Visualizing the Past: Tools and Techniques for Understanding Historical Processes

The University of Richmond requests a Level I Digital Humanities Start-Up grant to bring together experts for investigations about how to overcome limitations that prevent most humanities scholars from taking advantage of visualization techniques in their research. The grant will fund a two-day workshop where invited scholars will discuss current work on visualizing historical processes, and together consider: (1) How can we harness emerging cyber-infrastructure tools and interoperability standards to explore, visualize, and analyze spatial and temporal components of distributed digital archives to better understand historical events and processes? (2) How can user-friendly tools or web sites be created to allow scholars and researchers to animate spatial and temporal data housed on different systems across the Internet? The grant will also fund initial experiments toward creating new tools for overcoming obstacles to data visualization work. Results will be presented as a white paper

Relationships Between Environmental and Biological Variables, Plasma Clinical-Chemical Parameters and Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus) from Svalbard, Norway

Few previous studies have reported on levels of clinical-chemical parameters (CCPs) in polar bears (Ursus maritimus), and to date, only one study has investigated levels of CCPs and how they are related to persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in this species. The present study investigate levels of CCPs and how they vary between seasons, reproductive status, body condition (BCI) and age. In addition, the present study investigate how CCPs are related to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), their hydroxylated metabolites (OH-PCBs), organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). This was done by analyzing plasma samples from female polar bears (n = 111) from Svalbard, Norway, sampled during spring (April) and autumn (September) in 2012 and 2013. The CCPs analyzed were: cholesterol (CHOL), high-density lipoprotein (HDLP), triglycerides (TG), aspartate aminotransferase (ASAT), alanine aminotransferase (ALAT), γ-glutamyltransferase (GGT), creatine kinase (CK), potassium (K), and the ratio of urea and creatinine (UCR). Linear mixed effect models and multivariate statistics were used to investigate the data. There were found seasonal differences for UCR, CK, TG. The lipid-related CCPs (CHOL, HDLP, TG) were positively correlated, as were the liver enzymes (ASAT, ALAT, GGT). All PFASs were inter-correlated and thus summed, as were five of eight OH-PCBs. ∑PFAS was positively correlated with each lipid-related CCP, as were several other individual POPs. ∑OH-PCB was negatively correlated with the liver enzymes. The levels of CCPs were comparable to previous studies. The seasonal difference seen in UCR supports previous studies linking UCR to fasting/feeding status. The relationships between CCPs and POPs support previous studies linking PFAS exposure to lipid metabolism. It also supports previous studies linking POPs to hepatic dysfunction

Runtime Validation of Communication Histories: An Automata-based Approach

Modern software systems have become increasingly complex and they are used to perform vital functions in todays society. It is therefore crucial that software systems are as free of errors as possible. A software system is usually divided up into communicating components and there are restrictions on how the components can communicate. This thesis presents an approach for reducing errors in software system by validating, at runtime, that the restrictions are not violated. In this thesis the restrictions on the communication are specified as expressions over the communication histories of the components and the restrictions are represented either as an automaton or a state machine

Crucible of the Civil War: Virginia from Secession to Commemoration

Crucible of the Civil War offers an illuminating portrait of the state’s wartime economic, political, and social institutions. Weighing in on contentious issues within established scholarship while also breaking ground in areas long neglected by scholars, the contributors examine such concerns as the war’s effect on slavery in the state, the wartime intersection of race and religion, and the development of Confederate social networks. They also shed light on topics long disputed by historians, such as Virginia’s decision to secede from the Union, the development of Confederate nationalism, and how Virginians chose to remember the war after its close.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1258/thumbnail.jp

Mapping Texts: Examining the Effects of OCR Noise on Historical Newspaper Collections

Book chapter that documents the “Mapping Texts” project, an experiment focused on the problem of OCR noise in historical newspapers

Unions of Slavery: Slavery, Politics, and Secession in the Valley of Virginia

Book chapter discussing research on the issues involved in the secession of Virginia around the Civil War, including slavery and politics

The Impact of Target Financial Trends on Bidder Announcement Return: Empirical Evidence from the Norwegian M&A Market

We study the relationship between bidder announcement return and prior target financial development in the Norwegian takeover market. Based on a sample of 120 acquisitions of primarily private targets, we find that changes in financial ratios relative to the sample standard deviation provide more explanatory power than absolute ratio levels. Our results indicate that target size and trends in asset turnover have a statistically significant influence on the announcement return. On the one hand, the market is positively related to target size, yet it has a negative development in asset turnover on the other hand. We further find that the impact of the dynamic accounting characteristics is time-dependent, meaning that the importance of these variables changes over time. The trend measure of leverage is significant in the period between 2006-2016, indicating that this variable contributes to explain the announcement return in this particular period. The trend measures of liquidity and net profit margin are, however, not statistically significant in any of the short-term windows. Reviewing our results, we summarize that the shareholders of the bidding firm are most optimistic about the announcement when the target firm is large in size and with a decreasing asset turnover. In addition, increasing leverage levels seemed to be important in earlier years, whereas trends in liquidity and net profit margin seem to be irrelevant when explaining movements in announcement return regardless of the time frame.publishedVersio

Vannvegg som erstatning for brannvinduer mot svalgang

ING303