The discussion on bias automatically brings the question of what is the truth? To argue that a newspaper favors a particular topic or person (i.e. It is biased), one has to know what is the {\it expected} number of times that a topic or person should be mentioned.

Although politics are a multi-facet subject and politicians many times become popular on the media due to characteristics other than their performance as a politician, we decided to evaluate our proposed method entirely from the angle of ``collaborativeness''. We define the ``collaborativeness'' of a politician (in our case a senator) as the number of times this politician has collaborated with other senators (absolute collaborativeness) and the rate of each of those collaborations (weighted collaborativeness). The true level of collaboration of a senator is given by the concept of co-sponsorships. In the US Senate, bills can be introduced by any of the senators and others generally demonstrate their support by co-signing the introduced bill. Furthermore, according to Campbell \cite{campbell1982cosponsoring}, co-sponsorship are actively sought by the bill proponent because they can use the number of co-sponsorships on speeches as an indication of broad support for the bill's idea. Given this market for co-sponsorships, one could be inclined to say that they take place quite often, but Fowler \cite{fowler2006connecting} has observed that the average legislator cosponsors only 2-3\% of the bills---meaning they are quite selective.

The data related to the co-sponsorship from the 103$^{\text{th}}$ US Senate was collected by the New York Times Congress API\footnote{http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/read/congress\_api}. Both senator's name and number of co-sponsorship in the bill were available there. We collected data for 104 senators which is 4 over the normal 100. The additional names are: Jeffrey Chiesa (1), Republican, in replacement to Frank Lautenberg (died), then replaced by Democrat Cory Booker (2); William Cowan (3), Democrat, interim of John Kerry (Secretary of State), then replaced by Democrat Edward Markey (4).

One of the challenges when it comes to doing analysis of newspapers bias relates to the data collected. Most newspapers are not keen on giving their data for analysis and request us not to use Web crawlers to collect data either. Therefore, we decided to abandon our initial thought of using Web crawlers in lieu of using information from Google search queries because Google has already done the parsing of the pages on each site and can provide us with just the count we need.

Media bias in politics has always been a topic of interest because it is a subject everyone feels a little passionate about. Most people who pay attention to politics have an opinion about media outlets and how they possibly sway public opinion. Interestingly, no matter who you select, they believe the media always favors the other candidate, party, ideology, etc. In the USA, liberals say the media is conservative \cite{Dennis:Liberal:1996} and conservatives say the media is liberal \cite{Bozell:How:1992}. Who is right?

In 2000, D'Alessio and Allen \cite{DAlessio:2000te} set out to answer the question above. They investigated 3 kinds of bias namely: {\it gatekeeping bias}, the preference for selecting stories about one party or the other; {\it coverage bias}, or the amount of coverage each party gets; and {\it statement bias} which deals with the favorability of coverage towards one party. The authors looked at bias in newspapers, magazines and television and of these only the television had a slight coverage bias and statement bias.

Druckman and Parkin \cite{druckman2005impact} showed that the effect of a newspaper tone towards a candidate can impact the voters' decision and they found some good evidence that the slanted editorials indeed can achieve this goal. They also raised the question of whether readers are to blame or the victims for not looking for diversity in their media activities (reading, watching TV, etc.)

Groseclose and Mulyo \cite{Groseclose:2005wg} have proposed an interesting measure of media bias and applied it to print and television media outlets. Their metric is based on a count of mentions to specific think tanks. Think tanks themselves are assigned a score from conservative to liberal based on the mentions of their names by members of congress. The starting point is the ADA metric (Americans for Democratic Actions) of members of congress, which is used to calculate an ADA-like for each think tank which will then be used to calculate another ADA-like score for the media outlets. The authors found that most media outlets are left-leaning (liberal), except for the Fox News' Special Report and the Washington Times.

Media bias may also be related to voting patterns. DellaVigna and Kaplan \cite{dellavigna2007fox} have done a study specifically with the Fox News Channel in more than 9,000 towns in the USA and found that their pro-right approach accounted for a significant gain of the republican party between the years 1996 and 2000. On average the party gained 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points in the towns where the Fox News Channel was available.

Nowadays we live in the decade of the big data. Scientists today have the ability to collect data about virtually anything and certainly politics is one area of interest. This availability should yield more reliable results on bias, be it on politics or any other issue worth studying.

The use of networks to model and study relationships between seismic events has been used in the past for small areas of the globe. Here we demonstrate that similar techniques could also be used at the global level. More importantly, many of the techniques used in complex networks analysis were used here to show that there seem to exist long-distance relations between seismic events.

First we argued in favor of the long-distance relation hypothesis by showing that the network has small-world characteristics. Given the small-world characteristics of high clustering and low average path length, we were able to argue that seisms around the world appear not to be independent of each other. To strengthen this argument, we decided to do a temporal analysis of our network. Plotting the probability distribution for the time intervals between successive earthquakes, we have found that this distribution is well fitted by a $q$-exponential, indicating a behavior described by the non-extensive statistical mechanics, which obtain $q$-exponential distributions from the generalized Tsallis entropy. This non-extensive behavior also contributes to the long-distance relation hypothesis, since the non-extensive statistical has been used to explain many complex systems with long-range interactions and long-range temporal memory.

\green{Another interesting approach we intend to do in the future relates to using community analysis or community detection to understand how seismic locations are grouped. We believe that given the long-range relations that we found here it is unlikely that the globe would be well organized around local communities of nodes (geographical locations).}

Office

I'm back :)

I'm back... this blog was used when I was in Boston but will not be used for everything else. I'll share thoughts about everything related to my life.

End of Blog

I'm in Atlanta to catch my flight to Melbourne. I'm returning home. This means that there won't be any more posts. It has been a nice experience.

Prof. B. fractured both wrists

I got here yesterday just to find out that Prof. B has a bike accident and fractured both wrists! This is the 3rd bike accident in the lab since I got here. It seems that riding the bike and working in this lab is not a good combination. Maybe people work so much that they cannot concentrate on the road. I'm glad I use the T. lol

Twitter

I just signed up to twitter! Let's see if this works well. My user there is SuperTricolor

Home: Watch it. You will be convinced.

I have just finished watching the movie Home, a documentary produced by Yann Arthus Bertrand about the human effect in our planet and the global warming. I'm speechless. I have never seen a movie so beautiful and at the same time so sad. It shows in clear high definition images what we are all doing to our planet. We must change. I must change. Maybe if we spend a few extra pennies in our shopping we could watch what we buy, from where we buy. Where the things are produced. It is a small step, but if we all do it it will be a big change. Recycling also. I'm probably the biggest no-recycler that exists because I never saw the point. The movie makes it crystal clear. We must do it. The movie can be found in many places, including torrent sites. It is distributed copyright free so you can all download and watch it. You can download the HD version directly from the this torrent link http://www.mininova.org/tor/2657160 (you should know how to use torrent by now). Or watch it on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

Fortaleza. The team is terrible

Most of you know how much I love my soccer team: Fortaleza. But it's being awful to watch the last 5 games. No wins. One tie. Man. The team is bad. Really bad. I hope something is changing because this way we'll be relegated to the 3rd division next year. :(

Cheers for Lucas

I'm done working today. I just arrived at a bar near my house to drink one beer for Lucas. I'm very happy for Eraldo and Aurelia. It's going to be a wonderful experience. Cheers!!!!

Lucas is here

My friends Eraldo and Aurélia just had their first baby!!!!! Hurray!!!! Lucas is here. I'm very happy for them. I already got a picture and everything :) I was on the phone with my wife when he was born just a few minutes ago!!! It's great!

Missed station

I was so entertained by the news on the morning paper that I just missed my station. I hate this!! Now this adds 20 minutes to my commute. Just because of 1 station. Now I have to return to downtown crossing to get the orange line.

Waiting for Lucas

Even though I'm far I'm very excited with the prospect of Eraldo and Aurélia having their first baby SOON!!! They already created their blog which I'm following. It will be an interesting next few hours since they are already in the hospital.

Jet leg is good for you!!

Today I woke up at 6:20am without any alarm clock!! I guess this is due to some jet leg but if so this is good for me. I'm already on the T station and will be at work early! Wow! I'm surprised at myself. LOL.

Sicily is Beautiful

The island of Sicily is certainly beautiful. I been to the 3 corners of the island and I must say it is worth the trip. The only problem I have is that I'm getting tired of planes and airports and of course of spending 3 extra days in these places without my family. I know I have to stay because of the opportunity but it is not as fun. I wished I could have taken pictures of Kalil and Adele on the cold waters of the Mediterranean sea. It was cold but bareable. The water is the clearest I've seen, more so than Hawaii. The food is also very good and sicilians know how to enjoy life. Sometimes I felt I was in Brazil. Now I'm flying back to Boston and in a about a week i'll be home in Florida. :)

Palermo, Italy

Italy is like Brazil. Sometimes it makes me wonder if the history books got it wrong and some Italians got to Brazil before the Portuguese. The resemblance is amazing in the lack of organization, ease of life, love for football, nightlife, etc. I can't even begin to describe how I like Italy. Sure it is chaotic here but this place is soon moving to my favorite place to live just because it is Brazil without the violence and the stress. The traffic for instance, is a mess but people a not as stressed as they are in Brazil. It is bad but people learned to leave with it and make the best of it. They just accept it as a fact of life. The police and law enforcing agents also let a lot of things pass because it is not worth it. In a sense, it is a self-organized society that seems to thrive. I love it!!! I can't wait to go back home and talk to Sarah, Kalil and Adele about this place. I wish they were here. I'm starting to think that my next sabbatical MUST be in Italy. Kalil will be a bit less then 18 and I'm sure he will love it here.

Taormina, Italy

Today I woke up early, had breakfast here in the hotel and did some work until 11am. I then took the car and drove all the way to Taormina, Italy which is about a 1.5 hour drive from here. It took me more because I stopped in every place I found interesting including: Aci Castello, Aci Trezza, Avireale, Giarre and a few other places I don't remember the name. As I already knew, Italy is Brazil. I've been to Portugal and it does make more sense for us to have been colonized by Italians than Portugueses. Everything here reminds me of Brazil, the education of people in the traffic (or lack of), people throwing trash on the streets, but also some good things such as the happiness, the way they seem to know how to enjoy life, the nightlife with many many bars on the streets. Traffic here is so crazy that it becomes funny. I can't imagine leaving here but for 1 week I can survive and even enjoy. Even Rome is not as bad as this here and I heard Palermo (where I'm going after the conference) is worse than here. I remember a lot of Mano and Robson (two of my brothers) while I was driving because this places is full of small, tiny bars that they would love. Now I'm going to bed. Tomorrow the work starts.

Good Dinner

I had an excellent dinner yesterday. Giuseppe (the local organizer) has been a very good host and took me to the city of Nicolosi for a nice dinner at the Antico Orto dei Limoni which is a typical Sicilian restaurant. The food and the wine were very good. We had a 3-course meal with anti-pasti, primi and secondi piatti. Now it is 10am here and I'm leaving to visit some of the cities around Catania. The conference starts tomorrow.

Hotel in Catania

Not going well here thus far. First the lady on the plane, then you arrive in a country that thinks it is Europe but it is worse than the disorganization in Brazil; everyone treats you as if they were superior, they are almost becoming French. ;) Now I'm in the hotel, that is, if this can be called a hotel. I haven't been to to room yet but based on the ground floor here I'm not holding my breath. The city looks like it is in ruins. Sure people like this but I don't. I like new, or well preserved things. The city here gives the impression of ZERO preservation.