Journal articles on the topic 'S-Gini Index'

Gini index, which is derived from the Lorenz curve of income inequality and shows income inequality in different populations, can be applied to ranking and selectionpopulations. Many procedures are available for ordering and ranking income distributions where the ordering is not linear. However, the researchers often are not interested in ordering the populations but selecting the best (or worst) of available populations indicating a lower (or higher) level of disparities in incomes within the population. Madhuri S. Mulekar (2005) discussed the estimation of overlap ofincome distributions and selection in terms of Gini Measure of income inequality. In this paper, we simulate populations ranking and selection based on Gini index of income inequality for case that the variances are equal but known in income distributions and for case that the variances are unequal but known in income distributions.

Seasonality of tourist demand imposes a number of issues related to the destination?s carrying capacity and business activities of the individual service providers in tourism. As one indicator of seasonal fluctuation of tourist demand, the Gini index is identified in order to establish monthly concentration of tourists. In this study, the Gini index was calculated for four spa tourism destinations in Serbia (Vrnjacka Banja, Sokobanja, Niska Banja, and Prolom Banja), in order to establish variability in the seasonality. The research took into consideration the period 2010-2019. Research results indicate that Niska Banja Spa has the lowest values of the Gini index, while Vrnjacka Banja Spa and Sokobanja Spa have the highest values, whereby no values are higher that .45 (mostly between .30 and .39). Given that the theoretically lowest value of the Gini index is 0 (smallest seasonal concentration) and the highest is 1 (biggest concentration), the selected spas still do not have particularly high degree of seasonal concentration of tourists. Possibilities for reduction of tourist demand seasonality are pointed out, given its impact on tourism planning and its economic effects.

In the current scenario, the size of database is increasing due to audio and video files. In the database, irregularities occur due to duplication of data at many places, therefore, it needs reconstruction of database size. The present work deals with reducing of impurity through a well-known Gini index technique. Since many of software’s are using the object-oriented databases, therefore, an object-oriented database is considered, A real object-oriented database for Electricity Bill Deposit System is considered. A sample size of 15 records is considered, however the present technique can be applied for large size or even for the complex database. A decision tree is constructed and sample queries are performed for verifying the result and Gini index is computed for minimizing the impurity in the presented object-oriented database. Â

Available empirical evidence suggests that globalisation in recent years have had a significant positive impact on various sectors of most economies; however, significant evidence also exists suggesting that this economic process has also accentuated poverty and worsened income distribution in parts of some economies. This study examines the effects of foreign direct investment, trade openness and foreign remittance on income inequality in Ghana. The paper applied the vector error correction model in examining the effect of FDI inflow, foreign remittance and trade openness and income inequality in Ghana. The result indicates Foreign Remittance, FDI, Trade Openness and Gini index, are integrated of order one. Additionally, Johansen’s test for cointegration suggest a long-run relationship between the Gini coefficient (income distribution) and examined independent variables. The study also found out that foreign remittance has a significant negative relationship with Ghana’s income inequality and FDI inflows have no significant impact on Ghana’s income inequality.

Available empirical evidence suggests that globalisation in recent years have had a significant positive impact on various sectors of most economies; however, significant evidence also exists suggesting that this economic process has also accentuated poverty and worsened income distribution in parts of some economies. This study examines the effects of foreign direct investment, trade openness and foreign remittance on income inequality in Ghana. The paper applied the vector error correction model in examining the effect of FDI inflow, foreign remittance and trade openness and income inequality in Ghana. The result indicates Foreign Remittance, FDI, Trade Openness and Gini index, are integrated of order one. Additionally, Johansen’s test for cointegration suggest a long-run relationship between the Gini coefficient (income distribution) and examined independent variables. The study also found out that foreign remittance has a significant negative relationship with Ghana’s income inequality and FDI inflows have no significant impact on Ghana’s income inequality.

This paper aims to study the impact of microfinance on economic development. We used data from the MIX Market (Microfinance Information Exchange), collected from “Enda Tamweel” microfinance institution over the period 1995-2017. The VAR estimation shows that microfinance has a negative and significant impact on the ratio of poverty per capita and the GINI index. Granger's causality test confirms that microfinance contributes more effectively to economic development through its social performance. On the other hand, financial performance gives priority to activities that contribute to the sustainable development of the microfinance institution.

The submitted paper deals with the analysis of stand structure of mixed species natural forest located in the Carpathians, Middle Europe. In order to evaluation of structural diversity we chose the combination of distance independent and nearest-neighbor indices. Following structural indices were calculated: Shanon-Weaver index (S-W), diameter differentiation index (Td), Gigi coefficient (G), mingling index (DMi) and Clark Evans index (CEd). The permanent research plot with area of 2.5ha was established in National Naure Reserve Hrončecký grúň and subdivided into 25×25m subplots. The combination of mentioned indices was calculated for each subplot separately. Regarding the diameter heterogeneity, the most part of analyzed structures showed the moderate level of tree size differentiation (S-W value 0.393±0.074). The presence of high number of juvenile individuals which already reached the diameter category “above 2cm” did not significantly affect the diameter variation of investigated stand. On the other hand, a massive establishment of subsequent generation led to creation of spatial structure characteristic by high level of vertical differentiation (Gini coefficient 0.47 in the structure characterized as the breakdown with successive generation). High climax species richness was confirmed by calculated values of DMi index (maximum relative presence in the category from 0.3 to 0.4). Each tree was surrounded by two and more different species individuals. Analysis discovers the negative developmental shift in the DMi values towards to less differentiated structures. Regarding the horizontal distribution the analysis of CEd values indicated that investigated natural forest can reveal a random distribution of individuals regardless of developmental stage.

Abstract Self-rated health (SRH), an individual’s assessment of their own health status, is associated with older adults’ chronic and acute health conditions, as well as mortality. Assessments of SRH indicate individual’s global health is likely multifaceted. Level of education, particularly amount of post-secondary schooling, is associated with better SRH. Other indices of socioeconomic status (SES) such as income and wealth, have varying associations with SRH partly dependent on relative deprivation (e.g. Gini Index). The current study utilized data from 2,500 members of the Project Talent Twin and Sibling (PTTS) Study interviewed as adolescents in 1960 and followed up 54 years later. In 2014, participants were, on average, 70 years of age. Women comprised about 54% of the sample. We examined rearing family wealth, years of education, and functional independence as mediators of variance in SRH. Mean-level results indicated small positive associations between SES and SRH. Activities of Daily Living (ADL) accounted for about a quarter of variance in SRH, with higher functional independence predicting better SRH. Biometric analyses indicated that family wealth had small mediation effects on SRH via familial-environment (S) influences. Education mediated individual-specific (E) environmental influences. Functional independence (measured by ADL) mediated SRH via both additive genetic (A) and E influences. After adjusting for overall effects of sex, age, and specified mediators, a large portion of remaining variation in SRH was due to individual-specific (E) environmental influences. Current results suggest complex underlying genetic and environmental mechanisms contributing to an older adult’s assessment of their own health.

Abstract Fear of Falling (FOF) is common among community-dwelling older adults and is associated with increased fall-risk. In this cross-sectional study we examined the relationships between FOF and factors associated with fall-risk such as gait quality, cognition, and walking-confidence. Using baseline data from older adult participants in a randomized exercise trial (N=232; age 77±6; 65% females; 40% reported FOF), we quantified the following outcome measure for (1) gait quality: harmonic ratio (smoothness) and time-frequency spatiotemporal variables from triaxial accelerometry during 6 minute walk; gait speed, step-time CoV (variability) and walk-ratio (step-length/cadence) on an instrumented walkway; (2) cognition: Trails A and B (3) walking-confidence: Gait efficacy Scale. Mann Whitney U-tests indicated individuals without FOF had better gait quality (p<0.05): greater smoothness (2.38±.58 vs 1.14±.73), speed (1.10±.15 vs 1.04±.17 m/s) and walk-ratio (.56±.07 vs .53±.08 cm/steps/min), lower step-time CoV (3.72±1.24 vs 4.17±1.66), and greater walking-confidence (89±11 vs 79±13). A random forest classifier predicted FOF with 64% (gait only) and 70% (additional variables: cognition, walking-confidence) accuracy; Gini-index based ranking indicated gait quality (smoothness vertical (V) direction, walking speed) were consistently important variables. Linear Support Vector Machine learning yielded accuracies of 60% (only gait) and 68% (with additional measures): smoothness V, mediolateral frequency bandwidth, gait speed among top 4 ranked variables in both models, and walking-confidence in the additional measures model; smoothness-V the highest weighted coefficient (-0.52). Based on these findings, interventions targeted for gait quality and walking-confidence may be important to overcome FOF and reduce fall risks.

Our aim was to study the asthma control achieved in patients with uncontrolled asthma who had received appropriate treatment according to the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) 2010 (valid at the time the study was designed), and to analyse the factors associated with a lack of asthma control.This was a multicentre study in routine clinical practice performed in patients with uncontrolled asthma according to GINA 2010. At visit 1, we recorded demographics, asthma characteristics and spirometry. We assessed asthma control using GINA 2010 criteria and the Asthma Control Test (ACT). Treatment was optimised according to GINA 2010. At visit 2, 3 months later, we reassessed spirometry, asthma control and factors associated with failure to achieve control.We recruited 1299 patients with uncontrolled asthma (mean age 46.5±17.3 years, 60.7% women, 25.8% obese). The mean percentage of predicted forced expiratory volume in 1 s was 76.4±12.8% and the mean post-bronchodilator increase was 14.9±6.8%. We observed poor agreement between ACT and GINA 2010 when evaluating asthma control (kappa = −0.151). At visit 2, asthma in 71.2% of patients was still not fully controlled. Patients whose asthma remained uncontrolled were older, had a higher body mass index, greater disease severity, longer disease evolution and worse lung function.After treatment optimisation, most patients did not achieve optimal control according to GINA 2010. Risk factors for failure to achieve asthma control were time of disease evolution, severity, age, weight and lung function impairment (excluded in the GINA 2014).

Abstract The kinematics of the present-day deformation in the western Alps is still poorly known, mostly because of a lack of direct measurements of block motion and internal deformation. Geodetic measurements have the potential to provide quantitative estimates of crustal strain and block motion in the Alps, but the low expected rates, close to the accuracy of the geodetic techniques, make such measurements challenging. Indeed, an analysis of 2.5 years of continuous GPS data at Torino (Italy), Grasse (France), and Zimmerwald (Switzerland), showed that the present-day differential motion across the western Alps does not exceed 3 mm/yr [Calais, 1999]. Continuous measurements performed at permanent GPS stations provide unique data sets for rigorously assessing crustal deformation in regions of low strain rates by reducing the amount of time necessary to detect a significant strain signal, minimizing systematic errors, providing continuous position time series, and possibly capturing co- and post-seismic motion. In 1997, we started the implementation of a network of permanent GPS stations in the western Alps and their surroundings (REGAL network). The REGAL network mostly operates dual frequency Ashtech Z12 CGRS GPS stations with choke-ring antennae. In most cases, the GPS antenna is installed on top of a 1.5 to 2.5 m high concrete pilar directly anchored into the bedrock. The data are currently downloaded once daily and sent to a data center located at Geosciences Azur, Sophia Antipolis where they are converted into RINEX format, quality checked, archived, and made available to users. Data are freely available in raw and RINEX format at http://kreiz.unice.fr/regal/. The GPS data from the REGAL network are routinely processed with the GAMIT software, together with 10 global IGS stations (KOSG, WZTR, NOTO, MATE, GRAZ, EBRE, VILL, CAGL, MEDI, UPAD) that serve as ties with the ITRF97. We also include the stations ZIMM, TORI, GRAS, TOUL, GENO, HFLK, OBER because of their tectonic interest. We obtain long term repeatabilities on the order of 2-3 mm for the horizontal components, 8-10 mm for the vertical component. Using a noise model that combines white and coloured noise (flicker noise, spectral index 1), we find uncertainties on the velocities ranging from 1 mm/yr for the oldest stations (ZIMM, GRAS, TOUL, TORI, SJDV) to 4-5 mm/yr for the most recently installed (CHAT, MTPL). Station velocities obtained in ITRF97 are rotated into a Eurasian reference by substracting the rigid rotation computed from ITRF97 velocities at 11 central European sites located away from major active tectonic structures (GOPE, JOZE, BOR1, LAMA, ZWEN, POTS, WETT, GRAZ, PENC, Effelsberg, ONSA). The resulting velocity field shows residual motions with respect to Eurasia lower than 3 mm/yr. We obtain at TORI, in the Po plain, a residual velocity of 2.3+ or -0.8 mm/yr to the SSW and a velocity of 1.9+ or -1.1 mm/yr at SJDV, on the Alpine foreland. These results indicate that the current kinematic boundary conditions across the western Alps are extensional, as also shown by the SJDV-TORI baseline time series. We obtain at MODA (internal zones) a residual velocity of 1.2+ or -1.2 mm/yr to the SSE. The MODA-FCLZ baseline show lengthening at a rate of 1.6+ or -0.8 mm/yr. These results are still marginally significant but suggest that the current deformation regime along the Lyon-Torino transect is extension, as also indicated by from recent seismotectonic data. It is in qualitative agreement with local geodetic measurements in the internal zones (Briancon area) but excludes more than 2.4 mm/yr of extension (FCLZ-MODA baseline, upper uncertainty limit at 95% confidence). Our results indicate a different tectonic regime in the southern part of the western Alps and Provence, with NW-SE to N-S compression. The GRAS-TORI baseline, for instance, shows shortening at a rate of 1.4+ or -1.0 mm/an. This result is consistent with seismotectonic data and local geodetic measurements in these areas. The Middle Durance fault zone, one of the main active faults in this area, is crossed by the GINA-MICH baseline, which shows shortening at a rate of 1.0+ or -0.8 mm/an. This result is only marginally significant, but confirms the upper bound of 2 mm/yr obtained from triangulation-GPS comparisons. The REGAL permanent GPS network has been operating since the end of 1997 for the oldest stations and will continue to be densified. Although they are still close to or within their associated uncertainties, preliminary results provide, for the first time, a direct estimate of crustal deformation across and within the western Alps.

Für die deutschsprachige Medienpädagogik beginnt das Jahr 2000 mit der ersten wissenschaftlichen Online-Zeitschrift, die den theoretischen Diskurs über Medien und Medienpädagogik in den Mittelpunkt ihres Programms stellt. Sie wird herausgegeben von der AG Medienpädagogik der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft und dem Fachbereich Medienbildung des Pestalozzianums Zürich. Damit erhält unsere Disziplin ein Publikationsorgan, das es ihr ermöglicht, einen Diskurs besser zu vernetzen und öffentlich zu machen, der sich im letzten Jahrhundert erst ganz allmählich entwickelt hat. Am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts waren es vor allem die industrialisierten und für die Bedürfnisse eines Massenmarktes konfektionierten Druckerzeugnisse, welche die Agenda der Medienpädagogik bestimmten. Man diskutierte die Problematik einer massenhaft verbreiteten «Schundliteratur» und forderte eine «unverderbte» Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Andere Positionen - wie diejenige von Heinrich Wolgast (1910) - lehnten hingegen eine vorab moralisch inspirierte spezifische Kinder- und Jugendliteratur ab und zweifelten an ihrem ästhetischen Wert. In den zwanziger Jahren kam der Aspekt des Films hinzu - ebenfalls vorwiegend unter dem Gesichtspunkt des Kinder- und Jugendschutzes (Popert 1927). Medienkompetenz war indessen bei all diesen Diskussionen noch kaum ein Thema; vielmehr betrachtete man die Kinder und Jugendlichen als wehrlose Opfer von Erzeugnissen, die allein dem Kommerz verpflichtet waren. Generell war die Medienpädagogik sehr lange einer normativen Pädagogik verpflichtet, die glaubte, man müsse Kinder und Jugendliche vorwiegend vor einer Reizüberflutung durch - moralisch verwerfliche - Medien, den so genannten «geheimen Miterziehern» (Beer 1960), schützen. Dementsprechend war der theoretische Gehalt des Diskurses über Medien relativ schwach ausgeprägt. Die Überwindung dieser normativen Positionen stand insbesondere mit einer verstärkten empirischen Ausrichtung der Medienpädagogik im Zusammenhang, wie sie im Rahmen der «realistischen Wende» der Erziehungswissenschaft ab den Sechzigerjahren verstärkt auf den Plan trat. Dabei waren auch diese Bestrebungen zu Beginn noch stark auf die bewahrpädagogische Grundstruktur bezogen, wie sie mit den Konzepten der damaligen Wirkungsforschung verbunden war. Man wollte die problematischen Wirkungen der Medien - und nun vor allem des Fernsehens - empirisch erhärten; doch dies war nicht möglich, ohne gehaltvolle empirische Hypothesen zu bilden. Um nur ein prominentes Beispiel zu nennen: Die Untersuchungen von Herta Sturm (Sturm 1985) zur «fehlenden Halbsekunde» konnten nicht einfach normative Empfehlungen formulieren, sondern mussten das Konstrukt der Medienwirkung auf empirisch gehaltvolle Weise ausdifferenzieren. Aufgrund der damit gesetzten Ansprüche waren einfache Antworten immer weniger möglich. So betonte Dieter Baacke 1973, der Begriff der «Massenmedien» sei kein kulturkritischer, sondern ein deskriptiver Begriff. Es sei vielmehr problematisch, Begriffe wie «Massengesellschaft» zu assoziieren, da Öffentlichkeit in der heutigen Gesellschaft keine ungegliederte und amorphe Masse darstelle (vgl. Baacke 1973, S. 13 f.). Immer stärker fanden seither Diskussionen aus dem medienwissenschaftlichen und kulturellen Bereich Eingang in die medienpädagogische Disziplin: So waren Theoreme mit wie die Wissenskluft-Theorie oder das im Rahmen der cultural studies entwickelte Konzept des active reader geeignet, die Annahme gleichförmiger Wirkungen von Medien auf die Population der Kinder und Jugendlichen zu hinterfragen und die Position des Rezipienten nicht einfach aus einer Opferolle heraus zu thematisieren. In den letzten zwanzig Jahren hat zudem das neue Medium des Computers pädagogische Fragen aufgeworfen, die auf verschiedensten Ebenen Diskussionen auslösten. Gesellschaftlich stand zur Diskussion, inwieweit die heutige Gesellschaft als Medien- oder Informationsgesellschaft bezeichnet werden kann, und wie Kinder und Jugendliche darauf vorzubereiten sind. Auf didaktischer Ebene ging es um die Frage, wie die neuen Medien in die Schule zu integrieren sind, bzw. wie sich das Lernen durch diese verändert. Alle diese Themen und Diskussionen finden gegenwärtig Ausdruck in vielfältigen Publikationen und Beiträgen in Fachzeitschriften. Doch es fehlt ein Gefäss, welches schwergewichtig und systematisch den Diskurs der Medienpädagogik dokumentiert und fördert. Diese Lücke soll die Zeitschrift MedienPädagogik füllen, deren erste Ausgabe Sie hier auf dem Bildschirm vorliegen haben. Bewusst haben sich die beteiligten Partner für eine Online-Zeitschrift als Format entschieden. Das Gewicht der elektronischen Medien in der medienpädagogischen Diskussion kommt dadurch sozusagen sinnlich zum Ausdruck. Inhaltlich nimmt die vorliegende erste Ausgabe ein Kernthema der heutigen Diskussion um die Medien auf, nämlich den Schlüsselbegriff der Medienkompetenz. Die Themenwahl dieser ersten Nummer ist nicht zuletzt als Hommage an Dieter Baacke gedacht, an den leider viel zu früh verstorbenen Doyen und Mitstreiter für die Sache der Medienpädagogik, auf welchen seit den Siebzigerjahren des letzten Jahrhunderts wesentliche Impulse für die medienpädagogische Diskussion und Praxis zurückgehen. In den Beiträgen dieser Nummer wird der von ihm geprägte Begriff der Medienkompetenz - von Kübler (1996) ironisch als «Lieblingsmetapher der Medienpädagogik» bezeichnet - thematisiert und in seiner Funktion für die aktuelle medienpädagogische Debatte deutlich gemacht. Insbesondere geht es um die Frage, inwieweit Medienkompetenzen von Kindern und Jugendlichen über Sozialisationsprozesse quasi automatisch erworben werden, bzw. welchen Stellenwert das «Erlernen» solcher Kompetenzen hat. Dabei wird deutlich, dass es sich nicht einfach um einen Reflexionsbegriff handelt, indem Kinder und Jugendliche über den Sinn der Medien aufgeklärt werden; vielmehr geht es immer auch um die gestalterischen und kreativen Aspekte - also um kompetentes Handeln. Diese Dimension wird gegenwärtig besonders deutlich durch die Interaktivität von Medien wie dem Internet, das Kindern und Jugendlichen eine Vielzahl von Beteiligungschancen bietet - von der Teilnahme an Chats und Online-Diskussionen bis zur eigenen Homepage. Medienkompetenz soll aber in unserer Zeitschrift auch als inhaltlicher Anspruch verstanden werden, nämlich im Sinne eines Publikationsorgans, welches kompetent über Medien und medienpädagogische Fragen informiert sowie die wissenschaftliche Debatte weiterbringt. Auch wir setzen in diesem Zusammenhang auf die Interaktivität der Medien. In diesem Sinne freuen wir uns auf Reaktionen zu den Beiträgen dieser Nummer. Dazu ist ein Diskussionsforum eingerichtet, auf welchen die Debatte über die vorliegende Beiträge aufgenommen werden kann. In einer Online-Zeitschrift ist es möglich, solche Diskurse als integrierte Bestandteile einer Zeitschriftenausgabe zu konzipieren. Herausgeberschaft und Redaktion würden sich freuen, wenn diese Möglichkeiten von den Leserinnen und Leser der Zeitschrift rege genutzt würden.

Analyses of income data are often based on assumptions concerning theoretical distributions. In this study, we apply statistical analyses, but ignore specific distribution models. The main income data sets considered in this study are taxable income in Finland (2009) and household income in Australia (1967-1968). Our intention is to compare statistical analyses performed without assumptions of the theoretical models with earlier results based on specific models. We have presented the central objects, probability density function, cumulative distribution function, the Lorenz curve, the derivative of the Lorenz curve, the Gini index and the Pietra index. The trapezium rule, Simpson´s rule, the regression model and the difference quotients yield comparable results for the Finnish data, but for the Australian data the differences are marked. For the Australian data, the discrepancies are caused by limited data. JEL classification numbers: D31, D63, E64. Keywords: Cumulative distribution function, Probability density function, Mean, quantiles, Lorenz curve, Gini coefficient, Pietra index, Robin Hood index, Trapezium rule, Simpson´s rule, Regression models, Difference quotients, Derivative of Lorenz curve

PurposeThis paper is to propose a novel generalized grey target decision method (GGTDM) with index and weight both containing mixed types of data.Design/methodology/approachThe decision-making steps of the proposed approach are as follows. First, all mixed attribute values of alternatives and weights are transformed into binary connection numbers and also comprised two-tuple (determinacy, uncertainty) numbers. Then, the two-tuple (determinacy, uncertainty) numbers of target center indices are calculated. Next, the certain weights are determined by the Gini–Simpson (G–S) index-based method. Following this, the comprehensive-weighted Kullback–Leibler distances (CWKLDs) of all alternatives and the target center are obtained. Finally, the alternative ranking relies on the CWKLD considering the smaller value as the better option.FindingsThe certain weights determined by the improved Gini–Simpson index (IGSI) based method are more accurate in compared with that by the proximity-based method and the weight function method. The discrimination ability of alternatives ranking of the proposed approach is stronger than that of the compared comprehensive-weighted proximity (CWP) based method and comprehensive-weighted Gini–Simpson index (CWGSI) based method.Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed method fulfills the decision-making task relying on CWKLD, which solves the uncertain measurement from the viewpoint of entropy.Originality/valueThe proposed approach adopts the IGSI to transform uncertain weights into certain ones and takes the CWKLD as the basis for the decision-making.

This study examined the spatial heterogeneity association of HIV incidence and socio-economic factors including poverty severity index,permanently employed females and males, unemployed females, percentage of poor households i.e., poverty prevalence, night lights index, literacy rate,household food security, and Gini index at district level in Zimbabwe.A mix of spatial analysis methods including Poisson model based on original log likelihood ratios (LLR), global Moran’s I, local indicator of spatial association - LISA were employed to determine the HIV hotspots.Geographically Weighted Poisson Regression (GWPR) and semi-parametric GWPR (s-GWPR) were used to determine the spatial association between HIV incidence and socio-economic factors. HIV incidence (number of cases per 1000) ranged from 0.6 (Buhera district) to 13.30 (Mangwe district). Spatial clustering of HIV incidence was observed (Global Moran’s I = - 0.150; Z score 3.038; p-value 0.002). Significant clusters of HIV were observed at district level. HIV incidence and its association with socioeconomic factors varied across the districts except percentage of females unemployed. Intervention programmes to reduce HIV incidence should address the identified socio-economic factors at district level.

The purpose of this study is to make an attempt to assess the innovation activity on the achieved result , expressed in indicators that determine the socioeconomic level of country development, as it is the purpose of innovation In the applied method of calculating the evaluation of the effectiveness of innovation (Data environment Analysis) these indicators were the results, while the indicators of innovation were considered as a "resource". Rental indicators, Gini index and others , reflecting (directly or indirectly) the result of innovations was also taken into account. The results showed values that were less inconsistent with the estimates for other related indexes and indicators , while the evaluation with existing methods gave more inaccurate results. This suggests that the proposed method gives a more objective assessment of the innovation level in the country and more accurately determines the country 's place in the world ranking. The main source of the world economy development today is the innovation, an integrated assessment of which on a national scale can itself act as an indicator of the level of economic and — in a broader sense — the socio-economic level of the country development . From this point of view, an objective assessment of the innovation development level, as well as the development and proposal of methods for its evaluation are still relevant. Up-to-date assessment methods mainly assess the potential of countries to develop innovations, while their achieved level should be assessed, since, with significant differences in the development of countries , these potential opportunities can be realized to varying degrees.

Literary critics have mainly read Herman Melville’s short story “I and My Chimney” (1856) as allegory. This article elaborates on the tradition of interpreting Melville’s text allegorically by relating it to Fredric Jameson’s post-structural reinterpretation of allegory. In doing so, it argues that the story is not a simple example of allegory but rather an auto-reflexive engagement with allegory that reflects the cultural and historical ambivalences of the time in which Melville was writing. The suggestion is that Melville deliberately used signifiers (or the lack thereof) of directionality and place to reframe the overt context of his allegory (Civil War divisions of North and South) through teasing reference to the contemporaneous emergence of Manifest Destiny as an East-West historical spatialization. To this extent, from a literary-historical perspective, Melville’s text presents as an enquiry into the relationship between the obvious allegorical elements of a text and the literal or material elements that may either support or, as in this case, problematize traditional allegorical modes. In some ways, Melville’s story faintly anticipates Jameson’s post-structural theory of allegory as produced over a century later. “I and My Chimney” may also be linked to later texts, such as Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, which shift the directionality of American Literary History, in a definite way, from a North-South to an East-West axis. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books may also be mentioned here. While, in recent years, some literary critics have produced readings of Melville’s story that depart from the traditional emphasis on its allegorical nature, this article claims to be the first to engage with “I and My Chimney” from within an allegorical perspective also informed by post-structural thinking. To do this, it focuses on the setting or directionality of the story, and on the orientating details of the titular chimney.Written and published shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861-1865), which pitted North against South, Melville’s story is told in the first person by a narrator with overweening affection for the chimney he sees as an image of himself: “I and my chimney, two gray-headed old smokers, reside in the country. We are, I may say, old settlers here; particularly my old chimney, which settles more and more every day” (327). Within the merged identity of narrator and chimney, however, the latter takes precedence, almost completely, over the former: “though I always say, I and my chimney, as Cardinal Wolsey used to say, I and my King, yet this egotistic way of speaking, wherein I take precedence of my chimney, is hardly borne out by the facts; in everything, except the above phrase, my chimney taking precedence of me” (327). Immediately, this sentence underscores a disjunction between words (“the above phrase”) and material circumstances (“the facts”) that will become crucial in my later consideration of Melville’s story as post-structural allegory.Detailed architectural and architectonic descriptions manifesting the chimney as “the one great domineering object” of the narrator’s house characterize the opening pages of the story (328). Intermingled with these descriptions, the narrator recounts the various interpersonal and business-related stratagems he has been forced to adopt in order to protect his chimney from the “Northern influences” that would threaten it. Numbered in this company are his mortgagee, the narrator’s own wife and daughters, and Mr. Hiram Scribe—“a rough sort of architect” (341). The key subplot implicated with the narrator’s fears for his chimney concerns its provenance. The narrator’s “late kinsman, Captain Julian Dacres” built the house, along with its stupendous chimney, and upon his death a rumour developed concerning supposed “concealed treasure” in the chimney (346). Once the architect Scribe insinuates, in correspondence to the chimney’s alter ego (the narrator), “that there is architectural cause to conjecture that somewhere concealed in your chimney is a reserved space, hermetically closed, in short, a secret chamber, or rather closet” the narrator’s wife and daughter use Scribe’s suggestion of a possible connection to Dacres’s alleged hidden treasure to reiterate their calls for the chimney’s destruction (345):Although they had never before dreamed of such a revelation as Mr. Scribe’s, yet upon the first suggestion they instinctively saw the extreme likelihood of it. In corroboration, they cited first my kinsman, and second, my chimney; alleging that the profound mystery involving the former, and the equally profound masonry involving the latter, though both acknowledged facts, were alike preposterous on any other supposition than the secret closet. (347)To protect his chimney, the narrator bribes Mr. Scribe, inviting him to produce a “‘little certificate—something, say, like a steam-boat certificate, certifying that you, a competent surveyor, have surveyed my chimney, and found no reason to believe any unsoundness; in short, any—any secret closet in it’” (351). Having enticed Scribe to scribe words against himself, the narrator concludes his tale triumphantly: “I am simply standing guard over my mossy old chimney; for it is resolved between me and my chimney, that I and my chimney will never surrender” (354).Despite its inherent interest, literary critics have largely overlooked “I and My Chimney”. Katja Kanzler observes that “together with much of [Melville’s] other short fiction, and his uncollected magazine pieces in particular, it has never really come out of the shadow of the more epic texts long considered his masterpieces” (583). To the extent that critics have engaged the story, they have mainly read it as traditional allegory (Chatfield; Emery; Sealts; Sowder). Further, the allegorical trend in the reception of Melville’s text clusters within the period from the early 1940s to the early 1980s. More recently, other critics have explored new ways of reading Melville’s story, but none, to my knowledge, have re-investigated its dominant allegorical mode of reception in the light of the post-structural engagements with allegory captured succinctly in Fredric Jameson’s work (Allison; Kanzler; Wilson). This article acknowledges the perspicacity of the mid-twentieth-century tradition of the allegorical interpretation of Melville’s story, while nuancing its insights through greater attention to the spatialized materiality of the text, its “geomorphic” nature, and its broader historical contexts.E. Hale Chatfield argues that “I and My Chimney” evidences one broad allegorical polarity of “Aristocratic Tradition vs. Innovation and Destruction” (164). This umbrella category is parsed by Sealts as an individualized allegory of besieged patriarchal identity and by Sowder as a national-level allegory of anxieties linked to the antebellum North-South relationship. Chatfield’s opposition works equally well for an individual or for communities of individuals. Thus, in this view, even as it structures our reception of Melville’s story, allegory remains unproblematized in itself through its internal interlocking. In turn, “I and My Chimney” provides fertile soil for critics to harvest an allegorical crop. Its very title inveigles the reader towards an allegorical attitude: the upstanding “I” of the title is associated with the architecture of the chimney, itself also upstanding. What is of the chimney is also, allegorically, of the “I”, and the vertical chimney, like the letter “I”, argues, as it were, a north-south axis, being “swung vertical to hit the meridian moon,” as Melville writes on his story’s first page (327). The narrator, or “I”, is as north-south as is his narrated allegory.Herman Melville was a Northern resident with Southern predilections, at least to the extent that he co-opted “Southern-ness” to, in Katja Kanzler’s words, “articulate the anxiety of mid-nineteenth-century cultural elites about what they perceive as a cultural decline” (583). As Chatfield notes, the South stood for “Aristocratic Tradition”; the North, for “Innovation and Destruction” (164). Reflecting the conventional mid-twentieth-century view that “I and My Chimney” is a guileless allegory of North-South relations, William J. Sowder argues that itreveals allegorically an accurate history of Southern slavery from the latter part of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth—that critical period when the South spent most of its time and energy apologizing for the existence of slavery. It discloses the split which Northern liberals so ably effected between liberal and conservative forces in the South, and it lays bare the intransigence of the traditional South on the Negro question. Above everything, the story reveals that the South had little in common with the rest of the Union: the War between the States was inevitable. (129-30)Sowder goes into painstaking detail prosecuting his North-South allegorical reading of Melville’s text, to the extent of finding multiple correspondences between what is allegorizing and what is being allegorized within a single sentence. One example, with Sowder’s allegorical interpolations in square brackets, comes from a passage where Melville is writing about his narrator’s replaced “gable roof” (Melville 331): “‘it was replaced with a modern roof [the cotton gin], more fit for a railway woodhouse [an industrial society] than an old country gentleman’s abode’” (Sowder 137).Sowder’s argument is historically erudite, and utterly convincing overall, except in one crucial detail. That is, for a text supposedly so much about the South, and written so much from its perspective—Sowder labels the narrator a “bitter Old Southerner”—it is remarkable how the story is only very ambiguously set in the South (145). Sowder distances himself from an earlier generation of commentators who “generally assumed that the old man is Melville and that the country is the foothills of the Massachusetts Berkshires, where Melville lived from 1850 to 1863,” concluding, “in fact, I find it hard to picture the narrator as a Northerner at all: the country which he describes sounds too much like the Land of Cotton” (130).Quite obviously, the narrator of any literary text does not necessarily represent its author, and in the case of “I and My Chimney”, if the narrator is not inevitably coincident with the author, then it follows that the setting of the story is not necessarily coincident with “the foothills of the Massachusetts Berkshires.” That said, the position of critics prior to Sowder that the setting is Massachusetts, and by extension that the narrator is Melville (a Southern sympathizer displaced to the North), hints at an oversight in the traditional allegorical reading of Melville’s text—related to its spatializations—the implications of which Sowder misses.Think about it: “too much like the Land of Cotton” is an exceedingly odd phrase; “too much like” the South, but not conclusively like the South (Sowder 130)! A key characteristic of Melville’s story is the ambiguity of its setting and, by extension, of its directionality. For the text to operate (following Chatfield, Emery, Sealts and Sowder) as a straightforward allegory of the American North-South relationship, the terms “north” and “south” cannot afford to be problematized. Even so, whereas so much in the story reads as related to either the South or the North, as cultural locations, the notions of “south-ness” and “north-ness” themselves are made friable (in this article, the lower case broadly indicates the material domain, the upper case, the cultural). At its most fundamental allegorical level, the story undoes its own allegorical expressions; as I will be arguing, the materiality of its directionality deconstructs what everything else in the text strives (allegorically) to maintain.Remarkably, for a text purporting to allegorize the North as the South’s polar opposite, nowhere does the story definitively indicate where it is set. The absence of place names or other textual features which might place “I and My Chimney” in the South, is over-compensated for by an abundance of geographically distracting signifiers of “place-ness” that negatively emphasize the circumstance that the story is not set definitively where it is set suggestively. The narrator muses at one point that “in fact, I’ve often thought that the proper place for my old chimney is ivied old England” (332). Elsewhere, further destabilizing the geographical coordinates of the text, reference is made to “the garden of Versailles” (329). Again, the architect Hiram Scribe’s house is named New Petra. Rich as it is with cultural resonances, at base, Petra denominates a city in Jordan; New Petra, by contrast, is place-less.It would appear that something strange is going on with allegory in this deceptively straightforward allegory, and that this strangeness is linked to equally strange goings on with the geographical and directional relations of north and south, as sites of the historical and cultural American North and South that the story allegorizes so assiduously. As tensions between North and South would shortly lead to the Civil War, Melville writes an allegorical text clearly about these tensions, while simultaneously deconstructing the allegorical index of geographical north to cultural North and of geographical south to cultural South.Fredric Jameson’s work on allegory scaffolds the historically and materially nuanced reading I am proposing of “I and My Chimney”. Jameson writes:Our traditional conception of allegory—based, for instance, on stereotypes of Bunyan—is that of an elaborate set of figures and personifications to be read against some one-to-one table of equivalences: this is, so to speak, a one-dimensional view of this signifying process, which might only be set in motion and complexified were we willing to entertain the more alarming notion that such equivalences are themselves in constant change and transformation at each perpetual present of the text. (73)As American history undergoes transformation, Melville foreshadows Jameson’s transformation of allegory through his (Melville’s) own transformations of directionality and place. In a story about North and South, are we in the south or the north? Allegorical “equivalences are themselves in constant change and transformation at each perpetual present of the text” (Jameson 73). North-north equivalences falter; South-south equivalences falter.As noted above, the chimney of Melville’s story—“swung vertical to hit the meridian moon”—insists upon a north-south axis, much as, in an allegorical mode, the vertical “I” of the narrator structures a polarity of north and south (327). However, a closer reading shows that the chimney is no less complicit in the confusion of north and south than the environs of the house it occupies:In those houses which are strictly double houses—that is, where the hall is in the middle—the fire-places usually are on opposite sides; so that while one member of the household is warming himself at a fire built into a recess of the north wall, say another member, the former’s own brother, perhaps, may be holding his feet to the blaze before a hearth in the south wall—the two thus fairly sitting back to back. Is this well? (328)Here, Melville is directly allegorizing the “sulky” state of the American nation; the brothers are, as it were, North and South (328). However, just as the text’s signifiers of place problematize the notions of north and south (and thus the associated cultural resonances of capitalized North and South), this passage, in queering the axes of the chimneys, further upsets the primary allegory. The same chimney that structures Melville’s text along a north-south or up-down orientation, now defers to an east-west axis, for the back-to-back and (in cultural and allegorical terms) North-South brothers, sit at a 90-degree angle to their house’s chimneys, which thus logically manifest a cross-wise orientation of east-west (in cultural and allegorical terms, East-West). To this extent, there is something of an exquisite crossover and confusion of cultural North and South, as represented by the two brothers, and geographical/architectural/architectonic north and south (now vacillating between an east-west and a north-south orientation). The North-South cultural relationship of the brothers distorts the allegorical force of the narrator’s spine-like chimney (not to mention of the brother’s respective chimneys), thus enflaming Jameson’s allegorical equivalences. The promiscuous literality of the smokestack—Katja Kanzler notes the “astonishing materiality” of the chimney—subverts its main allegorical function; directionality both supports and disrupts allegory (591). Simply put, there is a disjunction between words and material circumstances; the “way of speaking… is hardly borne out by the facts” (Melville 327).The not unjustified critical focus on “I and My Chimney” as an allegory of North-South cultural (and shortly wartime) tensions, has not kept up with post-structural developments in allegorical theory as represented in Fredric Jameson’s work. In part, I suggest, this is because critics to date have missed the importance to Melville’s allegory of its extra-textual context. According to William J. Sowder, “Melville showed a lively interest in such contemporary social events as the gold rush, the French Revolution of 1848, and the activities of the English Chartists” (129). The pity is that readings of “I and My Chimney” have limited this “lively interest” to the Civil War. Melville’s attentiveness to “contemporary social events” should also encompass, I suggest, the East-West (east-west) dynamic of mid-nineteenth century American history, as much as the North-South (north-south) dynamic.The redialing of Melville’s allegory along another directional axis is thus accounted for. When “I and My Chimney” was published in 1856, there was, of course, at least one other major historical development in play besides the prospect of the Civil War, and the doctrine of Manifest Destiny ran, not to put it too finely, along an East-West (east-west) axis. Indeed, Manifest Destiny is at least as replete with a directional emphasis as the discourse of Civil War North-South opposition. As quoted in Frederick Merk’s Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History, Senator Daniel S. Dickinson states to the Senate, in 1848, “but the tide of emigration and the course of empire have since been westward” (Merk 29). Allied to this tradition, of course, is the well-known contemporaneous saying, “go West, young man, go West” (“Go West, Young Man”).To the extent that Melville’s text appears to anticipate Jameson’s post-structural theory of allegory, it may be linked, I suggest, to Melville’s sense of being at an intersection of American history. The meta-narrative of national history when “I and My Chimney” was produced had a spatial dimension to it: north-south directionality (culturally, North-South) was giving way to east-west directionality (culturally, East-West). Civil War would soon give way to Manifest Destiny; just as Melville’s texts themselves would, much later admittedly, give way to texts of Manifest Destiny in all its forms, including Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. Equivalently, as much as the narrator’s wife represents Northern “progress” she might also be taken to signify Western “ambition”.However, it is not only that “I and My Chimney” is a switching-point text of geo-history (mediating relations, most obviously, between the tendencies of Southern Exceptionalism and of Western National Ambition) but that it operates as a potentially generalizable test case of the limits of allegory by setting up an all-too-simple allegory of North-South/north-south relations which is subsequently subtly problematized along the lines of East-West/east-west directionality. As I have argued, Melville’s “experimental allegory” continually diverts words (that is, the symbols allegory relies upon) through the turbulence of material circumstances.North, or north, is simultaneously a cultural and a geographical or directional coordinate of Melville’s text, and the chimney of “I and My Chimney” is both a signifier of the difference between N/north and S/south and also a portal to a 360-degrees all-encompassing engagement of (allegorical) writing with history in all its (spatialized) manifestations.ReferencesAllison, J. “Conservative Architecture: Hawthorne in Melville’s ‘I and My Chimney.’” South Central Review 13.1 (1996): 17-25.Chatfield, E.H. “Levels of Meaning in Melville’s ‘I and My Chimney.’” American Imago 19.2 (1962): 163-69.Emery, A.M. “The Political Significance of Melville’s Chimney.” The New England Quarterly 55.2 (1982): 201-28.“Go West, Young Man.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia 29 Sep. 2017. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_West,_young_man>.Jameson, F. “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.” Social Text 15 (1986): 65-88.Kanzler, K. “Architecture, Writing, and Vulnerable Signification in Herman Melville’s ‘I and My Chimney.’” American Studies 54.4 (2009): 583-601.Kerouac, J. 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