A imprensa insurgente encomendada por Miguel Hidalgo e por José Morelos, durante o movimento de independência da Nova Espanha, marcou uma ruptura com a imprensa oficial no início do século XIX. Ao levantar os problemas sociais do Vice-Reino e estratégias para combatê-los, configurou um novo espaço de debate político que respondia prioritariamente às urgências de notícias da guerra e à publicação de constantes manifestos em que se justificava a causa separatista. Analisar o desenvolvimento dos impressos durante a independência constitui um mecanismo para compreendermos a formação de espaços de sociabilidade num momento de debate intenso sobre a formulação de uma identidade mexicana. Os jornais revolucionários podem ser lidos, a partir desta perspectiva, não apenas como um lugar de discussão, mas como um elemento que se vincula a outras instâncias de ação social e estabelece uma comunicação a fim de formar opiniões políticas. / The insurgent press demanded by Miguel Hidalgo and José Morelos, during the independence movement of New Spain, established a rupture with the official media from the early 19th century. When putting through the light the social problems of the Vice-Reign and the strategies to fight against it, a new space for political debate was created, answering mainly to the urgency of the news from the war and the publication of constant manifests in which the independence is a mechanism for us to understand the formation of places for sociability in a moment of intensive debates on the construction of a Mexican identity. The revolutionary newspapers can be read, through this perspective, not only as a place for arguments, but also an element connected to other social practices and establish a communication with the mission to create political opinion.

Esta tese analisa diferentes imagens e concepções elaboradas por protagonistas da cena política, pintores, literatos, viajantes e cronistas acerca dos povos indígenas da América portuguesa e do Brasil entre 1750, - ano em que D. José I assumiu o trono português e começou a introduzir as reformas pombalinas - e 1850, um dos marcos de consolidação do Estado nacional brasileiro. A periodização supracitada toma os dois marcos, inicial e final, como balizas cronológicas preliminares e estratégicas, e por isso, aproximativas e flexíveis. Resulta de um recolhimento exaustivo dessas visões em documentação de tipo variado: memórias, cartas, imprensa periódica (1808-1850), debates parlamentares (1826-1850), relatos de viajantes, textos literários e fontes iconográficas dos séculos XVIII e XIX, analisando-as de modo a entender como os indígenas eram vistos na cena pública pelos protagonistas de diferentes momentos políticos na América Portuguesa e posteriormente Brasil. Em última instância, objetivou-se compreender como, em meio à multiplicidade de imagens do indígena plasmadas por séculos, surgiram imagens positivas em momentos historicamente cruciais, a exemplo do processo de gestação de múltiplas identidades da América Portuguesa, das quais surgiu, no século XIX, uma brasileira capaz de satisfazer a um projeto incipiente de identidade nacional amparado em partes na figura do indígena. Tal projeto seria forjado no curso das lutas políticas independentistas e reiterado posteriormente, durante os primeiros anos do Segundo Reinado (1840-1889). Esta tese de doutorado é decorrente da dissertação de mestrado desenvolvida no Programa de Pós-Graduação em História Social da Universidade de São Paulo intitulada Um espelho brasileiro: visões sobre os povos indígenas na construção de uma simbologia nacional no Brasil (1808-1831), orientada pelo Prof. Dr. João Paulo Garrido Pimenta e financiada pelo CNPq. A dissertação acercou-se da identificação de um esboço de identidade nacional construída a partir de elementos simbólicos indígenas durante o processo de independência do Brasil. Esta primeira pesquisa deu margem ao aprofundamento de questões nela apenas sinalizadas, sendo fundamental o alargamento do período e das fontes estudados de modo, inclusive, a alargar o escopo analítico para além do tema da identidade nacional. / This thesis analyzes different images and concepts developed by the protagonists of the political scene, painters, writers, travelers and writers about the indigenous people from Portuguese America and Brazil between 1750, year that D. Joseph I took the Portuguese throne and began to introduce the Pombaline reforms - and 1850, one of the landmarks of consolidation of the Brazilian national state. The period of time in between those years, has made these two facts as preliminary and strategic chronological boundaries, and therefore, turn them approximate and flexible. It results of an exhaustive self-communion of these views on varied types of documents: memoirs, letters, periodical press (1808-1850), parliamentary debates (1826-1850), travelers\' accounts, literary texts and iconographic sources from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, analyzing them in order to understand how the indigenous people were seen on the public scene by the protagonists of the different political moments in Portuguese America and later on in Brazil. Ultimately, the objective was to understand how, through the multiplicity of images of indigenous molded along the centuries, there were positive images in moments historically crucial, like the gestation process of multiple identities of Portuguese America, which emerged in the nineteenth century, a Brazilian able to satisfy an incipient project of national identity supported in part by the figure of the indigenous. Such a project would be forged in the course of the political struggles for independence and reiterated later on, during the early years of the Second Empire (1840-1889). This doctorate degree thesis is a result of the dissertation developed at the postgraduate Program in Social History at the University of São Paulo entitled A brazilian mirror: visions of indigenous peoples and the construction of a national symbology in Brazil (1808-1831), oriented by Prof. Dr. João Paulo Garrido Pimenta and funded by CNPq. The approach of that dissertation was to identify a national identity sketch constructed from indigenous symbolic elements during the process of independence of Brazil. This first research has allowed a deeper discussion of elements that were just mentioned, and it is essential to extend the period and the sources that have been studied previouly, as well as to extend the analytical scope beyond the matter of national identity.

Pedro Orgambide (1929/2003), escritor argentino, foi exilado e viveu nove anos no México. Durante seu período de exílio, entre outras obras, escreveu El arrabal del mundo, primeiro volume de uma trilogia intitulada de la memoria, que foi publicado em 1983. A presente dissertação pretende analisar as representações identitárias nesse romance que trata do processo de independência argentino. Nele, o autor ficcionalizou suas experiências, propondo uma versão da história e da memória coletiva argentinas por meio de uma narrativa projetada num espaço e num tempo reconhecíveis pelos leitores. Dividido em três capítulos, o trabalho percorre a obra no que concerne à sua caracterização e aos seus elementos constitutivos, buscando as possíveis relações de Orgambide com a historiografia acerca do período histórico romanceado e traçando, também, um paralelo com a experiência e o presente da escrita do autor. / Pedro Orgambide (1929/2003), Argentine writer, was exiled to Mexico, where he lived for nine years. During his exile, among other works, he wrote El arrabal del mundo, which was the first volume of a trilogy entitled \"de la memoria\", published in 1983. This dissertation aims to analyze the identity representations within this novel regarding Argentinas independence process, whereas the author fictionalized his experiences, proposing his own version of Argentinas history and collective memory, through a narrative in a perceptible space and time. Divided in three chapters, this text addresses the questions about the novel, its caracterization and elements in relationship with Orgambide and the historiography, also addressing the parallel of the experience of being exiled and the authors writing process.

by Leung Hiu-shan. / Thesis submitted in: June 1999. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 55-58). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS --- p.iv / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.v / LIST OF TABLES --- p.vi / LIST OF FIGURES --- p.vii / LIST OF APPENDICES --- p.viii / INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Weak Central Coherence of Autism --- p.1 / Cognitive Style of Field Dependence/Independence --- p.4 / Visual Illusions --- p.5 / Summary of Previous research & Objectives and Hypotheses of Present Study --- p.8 / METHOD --- p.12 / Participants --- p.12 / Stimuli --- p.13 / Procedure --- p.19 / RESULTS --- p.24 / EFT --- p.24 / RFT --- p.26 / Correlation between EFT and RFT --- p.26 / Visual illusions --- p.30 / "Relationship between EFT, RFT and Visual Illusions" --- p.34 / Percentage of Subjects Succumbed/Not succumbed to Geometric Illusions --- p.44 / DISCUSSION --- p.44 / REFERENCES --- p.55 / APPENDICES --- p.59

Biological systems are driven by complex regulatory processes. Graphical models play a crucial role in the analysis and reconstruction of such processes. It is possible to derive regulatory models using network inference algorithms from high-throughput data, for example; from gene or protein expression data. A wide variety of network inference algorithms have been designed and implemented. Our aim is to explore the possibilities of using statistical independence criteria for biological network inference. The contributions of our work can be categorized into four sections. First, we provide a detailed overview of some of the most popular general independence criteria: distance covariance (dCov), kernel canonical variance (KCC), kernel generalized variance (KGV) and the Hilbert-Schmidt Independence Criterion (HSIC). We provide easy to understand geometrical interpretations for these criteria. We also explicitly show the equivalence of dCov, KGV and HSIC. Second, we introduce a new criterion for measuring dependence based on the signal to noise ratio (SNRIC). SNRIC is significantly faster to compute than other popular independence criteria. SNRIC is an approximate criterion but becomes exact under many popular modelling assumptions, for example for data from an additive noise model. Third, we compare the performance of the independence criteria on biological experimental data within the framework of the PC algorithm. Since not all criteria are available in a version that allows for testing conditional independence, we propose and test an approach which relies on residuals and requires only an unconditional version of an independence criterion. Finally we propose a novel method to infer networks with feedback loops. We use an MCMC sampler, which samples using a loss function based on an independence criterion. This allows us to find networks under very general assumptions, such as non-linear relationships, non-Gaussian noise distributions and feedback loops.

A firm’s participation in cartel depends upon the potential problems that may arise due to price fixing and the incentives provided to the management. The top levels of management such as the board of directors and the CEO are responsible for deciding if the firm will participate in the cartel and manage the corporate governance activities of collusive price fixing agreements. This study aims to identify which characteristics of the participating firms’ boards of directors and CEOs are associated with cartel formation. It analyses the empirical investigation of cartel participation of firms, taking into account corporate governance characteristics as such as board of directors’ characteristics, ownership structure, CEO characteristics, and CEO compensation scheme. The study is focused on UK cartel firms which has the highest representation in the sample. A total number of 150 cartel firms in 52 cases from all around the world between the years 1990 to 2008 are involved in this study, of which 114 are UK firms. Therefore, this study is dominated by UK firms. The challenge of this study is that the personal attributes of CEOs and boards can make a significant contribution to the risk profile of a cartel being formed. This indeed would be to ‘diagnose’ organisational culture in a quite radical direction. The study suggests and finds that some corporate governance attributes are associated with cartel formation. The results reveal consistency with prior researches, that cartel firms have different corporate governance relative to a control sample in the three years prior to cartel formation. Specifically, the study concludes that UK-based cartel firms characterised by having larger board size compared to non-cartel firms; lower percentage of independent directors (non-executive); higher average of board remuneration; less likely that cartel is formed by family-owned and controlled firm (large shareholders); having older CEOs represented on the board; having CEO who served a less number of years as a director; less likely to have a female CEO represented; more likely to have CEOs who’s combined CEO-chairman position; and a higher average of CEOs bonuses and compensation packages.

This thesis examines how the slave uprising in the French Caribbean sugar colony of Saint-Domingue (1791-1804) had dramatic and long-lasting repercussions on the neighbouring Spanish possessions of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo. Events in Saint-Domingue took place during a period of profound change in the Spanish colonies. Reforms implemented during the reign of Carlos III (1759-1788) had begun to shift the imperial economic focus from the extraction of precious metals in Spain's American colonies towards the potential of intensive agriculture, especially sugar. The process was accelerated by France's loss of Saint-Domingue in 1804, which presented the Spanish islands under Carlos IV (1788-1808) with the opportunity to have a much larger share of the sugar trade - a chance which Cuba and Puerto Rico were quick to seize. At the same time, Napoleon Bonaparte's overthrow of the Spanish monarchy, the war against France (1808-1814), and the writing of a Spanish constitution (1812) precipitated the unravelling of most of Spain's empire, bar the Philippines and the sugar islands in the Caribbean. The thesis focuses on how relations between Madrid and the Caribbean islands were significantly altered in the wake of peninsular upheaval. At the same time, this work also considers the islands' reconfigured relationship with new republic of Haiti, formed by the freed slaves of Saint-Domingue. Drawing from correspondence between the crown and the island authorities, as well as between colonial officials, this thesis also examines the culture of fear that permeated the Spanish possessions. Initially, this fear reflected anxieties about Saint-Domingue-style slave rebellions, but as mainland Spanish colonies became independent - and Santo Domingo fell under Haitian control in 1822 - this fear took on a new dimension and became a vital tie between Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Madrid, contributing to the continuation of colonial rule until the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Nearest neighbour methods are a classical approach in nonparametric statistics. The k-nearest neighbour classifier can be traced back to the seminal work of Fix and Hodges (1951) and they also enjoy popularity in many other problems including density estimation and regression. In this thesis we study their use in three different situations, providing new theoretical results on the performance of commonly-used nearest neighbour methods and proposing new procedures that are shown to outperform these existing methods in certain settings. The first problem we discuss is that of entropy estimation. Many statistical procedures, including goodness-of-fit tests and methods for independent component analysis, rely critically on the estimation of the entropy of a distribution. In this chapter, we seek entropy estimators that are efficient and achieve the local asymptotic minimax lower bound with respect to squared error loss. To this end, we study weighted averages of the estimators originally proposed by Kozachenko and Leonenko (1987), based on the k-nearest neighbour distances of a sample. A careful choice of weights enables us to obtain an efficient estimator in arbitrary dimensions, given sufficient smoothness, while the original unweighted estimator is typically only efficient in up to three dimensions. A related topic of study is the estimation of the mutual information between two random vectors, and its application to testing for independence. We propose tests for the two different situations of the marginal distributions being known or unknown and analyse their performance. Finally, we study the classical k-nearest neighbour classifier of Fix and Hodges (1951) and provide a new asymptotic expansion for its excess risk. We also show that, in certain situations, a new modification of the classifier that allows k to vary with the location of the test point can provide improvements. This has applications to the field of semi-supervised learning, where, in addition to labelled training data, we also have access to a large sample of unlabelled data.

Esta dissertação analisa os mercados institucionais através do estudo do Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos (PAA) nos municípios de Santa Rosa, Tuparendi e Porto Vera Cruz que se localizam na região Noroeste do Rio Grande do Sul. Busca-se, através de estudo de caso, analisar as implicações que a inserção nos mercados institucionais, especificamente no PAA, gera nas dinâmicas de venda da produção e na autonomia comercial dos agricultores familiares associados da Cooperativa Mista Agropecuária e Economia Solidária (COOPERSOL) e da Cooperativa dos Agricultores Porto Vera Cruz (COOPOVEC). Essas cooperativas foram constituídas pela ação dos agricultores para fazer frente às dificuldades nos processos de comercialização, num contexto onde se observa a tendência de ampliação da presença dos impérios alimentares e de crescimento da externalização das práticas agrícolas. A pesquisa teve caráter quantitativo e qualitativo. A principal técnica de coleta de dados foi a entrevista. Também foi utilizada a revisão bibliográfica, consulta a diversas fontes de dados secundários e observação participante. Na região estudada observa-se ampliação da mercantilização da agricultura, sobretudo nos últimos 50 anos, com a introdução, em diferentes graus, da modernização da agricultura, que acentuou, nos distintos espaços estudados, a diferenciação da agricultura e entre os agricultores. Considerando as taxas de uso dos canais de comercialização, observou-se, neste estudo, que o ingresso no PAA se associa de forma diversa com a ampliação da autonomia comercial dos agricultores nas duas cooperativas pesquisadas. No caso da COOPOVEC observa-se ampliação da autonomia comercial dos agricultores após o ingresso no PAA e no caso da COOPERSOL isso não se verifica. Argumenta-se que esse efeito diverso se dá em função das distintas trajetórias históricas e dos distintos estilos de agricultura praticados por esses agricultores. / This study analyzes the institutional markets through the study of the Food Acquisition Program - PAA in the municipalities of Santa Rosa, Tuparendi and Porto Vera Cruz that are located in the Northwest Rio Grande do Sul region. Through this case study, it seeks analyze that the implications of the inclusion in institutional markets, specifically the PAA, generate in sales dynamics of production and commercial independence of associated family farmers of the Agricultural and Solidarity Economy Cooperative (COOPERSOL) and the Farmers’ Cooperative Porto Vera Cruz (COOPOVEC). These cooperatives were formed by the action of farmers to cope with the difficulties in the trade process, in a context where it is observed the trend of increasing presence of food empires and growth of outsourcing of agricultural practices. The research was quantitative and qualitative. The main data collection technique was the interview. Also we used the literature review, consulting with various sources of secondary data and participation observation. In the studied area is observed expansion of the commercialization of agriculture, especially in the last 50 years, with the introduction, in varying degrees, the modernization of agriculture, which accentuated in different spaces studied the differentiation of agriculture and among farmers. The research was qualitative and the main data collection technique was the interview. Considering the usage rates of marketing channels, we observed in this study that the entry in the PAA is associated differently with the expansion of commercial independence of farmers surveyed in the two cooperatives. In the case of COOPOVEC observed expansion of the commercial independence of farmers after entering the PAA and in the case of COOPERSOL this is not the happen. It is argued that this effect is different according to the different historical trajectories and the different styles of farming practiced by these farmers.

O centenário da independência do Brasil, comemorado em 1922, mostrou-se uma oportunidade excepcional para as elites brasileiras exporem projetos de identidade nacional, de predominância europeia, no que diz respeito à cultura, o que inclui considerações racistas, e de manutenção da estrutura social, calcada no capitalismo liberal. O presente trabalho tem por objetivo investigar como tais projetos impactaram as exposições, congressos, e outros eventos comemorativos. A Exposição Internacional e os congressos de História do Brasil e Internacional de Americanistas mostraram um país inserido na economia mundial, buscando os fatos e os personagens fundadores da nacionalidade, interessado em se aproximar dos demais países do continente e que considerava a miscigenação uma aliada para promover o branqueamento da população. O estudo também se volta ao mecenato estatal, cuja intenção de adquirir quatro quadros de assunto histórico, relacionados aos acontecimentos de 1822, estimulou alguns artistas a retomar a produção de tal gênero de pintura, porém algo distanciados dos cânones acadêmicos e incorporando questões e discursos em pauta naquele momento histórico. O juri encarregado selecionou, para aquisição, as obras: Sessão do Conselho de Estado, de Georgina de Albuquerque; Primeiros sons do Hino da Independência, de Augusto Bracet; Tiradentes, o precursor, de Pedro Bruno; Minha terra, de Hélios Seelinger. Os eventos retratados, apesar da presença de personagens históricos, abordaram o direito de voto à mulher; a revisão do período monárquico e da figura de Pedro I; a trajetória do país de 1500 a 1889, sob a perspectiva da miscigenação e do branqueamento; o papel do Estado, enquanto instância de repressão. / The centennial of Brazil independence, celebrated in 1922, was an exceptional opportunity for Brazilian elites expose projects of national identity, of European predominance, with respect to culture, which includes racists considerations, and maintenance of the social structure, based on liberal capitalism. The present study aims to investigate how these projects impacted the exhibitions, conferences, and other commemorative events. The International Exhibition and the Congress of History of Brazil and the International Congress of Americanists showed a country inserted in a world economy, looking for facts and founders for a nationality, interested in being closer to the other countries of the continent, considering miscegenation as an allied to promote whitening of the population. This work studies the acquisition of four historical paintings, related to the events of 1822, under the state commitments which led some artists to resume the production of this genre, although something distanced from academic canons but incorporating questions and speeches of that historical moment. The responsible committee selected for purchase the works: Sessão do Conselho de Estado, by Georgina de Albuquerque; Primeiros sons do Hino da Independência, by Augusto Bracet; Tiradentes, o precursor, by Peter Bruno; Minha terra, by Helios Seelinger. The paintings portrayed, despite the presence of historical characters, the womans right to vote; the revision of the monarchic period and the figure of D. Pedro I; the country history from 1500 to 1889, from the perspective of miscegenation and whitening; the state\'s role as an institution of repression.