Single Style Research Articles

Doing it your way: The Variation in, and Importance of, Personal Style in Teaching Quantitative Methods for University Social Science Students

This paper reviews and discusses ideas and advice on quantitative methods teaching in the social sciences that were presented and debated in a series of workshops led by experienced university teachers of quantitative methods for social science students. Despite considerable similarity in course content for introductory statistics modules at the undergraduate level, there is often great freedom for teachers and so huge variation in how statistics is taught. This involves different approaches to theory, examples, practical exercises and so on. We argue that there is no single style that would be most effective for everyone, but instead it is important for teachers to teach in a style that suits them.

The Sculptural Object circa 1960

‘Messy’ was the word Donald Judd chose in 1964 to describe the history of art. In ‘Local History’, the artist and critic argued against a ‘neat’ or ‘linear’ historical trajectory based on categories of style. ‘A lot of things just can't be connected’, he wrote, observing how art of the post-war period in particular was diverse, heterogeneous, and could not be contained by a dominant school, or common goal.1 Judd took aim at the categories of Abstract Expressionism and Pop, showing how individual artworks eluded easy classification and failed to cohere to a single style. In such messiness Judd found openness. He demonstrated how divergent artists around 1960 began to engage three-dimensional space, or the question of ‘being an object’, a topic he would pursue again the following year. In his landmark essay ‘Specific Objects’, Judd mapped a wide array of early 1960s artworks that took hybrid form or...

The Songs of Madosini – Musical differences in a composite design

This short article serves as a programme note for The Songs of Madosini, contained on the CD appended to this issue of the journal. Apart from describing the composition structurally and dramaturgically, it suggests that beyond its musical effect the work's more important function is perhaps that of a ‘social intervention’ as its musical performances invariably facilitate deep intercultural exchanges, for which South Africa's society otherwise hardly provides comparable forums. The composition is based on an appreciation of musical differences as well as a conviction that these differences concern each other in ways that are concurrently constraining and enabling. It thereby evinces systemic qualities not contained in any single style in isolation, but qualities and properties that emerge only from the interactions of stylistic juxtapositions. Striving to arrive at a uniquely local and inclusive style of performance practice, the work implicitly suggests that what might be termed a ‘specifically South African idiom’ is principally attainable only on such a systemically complex level.

Ozakia, a new genus of winged fruit shared between the Miocene of Japan and western North America

A new genus is recognized based on winged fruits with a single species shared between the Miocene of southwestern Honshu, Japan, and the Miocene of Oregon and Idaho, USA. Calyces of Ozakia emryi gen. et sp. n. were formerly attributed to Heptacodium (Caprifoliaceae) and Amelanchier (Rosaceae); however, newly recovered specimens reveal additional characters that contradict these assignments. The pedicellate fruits are obovate, tapering basally and truncate apically, with about 10 longitudinal ribs, a prominent epigynous synsepalous calyx of five lobes, each with a midvein and a pair of weaker, ascending intramarginal primary veins. The single style has a capitate stigma. Ozakia is considered to represent an extinct eudicot genus, the familial affinities of which remain uncertain. The eastern Asian-western North American disjunction of Ozakia occurrences suggests that this plant traversed the Beringia land bridge during or prior to the Middle Miocene. Relatively few extinct angiosperm genera are known as late as the Miocene.

Complementary or contradictory? Combining returns-based and characteristics-based investment style analysis

This study is the first to combine returns-based (RBS) and characteristics-based (CBS) style analysis into a single style analysis model. We address the issue of whether RBS and CBS analysis are complementary. Out-of-sample tests confirmed two things: membership of style groups explains a significant degree of cross-sectional performance of mutual funds, and the cumulative effect of combining BFI (Best Fit Index) and CBS analysis significantly improves on the CBS and BFI models in isolation. The ex post explanatory power of the combined model is greater than the individual parts.

English

Bamboos are arborescent grasses belonging to the family Poaceae and are groupedunder the subfamily Bambusoideae. Bambusoideae are differentiated from othermembers of the family by the presence of petiolate blades with parallel venation andstamens are three, four, six or more, gynoecium is with single style with one to threestigmas and caryopsis. Bamboo is regarded as the major resource that meets theneed of common man and also a poverty alleviator due to its multipurpose uses. TheRaigad district, Maharashtra, India, is a good pocket of wild as well as cultivatedbamboo. This district is rich in Bamboo flora specially four species viz. Bambusabambos; Pseudoxytenanthera ritcheyi; Pseudoxytenanthera stocksii andDendrocalamus strictus. To study the genetics of bamboo, one has to faceenormous difficulties simply because of rare flowering and we cannot makehybridizations as easily as like other angiosperms. The randomly amplifiedpolymorphic DNA (RAPD) method is used for genetic characterization of bamboo.This method of DNA profiling is proven excellent for identification, phylogeneticanalysis, population studies and genetic linkage mapping of many plant species. Establishing multilocus markers RAPD analysis of genomes provides a versatile andrapid technology requiring low infrastructural input and use of arbitrary primers fordeveloping plant DNA fingerprinting. In the present study, a comparative geneticanalysis of four species of bamboo B. bambus, P. ritcheyi, P. stocksii and D. strictuscollected from different locations of Raigad district of Maharashtra, India had beencarried out using PCR-RAPD analysis. The present results warrant an extensivesurvey of genetic variation between the given four species of bamboo. The resultswould be helpful in designing sequence characterized amplified regions (SCAR)marker for each species. These SCAR markers can be used as diagnostic marker toauthenticate samples of given four species. Key words: Randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), DNA-fingerprinting,sequence characterized amplified regions (SCAR), Genetic characterization, ritcheyi,stocksii, Raigad.

Above the rest: chopines as trans-Mediterranean fashion

The chopine, one of the most extraordinary forms of footwear ever worn in Western dress, was integral to the sartorial splendor of upper-class women's dress throughout southern Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. However, this early modern fashion did not represent a single monolithic style; different regions produced distinctly different forms of chopines and they were worn in strikingly different ways that were framed by local issues related to gender construction, familial prestige, civic identity and the promotion of the industries that drove local economies. This essay traces the history of the chopine from antiquity to its dissemination across the Iberian Peninsula under Roman rule and then its transformation by the Moors into an unrivaled feature of upper-class women's dress in both Christian Spain and Italy. A detailed comparison between the late sixteenth-century luxury tapins of Valencia and the exceptionally high calcagnetti of Venice illuminates the regional difference in the ways in which chopines were made, how they were worn and how they came to be a paramount accessory of women's dress in Spain and Italy. The essay also addresses hybridism evidenced in some Italian chopines and chopines as a trans-Mediterranean fashion.

Comparative Studies of the AgNORS Motifs in Phytohemagglutinin-Stimulated Human T-Lymphocytes with T-Lymphocyte Subgroups

OZET Objective: Using of argyrophilic nucleolar organiser region (AgNOR) patterns, instead of the fluorescent T-lymphocyte markers, in specification of sub-groups of T-lymphocyte was researched in the study. For this, it was aimed to indicate that AgNOR pattern of each T-lymphocyte sub-group remains stable in a stage of cell cycle stimulated by phytohaemagglutinin (PHA) and that these patterns are different from each other. Material and Methods: Peripheral blood samples of four healthy volunteers were cultured according to whole blood and/or isolated blood culture methods. The slides were stained by using AgNOR and immunohistochemical staining methods. Results: As we expected, the CD8 staining is not observed in a single style of the nucleolar organiser region (NOR) motif, but rather occurred in the forms of different kinds of nucleolus. It was found that the different types of NOR motifs formed with AgNOR staining are not related to the Tlymphocyte subgroup. Conclusion: It was concluded that the NOR motifs are not specific to sub-groups of T-lymphocytes. Further investigations are needed to support our results.

XDoG: An eXtended difference-of-Gaussians compendium including advanced image stylization

Recent extensions to the standard difference-of-Gaussians (DoG) edge detection operator have rendered it less susceptible to noise and increased its aesthetic appeal. Despite these advances, the technical subtleties and stylistic potential of the DoG operator are often overlooked. This paper offers a detailed review of the DoG operator and its extensions, highlighting useful relationships to other image processing techniques. It also presents many new results spanning a variety of styles, including pencil-shading, pastel, hatching, and woodcut. Additionally, we demonstrate a range of subtle artistic effects, such as ghosting, speed-lines, negative edges, indication, and abstraction, all of which are obtained using an extended DoG formulation, or slight modifications thereof. In all cases, the visual quality achieved by the extended DoG operator is comparable to or better than those of systems dedicated to a single style.

Book Reviews

JOHN FLOWER, Accounting and Distributive Justice (New York, NY: Routledge, 2010, ISBN 978-0-415-87177-8, pp. 201)

Multiple Attachment Representations in Clinical Practice: Case Study of a Six-Year-Old Maltreated Child

Research on attachment predominantly traces the effect of a single or primary attachment and/or attachment style on working models and behavior. However, most children form multiple attachments. This article reviews research on multiple attachment representations in children and considers how such information can usefully be applied to clinical settings. Through the case study of a six-year-old adopted boy with a history of maltreatment, it explores how those internal working models can be assessed in treatment and the clinical value of recognizing different attachment representations and styles. Implications for treatment interventions are explored.

Complementary or Contradictory? Combining Returns Based & Characteristics Based Investment Style Analysis

This study is the first to combine returns based (RBS) and characteristics based (CBS) style analysis into a single style analysis model. We address the issue of whether RBS and CBS style analysis complementary. Out of sample tests confirmed two things; membership of style groups explain a significant degree of cross sectional performance of mutual funds and secondly the cumulative effect of combining BFI and CBS analysis significantly improves on the CBS and BFI models in isolation. The ex post explanatory power of the combined model is greater than the individual parts.

Gender expression and inflorescence structure of Pappea capensis Eckl. and Zeyh. (Sapindaceae)

Gender and the structure of the inflorescence and flowers of Pappea capensis (Sapindaceae) are investigated in a locality around Pretoria (22–27°S and 25–32°E) . The trees flower over a long period (December to April) and are basically monoecious, starting with male flowers followed by female flowers towards the end of the flowering period, although some trees may be predominantly male and some predominantly female. The inflorescence is a reduced thyrse with small flowers. Male flowers have five ephemeral petals, eight stamens and a rudimental pistil. Female flowers comprise a 3-lobed ovary, a single style and stigma and eight staminodes.

Combining Returns Based and Characteristics Based Style Analysis for US Diversified Equity Funds

Our study is the first to combine returns based and characteristics based style analysis into a single style analysis model. We use Best Fit Indices to establish the ‘investment domains’ of our sample managers, along the lines of size and ‘style,’ and then use our multidimensional characteristics based analysis to form style groups within those domains. We illustrate how using a combined BFI-CBS methodology (Best Fit Index (BFI) Characteristics Based Style Analysis (CBS)) improves on the out-of-sample forecasting properties of either model on their own. There has been debate in the literature about the relative merits of Returns Based Style (RBSA) analysis and Characteristics Based Style Analysis (CBS) but few of these papers address the issue of whether these methods are contradictory or complementary, preferring to focus on the relative attractiveness of the various methods or any apparent shortcomings. Our study is the first to combine the information into a single style analysis model. The BFI-CBS methodology provides a means of classification of equity investment styles that has academic rigour and is suitable for practical application; with intuitive appeal and empirical support. Our out of sample tests confirmed two things; membership of style groups formed on the basis of our combined BFI-CBS model explained a significant degree of cross sectional performance of mutual funds and secondly the cumulative effect of combining Best Fit Index and Characteristics Based Style analysis significantly improved on the CBS model and BFI models when reported on their own. The implication being that the ex post explanatory power of the combined model is greater than the individual parts.Furthermore, qualitative analysis of our results was consistent with investment practice and academic consideration of style and economic exposure with similar characteristics to the qualitative data presented by Christopherson and Williamson (1995) and Brown and Goetzmann (1997).

Parametricism: A New Global Style for Architecture and Urban Design

AbstractThough parametricism has its roots in the digital animation techniques of the mid‐1990s, it has only fully emerged in recent years with the development of advanced parametric design systems. Patrik Schumacher explains why parametricism has become the dominant, single style for avant‐garde practice today and why it is particularly suited to large‐scale urbanism as exemplified by a series of competition‐winning masterplans by Zaha Hadid Architects. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mutual Fund Style Timing Skills and Alpha

Selecting mutual funds on only alpha or a single style timing skill (e.g. market timing) leads to overestimating the loading on the selected characteristic and a negative bias towards other characteristics. Consequently, ex-post performance of the top decile is often weak. By estimating for each fund simultaneously alpha and style timing skills over its complete ex-ante available history based on daily returns we achieve two important results. First, the estimated alphas and style timing loadings of the top decile are estimated more accurately. Second, the ex-post performance of the top decile is superior to that of deciles selected on a subset of characteristics, using monthly data or a shorter estimation window.

The 1945 Stravinsky Debates: Nigg, Messiaen, and the Early Cold War in France

Abstract In spring 1945, a small group of students, among them Serge Nigg and Pierre Boulez, protested during the first performances in liberated Paris of the neoclassical works Stravinsky had composed in America. Whereas Boulez's biographers have interpreted the student protests as a sign of René Leibowitz's successful promotion of serialism in France, scholars of the Cold War have seen the 1945 concerts as a precursor to Stravinsky's participation in the 1952 L'Œuvre du XXe siècle, a festival in Paris indirectly funded by the CIA. These interpretations subsume the immediate postwar period in France within a synchronic view of the early Cold War era. But the 1945 protests against Stravinsky were not about the decisive embrace of a single musical style; rather, they were about the desire of young French composers to play an active role in shaping the postwar future of music in France. In 1945, Nigg—and not Boulez—represented the aesthetic opinions of a generation of French composers who had grown up during the German occupation of Paris and the political aspirations of those who, like Nigg, flocked to the French Communist Party at war's end. Nigg's participation in the 1945 Stravinsky debates gives us occasion to examine his earliest musical compositions and the political opinions he would express with increasing ideological fervor in the 1950s. Although in verbal pronouncements he supported socialist realism, Nigg's rare and complex use of a French folk tune in his 1954 Piano Concerto betrays his ambivalence about the Soviet demand for communist composers to reject "falsely cosmopolitan tendencies" in favor of their national cultural heritage. Having rejected in 1945 both Stravinsky's neoclassicism and French nationalism (the latter tainted by associations with Vichy during the occupation), Nigg had to choose in the early Cold War between his aesthetic and political loyalties.

The Eocene mystery flower of McAbee, British Columbia

A distinctive, extinct type of flower and fruit is described based on coalified compression and impression fossils from the Eocene lake bed deposits of McAbee, British Columbia. Dillhoffia cachensis gen. et sp. nov. has an elongate-ellipsoidal fruit with an epigynous, completely connate funnelform calyx 1.8–2.9 cm in diameter, with an unlobed, orbicular margin. The fruit narrows apically into a single style divided into four slightly recurved stigmatic arms. Fruits are pedicellate, borne in globose heads. Stamens, pollen, and internal fruit morphology remain unknown, but the available details of gynoecial and perianth morphology present a suite of characters not encountered in any known extant genus, and the familial affinities remain uncertain. This is noteworthy, because many other elements of the same Eocene flora represent extant genera with clear familial assignments such as Cunninghamia , Ginkgo , Aesculus , Alnus , Betula , Dipteronia , Fagus , Trochodendron , and Ulmus .

The CMD-3 data acquisition and control system

The CMD-3 cryogenic magnet detector for a VEPP-2000 collider is under construction now. This paper describes the hardware part of its DAQ system. The main features of this system are low EMI, low power and high speed. This is a serial-backplane LVDS-media-based system. The DAQ system is easily scalable while providing data output to fast ethernet. Also, the system is low cost due to using commercially available components only. Special attention is devoted to how a DAQ system interacts with trigger, digitizing and calibrating subsystems. To obtain compatibility of DAQ with different specific digitizers, a single style is required. Portable HDL code called “Skeletal Design” was developed. It includes all functions required for the digitizer to work in DAQ. It supports the modular approach to allow board-specific controllers to be easily added. The brief description of top-level DAQ hierarchy hardware module for synchronization of system (MChS) is presented.

Differentiatie door coaches binnen amateursportteams: terecht of onterecht?

Differential treatment by coaches of amateur sports teams: right or wrong? Differential treatment by coaches of amateur sports teams: right or wrong? J.W.M. van Breukelen & W. Wesselius, Gedrag & Organisatie, volume 20, November 2007, nr. 4, pp. 427-444 A central assumption in the Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory is that leaders do not adopt a single style towards all members of their work unit, but treat the various team members differently. This may result in different kinds of working relationships between the leader and the various members ranging from formal to intense. The effects of these different LMX relationships are visible in important outcome variables such as job satisfaction and performance. Not only in working organizations but also in the context of sports differential treatment by the coach seems a relevant topic. In this article we describe the results of a field study among the players (N = 218) of 21 amateur sports teams. Firstly, we investigated on which aspects the coaches of these teams differentiated between the various team members and how these incidents of differential treatment were experienced by the players in terms of justice and fairness. In addition, we analyzed whether the frequency and evaluation of differential treatment was related to the players' enthusiasm and to team atmosphere and team performance. Social differentiation was appreciated less than task differentiation. Especially task differentiation proved to be important for team performance.