1,721,608 research outputs found
The Challenge of Modifying Deviant Behavior: Restructuring Incentives in Renegade Regimes
No full textThis thesis considers whether international coercion used to confront deviant behavior in renegade or rogue regimes produces an offset of the benefits of continued defiant behavior, or produces a restructuring of incentives and a counterproductive result. Much has been written on the effectiveness of international coercion, but little focus has been given to the potential for a pressure to restructure the decision process in a non-desired way. This thesis contrasts the expectations of rational choice and expected-utility theory with prospect theory in the decision calculus of renegade regimes. Finally, this thesis creates a basic model for limited prediction by combining expectations of prospect theory with the incentive offsetting/incentive restructuring (IO/IR) models as proposed by Miroslav Nincic.v, 74 leave
The interactions of human Natural Killer cells with accessory cells
Full text linkNatural Killer (NK) cells are lymphocytes of the innate immune system. However, there is increasing
evidence that they can also play important roles in the adaptive immune system; as initiators, through
antigen presentation; as effectors, via early release of IFN-y; and as immunoregulators, by eliminating
over-activated macrophages. The functions of NK cells in these roles are intimately linked to their
interactions with other cells during an immune response, for example recognition of target cells via
activating receptors.
The activating receptor NKG2D recognises proteins that are not normally expressed at the surface
of most cells but are up-regulated during a cellular ‘stress’ response. However, NKG2D ligands
can also be induced on human macrophages by TLR stimulation, leading to NK cell-mediated lysis.
Here, I clarify that ligation of TLR4 preferentially up-regulates MICA but not MICB, TLR7/8 ligation
up-regulated both MICA and MICB, while ligating TLR3, signalling through a MyD88-independent
pathway, up-regulated neither. TLR4 stimulation decreased expression of microRNAs, miR-17-5, miR-
20a and miR-93, which target MICA, implicating a novel role for microRNAs in post-transcriptional
regulation of NKG2D ligand expression. Moreover, the pathway involved IL-12/TNF- a-mediated
autocrine signalling, thus incorporating an intrinsic mechanism for NK cell-mediated elimination of
particularly activated macrophages.
In addition to this immunoregulatory role, NK cell activity can shape a subsequent adaptive
immune response. Subsets of NK cells can have distinct functions. Here, I demonstrate that following
culture with IL-2, >25% of human peripheral blood NK cells express HLA-DR, due to an expansion
of a small subset of NK cells expressing HLA-DR, in contrast to previous assumptions that HLADR
is upregulated on previously negative cells. HLA-DR-expressing NK cells exhibited enhanced
degranulation to susceptible target cells and expression of the chemokine receptor CXCR3, which
facilitated their enrichment following exposure to CXCL11/I-TAC. Suggestive of an immunological
role, stimulation of PBMCs with Mycobacterium bovis BCG triggered dramatic expansion of HLADR-
expressing NK cells. In addition, the magnitude of the NK cell IFN-y secretion response in PBMC
triggered by BCG was associated with the proportion of HLA-DR-expressing NK cells ex vivo. A direct
contribution to the immune response was determined by specifically enriching the HLA-DR-expressing
NK cell compartment, which substantially augmented the total NK cell IFN-y secretion response
to BCG. Thus, HLA-DR expression marks a distinct subset of NK cells, present at low frequency
in peripheral blood but readily expanded by IL-2, that can play a significant role during immune
responses
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
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