In Financial Speculation in Victorian Fiction: Plotting Money
and the Novel Genre, 1815-1901, Tamara S. Wagner explores the
ways in which financial speculation was imagined and turned into
narratives ...in Victorian Britain. Since there clearly was much more
to literature's use of the stock market than a mere reflection of
contemporary economic crises alone, a much-needed reappraisal of
the Victorians' fascination with extended fiscal plots and
metaphors also asks for a close reading of the ways in which this
fascination remodeled the novel genre. It was not merely that
interchanges between literary productions and the credit economy's
new instruments became self-consciously worked into fiction.
Financial uncertainties functioned as an expression of
indeterminacy and inscrutability, of an encompassing sense of
instability. Bringing together canonical and still rarely discussed
texts, this study analyzes the making and adaptation of specific
motifs, of variously adapted tropes, extended metaphors, and
recurring figures, including their transformation of a series of
crises into narratives. Since these crises were often personal and
emotional as well as financial, the new plots of speculation
described maps of some of the major themes of nineteenth-century
literature. These maps led across overlapping categories of
literary culture, generating zones of intersection between
otherwise markedly different subgenres that ranged from silver-fork
fiction to the surprisingly protean versions of the sensation
novel's domestic Gothic. Financial plots fascinatingly operated as
the intersecting points in these overlapping developments,
compelling a reconsideration of literary form.
This paper seeks to understand whether a catastrophic and urgent event, such as the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerates or reverses trends in international collaboration, especially in ...and between China and the United States. A review of research articles produced in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that COVID-19 research had smaller teams and involved fewer nations than pre-COVID-19 coronavirus research. The United States and China were, and continue to be in the pandemic era, at the center of the global network in coronavirus related research, while developing countries are relatively absent from early research activities in the COVID-19 period. Not only are China and the United States at the center of the global network of coronavirus research, but they strengthen their bilateral research relationship during COVID-19, producing more than 4.9% of all global articles together, in contrast to 3.6% before the pandemic. In addition, in the COVID-19 period, joined by the United Kingdom, China and the United States continued their roles as the largest contributors to, and home to the main funders of, coronavirus related research. These findings suggest that the global COVID-19 pandemic shifted the geographic loci of coronavirus research, as well as the structure of scientific teams, narrowing team membership and favoring elite structures. These findings raise further questions over the decisions that scientists face in the formation of teams to maximize a speed, skill trade-off. Policy implications are discussed.
Different approaches have been used to analyse international collaboration in science but none can fully explain its rapid growth. Using international co-authorships, we test the hypothesis that ...international collaboration is a self-organising network. Applying tools from network analysis, the paper shows that the growth of international co-authorships can be explained based on the organising principle of preferential attachment, although the attachment mechanism deviates from an ideal power-law. Several explanations for the deviation are explored, including that of the influence of institutional constraints on the mechanism of self-organisation.
Global collaboration continues to grow as a share of all scientific cooperation, measured as coauthorships of peer-reviewed, published papers. The percent of all scientific papers that are ...internationally coauthored has more than doubled in 20 years, and they account for all the growth in output among the scientifically advanced countries. Emerging countries, particularly China, have increased their participation in global science, in part by doubling their spending on R they are increasingly likely to appear as partners on internationally coauthored scientific papers. Given the growth of connections at the international level, it is helpful to examine the phenomenon as a communications network and to consider the network as a new organization on the world stage that adds to and complements national systems. When examined as interconnections across the globe over two decades, a global network has grown denser but not more clustered, meaning there are many more connections but they are not grouping into exclusive 'cliques'. This suggests that power relationships are not reproducing those of the political system. The network has features an open system, attracting productive scientists to participate in international projects. National governments could gain efficiencies and influence by developing policies and strategies designed to maximize network benefits-a model different from those designed for national systems.
•Research suggests international collaboration and atypical knowledge recombination tend to produce higher impact research.•Research has yet to examine whether international collaboration produces ...atypical, novel, or conventional research.•This article shows that international collaboration tends to produce conventional rather than novel or atypical research.•Transaction costs and communication barriers may suppress novelty, while an audience effect may explain the higher impact of international work.•The findings suggest nuanced support for international research collaboration, incentivizing creativity rather than reputation-seeking.
Research articles produced through international collaboration are more highly cited than other work, but are they also more novel? Using measures developed by Uzzi et al. (2013), and replicated by Boyack and Klavans (2014), this article tests for novelty and conventionality in international research collaboration. Scholars have found that coauthored articles are more novel and have suggested that diverse groups have a greater chance of producing creative work. As such, we expected to find that international collaboration tends to produce more novel research. Using data from Web of Science and Scopus in 2005, we failed to show that international collaboration tends to produce more novel articles. In fact, international collaboration appears to produce less novel and more conventional knowledge combinations. Transaction costs and communication barriers to international collaboration may suppress novelty. Higher citations to international work may be explained by an audience effect, where more authors from more countries results in greater access to a larger citing community. The findings are consistent with explanations of growth in international collaboration that posit a social dynamic of preferential attachment based upon reputation.
Blood biomarkers indicative of Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology are altered in both preclinical and symptomatic stages of the disease. Distinctive biomarkers may be optimal for the identification ...of AD pathology or monitoring of disease progression. Blood biomarkers that correlate with changes in cognition and atrophy during the course of the disease could be used in clinical trials to identify successful interventions and thereby accelerate the development of efficient therapies. When disease-modifying treatments become approved for use, efficient blood-based biomarkers might also inform on treatment implementation and management in clinical practice. In the BioFINDER-1 cohort, plasma phosphorylated (p)-tau231 and amyloid-β42/40 ratio were more changed at lower thresholds of amyloid pathology. Longitudinally, however, only p-tau217 demonstrated marked amyloid-dependent changes over 4-6 years in both preclinical and symptomatic stages of the disease, with no such changes observed in p-tau231, p-tau181, amyloid-β42/40, glial acidic fibrillary protein or neurofilament light. Only longitudinal increases of p-tau217 were also associated with clinical deterioration and brain atrophy in preclinical AD. The selective longitudinal increase of p-tau217 and its associations with cognitive decline and atrophy was confirmed in an independent cohort (Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer's Prevention). These findings support the differential association of plasma biomarkers with disease development and strongly highlight p-tau217 as a surrogate marker of disease progression in preclinical and prodromal AD, with impact for the development of new disease-modifying treatments.
After the initial shock of the early months of the global COVID-19 pandemic, international collaboration in COVID-19 research continues to show aberrant patterns compared to coronavirus research in ...pre-COVID times. The most affected nations tend to produce the greatest number of coronavirus articles, with output closely coupled to the rate of infection. COVID-19 research has fewer nations and smaller teams than pre-COVID research, a trend which intensifies throughout the pandemic. The United States remains the single largest contributor to the global publication output, but contrary to China’s dominance in the initial months of the pandemic, China’s contribution falls as the national COVID-19 caseload drops. China-USA collaborations drop as the pandemic continues, perhaps due to China’s reduced rate of publication on the topic, and perhaps due to political obstacles, or a combination of these factors.
Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) has emerged as an attractive intervention to improve left ventricular mechanical function by changing the sequence of electrical activation. Unfortunately, ...many patients receiving CRT do not benefit but are subjected to device complications and costs. Thus, there is a need for better selection criteria. Current criteria for CRT eligibility include a QRS duration ≥120 ms. However, QRS morphology is not considered, although it can indicate the cause of delayed conduction. Recent studies have suggested that only patients with left bundle branch block (LBBB) benefit from CRT, and not patients with right bundle branch block or nonspecific intraventricular conduction delay. The authors review the pathophysiologic and clinical evidence supporting why only patients with complete LBBB benefit from CRT. Furthermore, they review how the threshold of 120 ms to define LBBB was derived subjectively at a time when criteria for LBBB and right bundle branch block were mistakenly reversed. Three key studies over the past 65 years have suggested that 1/3 of patients diagnosed with LBBB by conventional electrocardiographic criteria may not have true complete LBBB, but likely have a combination of left ventricular hypertrophy and left anterior fascicular block. On the basis of additional insights from computer simulations, the investigators propose stricter criteria for complete LBBB that include a QRS duration ≥140 ms for men and ≥130 ms for women, along with mid-QRS notching or slurring in ≥2 contiguous leads. Further studies are needed to reinvestigate the electrocardiographic criteria for complete LBBB and the implications of these criteria for selecting patients for CRT.
Variation in the availability and distribution of food resources is a strong selective pressure on wild primates. We explored variation in Tibetan macaque gut microbiota composition during winter and ...spring seasons. Our results showed that gut microbial composition and diversity varied by season. In winter, the genus Succinivibrio, which promotes the digestion of cellulose and hemicellulose, was significantly increased. In spring, the abundance of the genus Prevotella, which is associated with digestion of carbohydrates and simple sugars, was significantly increased. PICRUSt analysis revealed that the predicted metagenomes related to the glycan biosynthesis and metabolic pathway was significantly increased in winter samples, which would aid in the digestion of glycan extracted from cellulose and hemicellulose. The predicted metagenomes related to carbohydrate and energy metabolic pathways were significantly increased in spring samples, which could facilitate a monkey's recovery from acute energy loss experienced during winter. We propose that shifts in the composition and function of the gut microbiota provide a buffer against seasonal fluctuations in energy and nutrient intake, thus enabling these primates to adapt to variations in food supply and quality.
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