Barnard College

About: Barnard College is a education organization based out in New York, New York, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Suprachiasmatic nucleus. The organization has 1291 authors who have published 1750 publications receiving 61673 citations. The organization is also known as: Barnard.

Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences

Abstract: Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. By Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. 331p. 20.00 paper.In recent years, there has been a surge in work on what has come to be known as “qualitative methods.” The trend is essentially reactive, developing as a response to the outpouring of work on quantitative and formal methods and the assertions by scholars in those areas that case studies and historical work are impressionistic, unscientific, and noncumulative. To counter such claims, some of the field's most distinguished qualitative scholars (e.g., Stephan Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science, 1997; James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, eds., Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, 2003; and Marc Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History, 2006) have spent much time and ink to show that researchers who eschew regressions or game theory can be just as methodologically aware and sophisticated as those who embrace them. Alexander George and Andrew Bennett's Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences is an impressive and welcome addition to this literature.

Chemical Similarity Searching

Abstract: This paper reviews the use of similarity searching in chemical databases. It begins by introducing the concept of similarity searching, differentiating it from the more common substructure searching, and then discusses the current generation of fragment-based measures that are used for searching chemical structure databases. The next sections focus upon two of the principal characteristics of a similarity measure: the coefficient that is used to quantify the degree of structural resemblance between pairs of molecules and the structural representations that are used to characterize molecules that are being compared in a similarity calculation. New types of similarity measure are then compared with current approaches, and examples are given of several applications that are related to similarity searching.

Why tropical forest lizards are vulnerable to climate warming

Abstract: Biological impacts of climate warming are predicted to increase with latitude, paralleling increases in warming. However, the magnitude of impacts depends not only on the degree of warming but also on the number of species at risk, their physiological sensitivity to warming and their options for behavioural and physiological compensation. Lizards are useful for evaluating risks of warming because their thermal biology is well studied. We conducted macrophysiological analyses of diurnal lizards from diverse latitudes plus focal species analyses of Puerto Rican Anolis and Sphaerodactyus. Although tropical lowland lizards live in environments that are warm all year, macrophysiological analyses indicate that some tropical lineages (thermoconformers that live in forests) are active at low body temperature and are intolerant of warm temperatures. Focal species analyses show that some tropical forest lizards were already experiencing stressful body temperatures in summer when studied several decades ago. Simulations suggest that warming will not only further depress their physiological performance in summer, but will also enable warm-adapted, open-habitat competitors and predators to invade forests. Forest lizards are key components of tropical ecosystems, but appear vulnerable to the cascading physiological and ecological effects of climate warming, even though rates of tropical warming may be relatively low.