Data obtained from foreign data sources often come with only superficial structural information, such as relation names and attribute names. Other types of metadata that are important for effective integration and meaningful querying of such data sets are missing. In particular, relationships among attributes, such as foreign keys, are crucial metadata for understanding the structure of an unknown database. The discovery of such relationships is difficult, because in principle for each pair of attributes in the database each pair of data values must be compared. A precondition for a foreign key is an inclusion dependency (IND) between the key and the foreign key attributes. We present with Spider an algorithm that efficiently finds all INDs in a given relational database. It leverages the sorting facilities of DBMS but performs the actual comparisons outside of the database to save computation. Spider analyzes very large databases up to an order of magnitude faster than previous approaches. We also evaluate in detail the effectiveness of several heuristics to reduce the number of necessary comparisons. Furthermore, we generalize Spider to find composite INDs covering multiple attributes, and partial INDs, which are true INDs for all but a certain number of values. This last type is particularly relevant when integrating dirty data as is often the case in the life sciences domain - our driving motivation.
Data dependencies, or integrity constraints, are used to improve the quality of a database schema, to optimize queries, and to ensure consistency in a database. In the last years conditional dependencies have been introduced to analyze and improve data quality. In short, a conditional dependency is a dependency with a limited scope defined by conditions over one or more attributes. Only the matching part of the instance must adhere to the dependency. In this paper we focus on conditional inclusion dependencies (CINDs). We generalize the definition of CINDs, distinguishing covering and completeness conditions. We present a new use case for such CINDs showing their value for solving complex data quality tasks. Further, we define quality measures for conditions inspired by precision and recall. We propose efficient algorithms that identify covering and completeness conditions conforming to given quality thresholds. Our algorithms choose not only the condition values but also the condition attributes automatically. Finally, we show that our approach efficiently provides meaningful and helpful results for our use case.
Data obtained from foreign data sources often come with only superficial structural information, such as relation names and attribute names. Other types of metadata that are important for effective integration and meaningful querying of such data sets are missing. In particular, relationships among attributes, such as foreign keys, are crucial metadata for understanding the structure of an unknown database. The discovery of such relationships is difficult, because in principle for each pair of attributes in the database each pair of data values must be compared. A precondition for a foreign key is an inclusion dependency (IND) between the key and the foreign key attributes. We present with Spider an algorithm that efficiently finds all INDs in a given relational database. It leverages the sorting facilities of DBMS but performs the actual comparisons outside of the database to save computation. Spider analyzes very large databases up to an order of magnitude faster than previous approaches. We also evaluate in detail the effectiveness of several heuristics to reduce the number of necessary comparisons. Furthermore, we generalize Spider to find composite INDs covering multiple attributes, and partial INDs, which are true INDs for all but a certain number of values. This last type is particularly relevant when integrating dirty data as is often the case in the life sciences domain - our driving motivation.
Data dependencies, or integrity constraints, are used to improve the quality of a database schema, to optimize queries, and to ensure consistency in a database. In the last years conditional dependencies have been introduced to analyze and improve data quality. In short, a conditional dependency is a dependency with a limited scope defined by conditions over one or more attributes. Only the matching part of the instance must adhere to the dependency. In this paper we focus on conditional inclusion dependencies (CINDs). We generalize the definition of CINDs, distinguishing covering and completeness conditions. We present a new use case for such CINDs showing their value for solving complex data quality tasks. Further, we define quality measures for conditions inspired by precision and recall. We propose efficient algorithms that identify covering and completeness conditions conforming to given quality thresholds. Our algorithms choose not only the condition values but also the condition attributes automatically. Finally, we show that our approach efficiently provides meaningful and helpful results for our use case.
This book investigates governance practiced by non-state actors. It analyses how multinational mining companies protect their sites in fragile contexts and what that tells us about political ordering 'beyond' the state. Based on extensive primary research in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Europe and North America, the book compares companies' political role in the 19th and 21st centuries. It demonstrates that despite a number of disturbing parallels, many contemporary practices are not a reversion to the past but unique to the present. The book discloses hybrid security practices with highly ambiguous effects around the sites of contemporary companies that have committed to norms of corporate social and security responsibility. Companies invest in local communities, and offer human rights training to security forces alongside coercive techniques of fortress protection, and stability-oriented clientele practice and arrangements of indirect rule. The book traces this hybridity back to contradictory collective meaning systems that cross borders and structure the perceptions and choices of company managers, private security officers, NGO collaborators and others practitioners. The book argues that hybrid security practices are not the result of an encounter between a supposed ‘local’ with the liberal ‘global’. Instead, this hybridity is inherent in the transnational and part and parcel of liberal transnational governance. Therefore, more critical reflection of global governance in practice is required. These issues are sharply pertinent to liberal peacebuilding as well as global governance more broadly. The book will be of interest to anyone interested in business, politics and human rights; critical security studies; peacebuilding and statebuilding; African politics; and ethnographic and sociological approaches to global governance and international relations more generally.
Action against malnutrition is needed more than ever. An additional US$10.3 billion a year is required from national and international public resources to successfully attack undernutrition worldwide. This would benefit more than 360 million children in the 36 countries with the highest burden of undernutrition home to 90 percent of the stunted children globally. Since early childhood offers a special window of opportunity to improve nutrition, the bulk of the investment needs to be targeted between pre-pregnancy until two years of age. 'Scaling Up Nutrition: What Will It Cost?' notes that investment will yield high returns through thriving children, healthier families, and more productive workers. This investment is essential to make progress on the nutrition and child mortality Millennium Development Goals and to protect critical human capital in developing economies. The human and financial costs of further neglect will be high. This call for greater investment in nutrition comes at a time when global efforts to strengthen health systems provide a unique opportunity to scale up integrated packages of health and nutrition interventions with common delivery platforms, thereby reducing costs. 'Scaling Up Nutrition: What Will It Cost?' has benefited from the expertise of many international agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and research institutions. This book will be of interest to policy makers, public health officials, nutritionists, government officials, and all those interested in improving child nutrition and health outcomes.
What is Sexualized Violence? Intersectional Readings uses an intersectional, queer, and subject-oriented approach to examine how societies constitute subjects as abilized and vulnerabilized with respect to sexualized violence. Contributing to our thinking about the dynamic relationship between social structure, subject formation, intersubjectivity, and violence, this text deploys an intersectional reading to engage with the complex social topography that both offers and imposes violence as a socially mediated practice. Instead of discussing one particular group at the intersection of race and gender, this book discusses the constitution of positionalities through systems of oppression and includes racialization, gender, sexuality, disability, and age. Moreover, the text is also interested in explicitly engaging with how the history of disciplines, institutions, and organizations contributed to the current constitution of opportunities for violence. It gives us modes of thinking to confront sexualized violence as a social problem and challenge the discourses and social structures that uphold it. This book is meant to offer questions and approaches for students and scholars, practitioners and policy makers, and survivors of sexualized violence who have an interest in an intersectional perspective on sexualized violence.
Secrecy is endemic within organizations, woven into the fabric of our lives at work. Yet, until now, we've had an all-too-limited understanding of this powerful organizational force. Secrecy is a part of work, and keeping secrets is a form of work. But also, secrecy creates a social order—a hidden architecture within our organizations. Drawing on previously overlooked texts, as well as well-known classics, Jana Costas and Christopher Grey identify three forms of secrecy: formal secrecy, as we see in the case of trade and state secrets based on law and regulation; informal secrecy based on networks and trust; and public or open secrecy, where what is known goes undiscussed. Animated with evocative examples from scholarship, current events, and works of fiction, this framework presents a bold reimagining of organizational life.
This book describes and explains the development of international parliamentary institutions and asks why international organizations establish parliamentary institutions without, however, granting them relevant decision-making powers.
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