Small Circles: Mobile Telephony and the Cultivation of the Private Sphere

This article examines how we use mobile telephony to maintain our physically and socially closest social circle. The analysis is based on traffic data gathered from Norway using approximately 24 million calls and texts made by private individuals. Previous research has shown that our temporal and spatial movement is highly predictable and that the majority of calls and text messages are sent to only four to six different persons. This article extends this research by examining both tie strength and the distance between the interlocutors in urban and rural settings. The findings show that even as information and communication technologies (ICTs) potentially put the world at our fingertips, the mobile phone is an instrument of a more limited geographical and social sphere. Approximately two-thirds of our calls/texts go to strong ties that are within a 25-km radius.     

A two-stage proxy variable approach to estimating movie box office receipts

This paper advances the ongoing discussion of methods for predicting movie box office revenues with two contributions to the methodology and an out-of-sample test of the model. The first innovation is the development of a two-stage model using publicly available pre-release indicators to predict (1) initial week and (2) subsequent run box office revenues. To incorporate the experience-good nature of movies, the second stage is estimated by incorporating a proxy variable for box office success during the first week relative to predicted first week success. The second contribution is an empirical test of De Vany and Walls’ (J Econ Dyn Control 28:1035–1057, 2004) finding that the distribution of movie revenues has “heavy tails” and follows a non-Gaussian stable distribution with infinite variance. We estimate the two-stage model of a movie’s box office success on all general release movies in 1 year with both the Gaussian and stable distribution with heavy tails and infinite variance and find no evidence for the stable distribution in either stage of the estimation. This two-stage model is validated by comparing all general release movies in 3 future years (out-of-sample data) to the model’s predictions.     

Beyond the online catalog: developing an academic information system in the sciences

The online public access catalog consists essentially of a machine-readable database with network capabilities. Like other computer-based information systems, it may be continuously enhanced by the addition of new capabilities and databases. It may also become a gateway to other information networks. This paper reports the evolution of the Bibliographic Access and Control System (BACS) of Washington University in end-user searching, current awareness services, information management, and administrative functions. Ongoing research and development and the future of the online catalog are also discussed.     

Fees,flows and imaginaries: exploring the destination choices arising from intra-national student mobility

ABSTRACT

Are intra-national student flows driven by the same forces as international student mobility? This paper addresses this question by analysing cross-border student mobility in the UK. The paper identifies four principles that one might expect to drive the destination choices of students from Scotland enrolling in English universities. Following a statistical analysis of student destination choices, it is argued that cross-border moves from Scotland to England are stimulated by some of the same global forces as international student mobility (such as a desire to accumulate cultural capital), but in terms of destination choice the imaginaries held by Scottish students of ‘good’ places to study in England to accumulate cultural capital are constructed differently from the imaginaries of international students.     

Influence of conspecific and predatory Stressors and their associated odors on defensive burying and freezing responses

In Experiment 1, male rats were exposed to either aggressive (i.e., alpha) or nonaggressive conspecific colonies and tested 24 h later, with or without alpha odors, for freezing behavior and burying of a wall prod that had been the source of a brief electric shock. The results indicated that prior defeat experience and the presence of alpha odors alone during testing had no significant effects, but the combination of prior defeat and alpha-odor testing significantly decreased burying and increased freezing behavior. In Experiment 2, we examined the effects of noncontact exposure to a cat, as a predatory Stressor, during subsequent prod-shock tests involving the presence or absence of cat odors. Exposure to a cat failed to disrupt later prod burying and did not produce freezing. However, the presence of cat odors during testing significantly reduced the amount of defensive burying,without resulting in an increment in freezing. In Experiment 3, rats were given 1, 5, or 30 inescapable preshocks in the presence of either cat odors or a hedonically neutral citronella odor and were tested 24 h later for prod burying and freezing with or without these odors. Both the cat and the citronella odors resulted in a significant reduction in burying and an increase in freezing for rats given 5 and 30 preshocks and tested in the presence of these respective conditioned odors. For the groups that were given 5 preshocks, preshock and later testing in the presence of cat odors resulted in significantly less prod burying and more freezing than for rats that were preshocked and tested in the presence of citronella. The findings of these three ethoexperimental studies are discussed in terms of the learned-helplessness theory, the stress-coping-fear-defense (SCFD) theory, and the concept of selective CS-US associability.     

“Doing What I can,but I got no Magic Wand:” A Snapshot of Early Childhood Educator Experiences and Efforts to Ensure Quality During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Early Childhood Education Journal - The COVID-19 pandemic impacted early childhood programs serving infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in dramatic ways. After temporarily closing, many educators...     

Journey to the future

The Library view on development and initiatives in the electronic publishing environment: a paper presented at the STM Innovations Seminar, London, December 1996