Friday 30 December 2016

Some thoughts concerning Language as a Scientific Topic

Language is about the most important topic when it comes to understanding humans and the history of our species. This is a very active scientific field in many dimensions. I think it is of utmost importance, to keep the scope of thinking wide-open because many important issues are not fully covered yet.

cultural anthropology journals
When trying to understand the nature of human thinking, for me it is very important to capture its dual mode of operation. On the one side,we operate within the potential of a powerful neural network, as do most other highly developed species. At the same time, we have available something like digital computer-like machinery in our brain, which makes humans superior to all other animals. To me, this “machinery” seems to be an emulation of a digital system on our biological neural networks. This emulation process is possible and quite good understood.

Thursday 29 December 2016

Social Media Tipping Point or Economic Remorse?

Scranton Times reporter Donnie Collins reported that Laremy Tunsil, a football player from the University of Mississippi lost significant value in the 2016 National Football League draft. Collins alleged that information shared on Tunsil’s social media contributed to the Tunsil’s descent down the draft board and speculated that the drop cost Tunsil $7 million dollars. 

open access journals mass communication
A group of Mass Communications students at King’s College read Collins’ article, then reflected and shared their reflections. The students disagreed with Tunsil’s alleged behavior, citing the need for personal responsibility for their brands on social media in accordance with their vocations. How much the loss of millions of dollars contributed to their thinking was unclear.

Wednesday 28 December 2016

Critical Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility Concept

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), also called business social responsibility (BSR) is achieved when the company began a voluntary and active contribution to the social, environmental and economic improvement. This is in order to improve their competitive, value situation and value of the corporations. 

corporate social responsibility journal articles
When a good performance of these three characteristics is achieved, it is known as the triple bottom line. This triple bottom is used for sustainable business and as the name implies, covers three dimensions: environmental, economic size and revenue statements. Triple bottom line performance is known through sustainability reporting and/or corporate social responsibility.

Tuesday 27 December 2016

Profiling of High Risk Profiles of Clients in Order to Prevent Money Laundering and Terrorism

journal of money laundering control impact factor
One of the goals of the strategy to prevent money laundering and financing of terrorism is to keep the policy through preventive measures and activities by all stakeholders. These include financial institutions, especially banks which are most frequently used institutions by perpetrators for laundering the proceeds of crime or to support terrorist activity.


Thursday 22 December 2016

Should Law Look East?

Time and space have long constrained legal debate. Careful legal scholarship takes time to craft; publication in book and journals are at the mercy of selection and review processes and production schedules; and delivery of scholarship requires a further wait for the publication to reach library book shelves in hard copy form or become digitally available in online databases. 

civil sciences open access journals
Despite the globalisation of law, libraries prioritise research relevant to the regions in which they are located, and online databases even comprehensive repositories such as West law, Lexis Nexis and He in Online privilege research published in certain geographical jurisdictions, notably the United States, over others. Time fetters; space shackles; and legal debate, in the process, suffer.

Monday 19 December 2016

Marginalization and victimization of female sex workers of India

victimization journals

Although the acts regulating prostitution existed in India for ages and are getting modified over the years, there still exist certain social and cultural sanctities in the country. Socially, it stigmatizes only the women and marginalizes them by denying public space for them.

The social and cultural hegemony dictate terms on the women and her body and denies them the basic human rights in the guise of indulging in the shameful act. Male dominated society and hierarchical social structure is reinforcing this heinous system on a section of the women in the society. It is time to fight against this marginalization and victimization of women.

Thursday 1 December 2016

Nigerian Media and Indigenous Cultures Transformation: The Journey So Far

The Nigerian mass media owe their Nigerian peoples the duty of transforming their diverse cultures respectively. Although the task seems thankless and complex,it is indeed rewarding, thankful, worthwhile, easy and simple if willing,committed and functional. The current worrisome state of our indigenous cultures is majorly because the media that are supposed to duly rouse the peoples to their cultures and generally effect the transformation of these cultures have simply abandoned their right roles in doing so for the otherwise. 

journal of mass communication & journalism impact factor
Rather, they have resorted to attrition and westernization, dabbing them variously. This paper calls on Nigerian media to turn a new leave and take up active indigenous cultures transformation roles. Government, schools, parents(families), religious groups, corporate organisations and every individual must all actively join hands with the mass media in their new efforts and roles to transform our cultures. The paper basically draws from relevant library print sources, besides intuition and observation primary sources. The text content analysis, the descriptive method and qualitative comparative and analytical approaches ground the study.

Monday 28 November 2016

Is Print Readers Declining? A Survey of Indian Online Newspaper Readers

An online study was conducted among 3,183 online newspaper readers of India. The study reveals that majority of the online news consumers(90 percent) were still reading printed newspapers. It was found that online newspapers have not much affected the print newspaper circulation. But print has start losing young readers. 

Print Readers Declining
As per the study 18 percent of 15-20 age group, 12 percent of 20-30 age group and 8 percent of 30-40 age group readers have reduced their interest to read print newspapers, they prefer to read online newspapers. The displacement effect of online media is very low. The older generation above 50 years read both the media equally, while 3 percent readers of 40-50 age groups have reduced use of print newspaper. 

Friday 25 November 2016

Intellectual Property Rights and Performance of Start-ups

What is the basic tenet of intellectual property rights (IPR) including patent system in each country? Patents combine incentives for the production of technological knowledge with incentives for diffusion of that knowledge. This review paper deals with intellectual property rights and growth of start-ups. 

journal of intellectual property rights impact factor
There is no exaggeration that intellectual capital is more important than physical capital in globalized and knowledge based societies. Most countries have been interested in facilitating start-ups and growth of them as a way of job creations. Those who claim that the patent is inevitable for creation new venture have been likely to see a patent at an insurmountable hurdle.

Friday 18 November 2016

Operation Smile.....and How Media has Played a Role Creating Awareness and Promoting this Medical Organisation

Operation Smile is an international humanitarian medical charity, which provides services to children and adults of all faiths. Operation Smile was founded in 1982 by Dr Bill Magee and his wife Kathleen Magee. It is non-profit and non-governmental organisation based in Virginia. It involves corrective surgery of cleft lip and palate to developing countries. 

Operation Smile
The organisation assists the host country in managing and coordinating the surgical programs, educating the people of the country medical training, as well as contributing medical equipment and supplies. Operation Smile grows medical self-sufficiency in resource poor environments and is involved in scientific research. Through the organisations scientific research it gives them a better understanding of the incidence of cleft lip and palate with the aim of reducing the occurrence.

Thursday 17 November 2016

Do Current Suicide Prevention Policies Neglect Suicide Survivors?

An online study was conducted among 3,183 online newspaper readers of India. The study reveals that majority of the online news consumers(90 percent) were still reading printed newspapers. It was found that online newspapers have not much affected the print newspaper circulation. But print has start losing young readers. 

Suicide Survivors
As per the study 18 percent of 15-20 age group, 12 percent of 20-30 age group and 8 percent of 30-40 age group readers have reduced their interest to read print newspapers, they prefer to read online news papers. The displacement effect of online media is very low. The older generation above 50 years read both the media equally, while 3 percent readers of 40-50 age groups have reduced use of print newspaper. 

Wednesday 16 November 2016

Nuclear Facilities and Nuclear Weapons as a Guarantee of Peace

The global peace is as old as the nuclear weapons (NW)-71 years. It would be an overstatement to describe the Cold War as a long peace since a number of local wars were fought but not between superpowers and not using NW. The difference between nuclear and conventional weapons is well known: figuratively speaking, the use of the formers would spoil the winners’ triumph due to the extensive radioactive contamination. 

Nuclear Weapons
This is the probable reason why some bellicose leaders have advocated nuclear disarmament. Deterrence by credible threat of retaliation is another peace-preserving mechanism enhanced by NW. Presence of NW has obviously contributed to responsibility of political and military decisions. The same is true for nuclear facilities such as the nuclear power plants (NPP): destruction of a NPP would cause a contamination by radionuclides accumulated in the reactor. Note that contamination after the Chernobyl accident resulted from destruction of only one reactor.

Wednesday 9 November 2016

Drawbacks of Cross border illegitimate relocation from Ethiopia

Ethiopia has the phenomenon of cross border illegal migration which is mainly prompted by rural push than the urban pull reasons. This would disturb the balanced distribution of population between the urban and rural areas. 

Cross Border Illegal Migration
Majority of  these migrants  are encountering several challenges at the initial period of adjustment and even while travelling during night times through forest and coastal areas. While negative side of the illegal migration is not only leading to moral decline   but also remaining as a burden on the family. They are often subjected to rejection by their families and the community as they failed to meet expectations, only to return with adequate material wealth.

Monday 7 November 2016

Harmonisation of Private International Law - Is It Possible At All?

The European Union (EU) entered a new stage in the process of reducing the deficit of democratic legitimation of its politics. April 1st marks the start of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI). The ECI is new instrument for EU citizens to participate directly in influencing the development and setting of European law (e.g. regulations and directives).

Private International Law
To look back: The Lisbon Treaty of December 2009 brought about major changes in the architecture of the EU e.g. concerning competences of and decision-making by the European Council, the Council of Ministers, the European Commission and the European Parliament. A further innovation the Lisbon treaty brought about is the ECI. Its legal basis is Article 11: “Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the European Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties”.

Friday 4 November 2016

Does rural youth migration help the country?

Rural Youth Out Migration on Migrant

Due to increase in the education standards and other social factors migration of rural youth has increased significantly mainly in developing countries. Recent studies have shown that rural youth migration improves the socioeconomic conditions of their parents or elders in the village’s and helps in mitigating some harmful traditional/superstitious practices.

Thursday 3 November 2016

Critical Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility Concept

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), also called business social responsibility (BSR) is achieved when the company began a voluntary and active contribution to the social, environmental and economic improvement. This is in order to improve their competitive, value situation and value of the corporations. When a good performance of these three characteristics is achieved, it is known as the triple bottom line. This triple bottom is used for sustainable business and as the name implies, covers three dimensions: environmental, economic size and revenue statements. Triple bottom line performance is known through sustainability reporting and/or corporate social responsibility.

Corporate Social Responsibility
For the International Labor Organization, social responsibility of business is the set of actions that take into account the companies so that their activities have a positive impact on society and affirm their principles and values that they governed, both in their own internal methods and processes and in their relationship with the other actors. 

Wednesday 2 November 2016

Towards Excellence Organization Founded in Human Identity

The development of management thinking, has focused on the study and emphasis of the organizations, that is, single approach by specializing in specific segments, whether the task, structure, strategy, and very sparingly, It has attended the study of shared organizational values and human identity; Therefore, these approaches have been maximized in order to seek more effective solutions to organizational problems; 

Excellence Organization
Thus, the demands and pressures that are subject organizations of the future, if their senior executives aim to achieve more efficient management of resources for the generation of products and services of higher value, which allows a higher yield for investors and a better quality of life for workers, it is necessary to formulate and implement sophisticated new methods, tools, instruments and management systems that are centered on people, this is their shared values, to achieve organizations founded on human identity.

Monday 31 October 2016

Fit falls in the Chinese Anti-corruption Policies


Chinese Anti-Corruption

Chinese economists are opposing the government’s   views related to corruption and economic growth of the country. The communist party of china has launched a massive anti-corruption campaign in order to eradicate corruption at various levels of the economic system. To further explain this framework. It suggests the government to follow the mixed oligopoly economic approach. This approach would not blndlylet the governments to subsidize of the state owned enterprises at the cost of private sectors growth so that the economic growth would not be hauled down.

Thursday 27 October 2016

Hardships Children face in the United States of America by Having a Parent in Prison: How to Help Them! A Program Proposal

This research intends to discover how youth are impacted by having one or both parents incarcerated; and identify consequential outcomes youth incur, in their attempt to cope with parental separation. Perusing this issue, may reveal that as a parent walks into prison, their children simultaneously walk into a revolving door of multiple dilemmas linked to psychological challenges, behavioral difficulties, and emotional/ cognitive issues. 

Children face with parents in prison
Researchers have revealed that children who have a parent in prison are linked to many negative outcomes unfortunately. This highlights the importance of the ripple effect of having an incarcerated parent. Strategies and approaches to creating a network of effective support and amelioration services, to aid this population of youth, cannot be determined without first having this knowledge as part of the needs assessment.

Tuesday 25 October 2016

Regulatory Exclusivities or Non-patent exclusivities

Non-patent exclusivities
Pharmaceutical development is an expensive, time consuming and uncertain process that takes years to complete. Often, patent protection expires before a new drug is approved for marketing. As a result, most pharmaceutical companies in the United States and European Union (EU) depend on the exclusivity rights granted under the U.S. Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), and the corresponding EU authorities to recoup their considerable investment in the drug development and approval process. Therefore, pharmaceutical companies must understand and employ the different forms of nonpatent exclusivity in both the U.S. and EU in order to succeed in the global marketplace.

The Process of development of a pharmaceutical is time taking, costly and uncertain. The long-time duration of the process may result in expiry of the patent term before the marketing of the product. To overcome this difficulty the United States and European Union (EU) have advised the concept of exclusivities which help in recovering the investment that was made in the process? The product can be marketed during the period of exclusivity without any competition from its generic form.

Monday 24 October 2016

Authentic Design of Online Mathematics Assessment on Senior High Math Course

Rapid technological developments of this decade requires lecturers to pack an interesting learning for students with ICT based, one concrete manifestation of creativity by lecturer is made the form of online math assessment. From the results of the survey in the Kopert is VI Central Java region, there are still some colleges still use conventional ratings in high school math courses. The main reason is the high school math courses is a subject which is very important for students to be understood in theory and practice in preparation to become teachers in secondary schools. 

Online Mathematics Assessment
The purpose of this study is to produce products such as online math assessment for high school math courses that is valid or feasible to be used in all of mathematics education program in Central Java, which can produce human resources that is intelligent, creative, innovative and able to compete in the 21st century. Research method used in this study is Borg and Gall development model that is in practice only to the stage of Develop preliminary form of product Phase to produce valid product by experts. This stage is expert validation by four lecturers namely two lecturers of subject matter experts and two media expert lecturers from University PGRI of Semarang and Semarang State University.

Friday 21 October 2016

Is there any impact of Financial Compensation on Job Satisfaction of Higher Secondary Level teachers? Find it out.

Teachers Financial Compensation

Money and financial benefits is important tool for enhancing organizational performance and sustained competitiveness because the key element for employment relationship and the single greatest operating cost for much organization is compensation. The payment for the work through which employees support their family and money is considered as the reward which is given to employees against work. 

The condition of satisfaction and dissatisfaction of employees depends on their salary because it is organizational responsibility to provide suitable financial rewards like salary to their employees because it has strong influence on employee motivation and retention. All compensation factors include in employee pay and people do effort because they want some rewards in the term of money or promotion which was explained through expectancy theory. 

Thursday 20 October 2016

Had online newspaper reading affected print newspaper reading?

Print Readers Declining

Ninety percent of online news consumers are still reading printed newspapers and the online newspapers has very less effect on print newspaper circulation may be due to their popup ads. However young readers are favouring online newspapers, around 18% of 15-20 age and 12% of 20-30 age group populations prefer to read online newspapers.

Monday 17 October 2016

Teaching Leadership and its Prime Magnification

The expensive term “Leadership” is always having the best societal luminosity, which is absolutely purposeful and futuristic as well to enrich our booming society already. Education is one of the unequivocal mediums to measure the worthy range of academic depth and opulence which might affect our benevolent students in a broader platform. Teachers are the ultimate leader of education to detect the elite educational capacity and prevent the same for constructing the massive future of a student in deed.

Teaching Leadership
E-It is enrichment. Any successful teacher does aim for enriching the career of his/her students. It is the best key for them to walk upon a very productive avenue to project the acquired learning and that shall be minutely assessed for them to be occupationally settled in the near future.


D-It is dedication. Without this nobody can have the destined success at all. So teachers do inspire students to enhance the level of dedication to concentrate hard upon study and it is really conducive for them to cope up more knowledge within a very short while.

Friday 14 October 2016

Evolution of Decision Making Processes in Command during Irregular Warfare Operations

Stability operations and irregular war are increasingly complex and continually changing constructs which are no longer served by the traditional processes of the western military forces. This essay examines the significant work that has been carried out in recent years in an effort to develop new problem framing constructs that hope to offer the commander processes for utilizing and manipulating complex adaptive systems. 

Irregular Warfare Operations
What is becoming apparent is that the process of developing frameworks will not be of value to the military commander unless these frameworks can be embedded in the decision making process at an instinctive and experiential level. For the past 5 years the technical cooperation programme (TTCP) has been operating with the objective of harnessing complexity within the defense arena. The introduction of unknown risks associated with the incomplete and shifting information, and continuous readjustments due to the multi cell structure of irregular warfare would create significant base level noise in an adaptive system framework. 

Thursday 13 October 2016

Cultural Nationalism in India

The concept of Nationalism is linked to the idea of sovereignty and hence; it has to be associated to the principle of self-determination. In the 19th century, John Stuart Mill argued that nationalist movements were dependent on ethnicity, language and culture. These were the basis of the demand for statehood. While this stood true for most nationalistic movements, Hurst Hanum of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy remarked that in this era, the notion of self-determination was used by groups to divide rather than unify territory. The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire can be used as an example.

Cultural Nationalism
It was at the peak of colonialism in the mid-19th century that the colonised world witnessed the rise in nationalistic sentiments with the emphasis on the idea of a common language, religion, ethnicity etc. While the western idea of nationalism aims to set up a uni-nation, uni-culture dictum, nationalism operates on different principles in a multi-national, pluralist context (for the purpose of this paper, the term pluralist and multi-nationalist will be used interchangeably). Nationalism had a dual role to play in the last century through the many nationalistic upheavals leading to decolonization of most of Latin America, Africa and Asia. 

Wednesday 12 October 2016

A Comparitive Study on Politics in Sathyajith Ray’s Films-Appu Triology, Mahanagar, Jana Aranya, Charulatha and Pathirdwani

The politics in the films of Satyajith Ray has not been much examined. There are many legends of Indian film making; Satyajith has yet not being recognised as a political film maker. Comparing with the film of RithwikGhatak and Mrinal Sen which are politically highly influential, Sathyajith Rayhimself claims he is never a political film maker. But when we closely examine his films, we could read out a close relationship with Indian politics in his films. 

Politics in Sathyajith Ray’s Films-Appu Triology
He was an Indian Bengali filmmaker, wildly regarded as the one of the great filmmaker in 20th century. Ray was born in the city of Culcutta in to a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature. Starting his career as a commercial artist, Ray was drown in to independent film making after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing Vittorio De Sica’s Italian neorealistfilm Bicycle Thieves. During a visit to London, Ray directed 36 film including feature film documentaries and short. He was also fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, calligraphy, music composer, graphic designer and film critic. He authored several short stories and novels primarily. Aimed at fictional characters created by him, he was an honorary degree by Oxford University.

Monday 10 October 2016

Dynamics of Culture and Health: Perceived Behavioural Control and Differences in Smoking Behavior between Arab and Jewish Cardiac Patients in Israel

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are still the leading cause of death in many western countries even though major advances in treatment have contributed to higher rates of surviving cardiac events. It is also evidentthat not all segments of society benefit from the major advances and disparities in CVD rates persist between the majority and ethnic minorities.

Culture and Health
In order to prevent recurrent cardiovascular events, patients are advised to gradually resume their regular life routines while also changing lifestyle habits that are major risk factors for CVD. Smoking (tobaccoaddiction) is the most significant of the modifiable cardiovascular riskfactors; thus smoking cessation is considered a high priority in the management of patients with cardiovascular disease. However, most patients find it difficult to adhere to smoking cessation. Again, Non-adherence to recommended cardiac rehabilitative and preventive actions is particularly higher in patients from minority groups.

Friday 7 October 2016

Health Management Information System (HMIS); who’s Data is it Anyway? Contextual Challenges

In 1997 the Ministry of Health instituted the national HMIS in response to global and national call for greater accountability and results-based management. The goal being to provide timely reliable healthinformation that would inform decision making in the sector to aid provision ofbetter health care services to the people of Uganda. However, there are already concerns about the functionality of the system characterized by late and inadequate reporting. 

Health Management Information System
The purpose of this paper was to make a critical analysis of the contextual challenges to HMIS and propose a framework that would improve the collection of timely reliable data at all levels in the system. Aftercritical analysis of the existing literature, reports and presentation atvarious MOH workshops and review meeting, and interactive informal talks with some personnel at the Ministry, this paper asserts that failure to use HMIS data, poor culture of accountability, lack of incentives for performance, strategic planning and vertical programs-HIV/AIDS are the strategic contextual challenges to this menace.

Thursday 6 October 2016

Insightful Details on How Everything Developed From Nothing

In order to provide true knowledge, explanatory concepts in the social realm must be consistent with scientific observations on the micro-level substances that underlie the reality of the beings whose interactions social theories seek to explain. As a result, there is a need insocial research for a unified theory of the basic physics of social beings thatinvolves the nature of being itself. As pointed out by Omnes, a unified, consistent theory of being that reflects the reality of quantum physics is very important in ontology and philosophy in general.

explanation
However, deep philosophical issues relating to whether social beings represent mere illusions and whether perceptions of such beings are detailed symbolic categorizations of the nature of existence or rough generalizations of the true state of everything are important in all. A major contribution to ensuring such consistency has beenprovided by Leuten , who, using a very diverse cross-section of scientific evidence stemming from over a thousand interdisciplinary sources, explained how everything is composed of various combinations of divided nothingness that evolved from nothing.

Friday 30 September 2016

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is on a Sustainable Trajectory

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is here to stay in its present or slightly modified format. CSR has been stable and growing since the 1960s. CSR has been defined in a multitude of ways over the years. In my ownframework, CSR is defined broadly to encompass the economic, legal, ethical andphilanthropic expectations placed on businesses by society. CSR’s progress in the 2000s may appear to be moderate in light of pressing economic pressures, but it also is contending with competing and complimentary frameworks and socially conscious nomenclature.

Corporate Social Responsibility
Some of the alternative concepts embracing CSR include corporate citizenship, corporate stewardship, business ethics, stakeholder management, conscious capitalism, creating shared value, and sustainability. These concepts represent the principal variations of CSR striving for worldwideattention and adoption. These frameworks are all interrelated and overlapping and are integral to some facet of CSR. Though there are slight nuances in the differing language of each, at heart they are all focusing on business firms helping to improve society and stakeholders while at the same time sustaining their own profitability.

Thursday 29 September 2016

An Analysis of Hominin Cranial Capacity Data Using Simulations

The hominin cranial capacity data was reanalyzed using simulations, which emulated the variability in the estimation of cranial capacity of hominin skulls. First, the data was explored using k-means clustering to establish the presence of two groups in the data. The groups werefurther confirmed by using Hamming distance on the simulated cluster outcomes. Then, the resulting two datasets arising from two groups were used to estimate the confidence limits for the parameter estimates of Henneberg’s double exponential model. 

Hominid Cranial
Through these parameter estimates and their confidence limits it could be seen that two models for two time spans identified by cluster analysis were better than a single model for the full span of time, which the previous authors considered to be the best option. From an analyticalperspective, there are indications for a structural change in cranial capacitygrowth, which is expressed as a rapid increase after a slow growth period. This structural change scenario does not support the rejection of the concept of punctuated equilibrium on the basis of a gradual change based on the double exponential model.

Wednesday 28 September 2016

Nico Carpentier (2011) Media and Participation-A site of ideologicaldemocratic struggle, Intellect: Bristol

This book is composed out of two parts. In the first one, citizens’ participation is discussed in the light of most interesting social theories by author’s choice. Therefore this part represents aninterdisciplinary background overview. As such, it is unavoidably focused on a reduced list of theoretical approaches. Carpetier analyzes participation in frameworks of: spatial planning, social development, arts and museums and communication. 

NicoCarpentier

There is no explanation why these and not others – such as economic, social care, education…contexts aren’t revisited. However, it is true that going further the author could have extended the book endlessly. On the other hand, the impression is that this theoretical overview is adapted to the choice of case studies presented in the second part of the book. It brings toreaders a serial of case studies describing concrete peoples’ attempts toengage in participation. The author treats participation as a structurally unstable concept which, in order to be obtained, demands everyday ideological and political struggle. For, citizens’ participation is the normative token in all models of democracies. But, it is by no means warranted that participation will be exercised in democratic practices.

Tuesday 27 September 2016

What Accounts for the Differences in Suicide Trends Across Countries of the Former Soviet Union?

Suicide is a major public health problem worldwide. The Slavic countries of the former Soviet Union Russia, Ukraine and Belarus retain one of the highest suicide rates in the world, despite a gradual decline over the past decade. Since the early 1980s, suicide mortality in these countrieshas undergone sharp fluctuations. In general, the temporal pattern of suicide mortality fluctuations was similar for three countries: sharp decrease in the mid of 1980s, dramatic increase in the first half of 1990s followed by a decline. 

Suicide Trends
While the trends in suicide mortality have been similar in three countries during the Soviet period, there was significant discrepancy after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In particular, Russia experienced thesharpest suicide mortality fluctuations during anti-alcohol campaign andtransition. In Russia suicide rate jumped dramatically between 1991 and 1994. There was also a spike in suicide mortality between 1999 and 2001 in Russia, which might be explained by the financial crisis in 1998. In Ukraine and Belarus, suicide rates increased steadily up to 1996 and then started to decrease. 

Friday 23 September 2016

Social Institutions, Groups, Relations within the Globalization Context and Society Virtualization

The research of social institutions, groups and relations in globalized world and virtual environments was undertaken in an effort to bring a better understanding and appreciation of modern opportunities to people from around the world. This issue is important because misconceptions and stereotypes about globalized society and virtualization still exist. Like scholars have always done, the authors of the current issue do research that reflect the contemporary human condition.

Social Institutions
We asked researchers from around the world to respond to themes such as, violence in families as a result of society virtualization, ethnic minorities, national independence and its manifestation in modern arts, media texts and virtual galaxies. These themes provide us with a conceptualglimpse into the condition of modern society. The articles of the issue are ideal for the analysis of societies in transition, they are especially suitable for studying postmodern social relations. 

Hunters in a Farmers World: ADHD and Hunter Gatherers

The field of evolutionary psychology has grown significantly in the past two decades. According to Brinkman, evolutionary psychology is one of the fastest growing fields in psychology. It is a theoretical approach topsychology that attempts to explain useful mental and psychological traits—suchas memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, i.e., as the functional products of natural selection. 

Hunter Gatherers
An adaptation is a trait that developed in the course of evolution as a result of the mechanism of natural or sexual selection. These adaptations are transmitted genetically and can be anatomicalor psychological. In the case of psychological adaptations, the selected genes help to form specific circuits in the brain. Thus the behaviours contributing to the most to successful reproduction will be selected. It is of interest that Darwin himself wrote about evolutionary psychology in that he suggested that like any other trait, human mental faculties are the outcome of evolution by natural and sexual selection and suggested these mental faculties should be understood in light of common descent.

Thursday 22 September 2016

Coffee, tea and its relationship with Depression and Anxiety

Tea, Coffee with Depression
To check the role of beverages such as coffee, tea and nescafe on depression and anxiety, a survey was conducted in 1020 beverages consuming high school students in Shiraz, Iran. They were interviewed accordingto DSM-IV (Diagnostic and statistical Manual of mental disorder) and collectedthe data using demograph, further this data was subjected to analyse using SPSS version16, descriptive methods, person correlation and Chisquare tests. From the results it is clear that there is inverse significant relation between bevarages (coffee, tea and nescafe) and depression and anxiety.

Tuesday 20 September 2016

Towards a Credible Forecasting Process for Sustainable User Innovation

The document presents a review of the challenges that arise when forecasting techniques are applied to predict the evolution of sustainable user innovation. It also provides an augmented list of variables that may be used in the process of envisioning the future of lifestyles in Europe. 

Forecasting Process for Sustainable User Innovation
Forecasting any kind of individual and social behaviour requires assembling several elements from different disciplines: from mere technical methodological challenges (choice of model) to substantial theoretical discussions (prediction of outcomes); from data gathering strategies (combination of sources and their reliability) to measurement (Choice of variables used to represent the relevant ideas); from establishing the rules of micro-behaviour of individuals to usingwell established models for individual interactions. 

Monday 19 September 2016

On the Reliability of the Findings of PISA Tests

Knowledge is a hidden variable, and we therefore require a test in order to rank subjects according to their level of knowledge. A test is a battery of questions of varying levels of difficulty. The test results constitute an ordinal variable, since one cannot measure knowledge quantitatively, as one would height or weight. 

PISA Tests
A test can merely rank subjects according to their level of knowledge. It is common practice to rank the success of education systems in various countries according to the average score achieved by students who take a certain international test. An example ofsuch is the PISA test, on which Israel is ranked 29th out of the 33 OECDcountries. Averaging is a valid procedure for a quantitative variable, but not for an ordinal variable, the items of which can only be ranked. Since an ordinal variable can be ranked but not averaged, some of the rankings based on averages are unreliable, because one could have devised an alternative test with questions of a different degree of difficulty that would have altered the ranking of the mean scores.