Influential Point Research Articles

Imagining a World Without the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

We build towards a prediction of the content of the world’s constitutions, conditional upon the absence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The paper, at this juncture, is one-part research design, and one-part evidence. The theory guiding the background causal mechanism is highly intuitive, so we omit it here except in summary form. We identify two empirical implications that should follow if the UDHR has, indeed, been an influential reference point for those drafting constitutions subsequent to 1948. The first – that its content has projected onto subsequent national constitutions – was the subject of a recent article by two of us (plus one). We focus our attention here on a second implication: that the UDHR’s similarity to post-UDHR constitutions represents some deviation from the trajectory of constitutional design. This question requires untangling the effect of the UDHR from that of its milieu, which could plausibly be the source of ideas for both the UDHR and subsequent constitutions. Our approach is to unearth the process that produced the UDHR, which was fortunately a highly documented affair. Our investigation targets accidental elements of the process in order to trace its signature in subsequent texts.

Re-estimation and synthesis of coral-reef fishery landings in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands since the 1950s suggests the decline of a common resource

Coral-reef fisheries play a central role in Pacific Island societies for their cultural, subsistence and economic values. Despite their importance, management of coral reef fisheries continues to be hampered by difficulties in estimating accurate fish landings. This study focuses upon both commercial and non-commercial reef-fish landings in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), using existing and new datasets derived from catch-based records and household interviews. We found that previous estimations of CNMI’s non-commercial reef-fish landings were rooted in a common misinterpretation of a key historical study that led to very low reported contributions from the non-commercial reef-fishing sector. Present evidence introduced from socioeconomic surveys suggested that non-commercial fisheries were between five and nine times commercial counterparts in the mid-2000s. Further, we introduce new commercial landing datasets based upon required reporting to CNMI’s Nutritional Assistance Program that appeared to offer improved estimates of reef-fish landings compared with an existing voluntary reporting system that has been in place since the late 1970s. Using an influential anchor point in the 1950s, we synthesize that modern reef-fish landings in CNMI are, at best, similar to those conservatively estimated for the past, with more likely scenarios suggesting a 39–73 % decline since the 1950s. These findings are consistent with a body of literature suggesting reduced catch success through time and negative impacts to coral reefs in proximity to population centers. Ongoing data collection improvements are needed to ensure accurate assessments of CNMI’s coral-reef fishery and sound fisheries policies.

Negotiating Indonesia: Political Genealogies of Timorese Democracy

This article provides an examination of ambivalent negotiations of Indonesia in independent Timor-Leste. Post-independence engagements with and longings for Indonesia have rarely been treated in analyses of Timor-Leste. The article takes as its starting point the inscription of difference between Indonesia and what was then known as East Timor during the resistance years, before moving on to analyse how Indonesian discourses and imaginaries of politics and democracy came to acquire new meaning in the context of Timorese democratic politics and political crisis. It is suggested that Indonesia remains an influential but ambivalent reference point in the independent nation. It is the shadow from which Timor-Leste's nascent democracy is constantly required to distance itself and, simultaneously, an object of longing. Hence, Indonesia figures as an ambivalent model of modernity and of potent state power that inspires political visions of improved futures.

Influence Diagnostics in Linear Regression Under Heteroscedasticity : A Different Approach

Abtsrcat Many procedures are available to identify a single outlier or an isolated influential point in linear regression model. But the detection of multiple outliers or subset of influential points is rarely considered under heteroscedasticity and not been studied from the point of direct procedure. In this paper, dedinition and properties of an influence statistic for one or a set of observations in linear regression under heteroscedasticity is generalized. We express this influence statistic in terms of the residuals and the leverages.We prove that this statistic has asymptotically normal distribution and is able to detect a subset of high weighted leverage-outliers that will be undetected by Cook's distance. For illustration, a simulation study has been carried out and also a real data set has been analyzed.

Jackknife-after-bootstrap regression influence diagnostics

We propose a bootstrap approach to gauging the size of regression influence measures. The bootstrap cut-offs generated are based on approximating the sampling distribution of the respective measures under resampling, work well for small samples, and allow for features such as asymmetric cut-offs. The bootstrap method uses Efron's jackknife-after-bootstrap idea to deal with the issue of an influential point contaminating the resamples from which cut-offs are calculated. The method is illustrated through both real-world examples and a simulation study, the results of which suggest that the bootstrap method provides a reliable alternative to traditional methods particularly in small to moderate samples.

Is inequality at the heart of it? Cross-country associations of income inequality with cardiovascular diseases and risk factors

Despite a number of cross-national studies that have examined the associations between income inequality and broad health outcomes such as life expectancy and all-cause mortality, investigations of the cross-country relations between income inequality and cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity, mortality, and risk factors are sparse. We analyzed the cross-national relations between income inequality and age-standardized mean body mass index (BMI), serum total cholesterol, systolic blood pressure (SBP), obesity prevalence, smoking impact ratio (SIR), and age-standardized and age-specific disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) and mortality rates from coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke, controlling for multiple country-level factors and specifying 5- to 10-year lag periods. In multivariable analyses primarily limited to industrialized countries, countries in the middle and highest (vs. lowest) tertiles of income inequality had higher absolute age-standardized obesity prevalences in both sexes. Higher income inequality was also related to higher mean SBP in both sexes, and higher SIR in women. In analyses of larger sets of countries with available data, positive associations were observed between higher income inequality and mean BMI, obesity prevalence, and CHD DALYs and mortality rates. Associations with stroke outcomes were inverse, yet became positive with the inclusion of eastern bloc and other countries in recent economic/political transition. China was also identified to be an influential data point, with the positive associations with stroke mortality rates becoming attenuated with its inclusion. Overall, our findings are compatible with harmful effects of income inequality at the national scale on CVD morbidity, mortality, and selected risk factors, particularly BMI/obesity. Future studies should consider income inequality as an independent contributor to variations in CVD burden globally.

Charles P. Daly's Gendered Geography, 1860–1890

The American Geographical Society (AGS) serves as a case study for considering the nature of “gendered geography” in the nineteenth-century United States. This article links the ideals and programmatic interests of the society—which were fundamentally commercial in nature—with the personal subjectivity of its chief protagonist, Charles P. Daly, AGS president from 1864 until his death in 1899. Daly is presented as an “armchair explorer” who shifted the focus of the society away from statistical representations of the world toward the action-packed narrative descriptions of the world supplied by embodied explorers in the field. The gender dynamics associated with the center versus the field provide a useful way to contrast both sides of Daly's persona—as a scholar performing detached, careful study yet someone who also derived a great deal of personal authority by staging popular and dramatic spectacles in New York City, speechifying and presenting himself on stage at geographical society meetings with returning heroic explorers. Daly not only served as New York's most influential access point to the Arctic at the time, he also served as an important node in the reproduction of masculine culture in promotion of a particularly masculinist commercial geography.

ACE and ACE2: their role to balance the expression of angiotensin II and angiotensin-(1–7)

The discovery of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2) has revealed a far more complex enzymatic cascade that may influence the renin-angiotensin system within the kidney, specifically the expression of the functional products angiotensin II (Ang II) and Ang-(1-7). The regulation of this critical system involved in blood pressure control must now encompass the integral relationship of ACE and ACE-2 activities.

Liberty and Leviathan

Hobbes made a distinctive contribution to the discussion of freedom on two fronts. He persuaded later, if not immediate, successors that it is only the exercise of a power of interference that reduces people’s freedom, not its (unexercised) existence - not even its existence in an arbitrary, unchecked form. Equally, he persuaded them that the exercise of a power of interference always reduces freedom in the same way, whether it occurs in a republican democracy, purportedly on a ‘non-arbitrary’ basis, or under a dictatorial, arbitrary regime. But the basis on which Hobbes maintained those two propositions was very different from any that successors would have found plausible. This article explores the idiosyncratic principles that led Hobbes to develop his influential point of view.

New methodology of influential point detection in regression model building for the prediction of metabolic clearance rate of glucose.

Identifying outliers and high-leverage points is a fundamental step in the least-squares regression model building process. The examination of data quality involves the detection of influential points, outliers and high-leverages, which cause many problems in regression analysis. On the basis of a statistical analysis of the residuals (classical, normalized, standardized, jackknife, predicted and recursive) and diagonal elements of a projection matrix, diagnostic plots for influential points indication are formed. The identification of outliers and high leverage points are combined with graphs for the identification of influence type based on the likelihood distance. The powerful procedure for the computation of influential points characteristics written in S-Plus is demonstrated on the model predicting the metabolic clearance rate of glucose (MCRg) that represents the ratio of the amount of glucose supplied to maintain blood glucose levels during the euglycemic clamp and the blood glucose concentration from common laboratory and anthropometric indices. MCRg reflects insulin sensitivity filtering-off the effect of blood glucose. The prediction of clamp parameters should enable us to avoid the demanding clamp examination, which is connected with a higher load and risk for patients.

Digerati: encounters with the cyber elite

From the Publisher: The highly celebrated visionaries of the Digital Revolution offer their unique and influential point of view on the historic, social, cultural, psychological, political and economic changes we have been witnessing since the advent of the Net and related digital technologies. Digerati is an opportunity to meet the greatest thinkers of our time and our future. 35 photos.

Sustainability of a Fishing Community Facing the Japan Sea

The fishing group of Amamachi community, at the tip of the Noto Peninsula jutting out into the Japan Sea, is very distinctive in terms of life style. It has thus attracted many previous studies on this group in various disciplines. Most of them, however, have tended to demonstrate its uniqueness by introducing its uncommon customs. Nevertheless, such a conventional view should be modified now: this group, I think, is typical of kaimin (maritime people), one of the major marginal groups, whose importance has been r6ather neglected so far due to an influential and far-reaching point of view focused on rice cultivation.In the third section, the primary purpose to see them within the whole context of Japanese society in the right perspective was pursued. To do so, their situation was investigated in reference to kyakumin (major marginal people with autonomy) or kaimin with their own histories different from paddy-cultivating people. Unlike most kyakumin/kaimin groups, which have been weakened, dissolved or extinguished because of their failure in coping with new situations brought by changes over time, the Amamachi community has lasted well until now. Its sustainability deserves careful attention.Amamachi's fishing people are considered to be descendants of fishing people of Kanegasaki District located in the northern part of Kyushu. Since their arrival at the Noto Peninsula, they had been engaed in diving fishing under the protection of the Kaga Clan (Maeda Territory) until the end of the Edo Period (1603-1867). They had been conscious of their distinct characteristics and confirmed the difference between their own and surrounding societies by stressing their relation with the Kaga Clan and by remembering their own historical origin. Such an attitude was effective in keeping the autonomy of the group against the dominance of shumin (main people) engaged in paddy cultivation. In this sense, the Amamachi community indicated a prominent characteristic corresponding to that of kyakumin.On the other hand, another characteristic of theirs as kaimin is found in the following attitudes: wider mobility to seek better fishing grounds and acquire new trading areas, aggressive fishing methods based on high technical skills, and indifference to agriculture in general.In the fourth section, the second aim of this paper to substantiate the sustainability of the community was explored chiefly by tracing changing processes of systems and customs of their society. In particular, I devoted attention to the two periods when the community confronted crises of existence: the time of the second half of the nineteenth century, when the modern age began in Japan, and the high economic growth period in the mid-twentieth century. Their reponses for surviving can be summarized as follows:As for the second half of the nineteenth century, because of the collapse of the Bakufu-system, the relation between the Kaga Clan and this community was annulled. This implied that they would lose the exchange route for marine products and agricultural crops. Fortunately, however, a loose stratification occurred in this period, resulting in an establishment of the oyakata-kokata (patron-client) relation. While oyakata newly came to be in charge of the exchange instead of the Kaga Clan, kokata could peddle their extra products individually-this was called nadamadari (peddling trip)-. This suggests that newly emerged oyakata had a certain power, but nadamawari and other community controls restrained an excessive stratification.With respect to the high economic growth period, the wide diffusion of powerboats improved fishing productivity and accelerated the monetary economy. These changes caused a dissolution of oyakata-kokata relation and a decline of nadamawari.

Diagnostics statistics in QSAR

AbstractThe formal application of a Hansch analysis to a series of 3‐quinuclidinyl benzylates (QNBs) led to a ‘statistically significant’ QSAR equation. In contrast, the application of the MASCA model has shown that the design matrix is unsuitable for each QSAR analysis: one sample member is an outlier but not a high‐leverage or influential point; another one is an influential point, a high‐leverage point and an extra‐carrier point. The regressors of the design matrix are multicollinear without predictive model power. The result of such flagged observation and this type of multicollinearity is a multiple cluster correlation. The QNB series is a good example for ‘sampling artifacts’ where no practically important but artificial QSARs can be found.

Connectionism and the Language of Thought

In an influential critique, Jerry Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn point to the existence of a potentially devastating dilemma for connectionism (Fodor and Pylyshyn [1988]). Either connectionist models consist in mere associations of unstructured representations, or they consist in processes involving complex representations. If the former, connectionism is mere associationism, and will not be capable of accounting for very much of cognition. If the latter, then connectionist models concern only the implementation of cognitive processes, and are, therefore, not informative at the level of cognition. I shall argue that Fodor and Pylyshyn's argument is based on a crucial misunderstanding, the same misunderstanding which motivates the entire language of thought hypothesis.

Age- and Sex-Specific Survival of Northern Grand Bank Capelin (Mallotus villosus)

Age-specific, sex-specific survival rates for immature and mature capelin (Mallotus villosus) were estimated by linear least-squares models, using abundance data derived from annual acoustic/trawl research surveys conducted from 1982 to 1990 on the northern Grand Bank. Survival estimates for age 2 immature fish were comparable between sexes (annual survival equals approximately 40%). Survival estimates for age 4 mature fish differed between sexes, with females having a higher (25–51%) average survival estimate than males (6%). Survival estimates for immature and mature age 3 fish were equivocal; immature males and females had comparable rates (30.3–32.3 and 15.2–26.6%, respectively) whereas a greater proportion of mature females (25–50%) survived than of mature males (2.5–13%). The stated ranges denote survival estimates including and excluding an influential data point, respectively. Higher average survival of mature females than of mature males may be a result of sex-specific behavior during beach spawning. The average annual contribution of surviving mature females to the total number of female spawners was estimated as 24–47%.

Improvements of the infectivity of in Vitro transcripts from cloned cowpea mosaic virus cDNA: Impact of terminal nucleotide sequences

Full-length DNA copies of both B- and M-RNA of cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) were constructed downstream from a T7 promoter. By removal of nucleotides from the promoter sequence, B- and M-RNA-like transcripts with varying numbers of additional nonviral sequences at the 5′ end were obtained upon transcription with T7 RNA polymerase. The infectivity of the transcripts in cowpea protoplasts was greatly affected by only a few extra nonviral nucleotides at the 5′ end. The addition of about 400 nonviral nucleotides at the 3′ end did not have any effect. Using the most infectious transcripts, in 40% of the cowpea protoplasts replication and expression of B-RNA like transcripts were observed and in 10% of the protoplasts both B- and M-RNA-like transcripts multiplied. Moreover, cowpea plants could also be infected with these transcripts. Sequence analysis showed that the 5′ terminus of the M-RNA transcripts and the 3′ terminus of the B-RNA transcripts were completely restored during replication in plants, including a poly(A) tail of variable length. Swapping experiments have been used to identify an influential point mutation in the coding region for theviral polymerase of a noninfectious B transcript. This experiment demonstrates the potential of the optimized infection system for future analysis of virus-encoded functions.