Different blog use, different participation

Though it seems to be more popular for most people to discuss some issues with their friends on the micro blogs such as Twitter or community websites such as Facebook, there is still a doubt that these websites would play a role to facilitate civic engagement or promote the frequency for talking about public affairs. It is said that the success of Obama‟s case did intrigue politicians‟ attention for the effect of blog in Taiwan. That is why the study should be traced to the experiences of blog in America. There are some surveys which improved that the number of blogs have grown since 2001(Levy, 2002; Henning, 2003). In this case, Wallsten (2007) indicated that political blogs seems to have been grown faster than other types of blogs. In order to find the relationship between blog use and political participation, this study will focus on political blogs. Researchers pointed that the role of blog has become an open forum for users to address issues(Bruns, 2006; Cristol, 2002; Wall, 2006) and some researchers further claimed that blogs have been portrayed as political outlets (Kerbel and Bloom, 2005; Sweetser and Kaid, 2008; Trammell et al., 2006b) where allow users to express their self-perspective and access to different perspectives on an issue (Herring et al., 2004; Trammell and Keshelashvili, 2005; Papacharissi, 2004; Thompson, 2003). In brief, blog users also play a key role in the blog world. For this reason, the study will explore the connotation of blog users and further examine the relationship between blog use and political participation. But it seems to be less studies about types of blog users that could assess the effects of communication on blogs more precisely. To target more real supporters, this article will categorize the types of users into three kinds and measure the extent to their separate behavior which linked to political participation. --

Measurement-induced nonlocality in arbitrary dimensions in terms of the inverse approximate joint diagonalization

Here we focus on the measurement induced nonlocality and present a redefinition in terms of the skew information subject to a broken observable. It is shown that the obtained quantity possesses an obvious operational meaning, can tackle the noncontractivity of the measurement induced nonlocality and has analytic expressions for many quantum states. Most importantly, an inverse approximate joint diagonalization algorithm, due to its simplicity, high efficiency, stability, and state independence, is presented to provide almost analytic expressions for any quantum state, which can also shed light on other aspects in physics

Robust Tracking of Multiple People Using Two Widely Separated Cameras

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Londo

Singular solutions for divergence-form elliptic equations involving regular variation theory: Existence and classification

We generalise and sharpen several recent results in the literature regarding the existence and complete classification of the isolated singularities for a broad class of nonlinear elliptic equations of the form \begin{equation} -{\rm div}\,(\mathcal A(|x|) \,|\nabla u|^{p-2} \nabla u)+b(x)\,h(u)=0\quad \text{in } B_1\setminus\{0\}, \end{equation} where $B_r$ denotes the open ball with radius $r>0$ centred at zero in $\mathbb{R}^N$ $(N\geq 2)$. We assume that $\mathcal{A} \in C^1(0,1]$, $b\in C(\bar{B_1}\setminus\{0\})$ and $h\in C[0,\infty)$ are positive functions associated with regularly varying functions of index $\vartheta$, $\sigma$ and $q$ at $0$, $0$ and $\infty$ respectively, satisfying $q>p-1>0$ and $\vartheta-\sigma<p<N+\vartheta$. We prove that the condition $b(x) \,h(\Phi)\not \in L^1(B_{1/2})$ is sharp for the removability of all singularities at zero for the positive solutions of our problem, where $\Phi$ denotes the "fundamental solution" of $-{\rm div}\,(\mathcal A(|x|)\, |\nabla u|^{p-2} \nabla u)=\delta_0$ (the Dirac mass at zero) in $B_1$, subject to $\Phi|_{\partial B_1}=0$. If $b(x) \,h(\Phi)\in L^1(B_{1/2})$, we show that any non-removable singularity at zero for a positive solution to our equation is either weak (i.e., $\lim_{|x|\to 0} u(x)/\Phi(|x|)\in (0,\infty)$) or strong ($\lim_{|x|\to 0} u(x)/\Phi(|x|)=\infty$). The main difficulty and novelty of this paper, for which we develop new techniques, come from the explicit asymptotic behaviour of the strong singularity solutions in the critical case, which had previously remained open even for $\mathcal{A}=1$. We also study the existence and uniqueness of the positive solution to our problem with a prescribed admissible behaviour at zero and a Dirichlet condition on $\partial B_1$

Crowdsourcing avant la lettre: Henri Cordier and French Sinology, ca. 1875-1925

This article argues that the French sinologist Henri Cordier (1849-1926) used his private correspondence with a vast international network of diplomats, administrators, missionaries, writers and scholars of every field of Asian studies between the 1870s until his death in 1926 to produce knowledge about China. Indeed, his unpublished correspondence, housed in the Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France in Paris, demonstrates a collaborative knowledge production on a global scale long before the digital revolution. Moreover, Cordier’s letters further show his correspondents giving him guidance or professional mentoring at a crucial moment in the development and professionalization of European sinology

‘Paris, Japan and modernity: a vexed ratio

This essay uses mobility as a way to tackle the nominal question, “Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century?” By examining the illustrated travel narratives of two Frenchmen in Japan, Émile Guimet, founder of the eponymous museum of Asian art in Paris, and the artist Félix Régamey, who accompanied him on his tour in 1876, I argue that travel and transport provide a vehicle through which to challenge the centrality of Paris, and by extension, the West in the nineteenth century. By moving our attention to Japan, we can better understand the changing balance of power between East and West in the nineteenth century, and the contested terms of center and periphery that have preoccupied recent scholars in the humanities and social sciences

Paris, Japan, and modernity: a vexed ratio

This essay uses mobility as a way to tackle the nominal question, “Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century?” By examining the illustrated travel narratives of two Frenchmen in Japan, Émile Guimet, founder of the eponymous museum of Asian art in Paris, and the artist Félix Régamey, who accompanied him on his tour in 1876, I argue that travel and transport provide a vehicle through which to challenge the centrality of Paris, and by extension, the West in the nineteenth century. By moving our attention to Japan, we can better understand the changing balance of power between East and West in the nineteenth century, and the contested terms of center and periphery that have preoccupied recent scholars in the humanities and social sciences

The Dualistic Model of European Agriculture - a Theoretical Framework for the Endogenous Development

The European model of agriculture refers to a multifunctional and virtuous model of agriculture that is progressively substituting the productivist model of agriculture, that, in the recent past, has been supported by agricultural community policies. However, the European model of agriculture comprises heterogeneous realities and economic actors characterised by different local conducts. Schematizing this model, we can distinguish two agriculture typologies: modernised agriculture and traditional agriculture. In this article, we will develop a theoretical framework which encompasses the different patterns of endogenous development in both agriculture typologies. Through this article, we aim to create the theoretical basis necessary to undertake the study of the dualistic model of European agriculture.endogenous rural development, european model of agriculture, traditional agriculture, modern agriculture, multifunctionality

Social Status and Optimal Income Taxation

This paper examines the optimal (first-best) fiscal policy in a stochastic, infinite-horizon representative agent model that exhibits consumption-enhanced as well as wealth-enhanced social status in the household utility. We show that the optimal labor tax rate is a positive constant that is used to correct negative consumption externalities. The optimal capital tax rate is also positive in order to overturn agents' status-seeking capital over-accumulation. Moreover, we find that in contrast to a conventional automatic stabilizer, the optimal capital tax moves in the opposite direction with shocks to firms' production technology. This result turns out to be qualitatively consistent with the discernible empirical evidence that many countries have implemented procyclical fiscal policies.Social Status, Optimal Income Taxation