1,720,959 research outputs found
Family planning and ethic heritage: evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
No full textFamily planning is a critical issue in countries, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa, where high
fertility rates coexist with low contraceptive use alongside adverse perinatal outcomes. Using a
combination of ethnographic, ecological, and folklore data, we investigate the role played in this
context by postpartum sexual abstinence, an extensively documented practice that, in preindustrial
societies, finds its biological justification as a means to safeguard child survival. First, we show
that the duration of contemporary postpartum abstinence increases with the duration of ancestral
postpartum sex taboos within a woman's ethnic group. Second, postpartum abstinence is de facto
pronatalist, as it increases the number of children ever born to a woman. At the same time, it
increases the number of children of a woman who have died; lengthens birth intervals though not
sufficiently to meet recommended guidelines; and increases neonatal death and child stunting.
Exploring the underlying mechanisms reveals that postpartum abstinence is associated with
patriarchal cultural norms and that the motivation for its adoption is that it serves as a purification
ritual. Overall, our findings question the biological rationale for postpartum abstinence as a means
to protect child health, while aligning with anthropological evidence documenting its adoption as a
ritual
Slavery, Education, and Inequality
No full textWe investigate the effect of slavery on the current level of income inequality across US counties. We find that a larger proportion of slaves over population in 1860 persistently increases inequality, and in particular inequality across races. We also show that a crucialchannel of transmission from slavery to racial inequality is human capital accumulation, i.e., current inequality is primarily influenced by slavery through the unequal educational attainment of blacks and whites. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence that the underlying links run through the political exclusion of former slaves and the resulting negative influence on the local provision of education
The Racial Gap in Education and the Legacy of Slavery
No full textWe study the evolution of racial educational inequality across US states from 1940 to 2000. Weshow that throughout this period, despite evidence of convergence, the racial gap in attainmentbetween blacks and whites has been persistently determined by the initial gap. We obtain theseresults with 2SLS estimates where slavery is used as an instrument for the initial gap. We addressthe question of the excludability of slavery by instrumenting it with the share of disembarked slavesfrom the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Using the same approach we also find that income growth isnegatively affected by the initial racial gap in education and that slavery affects growth indirectlythrough this channel
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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