Search

This paper focuses on exploring the intellectual basis for establishing an academic development program for international doctoral students in social sciences and humanities in Central Europe so as to cultivate a reflective scholarly approach to teaching early on in their academic career. The program conceptions and practices are embedded in the notion that a scholarly approach to teaching integrates the understanding and demonstration of knowledge about teaching and necessitates a continuous learning process about teaching through reflection and through conducting research on teaching in the various disciplines. In particular, taking on board the domains of teaching knowledge which derived from the kinds of reflections on teaching (cf. Kreber & Cranton, 2000; Mezirow, 1991), instructional, pedagogical and curricular knowledge and continuous reflection at the level of content, process as well as premise, are represented in an integrative manner in our overarching program principles and pedagogical strategies. As we see, professionalization of doctoral students' teaching practice in higher education (cf. Lueddeke, 2003) is particularly important in the context of enhanced faculty mobility and internationalization. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to the literature and practice on establishing academic development programs, especially in academic environments with low institutional support for teaching and lack of formal requirements for professional development.

This paper examines the PhD by publication in the humanities and social sciences in US, UK, Canadian and Australian universities. A set of PhDs by publication from each of these countries were collected for the study. The theses were analysed to see to what extent they fitted, or not, with discussions of thesis types described in previous research into the PhD by publication. Interviews with students and supervisors were carried out to investigate the choices that students made in their writing. University rules for the submission of PhDs by publication and related policy documents are also examined. The study found that there seems to be a preference for different types of PhD by publication in each of the countries. In the US they were all prospective PhDs with the work being especially written for the thesis. In the UK, by contrast, retrospective PhDs, the PhD by published work, largely dominate. Canada was similar to the US, at least in the area of study where the data were collected for the paper, Education. In Australia, both prospective and retrospective PhDs were found, although it was the former, the prospective PhD, which dominated.

In April 1951 president Harry S. Truman established the Psychological Strategy Board to enhance and streamline America's sprawling psychological warfare campaign against the USSR. As soon as the Board's staff began work on improving US psychological operations, they wondered how social science might help them achieve their task. Board Director, Gordon Gray, asked physicist turned research administrator Henry Loomis to do a full review of America's social science research program in support of psychological operations. Loomis willingly accepted the task. This paper documents Loomis's investigation into America's social science research program. It uncovers the critical role that government departments had in the creation of research in the early 1950s and thus highlights that the government official is an important actor in the history of social science and the application of social science to psychological operations at the beginning of the Cold War., (© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of highly cited articles published in the Web of Science category "Education and Educational Research" in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). A total of 2091 journal articles published in this category and cited more than 100 times up to the end of the year 2016 were retrieved as highly cited articles. Distributions of highly cited articles per publication year, journals, institutions and countries were analysed, as well as the citation life cycle of the top-cited articles. The USA, its institutions and researchers are the absolute leaders in the category of Education and Educational Research according to the results of the conducted analysis.

This paper outlines the findings from a research project on students' conceptions of learning in a series of international online collaborative seminars that involved partner institutions from Europe and the US. The lead institution was an international, graduate university in Europe. The study was conducted with the aim of exploring the qualitatively different ways in which graduate students conceive of learning in an international, interdisciplinary and multimodal setting. Of the 82 participants in the seminars, 42 students in social sciences and humanities volunteered to be interviewed. The transcripts were analysed using a phenomenographic approach. A hierarchical system of qualitatively different conceptualisations was created; according to which students conceptualised internationalised learning as (1) a process to integrate information, skills and knowledge, (2) international encounters designed to harness diversity of views and (3) an opportunity for interdisciplinary learning. The varying forms of fragmented and cohesive conceptions are also discussed.

In this paper, we present the results of a scoping review in which we examined the scientific literature (2010–2021) on faith-based organizations (FBOs) working within the field of poverty alleviation, focusing on the way studies define and use the term FBO. Fifty-two relevant studies were identified and included. Our research shows that the term FBOs is primarily used in American studies. Moreover, there is no broad consensus on the exact definition or meaning of the term nor on its scope. Because of this lack of consensus and the inherent shortcomings of the term, we suggest to replace the term FBO by the term "religion-based solidarity initiatives" (RSIs), We define RSIs as: "Initiatives that, from a religious inspiration, aim at organizing collective action for and/or providing support or services to people in vulnerable positions." These initiatives can range from small scale ad hoc initiatives till large scale formal organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Quality & Quantity was established in 1967 and in 2017 it completed its half century. The journal is interdisciplinary in nature and it mainly discusses methodological application of mathematics and statistics in the social sciences, particularly sociology, economics, and social psychology. It was created with the idea of advancing methodology of the various social studies. This study looks back journey of the journal from 1967 to 2017 aims to develop a bibliometric analysis of all the publications of the journal. Web of Science Core Collection database is used to collect data. The present study discovered the significant contributions of the journal in terms of impact, topics, authors, universities and countries. Utrecht University of Netherlands is the most productive university. Asian Universities are emerging and growing quickly in the recent years. Although USA leads among the countries but Europe leads among the six supranational regions. Finally, the visualization of similarities viewer software is used to present network visualization of the bibliographic coupling, co-citation, citation, co-authorship and co-occurrence of keywords. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a bibliometric, citation network-based method for assessing the social validation of novel research, and applies this method to the development of high-throughput toxicology research at the US Environmental Protection Agency. Social validation refers to the acceptance of novel research methods by a relevant scientific community; it is formally independent of the technical validation of methods, and is frequently studied in history, philosophy, and social studies of science using qualitative methods. The quantitative methods introduced here find that high-throughput toxicology methods are spread throughout a large and well-connected research community, which suggests high social validation. Further assessment of social validation involving mixed qualitative and quantitative methods are discussed in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christian Smith's paper 'The Incoherence of 'Culture' in American Sociology' is a valuable provocation that can prompt us to reflect on the role of concepts and on the role of agreement on the definition of concepts in scientific research. In this comment paper, I raise questions about Smith's empirical expectation that sociologists should agree on a concept of culture based on debates in the sociology of science. I also suggest that in terms of the future agenda for the sociology of culture, we should distinguish between dialogue and clarification on the one hand, which I agree is needed, and standardization on the other hand, which seems incompatible with open-minded empirical research. Rather than work on agreement on what culture is, we might work on clarifying relevant distinctions among dimensions of culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists, public servants, and patient advocates alike increasingly question the validity of published scientific results, endangering the public’s acceptance of science. Here, I argue that emerging flaws in the integrity of the peer review system are largely responsible. Distortions in peer review are driven by economic forces and enabled by a lack of accountability of journals, editors, and authors. One approach to restoring trust in the validity of published results may be to establish basic rules that render peer review more transparent, such as publishing the reviews (a practice already embraced by some journals) and monitoring not only the track records of authors but also of editors and journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I intend to explore the role played by reflexivity in grounding a more critical perspective when designing, implementing and analysing participatory digital media research. To carry out this methodological reflection, I will present and discuss a recently concluded research project on young people's game-making in an after-school programme targeting Latin American migrants in London/UK. I will pay special attention to how my subjectivities influenced planning, data generation and analysis of this programme, and to how context, lived experiences, curricular decisions and interpersonal relationships shaped the kinds of knowledge produced through this research. Findings emerging from this experience included relevant dissonances between curricular design/decisions and the use of participatory approaches in game-making, and the limitations of traditional analytical categories within the Social Sciences field (e.g., gender and intersectionality) to understanding subjectivities expressed through game-making. This study offers relevant insights into the place of reflexivity in research on digital media production by young people by highlighting its complexity and by calling for more critical and less homogenising approaches to this type of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline is relatively new and almost entirely dominated by Western sources of knowledge. Its biased nature undermines its capacity to understand, explain and predict events in the non-Western part of the world. With the increasing effort to explore non-Western IR and diversify the sources of knowledge of the discipline, Islam has emerged as an essential source of interest, not necessarily as a reflection of the East–West dichotomy or non-Western versus Western discourse, but rather as an approach that has its own rules, concepts and perspectives on IR. In this sense, the article contributes to the increasing discussions on the interaction between Islam and IR. It critically engages with three levels of discourse: first, IR in Islam; second, Islam in contemporary IR; and, third, Islam as an IR theory or as a paradigm. The paper attempts to address the question of why there are no modern Islamic IR theories by exploring reasons related to Muslims as well as to the nature of the current system and Western hegemony. It concludes by introducing an initial model and two paths (traditional and revolutionary) that might help mitigate this situation in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1950s, the number of doctorate recipients has risen dramatically in the United States. In this paper, we investigate whether the longevity of doctorate recipients’ publication careers has changed. This is achieved by matching 1951–2010 doctorate recipients with rare names in astrophysics, chemistry, economics, genetics and psychology in the dissertation database ProQuest to their publications in the publication database Web of Science. Our study shows that pre-PhD publication careers have changed: the median year of first publication has shifted from after the PhD to several years before PhD in most of the studied fields. In contrast, post-PhD publication career spans have not changed much in most fields. The share of doctorate recipients who have published for more than twenty years has remained stable over time; the shares of doctorate recipients publishing for shorter periods also remained almost unchanged. Thus, though there have been changes in pre-PhD publication careers, post-PhD career spans remained quite stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Based on single cross-sectional data, prior research finds evidence of “transportation assimilation” among U.S. immigrants: the length of stay in the U.S. is negatively correlated with public transit use. This paper revisits this question by using repeated cross-sectional data, and examines the trend of transportation assimilation over time. Methods and results: Using 1980, 1990, 2000 1% census and 2010 (1%) American Community Survey, I examine the relationship between the length of stay in the U.S. and public transit ridership among immigrants. I first run regressions separately in four data sets: I regress public transit ridership on the length of stay, controlling for other individual and geographic variables. I then compare the magnitudes of the relationship in four regressions. To study how the rate of transportation assimilation changes over time, I pool the data set and regress public transit ridership on the length of stay and its interactions with year dummies to compare the coefficients across surveys. Results confirm the conclusion of transportation assimilation: as the length of stay in the U.S. increases, an immigrant’s public transit use decreases. However, the repeated cross-section analysis suggests the assimilation rate has been decreasing in the past few decades. Conclusions: This paper finds evidence of transportation assimilation: immigrants become less likely to ride public transit as the length of stay in the U.S. increases. The assimilation rate, however, has been decreasing over time. This paper finds that the rate of public transit ridership among new immigrants upon arrival, the geographic distribution of immigrants, and the changing demographics of the U.S. immigrants play roles in affecting the trend of transportation assimilation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a new wave of interest in the inequality of income and wealth in the social sciences as well as in physics. On the top of the list are persons who own assets of US dollar 1 billion and more. Not much is known quantitatively of the distribution of these persons among countries. In this paper, it is analyzed empirically whether more capitalistic countries, as measured by index variables of economic freedom, exhibit a systematically larger number of billionaires in the year 2012 than less capitalistic countries. The main result is that the typical economic freedom indicators do not play a statistically significant role with respect to the number and wealth of billionaires, except the protection of property rights. In addition to that, according to further empirical results of the paper, billionaires may not be economically harmful for the respective countries as their existence, number and wealth is positively correlated with the GDP per head. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual design, learning sciences, and nanotechnology may be strange bedfellows; yet, as this paper highlights, peer interaction between a designer and a scientist is an effective method for helping scientists acquire visual design skills. We describe our findings from observing twelve sessions at the Design Help Desk, a tutoring center at the University of Washington. At each session, a scientist (who is expert in his own domain but a novice in design) consulted a designer (who is expert in design but a novice in science) in order to receive advice and guidance on how to improve a scientific visualization. At the Design Help Desk, this pairing consistently produced a momentary disequilibrium in the scientist’s thought process: a disequilibrium that led to agency (where the scientist gained ownership of his/her own learning) and conceptual change in the scientist’s understanding of visual design. Scientists who visited the Design Help Desk were satisfied with their experience, and their published work demonstrated an improved ability to visually communicate research findings—a skill critical to the advancement of science. To our knowledge, the Design Help Desk is a unique effort to educate scientists in visual design; we are not aware of any other design-advice/tutoring centers at public or private universities in the United States or abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to produce timely and accurate flu forecasts in the United States can significantly impact public health. Augmenting forecasts with internet data has shown promise for improving forecast accuracy and timeliness in controlled settings, but results in practice are less convincing, as models augmented with internet data have not consistently outperformed models without internet data. In this paper, we perform a controlled experiment, taking into account data backfill, to improve clarity on the benefits and limitations of augmenting an already good flu forecasting model with internet-based nowcasts. Our results show that a good flu forecasting model can benefit from the augmentation of internet-based nowcasts in practice for all considered public health-relevant forecasting targets. The degree of forecast improvement due to nowcasting, however, is uneven across forecasting targets, with short-term forecasting targets seeing the largest improvements and seasonal targets such as the peak timing and intensity seeing relatively marginal improvements. The uneven forecasting improvements across targets hold even when “perfect” nowcasts are used. These findings suggest that further improvements to flu forecasting, particularly seasonal targets, will need to derive from other, non-nowcasting approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem Statement: There is a need to increase diversity among both researchers and participants in the area of HIV scholarship. The Mid-Atlantic Center for AIDS Research Consortium (MACC) Scholars Program was developed to promote diversity among HIV-related researchers and participants., Approach: Four Scholars were provided with mentorship from senior investigators at Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Each Scholar was awarded a grant to develop a pilot study on a topic related to HIV-prevention, treatment, or care. The paper will describe the benefits of the program, challenges that Scholars faced in their projects, and areas for growth of the program from the perspective of the Scholars., Findings: The Scholars unanimously agreed that the program was essential for gathering pilot data and for receiving practical training in grantsmanship and writing. For challenges, each Scholar encountered unanticipated delays in regulatory approval, resulting in a lag of project start-up. As an indication of the success of the program, Scholars reported on their productivity for grantsmanship, scientific publications, and grantsmanship over the first year of the program. Finally, the Scholars offered several suggestions for continuing to improve the MACC Program for future cohorts., Conclusion: The Scholars perceived the inaugural year of the MACC Scholars Program as extremely helpful and productive. Ongoing efforts should be made to continue to promote the development of diverse junior scientists in HIV research.

Although substantial attention has focused on efforts by the new Administration to block environmental policies, climate politics have been contentious in the US since well before the election of Donald Trump. In this paper, we extend previous work on empirical examinations of echo chambers in US climate politics using new data collected on the federal climate policy network in summer 2016. We test for the similarity and differences at two points in time in homophily and echo chambers using Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM) to compare new findings from 2016 to previous work on data from 2010. We show that echo chambers continue to play a significant role in the network of information exchange among policy elites working on the issue of climate change. In contrast to previous findings where echo chambers centered on a binding international commitment to emission reductions, we find that the pre-existing echo chambers have almost completely disappeared and new structures have formed around one of the main components of the Obama Administration’s national climate policy: the Clean Power Plan. These results provide empirical evidence that science communication and policymaking at the elite level shift in relation to the policy instruments under consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of interest among sociologists in the works of Talcott Parsons over the last several decades has been driven in substantial respects by a belief that he was personally conservative in his political views and that his theoretical formulations were rigidly tied to a conservative view of social order. The present paper reviews Parsons' major political involvements through the course of his career from his student days through the last decade of his life. The review demonstrates that Parsons was a typical academic liberal of his time and that his liberalism was expressed especially in several major applied essays. In the 1930s, he was an early and active opponent of Nazism. During World War II, he taught professionals to administer occupied territories and nations effectively. After the war, he advocated for government support of the social sciences, citing the important contributions they had made to the war effort. In the 1950s, he wrote a famous critical analysis of the Joseph McCarthy movement in American politics. In the 1960s, he contributed supportive essays to the Civil Rights movement. Later in the decade and in the 1970s, he contributed to the protection of academic freedoms while also proposing accommodations to the demands of the student movement for more "relevant" teaching and greater participation in university governance. Throughout his career, he taught and worked closely with students of various political views and sought to protect their rights of freedom of political expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encouraging knowledge flow between mutually relevant disciplines is a worthy aim of research policy makers. Yet, it is less clear what types of research promote cross-disciplinary knowledge flow and whether such research generates particularly influential knowledge. Empirical questions remain as to how to identify knowledge-flow mediating research and how to provide support for this research. This study contributes to addressing these gaps by proposing a new way to identify knowledge-flow mediating research at the individual research article level, instead of at more aggregated levels. We identify journal articles that link two mutually relevant disciplines in three ways—aggregating, bridging, and diffusing. We then examine the likelihood that these papers receive subsequent citations or have funding acknowledgments. Our case study of cognitive science and educational research knowledge flow suggests that articles that aggregate knowledge from multiple disciplines are cited significantly more often than are those whose references are drawn primarily from a single discipline. Interestingly, the articles that meet the criteria for being considered knowledge-flow mediators are less likely to reflect funding, based on reported acknowledgements, than were those that did not meet these criteria. Based on these findings, we draw implications for research policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While basic access to clean water is critical, another important issue is the affordability of water access for people around the globe. Prior international work has highlighted that a large proportion of consumers could not afford water if priced at full cost recovery levels. Given growing concern about affordability issues due to rising water rates, and a comparative lack of work on affordability in the developed world, as compared to the developing world, more work is needed in developed countries to understand the extent of this issue in terms of the number of households and persons impacted. To address this need, this paper assesses potential affordability issues for households in the United States using the U.S. EPA’s 4.5% affordability criteria for combined water and wastewater services. Analytical results from this paper highlight high-risk and at-risk households for water poverty or unaffordable water services. Many of these households are clustered in pockets of water poverty within counties, which is a concern for individual utility providers servicing a large proportion of customers with a financial inability to pay for water services. Results also highlight that while water rates remain comparatively affordable for many U.S. households, this trend will not continue in the future. If water rates rise at projected amounts over the next five years, conservative projections estimate that the percentage of U.S. households who will find water bills unaffordable could triple from 11.9% to 35.6%. This is a concern due to the cascading economic impacts associated with widespread affordability issues; these issues mean that utility providers could have fewer customers over which to spread the large fixed costs of water service. Unaffordable water bills also impact customers for whom water services are affordable via higher water rates to recover the costs of services that go unpaid by lower income households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite significant progress in research on the treatment and prevention of psychological, behavioral, and health problems, the translation of this knowledge into population-wide benefit remains limited. This paper reviews the state of America's children and families, highlighting the influence of stressful contextual and social conditions on child and family well-being and the concentration of disadvantage in numerous neighborhoods and communities throughout the nation. It then briefly reviews the progress that has been made in pinpointing policies that can reduce stressful contextual conditions such as poverty, discrimination, and the marketing of unhealthful foods and substances. It also describes numerous family and school interventions that have proven benefit in preventing psychological and behavioral problems as diverse as tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use; depression; antisocial behavior; academic failure; obesity prevention; and early childbearing. We argue that progress in translating existing knowledge into widespread benefit will require a nationwide effort to intervene comprehensively in neighborhoods and communities of concentrated disadvantage. We present a strategic plan for how such an effort could be organized. The first step in this organizing would be the creation of a broad and diverse coalition of organizations concerned with advancing public health and well-being. Such a coalition could increase public support both for the policies needed to focus on these disadvantaged areas and the research needed to incrementally improve our ability to help these areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Confronted by a number of home-grown Islamic terrorist attacks, many Americans incorrectly assume that Muslim religiosity correlates with anti-American values and that the American mosque is the center of radical socialization efforts. This paper examines the nature of the relationship between mosque involvement and political engagement. It finds that mosque attendance is positively associated with political engagement only when the attendance engages congregants in ways beyond religious ritual. Attending mosque to pray does not significantly impact political identities or engagement like following politics, registering to vote, voting, or party membership, while participation in other social or religious activities at a mosque is associated with an increased probability of engagement. These results suggest that not all mosque involvement is equally beneficial for promoting political engagement and that religious participation must proactively engage with the social lives of the congregants to have a substantive political effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on coupled networks, taking node load, capacity and load redistribution between two networks into consideration, we propose functionally identical coupled networks, which consist of two networks connected by interlinks. Functionally identical coupled networks are derived from the power grid of the United States, which consists of many independent grids. Many power transmission lines are planned to interconnect those grids and, therefore, the study of the robustness of functionally identical coupled networks becomes important. In this paper, we find that functionally identical coupled networks are more robust than single networks under random attack. By studying the effect of the broadness and average degree of the degree distribution on the robustness of the network, we find that a broader degree distribution and a higher average degree increase the robustness of functionally identical coupled networks under random failure. And SF-SF (two coupled scale-free networks) is more robust than ER-ER (two coupled random networks) or SF-ER (coupled random network and scale-free network). This research is useful to construct robust functionally identical coupled networks such as two cooperative power grids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social science research on polio has been centred in the global south, where countries that remain endemic or vulnerable to outbreaks are located. However, closely-related strains of poliovirus were detected in the sewage systems of several New York State counties and London boroughs in 2022. These detections constituted the first encounters with polio in the United States and United Kingdom for a generation – for both public health agencies and publics alike. This paper takes the transnational spread of poliovirus in 2022 as an opportunity to critique how public health memories of twentieth-century polio epidemics were mobilised to encourage vaccine uptake among groups considered vulnerable to transmission, notably Orthodox Jewish families. The study integrates data collected in London and New York as part of academic engagement with health protection responses to the spread of polio. Methods in both settings involved ethnographic research, and a total of 59 in-depth semi-structured interviews with public health professionals, healthcare providers, and Orthodox Jewish community partners and residents. Analysis of results demonstrate that narratives of epidemiological progress were deployed in public health responses in London and New York, often through references to sugar cubes, iron lungs, and timelines that narrate the impact of routine childhood immunisations. While memories of polio were deployed in both settings to provoke an urgency to vaccinate, vulnerable publics instead considered the more recent legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic when deciding whether to trust recommendations and responses. Critical attention to memory places analysis on the divergences between institutional (public health agencies) and peopled (publics) responses to disease events. Responses to re-emerging infectious disease outbreaks engender a temporal dissonance when historical narratives are evoked in ways that contrast with the contemporary dilemmas of people and parents. • Memories of past polio outbreaks were deployed to encourage vaccination in 2022. • Vulnerable publics were instead concerned with the legacy of Covid-19 mis/management. • Memory provokes diverging concerns for public health agencies and communities. • Learning from community experiences of outbreaks may inform engagement strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To review the research literature on cultural safety education within post-secondary health science programs., Methods: We conducted health and social science database searches from 1996-2016, using combined keywords: cultural competence or safety; teaching or curriculum; universities, polytechnics or professional programs; and Aboriginal or Indigenous. In dyads, authors selected, and reviewed studies independently followed by discussion and consensus to identify thematic linkages of major findings., Results: A total of 1583 abstracts and 122 full-text articles were reviewed with 40 selected for final inclusion. Publications from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States described curriculum development and delivery. A variety of evaluation approaches were used including anecdotal reports, focus groups, interviews, course evaluations, reflective journals, pre-post surveys, critical reflective papers, and exam questions. Duration and depth of curricular exposure ranged from one day to integration across a six-year program.  Changes in student knowledge, attitude, self-confidence, and behaviour when working with Indigenous populations were reported. Cultural safety education and application to practice were shown to be linked to improved relationships, healthier outcomes, and increased number of Indigenous people entering health education programs and graduates interested in working in diverse communities., Conclusions: This review provides a summary of multidisciplinary didactic and experiential instructional approaches to cultural safety education and the impact on students, educators and Indigenous people.  Institutional support, strategic planning and cultural safety curriculum policy within post-secondary settings and community engagement are imperative for positive student experiences, advocacy, and actions toward health equity and improved health for Indigenous people and communities.

While road safety in the United States (U.S.) has been continually improving since the 1970's, there are indications that these improvements are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. Strategic Highway Safety Plans (SHSPs) are prepared by States to guide road safety management, however assessing the appropriateness of these plans remains a significant challenge, especially for the future in which they are to be applied. This study developed a new methodology to assess SHSPs from the perspectives of comprehensive system-based safety management and relevant future issues that can be applied before SHSPs are implemented, thereby avoiding long periods after implementation before assessing the appropriateness of the plans. A rating scale was developed and applied to assess 48 U.S. SHSPs against two key criteria: 1. a comprehensive framework for road safety, and 2. the anticipated changing, difficult and unpredictable nature of future transport and its context. The analysis concluded that current SHSPs have good national oversight with several strengths but were weak in some areas of content and did not address future challenges. Improvements are suggested to strengthen the plans’ thoroughness by being consistent with systems theory and practice, as well as ways that these SHSPs can be more resilient to future circumstances. Implementing the recommendations in this paper provides the opportunity to adopt a system-based safety management practice that has been successful in other hazardous industries. Doing so is expected to most efficiently and effectively continue the recent improvements to road safety, which is likely to be increasingly difficult otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There have been growing recommendations to include education in multi-disciplinary interventions targeting chronic pain management. However, effects of this strategy on short- and long-term self-management of chronic pain, remain largely unexplored. Objectives: 1. To provide an updated overview of studies that report on the impact of patient education in multi-disciplinary interventions, on self-management of chronic pain; 2. To explore associations between education and chronic pain self-management techniques; and 3. To identify the format and duration of suitable chronic pain interventions targeted at patient self-management. Methods: Design: Narrative systematic literature review of randomised or controlled study designs. Data Sources: PubMed, CINAHL, EMBASE, PsycINFO. Participants: Adult patients with chronic pain of any aetiology participating in multi-disciplinary programs that included education. Main outcome measures: Assessments of level of pain, function, quality of life, self-efficacy, self-management, and any other relevant assessments. Study Appraisal and Synthesis Methods: PRISMA guidelines, Cochrane Risk of Bias tool, and TIDieR model. Results: Database searching identified 485 potential papers. After removal of duplicates, and irrelevant articles by title and abstract, 120 full-text articles were reviewed and 27 studies were included in this systematic review. Studies were predominantly from the United States (n = 8; 29.6%). Over one hundred outcome measures were identified across all studies, with significant variation also observed in terms of how chronic pain duration was defined, and how education was delivered to participants. Overall, positive benefits of education were reported. Conclusions: Education, as part of multi-disciplinary programs, is likely to improve self-management and self-efficacy in people with chronic pain of any aetiology. Heterogeneity in terms of: chronic pain duration; educational resources; healthcare professionals; and outcome measures, were identified as limitations. Further research, in the form of Randomised Controlled Trials addressing these limitations, is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prophylactic interventions such as vaccine allocation are some of the most effective public health policy planning tools. The supply of vaccines, however, is limited and an important challenge is to optimally allocate the vaccines to minimize epidemic impact. This resource allocation question (which we refer to as VID) has multiple dimensions: when, where, to whom, etc. Most of the existing literature in this topic deals with the latter (to whom), proposing policies that prioritize individuals by age and disease risk. However, since seasonal influenza spread has a typical spatial trend, and due to the temporal constraints enforced by the availability schedule, the when and where problems become equally, if not more, relevant. In this paper, we study the VID problem in the context of seasonal influenza spread in the United States. We develop a national scale metapopulation model for influenza that integrates both short and long distance human mobility, along with realistic data on vaccine uptake. We also design GA, a greedy algorithm for allocating the vaccine supply at the state level under temporal constraints and show that such a strategy improves over the current baseline of pro-rata allocation, and the improvement is more pronounced for higher vaccine efficacy and moderate flu season intensity. Further, the resulting strategy resembles a ring vaccination applied spatiallyacross the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Ciencias de la Salud is the property of Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Senora del Rosario and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Addressing critical global health issues, such as antimicrobial resistance, infectious disease outbreaks, and natural disasters, requires strong coordination and management across sectors. The One Health approach is the integrative effort of multiple sectors working to attain optimal health for people, animals, and the environment, and is increasingly recognized by experts as a means to address complex challenges. However, practical application of the One Health approach has been challenging. The One Health Systems Mapping and Analysis Resource Toolkit (OH-SMART) introduced in this paper was designed using a multistage prototyping process to support systematic improvement in multi-sectoral coordination and collaboration to better address complex health concerns through an operational, stepwise, and practical One Health approach. To date, OH-SMART has been used to strengthen One Health systems in 17 countries and has been deployed to revise emergency response frameworks, improve antimicrobial resistance national action plans and create multi agency infectious disease collaboration protocols. OH-SMART has proven to be user friendly, robust, and capable of fostering multi-sectoral collaboration and complex system-wide problem solving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Lung cancer is the most common type of cancer around the world, and it represents the main cause of death in the USA. Surgical treatment is the optimal therapeutic strategy for resectable non-small cell lung cancer. The principal factor for long-term survival after complete resection is the anatomic extension of the neoplasm. However, other factors also have adverse effects on operative mortality, and influence long-term outcome. In this paper we propose an algorithmic solution for the estimation of 5-years survival rate in lung cancer patients undertaking pulmonary resection. Materials and methods: We address the issue of survival analysis through decision-making techniques based on fuzzy and soft set theories. We develop an expert system based on clinical and functional data of lung cancer resections in patients with cancer that can be used to predict the survival of patients. Results: The evaluation of surgical risk in patients undertaking pulmonary resection is a primary target for thoracic surgeons. Lung cancer survival is influenced by many factors. The computational performance of our algorithm is critically analyzed by an experimental study. The correct survival classification is achieved with an accuracy of 79.0%. Our novel soft-set based criterion is an effective and precise diagnosis application for the determination of the survival rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that mechanisms are crucially important to differentiate between genuine and spurious causal relations is ubiquitous both in the philosophical and in the social scientific literature. Yet philosophers of the social sciences have seldom attempted to spell out systematically the way in which mechanistic reasoning or evidence are concretely used to deal with spurious association and the problem of confounders in the social sciences. In this paper, we analyze two recent such accounts, proposed by Harold Kincaid and Daniel Steel. We show how these two accounts radically differ in their notion of mechanism (a process account, and a complex system account, respectively), and how this ultimately impacts in the way in which they understand the inferential role of mechanisms in the social sciences. We then confront both accounts with the details of a well-known controversy around the purportedly causal association between the legalization of abortion and the subsequent fall in criminality in the United States. We show the limitations of both accounts in representing accurately the role of mechanistic evidence and hypotheses in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are public officials more responsive to requests from affluent or poor constituents? A growing body of evidence suggests that lawmakers are more responsive to the rich when they craft policy. However, some scholars theorize that officials also exhibit a corresponding bias in favor of the poor when they handle casework, essentially giving policy to the rich and services to the poor. In this paper, we test this casework prediction using four experiments in which confederates sent simple requests to state or local officials. In each, our confederates’ reported social classes were randomly assigned and signaled with a brief introductory statement mentioning the sender’s occupation or economic situation. Across our samples, we find precisely-estimated null effects of social class biases: the officials we studied were equally likely to respond regardless of the constituent’s class. These findings raise doubts about whether casework is really a class-biased process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residential segregation by race and income are enduring features of urban America. Understanding the effects of residential segregation on educational attainment, labor market outcomes, criminal activity, and other outcomes has been a leading project of the social sciences for over half a century. This paper describes techniques for measuring the effects of neighborhood of residence on long-run life outcomes. ( JEL C51, I24, J15, K42, R23) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on recent contributions inferring financial interconnectedness from market data, our paper provides new insights on the evolution of the US financial industry over a long period of time by using several tools coming from network science. Relying on a Time-Varying Parameter Vector AutoRegressive (TVP-VAR) approach on stock market returns to retrieve unobserved directed links among financial institutions, we reconstruct a fully dynamic network in the sense that connections are let to evolve through time. The financial system analysed consists of a large set of 155 financial institutions that are all the banks, broker-dealers, insurance and real estate companies listed in the Standard & Poors’ 500 index over the 1993–2014 period. Looking alternatively at the individual, then sector-, community- and system-wide levels, we show that network sciences’ tools are able to support well-known features of the financial markets such as the dramatic fall of connectivity following Lehman Brothers’ collapse. More importantly, by means of less traditional metrics, such as sectoral interface or measurements based on contagion processes, our results document the co-existence of both fragmentation and integration phases between firms independently from the sectors they belong to, and doing so, question the relevance of existing macroprudential surveillance frameworks which have been mostly developed on a sectoral basis. Overall, our results improve our understanding of the US financial landscape and may have important implications for risk monitoring as well as macroprudential policy design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Concerns about reproducibility and impact of research urge improvement initiatives. Current university ranking systems evaluate and compare universities on measures of academic and research performance. Although often useful for marketing purposes, the value of ranking systems when examining quality and outcomes is unclear. The purpose of this study was to evaluate usefulness of ranking systems and identify opportunities to support research quality and performance improvement. Methods: A systematic review of university ranking systems was conducted to investigate research performance and academic quality measures. Eligibility requirements included: inclusion of at least 100 doctoral granting institutions, be currently produced on an ongoing basis and include both global and US universities, publish rank calculation methodology in English and independently calculate ranks. Ranking systems must also include some measures of research outcomes. Indicators were abstracted and contrasted with basic quality improvement requirements. Exploration of aggregation methods, validity of research and academic quality indicators, and suitability for quality improvement within ranking systems were also conducted. Results: A total of 24 ranking systems were identified and 13 eligible ranking systems were evaluated. Six of the 13 rankings are 100% focused on research performance. For those reporting weighting, 76% of the total ranks are attributed to research indicators, with 24% attributed to academic or teaching quality. Seven systems rely on reputation surveys and/or faculty and alumni awards. Rankings influence academic choice yet research performance measures are the most weighted indicators. There are no generally accepted academic quality indicators in ranking systems. Discussion: No single ranking system provides a comprehensive evaluation of research and academic quality. Utilizing a combined approach of the Leiden, Thomson Reuters Most Innovative Universities, and the SCImago ranking systems may provide institutions with a more effective feedback for research improvement. Rankings which extensively rely on subjective reputation and “luxury” indicators, such as award winning faculty or alumni who are high ranking executives, are not well suited for academic or research performance improvement initiatives. Future efforts should better explore measurement of the university research performance through comprehensive and standardized indicators. This paper could serve as a general literature citation when one or more of university ranking systems are used in efforts to improve academic prominence and research performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: As gentrification continues in New York City as well as other urban areas, residents of lower socioeconomic status maybe at higher risk for residential displacement. Yet, there have been few quantitative assessments of the health impacts of displacement. The objective of this paper is to assess the association between displacement and healthcare access and mental health among the original residents of gentrifying neighborhoods in New York City. Methods: We used 2 data sources: 1) 2005–2014 American Community Surveys to identify gentrifying neighborhoods in New York City, and 2) 2006–2014 Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System. Our cohort included 12,882 residents of gentrifying neighborhoods in 2006 who had records of emergency department visits or hospitalization at least once every 2 years in 2006–2014. Rates of emergency department visits and hospitalizations post-baseline were compared between residents who were displaced and those who remained. Results: During 2006–2014, 23% were displaced. Compared with those who remained, displaced residents were more likely to make emergency department visits and experience hospitalizations, mainly due to mental health (Rate Ratio = 1.8, 95% confidence interval = 1.5, 2.2), after controlling for baseline demographics, health status, healthcare utilization, residential movement, and the neighborhood of residence in 2006. Conclusions: These findings suggest negative impacts of displacement on healthcare access and mental health, particularly among adults living in urban areas and with a history of frequent emergency department visits or hospitalizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 40 years, the 1976 US Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was revised under the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. Its original goals of protecting the public from hazardous chemicals were hindered by complex and cumbersome administrative burdens, data limitations, vulnerabilities in risk assessments, and recurring corporate lawsuits. As a result, countless chemicals were entered into commercial use without toxicological information. Few chemicals of the many identified as potential public health threats were regulated or banned. This paper explores the factors that have worked against a comprehensive and rational policy for regulating toxic chemicals and discusses whether the TSCA revisions offer greater public protection against existing and new chemicals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fish consumption in Mexico is considered low (around 12 kg per person per year) and non-homogeneously distributed across the country. One of the reasons for this situation is the scarcity of wholesale selling sites. In this context, the Mercado del Mar (MM), located in Guadalajara city, Jalisco, is the second biggest wholesale fish market in Mexico, with a distribution of about 500 tons per day and a variety of about 350 different species of fish. In this paper, we argue that MM has accumulated social capital, which is formed from two main resources: buyer and seller relationships, and reputation. Specifically, the MM manages a broad and intensive interaction among business actors and the already achieved reputation allows the MM to adapt to market changes. To validate our hypotheses, an empirical study was conducted in 2015 by means of interviews to fish wholesalers in the MM and a sample of their suppliers and buyers. For simplicity we have only considered fresh water fish. We have followed snow-ball sampling as the survey strategy. Results show that the MM has responded to fish market dynamics organizing a complex network of buyers and suppliers whose relationships can be explained in the form of strong and weak ties. At the same time, reputation has been the central resource to build this social capital and also gives place to market transactions. Additionally, the strategic position of Guadalajara city and the well-connected routes have facilitated fish bulking and distribution in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After decades-old efforts to nudge consumers towards healthier lifestyles through dietary guidelines, diet-related diseases are on the rise. In addition, a growing share of U.S. consumers proactively chooses nutritional supplements as an alternative preventative way of maintaining good health, a $25.5 billion industry in the United States. This paper investigates possible linkages between the economics of consumer supplement choices and the relationship to important dietary and health outcomes. We use National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data to estimate the impact of nutritional supplements intake on respondent’s body weight outcomes, controlling for diet quality.: The focus of this article is to determine whether nutritional supplements takers differ from non-takers with regard to their health outcomes when controlling for differences in diet quality, based on individual Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2010) score. The analysis applies treatment effects estimators that account for the selection bias and endogeneity of self-reported behavior and diet-health outcomes. The analysis demonstrates a negative association between supplement intake and BMI but no significant effect on an individual’s diet quality. Our findings suggest that individuals proactively invest into their health by taking nutritional supplements instead of improving diet quality through more nutritious food choices. Our results provide important contributions to the literature on a key food policy issue. Knowledge of the determinants of supplement demand in the context of strong diet-health trends should also be helpful to stakeholders in the U.S. produce sector in their competition over consumer market share. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Heroin use in the United States has reached epidemic proportions. The objective of this paper is to estimate the annual societal cost of heroin use disorder in the United States in 2015 US dollars. Methods: An analytic model was created that included incarceration and crime; treatment for heroin use disorder; chronic infectious diseases (HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and Tuberculosis) and their treatments; treatment of neonatal abstinence syndrome; lost productivity; and death by heroin overdose. Results: Using literature-based estimates to populate the model, the cost of heroin use disorder was estimated to be $51.2 billion in 2015 US dollars ($50,799 per heroin user). One-way sensitivity analyses showed that overall cost estimates were sensitive to the number of heroin users, cost of HCV treatment, and cost of incarcerating heroin users. Conclusion: The annual cost of heroin use disorder to society in the United States emphasizes the need for sustained investment in healthcare and non-healthcare related strategies that reduce the likelihood of abuse and provide care and support for users to overcome the disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an extraordinary burden placed upon the healthcare system and people as a result of health disparities that exist within the United States. If there is going to be a concerted effort to develop innovative strategies to reduce health disparities, input from the community and behavioral scientists can and should be included in this approach and narrative. Grant writing provides one vehicle to express the narrative and to provide a means to fund research and programs within clinic-based and community settings. This paper describes a four-step inquiry process to guide healthcare professionals with varying degrees of clinical and scholarship interests through the grant writing process. They include: (1) Why write grants (motivations), (2) what is the area of focus? (Interests), (3) whom should be on the project? (partnerships), and (4) what needs to happen next to move the idea forward? (actions) The complexity of psychosocial issues means that behavioral science is well suited to develop both hypotheses-driven and phenomenological research to understand bio-psycho-social health issues. Grant writing does not need to be mysterious or daunting. It can provide a means to an end, not only to fund research but also as a means to an end of health disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we extend some usual techniques of classification resulting from a large-scale data-mining and network approach. This new technology, which in particular is designed to be suitable to big data, is used to construct an open consolidated database from raw data on 4 million patents taken from the US patent office from 1976 onward. To build the pattern network, not only do we look at each patent title, but we also examine their full abstract and extract the relevant keywords accordingly. We refer to this classification as semantic approach in contrast with the more common technological approach which consists in taking the topology when considering US Patent office technological classes. Moreover, we document that both approaches have highly different topological measures and strong statistical evidence that they feature a different model. This suggests that our method is a useful tool to extract endogenous information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Economic inequality in the United States is extreme, but little is known about the national origin of affluent households. Households in the top one percent by total wealth own vastly disproportionate quantities of household assets and have correspondingly high levels of economic, social, and political influence. The overrepresentation of white natives (i.e., those born in the U.S.) among high-wealth households is well-documented, but changing migration dynamics suggest that a growing portion of top households may be immigrants. Methods: Because no single survey dataset contains top wealth holders and data about country of origin, this paper uses two publicly-available data sets: the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Multiple imputation is used to impute country of birth from the SIPP into the SCF. Descriptive statistics are used to demonstrate reliability of the method, to estimate the prevalence of immigrants among top wealth holders, and to document patterns of asset ownership among affluent immigrants. Results: Significant numbers of top wealth holders who are usually classified as white natives may be immigrants. Many top wealth holders appear to be European and Canadian immigrants, and increasing numbers of top wealth holders are likely from Asia and Latin America as well. Results suggest that of those in the top one percent of wealth holders, approximately 3% are European and Canadian immigrants, .5% are from Mexico or Cuban, and 1.7% are from Asia (especially Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, and India). Ownership of key assets varies considerably across affluent immigrant groups. Conclusion: Although the percentage of top wealth holders who are immigrants is relatively small, these percentages represent large numbers of households with considerable resources and corresponding social and political influence. Evidence that the propensity to allocate wealth to real and financial assets varies across immigrant groups suggests that wealth ownership is more global than previous research suggests and that immigrant groups are likely to become more prevalent in top wealth positions in the U.S. As the representation of immigrants in top wealth positions grows, their economic, social, and political influence is likely to increase as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many US biomedical PhD programs receive more applications for admissions than they can accept each year, necessitating a selective admissions process. Typical selection criteria include standardized test scores, undergraduate grade point average, letters of recommendation, a resume and/or personal statement highlighting relevant research or professional experience, and feedback from interviews with training faculty. Admissions decisions are often founded on assumptions that these application components correlate with research success in graduate school, but these assumptions have not been rigorously tested. We sought to determine if any application components were predictive of student productivity measured by first-author student publications and time to degree completion. We collected productivity metrics for graduate students who entered the umbrella first-year biomedical PhD program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2008–2010 and analyzed components of their admissions applications. We found no correlations of test scores, grades, amount of previous research experience, or faculty interview ratings with high or low productivity among those applicants who were admitted and chose to matriculate at UNC. In contrast, ratings from recommendation letter writers were significantly stronger for students who published multiple first-author papers in graduate school than for those who published no first-author papers during the same timeframe. We conclude that the most commonly used standardized test (the general GRE) is a particularly ineffective predictive tool, but that qualitative assessments by previous mentors are more likely to identify students who will succeed in biomedical graduate research. Based on these results, we conclude that admissions committees should avoid over-reliance on any single component of the application and de-emphasize metrics that are minimally predictive of student productivity. We recommend continual tracking of desired training outcomes combined with retrospective analysis of admissions practices to guide both application requirements and holistic application review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Policies designed to restrict marketing, access to, and public use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are increasingly under debate in various jurisdictions in the US. Little is known about public perceptions of these policies and factors that predict their support or opposition. Methods: Using a sample of US adults from Amazon Mechanical Turk in May 2015, this paper identifies beliefs about the benefits and costs of regulating e-cigarettes and identifies which of these beliefs predict support for e-cigarette restricting policies. Results: A higher proportion of respondents agreed with 8 different reasons to regulate e-cigarettes (48.5% to 83.3% agreement) versus 7 reasons not to regulate e-cigarettes (11.5% to 18.9%). The majority of participants agreed with 7 out of 8 reasons for regulation. When all reasons to regulate or not were included in a final multivariable model, beliefs about protecting people from secondhand vapor and protecting youth from trying e-cigarettes significantly predicted stronger support for e-cigarette restricting policies, whereas concern about government intrusion into individual choices was associated with reduced support. Discussion: This research identifies key beliefs that may underlie public support or opposition to policies designed to regulate the marketing and use of e-cigarettes. Advocates on both sides of the issue may find this research valuable in developing strategic campaigns related to the issue. Implications: Specific beliefs of potential benefits and costs of e-cigarette regulation (protecting youth, preventing exposure to secondhand vapor, and government intrusion into individual choices) may be effectively deployed by policy makers or health advocates in communicating with the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]