Book Review: Charles E. McClelland. Berlin, the Mother of All Research Universities, 1860–1918.

Charles McClelland has long been one of the leading scholars of German universities and professionalism in Germany. His State, Society, and University in Germany, 1700–1914 (Cambridge, 1980), for example, is a fundamental introductory work for anyone wishing to understand the structure, growth, and development of the German universities during this period. To help celebrate its bicentennial (2010), the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (to use the University of Berlin’s official name since 1949) commissioned a six-volume history, of which McClelland was the co-author of Volume 1, running from 1810 to 1918 and published in German. The work under review is an augmented, English-language version of that volume. That fact perhaps helps explain why the book is so expensive. To say the very least, it far surpasses the forty pages devoted to the period 1870–1910 in the standard history of the university by Max Lenz (4 vols., 1910). The University of Berlin unexpectedly began life in 1810 as the “Berliner Universität” and as compensation for Prussia’s loss of Halle during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1828 it was renamed the Friedrich- Wilhelms-Universität, retaining that name until 1949. Located in the heart of Berlin (on Unter den Linden), during its first half-century its facilities left much to be desired and its faculty, before midcentury, was of mixed scientific distinction. It was largely in the 1860s, as Berlin became a “big” city and as Prussia took on economic and political heft, that the university, located cheek by jowl with the monarchical court, governmental headquarters (including the educational ministry), and military command, emerged as a national and, soon, international research center. Indeed, my only critique of McClelland’s study concerns its muddled, misleading title, “the Mother of All Research Universities.” As is well known, and as McClelland himself eventually points out (but only en passant), it was Halle and Göttingen in the mid-eighteenth century that first promoted research as a central feature of the university. Besides, the advancement of research at the German universities stemmed not from anyone institution but, rather, from a gradually forming system of research-oriented universities. Nonetheless, in the imperial period Berlin most definitely became an outstanding research university and, for some, a model of its kind. That point is beyond dispute

UNCLES: Method for the identification of genes differentially consistently co-expressed in a specific subset of datasets

Background: Collective analysis of the increasingly emerging gene expression datasets are required. The recently proposed binarisation of consensus partition matrices (Bi-CoPaM) method can combine clustering results from multiple datasets to identify the subsets of genes which are consistently co-expressed in all of the provided datasets in a tuneable manner. However, results validation and parameter setting are issues that complicate the design of such methods. Moreover, although it is a common practice to test methods by application to synthetic datasets, the mathematical models used to synthesise such datasets are usually based on approximations which may not always be sufficiently representative of real datasets. Results: Here, we propose an unsupervised method for the unification of clustering results from multiple datasets using external specifications (UNCLES). This method has the ability to identify the subsets of genes consistently co-expressed in a subset of datasets while being poorly co-expressed in another subset of datasets, and to identify the subsets of genes consistently co-expressed in all given datasets. We also propose the M-N scatter plots validation technique and adopt it to set the parameters of UNCLES, such as the number of clusters, automatically. Additionally, we propose an approach for the synthesis of gene expression datasets using real data profiles in a way which combines the ground-truth-knowledge of synthetic data and the realistic expression values of real data, and therefore overcomes the problem of faithfulness of synthetic expression data modelling. By application to those datasets, we validate UNCLES while comparing it with other conventional clustering methods, and of particular relevance, biclustering methods. We further validate UNCLES by application to a set of 14 real genome-wide yeast datasets as it produces focused clusters that conform well to known biological facts. Furthermore, in-silico-based hypotheses regarding the function of a few previously unknown genes in those focused clusters are drawn. Conclusions: The UNCLES method, the M-N scatter plots technique, and the expression data synthesis approach will have wide application for the comprehensive analysis of genomic and other sources of multiple complex biological datasets. Moreover, the derived in-silico-based biological hypotheses represent subjects for future functional studies.The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Programme Grants for Applied Research Programme (Grant Reference Number RP-PG-0310-1004)

Compensation Committee Governance Quality, Chief Executive Officer Stock Option Grants, and Future Firm Performance

NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in the Journal of Banking & Finance and Accounting. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in the Journal of Banking & Finance and Accounting 33 (8), 2009 and is available here.This paper examines whether the relationship between future firm performance and chief executive officer (CEO) stock option grants is affected by the quality of the compensation committee. Compensation committee quality is measured using six committee characteristics--the proportion of directors appointed during the tenure of the incumbent CEO, the proportion of directors with at least ten years' board service, the proportion of directors who are CEOs at other companies, the aggregate shareholding of directors on the compensation committee, the proportion of directors with three or more additional board seats, and compensation committee size. We find that future firm performance is more positively associated with stock option grants as compensation committee quality increases

The effect of earnings quality and country-level institutions on the value relevance of earnings

The article availbale for download is a post print. The definitive version was published in Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting and is available here. Copyright (2012) Springer.This study investigates the relationship between the value relevance of earnings and earnings quality across countries. We find that there is a stronger relationship between earnings quality and the value relevance of earnings in countries with high investor protection than in countries with weak investor protection. We also find that the association between the value relevance of earnings and earnings quality is higher when a country's information environment is less opaque. Overall, our study documents evidence on international differences in the ability of stock prices to capture useful accounting information, consistent with the notion that the returns-earnings association reflects not only the quality of accounting earnings but also the informativeness of stock prices

Formar bem as mães para criar e educar boas crianças: as revistas portuguesas de educação familiar e a difusão da maternidade científica (1945-1958)

Este artigo tem como principal objetivo contribuir para a compreensão do processo de construção da maternidade científica em Portugal. Neste sentido, foi analisado um conjunto de artigos (n=628), publicados em revistas de educação familiar, entre 1945 e 1958. A análise realizada permitiu compreender que as revistas analisadas contribuem para a difusão da maternidade científica, ou seja, da ideia de que a aquisição de conhecimento científico sobre a criação e educação das crianças é elemento indispensável ao adequado exercício da função maternal. Observou-se, ainda, a existência de diferentes estratégias de educação para a maternidade, às quais está subjacente um elemento de classe, assim como diferentes níveis de adesão, por parte das mulheres, à concepção de maternidade científica

Integrating GWAS and Transcriptomics to Identify the Molecular Underpinnings of Thermal Stress Responses in \u3cem\u3eDrosophila melanogaster\u3c/em\u3e

Thermal tolerance of an organism depends on both the ability to dynamically adjust to a thermal stress and preparatory developmental processes that enhance thermal resistance. However, the extent to which standing genetic variation in thermal tolerance alleles influence dynamic stress responses vs. preparatory processes is unknown. Here, using the model species Drosophila melanogaster, we used a combination of Genome Wide Association mapping (GWAS) and transcriptomic profiling to characterize whether genes associated with thermal tolerance are primarily involved in dynamic stress responses or preparatory processes that influence physiological condition at the time of thermal stress. To test our hypotheses, we measured the critical thermal minimum (CTmin) and critical thermal maximum (CTmax) of 100 lines of the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel (DGRP) and used GWAS to identify loci that explain variation in thermal limits. We observed greater variation in lower thermal limits, with CTmin ranging from 1.81 to 8.60°C, while CTmax ranged from 38.74 to 40.64°C. We identified 151 and 99 distinct genes associated with CTmin and CTmax, respectively, and there was strong support that these genes are involved in both dynamic responses to thermal stress and preparatory processes that increase thermal resistance. Many of the genes identified by GWAS were involved in the direct transcriptional response to thermal stress (72/151 for cold; 59/99 for heat), and overall GWAS candidates were more likely to be differentially expressed than other genes. Further, several GWAS candidates were regulatory genes that may participate in the regulation of stress responses, and gene ontologies related to development and morphogenesis were enriched, suggesting many of these genes influence thermal tolerance through effects on development and physiological status. Overall, our results suggest that thermal tolerance alleles can influence both dynamic plastic responses to thermal stress and preparatory processes that improve thermal resistance. These results also have utility for directly comparing GWAS and transcriptomic approaches for identifying candidate genes associated with thermal tolerance

Improving human and environmental health in urban informal settlements: the Revitalising Informal Settlements and their Environments (RISE) programme

Daniel Reidpath - ORCID: 0000-0002-8796-0420 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8796-0420https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(18)30114-12pubpubSuppl