Musical Chairs Research Articles

Musical chairs mortality functions: density-dependent deaths caused by competition for unguarded refuges

Structural refuges within which prey can escape from predators can be an important limiting resource for the prey. In a manner that resembles the childhood game of musical chairs, many prey species rapidly retreat to shared, unguarded refuges whenever a predator threatens, and only when refuges are relatively abundant do all prey individuals actually escape. The key feature of this process is that the per capita prey mortality rate depends on the ratio of prey individuals to refuges. We introduce a new class of mortality functions with this feature and then demonstrate statistically that they describe field mortality data from a well-studied coral reef fish species, the Caribbean bridled goby Coryphopterus glaucofraenum, substantially better than do several mortality functions of more conventional form.

Pricing and Valuation on the Capital Markets: How to Clear the Fallout?

These ppt slides represent my presentation prepared for the National Seminar on Financial Markets: Concerns & Challenges (Ghaizerabad, India; Feb 21-22, 2009) and set off with the vision of social functions for the capital markets. In exploring this basic dimension, the slides lean on the Keynesian vision of capital markets in opposition to one espoused by the Modern Financial Economics where markets are conceptualized as efficient and 'fully reflecting all the relevant information'. The opinion expressed is that instead of taking care to act on long-term fundamental information investors have been treated, and eaten with pleasure, a short-termist diet of 'Snap and Musical chairs'. In regulatory terms, it means that some institutional arrangements upholding expectation-formation processes about the prospects of entities (mostly valuation and rating practices) have revealed themselves in unfavourable light, outlived their relevance and are in dire need of replacement by a new architecture and methodology for economic measurements, rating and valuation on capital markets. Following this view, some institutional and methodological features that can be weaven into the new system are suggested and briefly explored, including the proposal for creating a public network of industry-specific rating agencies. It is speculated that what would make for a prolonged crisis on the capital markets is the inevitable distrust toward the old architecture of micro-economic information and forecast providers and to anything that henceforward is likely to come from their analytical motions (whether sensible or not). With pre-crisis enthusiastic expectations gone out of the window, the vacuum of micro-economic expectations which was thus left is the place which regulators should look into and try to contain. This can't be done without looking at the situation anew by first embracing a proper new vision related to the market behavior and recognition of the serious danger implicit in the Modern Financial Economics paradigm. The edifice of the latter may collapse, as the enormous scale of liquidity effects and fallout from speculation may put paid to the infatuation with the building blocks of that paradigm. It is yet foolhardly to speculate on the replacement structure before the event, but any new theoretical view of 'capital ideas' should provide for their explicit linkage with the real economic sphere and direct incorporation of the policy for sustainable macroeconomic development. Macroeconomic foundations for micro-economic market behavior practices is a hackneyed shibboleth of vision for what capital markets theory and regulation needs but one which may well come to give fresh boost to the vigor of capital market activities.

Le touriste malgré lui : John Edgar Wideman et la Martinique

African-American writer John Edgar Wideman chose the French Caribbean island of Martinique as setting and object of his travel narrative for his dual relationship to the place. He is both an outsider—in matters of language and citizenship—and an insider—as a member of the African diaspora in the Americas, and through his French girlfriend. To go to an alien nation is to experience alienation, hopefully leading to “the clarifying distance and difference” that allows a novel outlook on one’s own identity. On the “realistic” side, the writer imagines himself as a respectful wanderer, poles apart from the colonizer or the plantation owner. Yet, tourism can also be a late outpost of slavery, “stealth” having replaced strength as a tool of domination. Moreover, in a striking mirroring of center and periphery, natives and French people from the Métropole envy each other, in a game of musical chairs that is also a fantasy of freedom. To escape from this uncanny state of historical alienation, one has to reinvent the island. To think different is to make things different. This is why travel writing is more than “non fiction”. Love, dreams and stories are also factories of the real. The book does not only represent the island, it is the island: an islanded text, an intertextual archipelago. The work works itself out in a constant to-and-fro movement between a U.S. minority perspective and the angle of vision of Martiniquan writers. The place becomes an eerie compound of the strange and familiar, and the writing ends up embodying the “Poetics of Relation” proposed by Edouard Glissant.

Musical Chairs?

Musical Chairs?

What Do Musical Chairs Afford? On Clarke's Ways of Listening and Sacks's Musicophilia

Oliver Sacks's Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007) and Eric F. Clarke's Ways of Listening: An Ecological Approach to the Perception of Musical Meaning (2005) purport to show the active nature of listening. Sacks, a neurologist, examines the transformative effects of music on his patients' behavior, which he traces to their active engagement. Clarke, a musician, focuses on the intersection between worldly and aesthetic perceptions; he describes various dimensions of the musical environment, drawing on Gibson's (1979/1986) idea of the affordance to show how musical objects and events carry meaning for the active listener. Despite their stated intentions, however, Sacks and Clarke characterize the listening experience as one in which the musical stimulus is imposed on the listener, a subject whose responses are largely determined by outside forces. Problematic issues arise from Clarke's loose definition of the terms “affordance” and “environment” and lack of distinction between percepts and concepts and Sacks's hesitancy to acknowledge the processes and implications of perceptual learning.

Uganda's decentralised primary education: musical chairs and inverted elite capture in School Management Committees

AbstractDecentralisation policies in Africa increasingly place responsibilities and resources for the provision of public services in the hands of public bodies at the lowest level, for example in School Management Committees (SMCs). This paper questions whether elite capture, which is considered a major reason for the ineffectiveness of the management of public services at a national level, also characterises SMCs. On the basis of field research in Uganda, it is argued that elite capture does not trickle down to the lowest levels in the management of public services. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Ligands playing musical chairs with G-quadruplex DNA: A rapid and simple displacement assay for identifying selective G-quadruplex binders

We report here the details of G4-FID (G-quadruplex fluorescent intercalator displacement), a simple method aiming at evaluating quadruplex-DNA binding affinity and quadruplex- over duplex-DNA selectivity of putative ligands. This assay is based on the loss of fluorescence upon displacement of thiazole orange from quadruplex- and duplex-DNA matrices. The original protocol was tested using various quadruplex- and duplex-DNA targets, and with a wide panel of G-quadruplex ligands belonging to different families (i.e. from quinacridines to metallo-organic ligands) likely to display various binding modes. The reliability of the assay is further supported by comparisons with FRET-melting and ESI-MS assays.

Mozart's Viennese instrumental music: a study of stylistic re-invention

The music Mozart composed in Vienna closely examined, bringing out the processes of re-invention and re-formulation it displays. The stylistic evolution of Mozart's Viennese instrumental repertory as a whole [1781-1791] has never been systematically addressed. This book fills this gap through a study of stylistic re-invention, a practically- and empirically-based theory that explains how innovative, putatively inspired ideas take shape in Mozart's works and lead to stylistic re-formulation. The stylistic evolution of Mozart's Viennese instrumental repertory as a whole [1781-1791], closely tied to historical and contextual lines of enquiry, has yet to receive systematic attention. This book fills the gap through a study of stylistic re-invention, a practically- and empirically-based theory that explains how innovative, putatively inspired ideas take shape in Mozart's works and lead to stylistic re-formulation. Re-invention comprises a two-stage process: Mozart manipulates pre-existent stylistic features of his music to climactic effect, in so doing introducing a demonstrably 'new' stylistic dimension with broad aesthetic resonance; he subsequently re-appraises his style in response to the dimension in question. From close examination of a variety of Mozart's works [piano concertos, string quartets and symphonies in particular], supported by study of Mozart's other chamber and dramatic works, the author shows that stylistic re-invention is a consistent and coherent manifestation of stylistic development. Ultimately re-invention puts centre stage the interaction of intellectual and imaginative elements of Mozart's musical personality, accounting both for processes of reflection and re-appraisal and for striking conceptual leaps. SIMON P. KEEFE is James Rossiter Hoyle Chair of Music, University of Sheffield.

The Paulson Report Reconsidered: How to Fix Securities Litigation by Converting Class Actions into Issuer Actions

This short essay considers the findings and recommendations of the Paulson Report relating to securities fraud class actions under the 1934 Act and Rule 10b-5. While the report exposes numerous problems with securities litigation in the United States, it understates the problems inherent in stock-drop actions. As a result, the report fails to propose an effective fix. As the report recognizes, diversified investors gain nothing from stock-drop actions: Because the corporation pays, holders effectively reimburse buyers and sellers keep their gains. In other words, the system suffers from circularity akin to a game of musical chairs in that stock-drop actions ultimately do no more than transfer wealth among investors. Indeed, diversified investors are net losers to the extent of attorney fees and other costs of litigation. But the report fails to note that issuers who are targets of such actions see their stock drop in price by more than it otherwise would because of the prospect of litigation and a feedback effect: When the issuer pays to settle the case, the payment further reduces the value of the company, which leads to a further decrease in stock price and a further increase in the potential for damages. In the end, a target company faces a higher cost of capital than it would in a world without securities fraud class actions. And in some cases it may face financial ruin. The report also fails to note that diversified investors may suffer genuine financial loss when insiders take advantage of nonpublic information for personal gain or when they damage the reputation of the company by failure to be candid with the market. In such cases, stockholders have a real gripe and should have a remedy. The simple solution is for the courts to deem stock-drop actions under the 1934 Act and Rule 10b-5 to be derivative actions rather than direct (class) actions. It is well settled that it is up to the court to decide whether an action is direct or derivative. The fact that the parties style the action as a direct (class) action rather than as a derivative action does not make it so. By recasting stock-drop actions as derivative actions, the courts could in one stroke eliminate the glaring market inefficiency of circular recovery, lower the cost of capital for issuers, emphasize individual responsibility, induce boards of directors and gatekeepers to become more vigilant, and reduce the need for criminal prosecution.

Tweeners - the Nexgen Shoppers

India is a booming Economy. Indian Economic, Political & Socio­Cultural Topography is evolving at very fast rate. It is a huge market where people have a great choice. Life in India's metros, cities, towns - big & small & even villages is undergoing a sea-change, what with high end shopping Malls and Supermarkets playing a musical chair with the highly enterprising & Omnipresent Kirana stores, Multiplexes driving the theatres to oblivion & an emerging new class of consumers

Musical Chairs Revisited: Status and Terms of Participation of the European Union in the UN Peacebuilding Commission

Musical Chairs Revisited: Status and Terms of Participation of the European Union in the UN Peacebuilding Commission

Musical chairs: paradigm shifts down a long and winding road

Musical chairs: paradigm shifts down a long and winding road

Understanding Intervention for (C)APD: As Easy as A-B-C

Understanding Intervention for (C)APD: As Easy as A-B-C

The Cockpit's Empty Chair: Education through Appropriating Alienation at a Chicago Technology Museum

Background/Context In the United States, the percentage of schoolchildren planning to become high-status professionals is grossly disproportionate to the percentage of such jobs comprising our division of labor. As in a game of musical chairs, it is not structurally possible for everyone to remain a contender. Focus of Study Various adults who did not grow up to be pilots educate others (including the researcher) about how they visually experienced a pilot's workplace, and the lessons they drew from this experience. Setting Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. Research Design Long-term ethnographic fieldwork, and a close analysis of interactions among twenty randomly sampled groups of visitors. Findings/Results What visitors have achieved directs our attention to a different kind of pedagogy possible in technology centers: a pedagogy in which, rather than appropriating technological knowledge, one appropriates one's own alienation from this knowledge. Although it might seem perverse to suggest building it in, this is after all a crucial aspect of the larger world of technology: its incomprehensibility, its alienness, its requirement of training. The cockpit gives visitors a partial perspective on a totality, and when you look into the totality, the totality also looks into you: the experience compels people to account for their own positioning. Conclusions/Recommendations If we take seriously the idea that education is a collective project, then studying education means studying not only how people are transformed from one status to another, but how as part of this process people construct accounts rationalizing what has happened to them. As it happens, such accounts are not merely post hoc rationalizations; they also permit a forward impetus, as people draw on these accounts in seeking to attain transformative agency, to make things happen differently next time.

EDITOR'S CHOICE: Living with MTAS

As far as I am aware there has never been a time when morale in the NHS has not been at an all time low. And yet, for junior doctors at least, things have happened in the past year to justify that overworked phrase. Firstly, there was the news that international medical graduates who were not on the highly skilled migrant programme had been told that they were not wanted and advised to return home. Then we started to hear of musical chairs on some senior house officer rotations where, for instance, six juniors were told they would have to …

Strategic merger waves: A theory of musical chairs

This paper proposes an explanation of merger waves based on the interaction between competitive pressure and irreversibility of mergers in an uncertain environment. A set of acquirers compete over time for scarce targets. At each point in time, an acquirer can either postpone a takeover attempt or raid immediately. By postponing the takeover attempt, an acquirer may gain from more favorable future market conditions, but runs the risk of being preempted by rivals. First, a complete information model is considered and it is shown that the above tradeoff leads to a continuum of subgame perfect equilibria in monotone strategies that are strictly Pareto ranked. All these equilibria share the feature that all acquirers rush simultaneously in merger waves. The model is then extended to a dynamic global game by introducing slightly noisy private information about merger profitability. This game is shown to have a unique Markov perfect Bayesian equilibrium in monotone strategies and the timing of the merger wave can thus be predicted. Last, the comparative dynamics predictions of the model are related to stylized facts.

The Anonymous Lima Census of 1860

The Anonymous Lima Census of 1860

Homelessness and Musical Chairs: Quicken Your Step or Include More Seats?

Homelessness and Musical Chairs: Quicken Your Step or Include More Seats?

Musical Chairs

Musical Chairs

“Living in Each Other's Pockets”: The Navigation of Social Distances by Middle Class Families in Los Angeles

In Hollywood movies and dystopian critiques, Los Angeles is two cities: one wealthy, white, and gated, the other impoverished, dark, and carceral. This depiction verges on caricature, eliding the diversity and maneuvers of the region's middle class. Drawing upon ethnographies of middle class families (black, white, Latino, Asian) in affluent areas of West Los Angeles and the Valley and in the low‐income areas that are located south and east of downtown Los Angeles, I explore how and why, and at what costs, parents engage in daily maneuvers to place their children in beneficial settings across the region's vast sprawl. I describe these maneuvers that resemble a game of “musical chairs” as selective flight. In contrast to middle class flight to the suburbs, selective flight involves diurnal rather than residential shifts. Enabling middle‐class families who reside amidst the crumbling infrastructure of the urban core to chase cultural capital and physical safety in ever‐receding advantaged areas, the post‐Civil Rights State expands spatial mobility yet does not close racial distances. The pursuit of ever‐receding spaces of advantage is particularly paradoxical and burdensome for black middle‐class parents.