Doctor of Philosophy / Security Studies / David Graff / How does the social network structure of China’s Central Committee influence the direction and timing of intra-Party events, domestic policies, and foreign policies? How do changes in network structures explain specific patterns and propensities for policy change? The purpose of this study is to describe the social network structure of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee from 1922 to 2011 and to explore the relationship between changes in the network and policy trends. This study draws on policy network theory, network dynamics, Veto Player Theory and Prospect Theory which together posit that dynamic network structural characteristics influence policy outcomes. I introduce a dynamical theory of policy networks and describe some observable implications. This mixed method analysis is based on a new network dataset and follows two major lines of investigation. A structured, focused comparison of case studies associates changes in the Central Committee’s network structure in 1969, 1978, 1982, and 1997 with consequent policy outcomes and demonstrates the explanatory power of the dynamical theory. Statistical analyses of China’s foreign policies (1949-1978 and 1984-1995) and China’s domestic policies (1984-1995) suggest the dynamical theory is generalizable. Changes in paramount leader and potential competitor centralities and Central Committee centralization are important causal factors explaining the timing and type of intra-Party, domestic, and foreign policies.

Master of Arts / Department of Communication Studies / William Schenck-Hamlin / The following research project seeks to answer the question: “To what extent can differences among juvenile detention centers be explained on the basis of concepts of restorative and retributive justice?” To investigate, mission statements were collected from a national sample of Juvenile Detention Centers. A semantic network analysis was performed to answer the above research question. The computer program CATPAC was used to create 2-d images of the semantic analysis. From these images eight themes emerged through clusters: institutional identity, public safety, life skill values, family and child tie, and community and family tie, support from staff, support from environment, and support from environment and staff. These themes were reflective of retributive or restorative orientation. Results indicate that male public institutions are reflective of retributive justice while female public, male private, and female private institutions are more reflective of restorative justice. These findings suggest biases and treatment patterns within the juvenile justice system.

A presente tese apresenta, discute e avalia criticamente o conteúdo e o contributo de uma seleção de trabalhos de pesquisa submetidos ou publicados em revistas internacionais no campo das ciências do esporte. Coletivamente, esses trabalhos contribuem para o campo da análise de jogo em jogadores jovens e adultos de futebol, com implicações para aperfeiçoar a avaliação e o treinamento. As pesquisas foram em parte moldadas pela experiência do autor na prática profissional e acadêmica, mas principalmente impulsionada por necessidades emergentes identificadas durante os anos de atuação prática e em parceria com profissionais atuantes em clubes de futebol. Um total de duas revisões sistemáticas (apresentadas na presente tese como introdução ao campo de estudo), sendo uma metaanálise, e três estudos de campo revisados por pares estão incluídos. Esta tese apresenta criticamente resultados e discussões sobre dois principais fluxos: (i) validação de testes físicos em ambiente de jogo, de acordo com as características gerais e exigências específicas das partidas; (ii) análise dos fatores contextuais e posicionais que afetam potencialmente o desempenho no futebol. Os trabalhos de pesquisa são apresentados em uma sequência conceitual dentro dos dois temas, em vez de uma ordem estritamente cronológica, para demonstrar a coerência e a sinergia dentro dos dois fluxos. Esta tese fornece uma reflexão crítica sobre a contribuição geral para o corpo atual de conhecimento científico e o impacto coletivo dos trabalhos que foi alcançado. As limitações dos estudos encontradas no decorrer do trabalho são discutidas como temas atuais, possibilitando um direcionamento para futuras pesquisas. Por fim, todo conhecimento produzido foi traduzido em forma de um e-book para maior acesso por diferentes recursos humanos / This thesis presents, discusses and critically evaluates the content and the contribution of a selection of research papers submitted or published to international peer-reviewed sports science journals. Collectively, these papers make novel insights to the field of match analysis in young and adults\' soccer players, with implications for improving assessment and training. The researches were partly shaped by the authors\' experience in professional and academic practice, but mainly driven by emerging and evolving needs-analyses identified within his work, identified during the years of practice and in partnership with professionals working in soccer teams. A total of two systematic reviews (presented in this document as an introduction to the field of study), one of them being a metaanalysis, and three original articles are included. These papers present critically comments on work in two main streams: (i) validation of physical fitness tests in a game context, according to general characteristics and specific requirements of the match; (ii) analysis of contextual and positional factors that potentially affect the soccer performance. The original research papers are presented in a conceptual sequence within the two themes, rather than a strictly chronological order to demonstrate coherence and synergy within the two collections. The document provides critical reflection on the general contribution to the current body of scientific knowledge and the collective impact of the work that has been achieved. The limitations of the studies found during the course of the work are discussed as current themes, allowing a direction for future research. Finally, all scientific knowledge produced was translated into an e-book for greater access by different human recourses

Student Number : 0111065D - PhD thesis - School of Architecture and Planning - Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment / This thesis deals with self-help housing networks in Nairobi, Kenya and Johannesburg, South Africa. It starts by discussing some of the current manifestations and challenges of self-help housing in the two contexts. It locates these against neo-liberal development paradigms in Kenya and South Africa. It reviews some of the main theories and concepts that have been applied to understand self-help housing, arguing that there are many issues that these lenses fail to explain. Amongst these are the relationships amongst actors and the ways resources are exchanged in self-help housing. The thesis discusses some of the key resources used for self-help housing in Nairobi and Johannesburg, namely: land, finance, labour, materials and technology, and infrastructure and services. It develops a case for network analysis of these resources and actors in self-help housing. The second part of the thesis is dedicated to analysis of self-help housing networks in Nairobi and Johannesburg, based on empirical data. The three categories of networks analysed are: individual-based ego-centric networks; group-based networks of collective action; and content-of-ties-based networks of exchange. The study compares self-help housing networks in Nairobi and Johannesburg. On one hand, lack of the state intervention in Kenya has resulted in self-help housing in Nairobi being accessed almost exclusively through networks. On the other hand, state intervention in South Africa has resulted in weakening of ties within local groups and domination of state/market hierarchies in access to various self-help housing resources in Johannesburg. The major conclusion from this study is that, in both cities, networks remain a viable third way of provision of housing, in addition to (not instead of) housing production through state/market hierarchies and decentralised models. Networks tend to overcome lack of inclusion dominant in state/market hierarchies and lack of capacity, endemic in decentralised models. In terms of analysis, the study shows that network theories are relevant to understanding the operations of actors and access to resources in low-income housing, complementing sector-based understanding, which remains dominant in analysis of low-income housing today.

In 2011, Oregon was one of many states in the U.S. consolidating their education governance around an early learning, K-12, and postsecondary hub. This study uses legislator-voting data to investigate the relationship between this consolidated model and endogenous policy formulation processes. This study employs a separable temporal exponential random graph model (STERGM) to investigate how an education governance shift toward consolidated authority relates to bipartisan outcomes for education-related bills over time. Oregon legislator voting networks were analyzed for cohesion, centrality, and community detection measures, as well as by legislator attributes (e.g. gender, party, and title) to test the association they had on the likelihood of forming ties with other legislators. Finally, to study the relationship of bipartisanship with legislators’ likelihood to vote commonly, I added the legislators’ political party attributes within dyads to analyze the association that having different political parties had on legislators’ common votes. The results highlight evidence of legislator networks that were very dense at each time point included in the study, with a high likelihood of forming ties. However, when Oregon shifted to centralized education governance model their legislator networks became more distributed and cohesive when compared to other years included in the longitudinal study. It is possible that such a shift prompted collaboration among legislators resulting in mutuality that increased the likelihood for underrepresented groups of legislators (e.g. females and republicans) to vote commonly with their colleagues. Aligned with previous research, this study found that centralized governing bodies reinforced by political legislation provided collaborative initiatives for the legislative community. Attending to bipartisan voting patterns dynamically through a governance shift is a valuable investigation that will provide nuanced inferences about education governance and policymaking for states making similar consolidated governance shifts in the future.

Propomos o uso da análise de redes sociais para entender efeitos de agenda-setting. Para tanto, recuperamos a evolução dos estudos sobre a teoria da agenda-setting, desde as aplicações relacionadas à mídia tradicional até os estudos contemporâneos sobre mídias sociais. Em seguida, apresentamos o conceito de agenda-setting interpessoal e descrevemos métodos da análise de redes sociais para investigação desse conceito. A operacionalização empírica da proposta foi feita pela comparação de dois tipos de redes: 1) um grupo de indivíduos que publicou mensagens no Twitter sobre um tópico transmitido na TV nacional e 2) um grupo de indivíduos que publicou mensagens no Twitter sobre um tema que não fez parte da mídia broadcast. Nosso objetivo foi investigar as diferenças entre as redes de indivíduos que experimentaram efeitos de agenda-setting advindos da mídia de massa e indivíduos que experimentaram efeitos de agenda-setting interpessoal. Nossos resultados ainda são preliminares, mas indicam diferenças estruturais entre os grupos e evidências de que indivíduos mais centrais são impactados antecipadamente por mensagens transmitidas interpessoalmente. / We propose the use of social network analysis to understand agenda-setting effects. To achive that purpose, we recover the evolution of studies on agenda-setting theory, from applications related to traditional media to contemporary studies on social media. Next, we present the concept of interpersonal agenda-setting and describe methods of social network analysis to investigate this concept. The empirical operationalization of the proposal was made by comparing two types of networks: 1) a group of individuals that tweeted about a topic broadcasted on national TV and 2) a group of individuals that tweeted about a non-mainstream topic. We aim to investigate differences between networks of individuals that experienced mass media agenda-setting effects and individuals that experienced interpersonal agenda-setting effects. Our results are still preliminary but indicate structural differences between the groups and also indicate evidence that more central individuals are impacted in advance by interpersonally transmitted messages.

Thesis advisor: Larry Ludlow / In this dissertation study, I examined the extent to which a relational network of teachers, administrators, two-way immersion (TWI) experts and mentors promote productive communities of practice (CoP). In a conventional instruction, teachers are often isolated in their classrooms, and a private practice culture prevails. In 2012, the Two-Way Immersion Network for Catholic Schools (TWIN-CS) was launched in an effort to support school reform by engaging school leaders and teachers to collectively learn toward implementing TWI models in their schools. Using the framework of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1999), I employed a case study design (Yin, 2009) to explore a national network of Catholic elementary school educators. Data sources included qualitative data featuring semi-structured interviews and quantitative source from a relational network survey. Qualitative results revealed that organizational features of TWIN-CS are critical in promoting participants’ learning to implement TWI. In particular, participants discussed the annual TWIN Summer Academy and bi-monthly webinars to be instrumental for their learning. Many participants also shared that an expansion of CoPs beyond TWIN-CS further prompted productive learning. However, the qualitative evidence also showed a lack of clear internal and external network structures and role definition, and sustaining connection beyond the Summer Academy and webinars were perceived as a great challenge. Quantitative results suggest that TWIN-CS has a core-and-periphery network structure with the Boston College design team at the innermost core, with visibly dense ties connecting to and from them. Most teachers, on the other hand, occupy the most peripheral positions in this network. Survey evidence also showed that participants generally perceived a much stronger learning relationship within schools and showed less certainty on cross-network relationships. In terms of learning characteristics, majority of the respondents viewed knowledge sharing, trust, and advice-oriented dimensions “strongly” but perceived a lack of data-driven learning for both within school and cross-network. I conclude this study with a discussion of implications for future research and practice. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation.

A importância do morcego hematófago Desmodus rotundus para a manutenção do vírus da raiva no meio rural não reside unicamente em sua capacidade de transmitir esta enfermidade para animais de produção, mas também na sua capacidade de adaptação às mudanças ambientais e climáticas, concedendo-lhe uma ampla distribuição geográfica. Métodos de controle e vigilância para esta enfermidade foram criados baseando-se no conhecimento empírico acumulado sobre a transmissão do vírus pelos morcegos hematófagos. Esta abordagem, no entanto, tem se mostrado insuficiente para controlar adequadamente a doença em animais de produção, tendo sido observado um aumento no número de casos notificados nos últimos anos. No presente trabalho, foram descritos os padrões de uso do espaço por estes morcegos por meio de monitoramento por rádio-telemetria. Com base nos resultados obtidos, somados aos conhecimentos científicos disponíveis, construiu-se um modelo de transmissão incorporando determinantes geográficos e comportamentais do morcego hematófago com o intuito de direcionar e otimizar as ações de vigilância epidemiológica e controle da transmissão da raiva. Uma rede do tipo bimodal foi construída, composta pela integração entre uma rede de contato entre abrigos de morcegos hematófagos e outra, de contato entre estes abrigos e propriedades rurais criadoras de herbívoros de interesse econômico. O modelo resultante demonstra maior significância da rede entre abrigos para a manutenção e transmissão do vírus, além da correlação entre topografia e espoliação. O modelo foi capaz de identificar comunidades de propriedades rurais sob risco para a ocorrência de raiva e em que comunidades de abrigos o vírus se mantem circulando. O entendimento das interações entre morcegos e suas fontes de alimentação, influenciadas pelo ambiente, permite estabelecer medidas de vigilância e controle mais precisas e, em última instância, com uma menor relação de custo-benefício destas ações. / The importance of the hematophagous bat Desmodus rotundus for the maintenance of the rabies virus in the rural environment is not only related to its ability to transmit this disease to livestock, but also in its capacity for adaptation to the environmental and climatic changes, granting them a wide geographic distribution. Control and surveillance methods for this disease were created based on the accumulated empirical knowledge about the transmission of the virus by hematophagous bats. This approach, however, has proved insufficient to adequately control the disease in livestock, with an increased number of cases reported in recent years. In the present work, the home range pattern of these bats was described through radio-telemetry monitoring. Based on the results obtained, allied with the available scientific knowledge, a transmission model was built incorporating geographic and behavioral determinants of the hematophagous bat in order to orientate and optimize the actions of epidemiological surveillance and control for the transmission of rabies. A bimodal network was constructed, composed by the integration between a network of contact between hematophagous bat roosts and a network of contact between these same roosts and farms of herbivores of economic interest. The resulting model showed greater significance of the network between roosts for the maintenance and transmission of the virus, besides the correlation between topography and spoliation. The model was able to identify farm communities at risk of rabies and in which roost communities the virus circulates. The understanding of the interactions between bats and their forage sources, influenced by the environment, allows to establish more precise surveillance and control measures and, ultimately, a lower cost-benefit ratio of these actions.

Big data concerns large-volume, complex, growing data sets, and it provides us opportunities as well as challenges. This thesis focuses on statistical methods for several specific large, complex data challenges - each involving representation of data with complex format, utilization of complicated information, and/or intensive computational cost. The first problem we work on is hypothesis testing for multilayer network data, motivated by an example in computational biology. We show how to represent the complex structure of a multilayer network as a single data point within the space of supra-Laplacians and then develop a central limit theorem and hypothesis testing theories for multilayer networks in that space. We develop both global and local testing strategies for mean comparison and investigate sample size requirements. The methods were applied to the motivating computational biology example and compared with the classic Gene Set Enrichment Analysis(GSEA). More biological insights are found in this comparison. The second problem is the source detection problem in epidemiology, which is one of the most important issues for control of epidemics. Ideally, we want to locate the sources based on all history data. However, this is often infeasible, because the history data is complex, high-dimensional and cannot be fully observed. Epidemiologists have recognized the crucial role of human mobility as an important proxy to a complete history, but little in the literature to date uses this information for source detection. We recast the source detection problem as identifying a relevant mixture component in a multivariate Gaussian mixture model. Human mobility within a stochastic PDE model is used to calibrate the parameters. The capability of our method is demonstrated in the context of the 2000-2002 cholera outbreak in the KwaZulu-Natal province. The third problem is about multivariate time series imputation, which is a classic problem in statistics. To address the common problem of low signal-to-noise ratio in high-dimensional multivariate time series, we propose models based on state-space models which provide more precise inference of missing values by clustering multivariate time series components in a nonparametric way. The models are suitable for large-scale time series due to their efficient parameter estimation. / 2019-05-15T00:00:00Z

In this thesis we analyse the impact of uncertainty shocks in the Scandinavian banking sector. We apply the spillover approach developed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2009; 2012; 2014), followed by network analysis. Furthermore, the dynamics of uncertainty shocks are examined by applying a quantile regression approach. We study the effects of financial uncertainty, economic policy uncertainty, geopolitical risk and housing market uncertainty on the seven banks Swedbank, Nordea, SEB, Svenska Handelsbanken, DNB, Danske Bank and Jyske Bank. We study these uncertainties on global, regional and local level between 2005 and 2018. We find that the Swedish banks are greater emitters of contagion, compared to the Norwegian and Danish banks, where SEB and Nordea are the banks emitting and receiving the most spillovers. Moreover, the connectedness within the banking sector tend to increase in times of heightened uncertainty, such as during the Global Financial Crisis and the European Sovereign Debt Crisis. Global financial uncertainty is shown to affect the Scandinavian banks the most, followed by regional and local financial uncertainty. The same pattern can be seen for economic policy uncertainty, although at lower levels of spillovers. Reversely, housing market uncertainty is seen to increase going from global, regional to local, where the impact of local housing market uncertainty has a considerable amount of spillovers to the Scandinavian banks. Geopolitical risk is shown to have limited spillovers to the Scandinavian banks. The result of the quantile regressions suggests that financial uncertainty is affecting the banks’ returns negatively during bearish market conditions, whilst the relationship is positive during bullish market conditions. Moreover, we find that financial uncertainty is a quicker transmitter of spillovers than housing market uncertainty. Finally, we conclude that uncertainty shocks affecting the Scandinavian banks negatively tend to take effect instantaneously, while the effects of positive shocks are delayed.