘spiritual’ care, and an edited collection introducing the research methods used within palliative care research.

Handbook of Diagnostic and Structured Interviewing

Article AbstractFrom our regular book review column. With the advent of DSM-III-R, psychiatry committed itself to a quantitative and operational system. Although a dramatic increase in reliability was achieved, clinical diagnosis was, and is, still completely dependent on how the history of illness was obtained. Slight changes in inflection, in choice of language, and in sequence of questioning, coupled with clinicians†idiosyncratic choices as to what questions should be asked and determination of what answers are clinically relevant, result in unnecessary diagnostic variability. Structured interviews were designed to remedy this problem by organizing clinician inquiry and by limiting, as much as possible, sources of needless variance. As the author of this work notes, however, mindless adherence to structured interviews, at the cost of rapport and abandonment of clinical intuition, can result in a cure that is worse than the problem itself.

Traumatized Political Cultures: The After Effects of Totalitarianism in China and Russia

Developments in both China and Russia are a challenge to political science, and more particularly to theories of political culture. Both countries are engaged in profound processes of transition involving the abandonment of totalitarianism and the adoption of market-based economies. It is, however, far from clear what form their political systems will eventually take. They are currently following strikingly different paths. Are the differences a reflection of their distinctive cultures? Or, are the differences more structural, a manifestation of their respective stages of economic and social development? Or, are they merely the consequences of the idiosyncratic choices and policy decisions of the two leaderships?