Fracturing Jazz, Freeing Fusion: Miles Davis’s Role in Counterculture Rock

The paper details Miles Davis\u27s influence in the counterculture rock and roll movement through his development of jazz fusion and his personal connections with rock musicians of the period, as well the overlap in musical ideology that occurred when both rock and jazz began to incorporate elements of each others\u27 styles

Why are neoliberal ideas so resilient in Europe’s political economy?

Despite the economic crisis that hit full force in 2008 in the US and Europe, political leaders have made little attempt to rethink the neoliberal ideas that are in large part responsible for the boom and bust, let alone to come to terms with how immoderate the ‘Great Moderation’ really was. Much the contrary, neoliberal ideas seem to continue to constitute the ruling ideas. In the financial markets, where the crisis began, reregulation remains woefully inadequate, while the only ideas in play are neoliberal, either for more ‘market-enhancing’ regulation or in favor of greater laissez-faire. The biggest puzzle, however, is the response to the crisis by Eurozone countries that have embraced ‘market discipline’ through austerity and, in so doing, have condemned themselves to slow or no growth. This is in contrast to the US, which has posted better economic results, despite being torn between Republican fundamentalists advocating austerity and a more pragmatic leadership focused on growth

The compression of deaths above the mode

Kannisto (2001) has shown that as the frequency distribution of ages at death has shifted to the right, the age distribution of deaths above the modal age has become more compressed. In order to further investigate this old-age mortality compression, we adopt the simple logistic model with two parameters, which is known to fit data on old-age mortality well (Thatcher 1999). Based on the model, we show that three key measures of old-age mortality (the modal age of adult deaths, the life expectancy at the modal age, and the standard deviation of ages at death above the mode) can be estimated fairly accurately from death rates at only two suitably chosen high ages (70 and 90 in this study). The distribution of deaths above the modal age becomes compressed when the logits of death rates fall more at the lower age than at the higher age. Our analysis of mortality time series in six countries, using the logistic model, endorsed Kannisto’s conclusion. Some possible reasons for the compression are discussed.compression of mortality, lexis model, logistic model, modal age of death, oldest old mortality decline, standard deviation

The Survivor Ratio Method for Estimating Numbers at High Ages

Only a few countries have official population statistics which are sufficiently accurate to produce reliable estimates of death rates at high ages. For other countries, there are several methods which can be used to produce improved estimates. The choice is important for research on old age mortality. In 1999 the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research undertook a research project to compare the performance of the three leading methods, using data for nine countries over 35 years. This paper describes the research and the results, which were unexpectedly simple. It also gives an authoritative account of the most successful method.estimation techniques, high ages, population estimates, survivor ratio

A STUDY OF SUBCLINICAL MASTITIS IN TWO HERDS, ONE MANAGED ORGANICALLY, THE OTHER CONVENTIONALLY, AND THE EFFECT OF DIFFERENT MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

Mastitis in two herds managed as a comparison between organic and conventional dairy farming systems was monitored for 9 years utilising regular bacterial culture of milk samples, individual and bulk somatic cell counts and observation by farm staff. The most important isolates in pure cultures were coagulase-negative staphylococci, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus uberis, and Bacillus spp. Positive cultures were generally not associated with subclinical mastitis. The objective was to develop strategies for the control of mastitis in organic cows without the use of antibiotics. Within a set of key control measures, two management strategies were trialled, one of which reduced the prevalence of subclinical mastitis to very low levels

Stability of string defects in models of non-Abelian symmetry breaking

In this paper we describe a new type of topological defect, called a homilia string, which is stabilized via interactions with the string network. Using analytical and numerical techniques, we investigate the stability and dynamics of homilia strings, and show that they can form stable electroweak strings. In SU(2)xU(1) models of symmetry breaking the intersection of two homilia strings is identified with a sphaleron. Due to repulsive forces, the homilia strings seperate, resulting in sphaleron annihilation. It is shown that electroweak homilia string loops cannot stabilize as vortons, which circumvents the adverse cosmological problems associated with stable loops. The consequences for GUT scale homilia strings are also discussed.Comment: 15 pages, revtex, with 8 figures. Submitted to PR

Logics for Unranked Trees: An Overview

Labeled unranked trees are used as a model of XML documents, and logical languages for them have been studied actively over the past several years. Such logics have different purposes: some are better suited for extracting data, some for expressing navigational properties, and some make it easy to relate complex properties of trees to the existence of tree automata for those properties. Furthermore, logics differ significantly in their model-checking properties, their automata models, and their behavior on ordered and unordered trees. In this paper we present a survey of logics for unranked trees

Do faultlines hurt or help? exploring distance, identity, task conflict, and individual performance in diverse groups

We introduce the concept of faultline distance that reflects the extent to which subgroups formed by faultlines diverge as a result of accumulated differences across them (e.g., two members of age 20 are closer in age to two members of an opposing faultline of age 25 than of two members of age 50). We further extend faultline theory by showing how different faultline bases (information-based and social category faultlines) have differential effects on outcomes. Using a sample of 76 workgroups from a Fortune 500 information processing company, we examine the relationships between group faultlines, shared identity, work-related conflict, and multiple individual performance indicators. The results reveal that members of groups with strong information-based faultlines had high levels of performance ratings, while members of groups with strong social category faultlines had low levels of bonuses. Faultline distance further exacerbated the negative effects in groups with strong social category faultlines and reversed the positive effects in groups with information-based faultlines. A sense of strong superordinate identity among group members enhanced members\u27 performance. Finally, mediated moderation was confirmed for the groups with strong social category faultlines; such groups had low levels of conflict which then resulted in low levels of bonuses