scholarly journals Phylogenetic Typology

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Jäger ◽  
Johannes Wahle

In this article we propose a novel method to estimate the frequency distribution of linguistic variables while controlling for statistical non-independence due to shared ancestry. Unlike previous approaches, our technique uses all available data, from language families large and small as well as from isolates, while controlling for different degrees of relatedness on a continuous scale estimated from the data. Our approach involves three steps: First, distributions of phylogenies are inferred from lexical data. Second, these phylogenies are used as part of a statistical model to estimate transition rates between parameter states. Finally, the long-term equilibrium of the resulting Markov process is computed. As a case study, we investigate a series of potential word-order correlations across the languages of the world.

2021 ◽  
Vol 263 (6) ◽  
pp. 206-214
Author(s):  
David Montes-González ◽  
Juan Miguel Barrigón-Morillas ◽  
Ana Cristina Bejarano-Quintas ◽  
Manuel Parejo-Pizarro ◽  
Guillermo Rey-Gozalo ◽  
...  

The pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) led to the need for drastic control measures around the world to reduce the impact on the health of the population. The confinement of people in their homes resulted in a significant reduction in human activity at every level (economic, social, industrial, etc.), which was reflected in a decrease in environmental pollution levels. Studying the evolution of parameters, such as the level of environmental noise caused by vehicle traffic in urban environments, makes it possible to assess the impact of this type of measure. This paper presents a case study of the acoustic situation in Cáceres (Spain) during the restriction period by means of long-term acoustic measurements at various points of the city.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphaëlle Ortiz ◽  
Anamaría Núñez ◽  
Corinne Cathala ◽  
Ana R. Rios ◽  
Mauro Nalesso

This technical note is an update to the previous "Water in the Time of Drought: Lessons from Five Droughts Around the World", published in 2018. It explores drought situations and policies in Spain (including the Canary Islands), Chile, Mexico, the dry corridor between Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, Brazil, and South Africa. Each of these countries has recently dealt with droughts and/or developed long-term solutions to manage them. HydroBID, a tool developed by the IDB, will be presented through relevant case studies. After defining drought experiences and institutional frameworks in each country, the brief will explore the successes and challenges of national drought and water management policies. Best practices and lessons learned will be extracted from each case study to help policymakers better prepare for droughts.


Author(s):  
Alon Eisenstein ◽  
Neta Raz

After decades of decreasing long-term job security and ongoing global economic crises, attention on and interest in entrepreneurship have significantly increased among Gen Y and Gen Z students in higher education institutions around the world. The pedagogical potential of work-integrated learning (WIL) and the increased offering of entrepreneurship programs in higher education intersect in a field referred to as entrepreneurial WIL (EWIL). This field, where WIL pedagogy is applied to deliver the learning outcomes of entrepreneurship education, is discussed here. The unique features and associated challenges that EWIL presents, particularly when compared with traditional forms of WIL experiences, are also examined, from the framework of a case study conducted on an internship-based course offered in a Canadian university. This chapter contributes to an understanding of the various factors that should be considered when developing novel EWIL programs in higher education institutions.


Entropy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. 1195 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. F. Lawless

Key concepts: We review interdependence theory measured by entropic forces, findings in support, and several examples from the field to advance a science of autonomous human-machine teams (A-HMTs) with artificial intelligence (AI). While theory is needed for the advent of autonomous HMTs, social theory is predicated on methodological individualism, a statistical and qualitative science that neither generalizes to human teams nor HMTs. Maximum interdependence in human teams is associated with the performance of the best teams when compared to independent individuals; our research confirmed that the top global oil firms maximize interdependence by minimizing redundant workers, replicated for the top militaries in the world, adding that impaired interdependence is associated with proportionately less freedom, increased corruption, and poorer team performance. We advanced theory by confirming that the maximum interdependence in teams requires intelligence to overcome obstacles to maximum entropy production (MEP; e.g., navigating obstacles while abiding by military rules of engagement requires intelligence). Approach: With a case study, we model as harmonic the long-term oscillations driven by two federal agencies in conflict over closing two high-level radioactive waste tanks, ending when citizens recommended closing the tanks. Results: While contradicting rational consensus theory, our quasi-Nash equilibrium model generates the information for neutrals to decide; it suggests that HMTs should adopt how harmonic oscillations in free societies regulate human autonomy to improve decisions and social welfare.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-116
Author(s):  
Sergei Monakhov

There is little doubt that one of the most important areas of future research within the framework of Construction Grammar will be the comparative study of constructions in different languages of the world. One significant gain that modern Construction Grammar can make thanks to the cross-linguistic perspective is finding a clue to some contradictory cases of construction alternation. The aim of the present paper is to communicate the results of a case study of two pairs of alternating constructions in English and Russian: s-genitive (SG) and of-genitive (OG) in English and noun + noun in genitive case (NNG) and relative adjective derived from noun + noun (ANG) in Russian. It is evident that the long years of elaborate scientific analysis have not yielded any universally accepted view on the problem of English genitive alternation. There are at least five different accounts of this problem: the hypotheses of the animacy hierarchy, given-new hierarchy, topic-focus hierarchy, end-weight principle, and two semantically distinct constructions. We hypothesised that in this case the comparison of the distribution of two English and two Russian genitives could be insightful. The analysis presupposed two consecutive steps. First, we established an inter-language comparability of two pairs of constructions in English and Russian. Second, we tested the similarity of intra-language distribution of each pair of constructions from the perspective of the animacy hierarchy. For these two purposes, two types of corpora were used: (1) a translation corpus consisting of original texts in one language and their translations into one or more languages; and (2) national corpora consisting of original texts in two respective languages. It was established that in both languages, the choice between members of an alternating pair is governed by the rules of animacy hierarchisation. Additionally, it was possible to disprove the idea that the animacy hierarchy is necessarily based on the linearisation hierarchy. Two Russian constructions are typologically aligned with their English counterparts, not on the grounds of the linear order of head and modifier but on the grounds of structural similarity. The English SG and Russian NNG construction are diametrically opposed in terms of word order. However, they reveal the same underlying structure of the inflectional genitive as contrasted with the analytical genitive of the Russian ANG and the English OG. These findings speak strongly in favour of the animacy hierarchy account of English genitive alternation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (23) ◽  
pp. 13142
Author(s):  
Štěpán Kavan ◽  
Olga Dvořáčková ◽  
Jiří Pokorný ◽  
Lenka Brumarová

The power outages that have occurred in recent years around the world point to widespread problems with consequences for the lives and health of the population, but also material damage. This is a case study that focuses on the evaluation of the preparedness of the population of a selected region in the Czech Republic for a long-term power outage. This article deals with a case study that focuses on the evaluation of the preparedness of the population of the Karlovy Vary region in the field of emergency survival. Part of the study is the evaluation of the respondents’ answers, which provides an overview of the actual state of preparedness for power outages on a sample group of respondents in the Karlovy Vary region. The research method used was a survey using questionnaires. The obtained information was subsequently statistically evaluated by nonparametric correlation using Kendall’s taub. From the presented results of the survey, it is clear that the inhabitants of smaller municipalities are better prepared for a power outage and can create basic conditions for emergency survival.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Somasundaram ◽  
K.A. Mohamed Junaid ◽  
D. Sudha ◽  
Sabari L. Umamaheswari

Business leaders around the world are using emerging technologies to capitalize on data, to create business value and to compete effectively in a digitally driven world. Among them the risk assessment and the risk management, based on the assessment is a process which can be made using the available past historical data and applying Data Analytics. Although it is being implemented in different business domains, it is at a nascent stage. It is further new and emerging in the area of Education. This paper describes such a process followed in an educational institution of an engineering college and the use of data for risk management. Based on the processes followed, the performance of the students is seen to be improving in academic performance, placement, higher education and entrepreneurship. This also provides a good process and framework for taking strategic initiatives which will give long term benefits in the areas like research and outreach activities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sourit Bhattacharya

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the colonies controlled by the British, the Dutch, and other European countries witnessed a number of devastating famines. These famines did not solely arise for the ‘natural’ reasons of the shortage of rainfall or food availability problems, but were aggravated by the systemic imperialist exploitation of the world by these major European powers. Taking as its case study the two great famines in Ireland and India – the 1845–52 Irish Famine and the 1943–44 Bengal Famine – the essay offers a reading of Liam O'Flaherty's Famine (1937) and Bhabani Bhattacharya's So Many Hungers! (1947). It shows that these works – apart from registering the devastating impact of the famines on the colonial population – have pointed through their powerful uses of content, form, and style to the world-historical reasons of long-term agrarian crisis, political instability, tyranny of the landlord classes, inefficiency of the British Empire, and others as responsible for the famines.


Author(s):  
Marie-Pier Veillette ◽  
Emily Grisé ◽  
Ahmed El-Geneidy

Promoting active modes of transportation, such as cycling, is an ongoing challenge faced by many cities around the world. Fostering a bicycle culture in an auto-dominant region is riddled with challenges, but success has been achieved with investments in bicycle infrastructure, including bicycle parking. This study presents a new methodology to identify the optimal locations to install short-term (bicycle racks) and long-term (bicycle lockers or indoor locking facilities) bicycle parking using a GIS-based approach that considers multiple criteria. Using Québec City, Canada, as a case study, our methodology considers multiple criteria related to the demand for bicycle parking, including the destinations of existing and potential cyclists and proximity to a frequent bus service. A prioritization index is developed to identify the optimal locations for long-term and short-term bicycle parking. This is followed by a recommendation of the number of bicycle parking spaces required to meet existing and potential demand. This paper aims to provide practitioners with an easy-to-use method to aid in the planning of new bicycle parking infrastructure, which is designed to be flexible and adaptable to other contexts.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Koji Mizoguchi

This paper proposes a novel procedural framework for the archaeological study of the long-term transformation of religious practices by heuristically defining the religious in terms of their functional-effective elements. Thus, religious activities constitute a distinct communicative domain that responds to and processes the uncertainties and risks of the world. Drawing on this re-definition, this paper proposes a procedure comprising the following units of investigation: (A) what uncertainties and risks of the world were generated in and differentiated by a certain social formation; (B) how were they responded to and processed; and (C) how is the mode of the responding and processing changed as social formations are transformed? The applicability of this procedure is examined through a case study from the pre- and proto-historic periods of the Japanese archipelago. It is hoped that the framework reintroduces causally explanatory, comparative and long-term perspectives to the archaeological study of religious practices.


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