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Background: Determine if individual adolescent vaping is associated with the vaping behavior of their school-based friendships; whether that association stems from peer influence or peer selection; and whether it varies by age. Methods: Two wave longitudinal survey of 1,208 students in one Midwestern US school district. Students were asked if they ever vaped and to name their seven closest friends within the school district. A roster of all eligible students was pre-loaded into the survey to facilitate network data collection. Terms for network exposure, the proportion of vaping friends; and selection, the number of new friends who vape, were created. Logistic regression and Stochastic Actor Oriented Models were used to test both influence and selection effects. Results: A cross-sectional logistic regression model indicated that friend vaping was associated with individual vaping (AOR = 4.96, p < 0.01); and lagged logistic models indicated that increased friend vaping was associated with individual vaping initiation (AOR = 1.72, p < 0.05). Selecting new friends who vape was also associated with becoming a vaper (AOR = 1.25, p < 0.01). Both influence and selection were present for those less than 14 years old. Conclusions: This is the first study to use social network analysis to show that adolescents who vape or initiate vaping are more likely to do so if their friends vape, and/or they make new friends who vape. Prevention and cessation programs should address the role of friend influence and selection on e-cigarette use; particularly at younger ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of risk contagion, it is difficult to balance the benefits and costs of banking globalization. We use data on cross-border syndicated loans intended to build heterogeneous credit networks among banking sectors in various countries to explore the introduction of banking risks into the network. Via social network analysis (SNA), we find that the global credit network has phased characteristics, and it is a source of exposure to global banking risks. However, the more important network position, that is, the greater centrality, identified shows that the banking industry is more stable. To explain these findings, we present and estimate the banking risk contagion model and the suppression effect model of contagion. Evidence suggests that the international credit network is the channel of risk contagion, and the long-term loan network and nonfinancial borrower network have a stronger contagion effect. Exogenous banking supervision and network endogenous closeness centrality can inhibit risk contagion. From a policy perspective, these findings indicate the need to supervise high-risk cross-border loans and maintain independence in the international credit network. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [Heng Zhao, email: zhao0501@mail.dlut.edu.cn], upon reasonable request. • The global credit network has phased characteristics, and it is a source of exposure to global banking risks. • The long-term loan network and nonfinancial borrower network have a stronger contagion effect. • Exogenous banking supervision and network endogenous closeness centrality can inhibit risk contagion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since it was published, Dmitry Glukhovsky's novel Metro 2033 (2005), in addition to sequels and other novels, has also jumped across media boundaries to spawn comic books and video games. The story takes place following a nuclear holocaust which has left Earth's surface uninhabitable, condemning some survivors to eke out a life underground in the subway network. The novel's basic narrative concerns this last haven, imagined as a giant organism, being invaded by "чёрные" ("blacks" or "black ones"), the homo novus better adapted to life on the harsh planet. In this paper, I argue that Glukhovsky subverts this corporeal metaphor to call attention to the troubling implications of, on one hand, the militaristic description of the immune system, and on the other, national security imagined in immunological terms. At the same time, the viral logic of contagion also allows us to glimpse the central tenet of ecological thought, that "all beings are connected," or as Donna Haraway likewise reminds us, that we are always already infected through our relations with human and non-human others. It is only when we allow for such mutual contagions that we have any hope of confronting the dire consequences of our technological progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a rule, influenza is considered a dangerous infectious disease that spreads rapidly and chaotically. In his novel Petrovy v grippe i vokrug nego (The Petrovs in and around the Flu) (2016), Aleksei Sal'nikov undermines these notions by making a strong case for the salvific, albeit not immediately apparent, qualities of the flu. Much like the source of the viral infection that afflicts the Petrovs, the link between the events that aids the family's recovery is imperceptible to them. By considering various connections between characters and events represented in the novel, I demonstrate that the spread of the flu, the characters' interpersonal relations, and even the structure of the text are bound by the same rhizomatic logic, a concept proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The rhizome theory, I maintain, begins to explain the complexity of the novel's structure, which is one of the main reasons for critics' dissatisfaction with the text. As I show, according to the novel's rationale, human relations and stories are more bound by biology than by human agency, free will, and personal choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This cluster of articles examines Russian and Eastern European outbreak narratives and metaphors of infection. Together, these articles further the understanding of the cultural politics of contagion in Russia and Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dualistic pairs of romanticism/rationalism and nature/science have traditionally shaped readings of Turgenev's Fathers and Children. This article, building on affect theory and theories of the grotesque, examines Bazarov as a character who does not fit into either model. As an outsider, he represents a threat of infection to all the other characters in the novel. His excessive, animalistic life force elicits disgust in those surrounding him and forces them to distance themselves from him for fear of a "life contagion," which would insert an uncontrollable, repulsive life-energy into their predictable genteel existence. Additionally, Bazarov is characterized by a grotesque affective system, that is, he experiences feelings that are contradictory and elude a definitive reading, right up to the novel's end. After being exposed to his ambiguous and incongruous feelings, the other characters are at risk of "affective contagion": they might start experiencing feelings as grotesquely as Bazarov does. This trend towards ambiguity rather than legibility defies the expectations of clarity in psychological prose that critics at the time demanded and that readers have been taught to look for. This article thus proposes pervasive illegibility of character as a previously unidentified trait of Russian Realism, and uses Fathers and Children 's Bazarov as a vivid case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Owing to its immense scope and persistence in impacting health, there have been increasing, but undertheorized, calls to conceptualize and address violence as a public health issue. This violence-as-a-disease paradigm has particular relevance in consideration of the deep sociomedical embeddedness of violence in minoritized communities. Given that violent ideation and actualized violence begin early in one's life, consideration of adolescent violence in these theoretical contexts is of particular utility. Method: We conducted semistructured interviews with 32 school staff members, including, school teachers, administrators, and security, at five high-risk urban public high schools in the Chicago metropolitan area. Most participants were either Black (31.3%), White (43.8%), or Hispanic (21.9%). We examined perspectives on the causes and consequences of adolescent violence, tested and reconceptualized the violence-as-a-disease model, and developed an enhanced nomenclature for this model. Abductive analysis was used to analyze the interviews. Results: Respondents identified specific co-occurring "chronic" and "acute" causes for violence, with psychosocial cognates being central to violence initiation. Chronic causes include structural forces such as neighborhood deprivation, limited resource access, and familial and cultural influences. Acute causes include situational and "real-time" triggers like perceived slights and a desire to meet social group performance expectations. Conclusions: In consideration of the violence-as-a-disease paradigm, violence is stimulated and entrenched by socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental forces that implicate psychopathological paradigms in multiple groups and individual-level contexts. An expanded nomenclature and conceptual model for primary and secondary prevention are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The absence of research on bisexuality in the twentieth century and concerns regarding the AIDS epidemic enabled the construction of speculative narratives on the bisexual population, which is commonly described as an ambiguous category. Analyzing bisexuality through an anthropological lens, this article examines the symbolic complexes that produce bisexuality as an ambiguous category, relating it to the discursive production of fictions of contagion, which are essentially metonymic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists have long been interested in the diffusion of innovations—the process by which new ideas, behavior, and practices spread between persons, organizations, and even countries. While innovations can enter a community through various channels, ongoing spread of innovations through a community occurs through the medium of social networks—collections of interpersonal or digital relationships connecting actors to each other. Social networks are important for diffusion because relationships foster communication, trust, and flow of information. Diffusion outcomes are also shaped by the structural properties of social networks such as density, centrality, and strength of ties, as well as properties of the innovation and the actors involved in the process. The purpose of the article is twofold: (1) to take stock of the field and review ongoing debates on the role of social networks in the diffusion of innovations and (2) to summarize the sociological implications of the diffusion of innovations through social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we build upon the buffering hypothesis within the job demands–resources framework to develop a coevolutionary explanation to untangle the process by which emotional job demands, work-based social networks, and employee performance are associated over time. We integrate ideas from the social contagion and social network dynamics literatures to support our coevolutionary theory. To test our theory, we collected longitudinal data at three time points from 135 employees in a customer-facing research-and-development department. We employ a stochastic actor-oriented model that allows the simultaneous modeling of changes in work-based social network ties, emotional job demands, and employee performance. We find a social contagion effect whereby employees are more at risk of an increase in their emotional job demands, the more reciprocal work-based social relationships they have with colleagues who have high emotional job demands. In addition, individuals with high emotional job demands change their networks in two notable ways: They have a positive tendency for having work-based social ties, that is, sociability, and for having ties with others with high emotional job demands, that is, homophily. However, despite the unintended consequence of these network tendencies making employees more susceptible to the contagion effect of emotional job demands, we also find support for the buffering hypothesis. The negative effect of high emotional job demands on performance is lower for employees who have more work-based social ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the health emergency caused by COVID-19, a series of sensations such as fear, stress, and concern about contracting the virus were developed. Despite the fact that in recent months infection rates have been significantly reduced due to vaccination campaigns, the return of teachers to face-to-face classes established in Peru from April 2022 has increased once again the fear that contagion levels could grow. Therefore, the objective was to analyze the concern of regular basic education teachers about the spread of COVID-19 when returning to face-to-face classes. A quantitative investigation was carried out; the research design was observational and the type of study was descriptive cross-sectional. The sample was made up of 648 teachers who responded to the Scale of Concern for the Contagion of COVID-19, an instrument with adequate psychometric properties. The results show that 43.8% of teachers had moderate levels of concern about the spread of COVID-19, 38.7% had low levels, and 17.5% had high levels. Teachers reported most recurrent concerns about some risks in educational institutions and the fear of spreading COVID-19 to their relatives or people with whom they lived. On the other hand, it was found that some sociodemographic, occupational, and medical variables were significantly associated with this concern (p < 0.05). Then, it was concluded that teachers had moderate levels of concern about the spread of COVID-19 when returning to face-to-face classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contagion is the belief that an entity's invisible or essential qualities can be transferred to a target. Researchers studying contagion have often distinguished between physical contagion (the perceived transfer of germs, toxins, and pathogens) and spiritual contagion (the perceived transfer of metaphysical properties such as spirits, essence, and moral characteristics). While sensitivity to physical contagion is a component of several existing scales, to date, there are no scales that measure sensitivity to spiritual contagion. Here, we develop and validate a measure of Spiritual Contagion Sensitivity (SCS), which considers positive, negative, and neutral aspects of spiritual contagion. We demonstrate discriminant validity from existing measures of physical contagion sensitivity, such as perceived vulnerability to disease and disgust sensitivity (Study 1). We demonstrate construct validity by showing the correlation between SCS and a variety of published findings in the literature for which spiritual contagion beliefs have been hypothesized to play a role (Study 2). Finally, we demonstrate predictive utility of the SCS scale by showing significant moderation of spiritual contagion effects from the literature (Studies 3A–3C). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given low base rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) in national samples of adolescents, clarifying the sociodemographic and clinical correlates among psychiatric inpatients may afford insights into potential risk factors that predict STBs onset. Adolescents (N = 970; ages 12–19 years) admitted for acute, psychiatric inpatient care completed baseline clinical interviews and self-report measures assessing demographics and early life adversity. Lifetime and 12-month STBs prevalence were obtained, allowing for the estimate of STBs persistence (i.e., rates of those with both current and past STBs) and transition rates (i.e., proportion of ideators that transition to plans or attempts). Univariate and multivariate logistic regression tested sociodemographic and clinical correlates of STBs. Age-of-onset for STBs occurred in early adolescence. Most patients reported suicide ideation with nearly half of patients making a plan and one-third a suicide attempt. Although relatively modest, the strongest correlates of lifetime attempts were depressive disorders, physical abuse, and non-suicidal self-injury. Knowing a peer that had attempted suicide also increased the likelihood of a suicide attempt, especially among attempters who transitioned from ideation to planned attempts. STBs are highly prevalent among adolescents admitted for acute psychiatric inpatient treatment. The modest effects suggest that correlates, particularly those related to suicide attempts, are widely distributed. As a history of physical abuse and knowing a peer with a suicide attempt history are related to transitioning from ideation to action, these may be critical factors to target in the deployment of future suicide prevention and treatment programs. One-third of adolescent inpatients report a lifetime history of suicide attempts. Approximately 65% of adolescent inpatients with a lifetime plan attempt suicide. Knowing peers who attempt suicide may facilitate the transition from ideation to action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music has strong emotional powers. How are we to understand affective responses to music? What does music teach us about emotions? Why are musical emotions important? Despite the rich literature in philosophy and the empirical sciences, particularly psychology and neuroscience, little attention has been paid to integrating these approaches. This extensive review aims to redress this imbalance and establish a mutual dialogue between philosophy and the empirical sciences by presenting the main philosophical puzzles from an affective science perspective. The chief problem is contagion. Sometimes, listeners perceive music as expressing some emotion and this elicits the same emotion in them. Contagion is perplexing because it collides with the leading theory of emotions as experiences of values. This article mostly revolves around the critical presentation of the philosophical solutions to this problem in light of recent developments in emotion theory and affective science. It also highlights practical issues, particularly the role of musical emotions in well-being and health, by tackling the paradox of sad music, i.e., the question of why people enjoy sad music. It thus bridges an important gap between theoretical and real-life issues as well as between philosophical and empirical investigations on affective responses to music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a mechanism based on regional inequality in economic activity to explain the heterogeneity in the spread of COVID-19 and test it using data from India. Contagion is expected to spread at a higher rate in regions characterized by greater movement of goods and services. We argue that mobility is higher in regions with greater degree of intra-regional inequality in economic activity. Such regions are usually characterized by a core-periphery economic structure in which the periphery is dependent on the core for the supply of jobs, goods, and services. Such dependence leads to a greater degree of mobility between the core and periphery, which in turn leads to higher rate of contagion. Using nightlight data to measure regional inequality, we find evidence in support of our hypothesis. Using mobility data, we provide direct evidence in support of our proposed channel; the positive relationship between regional inequality and COVID-19 infection is driven by mobility. Our findings suggest that policy responses to contain COVID-19 contagion need to be heterogeneous across India, where the priority areas can be chosen ex ante based on a regional inequality-based criterion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I will seek to consider the simultaneous workings of race and capital in apartheid biopower. J.M. Coetzee offers a reading of apartheid racism as racial madness which is imbricated with economic reason. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have witnessed instances of the biopolitical making live and letting die. The Strandfontein homeless camp set up just outside Cape Town in 2020 is an instantiation of a particular normative order, wherein contagion was used to justify the movement of black, homeless people outside of the city's cordon sanitaire. This is resonant of apartheid racial segregation in which the fear of race mixing is sometimes described in terms of contagion where whiteness represents that which is pure while blackness that which is dirty and infectious. Despite this desire for racial separation, apartheid biopower depends on exploitable black labour to sustain white domination. The figurative work of racial contagion is then undercut when the black worker is to be present and available in white areas to work. Neoliberal modes of power inherit the dual work of race and contagion in apartheid when the poor and black are let to die. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Visitor of the Poor (1824; trans. 1832), a highly influential tract in the antebellum United States by French essayist, moral reformer, and philosopher Joseph-Marie de Gérando, encourages philanthropists to visit the poor and investigate their lives prior to donating money or rendering help: "Penetrate into secrets of his afflicted heart," he writes. Another study in moral reform, "An Address on the Prevention of Pauperism" (1843) by Walter Channing, claims that poverty "tells its whole story. It has no concealments." Starting with these completely opposite visions of poverty in moral reform literature, this article places "The Man of the Crowd" against the context of antebellum philanthropic discourse. Poe's story stages a dramatic encounter of a middle-class gentleman with a stranger stricken by poverty and despair that fluctuates between surfaces and depths, transparency and secrecy, exposure and concealment. Although Poe's narrator is not a philanthropist and the old man is anything but a humble supplicant, this story makes use of rhetorical formulas and conventions present in the vast body of the so-called benevolence literature and can be read as a complex response to this influential antebellum genre of writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although written before the COVID-19 pandemic, Amy Seimetz's She Dies Tomorrow is widely regarded as speaking to collective social anxiety. In the film, Amy is convinced that she will die the next day. She tells her friend, Jane, who becomes convinced that she too will die. Everyone that Jane tells catches the conviction and it spreads like a virus. This article offers an alternative reading, analysing the film as a meditation on (horror) cinema as a vehicle for affective bodily contagion. Filmic images and sounds are intangible and do not physically touch viewers yet can nevertheless carry affect that makes bodies respond to and sometimes replicate what is shown on screen. Similarly, in She Dies Tomorrow, an intangible idea causes affective response and mimesis, as well as audio-visual hallucinations. The article explores how contagious anxiety might be spread through cinematic objects, drawing from affect, phenomenology and object-oriented ontology (OOO). Finally, it explores the film's engagement with both Derrida's spectrality of cinema and the nature of the horror genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a systematic algorithmic reverse‐stress testing methodology to create "worst case" scenarios for regulatory stress tests by accounting for losses that arise from distressed portfolio liquidations. First, we derive the optimal bank response for any given shock. Then, we introduce an algorithm which systematically generates scenarios that exploit the key vulnerabilities in banks' portfolio holdings and thus maximize contagion despite banks' optimal response to the shock. We apply our methodology to data of the 2016 European Banking Authority (EBA) stress test, and design worst case scenarios for the portfolio holdings of European banks at the time. Using spectral clustering techniques, we group 10,000 worst‐case scenarios into twelve geographically concentrated families. Our results show that even though there is a wide range of different scenarios within these 12 families, each cluster tends to affect the same banks. An "Anna Karenina" principle of stress testing emerges: Not all stressful scenarios are alike, but every stressful scenario stresses the same banks. These findings suggest that the precise specification of a scenario is not of primal importance as long as the most vulnerable banks are targeted and sufficiently stressed. Finally, our methodology can be used to uncover the weakest links in the financial system and thereby focus supervisory attention on these, thus building a bridge between macroprudential and microprudential stress tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A primary concern in epidemics is to minimize the probability of contagion, often resorting to reducing the number of contacted people. However, the success of that strategy depends on the shape of the dose-response curve, which relates the response of the exposed person to the pathogen dose received from surrounding infected people. If the reduction is achieved by spending more time with each contacted person, the pathogen charge received from each infected individual will be larger. The extended time spent close to each person may worsen the expected response if the dose-response curve is convex for small doses. This is the case when the expected response is negligible below a certain dose threshold and rises sharply above it. This study proposes a mathematical model to calculate the expected response and uses it to identify the conditions when it would be advisable to reduce the contact time with each individual even at the cost of increasing the number of contacted people.

In this research, the authors study the process by which social media posts are created and shared during live political debates. Using data from over 9.5 million tweets posted during and shortly after four key debates leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the authors test a series of hypotheses about how tweeting evolves over time during such events. They find that (1) as the debates progressed, the content of the "Twittersphere" became increasingly decoupled from the live event, and (2) the drivers of the success of tweets during the debates differed from the drivers of success observed after the debates. During the debates, users acted akin to narrators, posting shorter tweets that commented on unfolding events, with linguistic emotionality playing a limited role in sharing. However, when the debates were over, users acted more like interpreters, with successful posts being more elaborate and visually and emotionally rich accounts of the event. Evidence for the generalizability of the findings is provided by an analysis of Barack Obama's last State of the Union Address, where similar dynamics are observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the role of interbank network structure and premature liquidation costs for the likelihood of financial contagions in a laboratory experiment. We consider complete versus incomplete networks of banks linked together by interbank deposits, and we further vary premature liquidation costs. Subjects play the role of depositors deciding whether or not to withdraw funds from their interconnected bank. We find that when liquidation costs are high, a complete network structure is significantly less vulnerable to financial contagions than an incomplete network structure. However, when liquidation costs are low, network structure is less important for the frequency of financial contagions.

We often seek to estimate the impact of an exposure naturally occurring or randomly assigned at the cluster-level. For example, the literature on neighborhood determinants of health continues to grow. Likewise, community randomized trials are applied to learn about real-world implementation, sustainability, and population effects of interventions with proven individual-level efficacy. In these settings, individual-level outcomes are correlated due to shared cluster-level factors, including the exposure, as well as social or biological interactions between individuals. To flexibly and efficiently estimate the effect of a cluster-level exposure, we present two targeted maximum likelihood estimators (TMLEs). The first TMLE is developed under a non-parametric causal model, which allows for arbitrary interactions between individuals within a cluster. These interactions include direct transmission of the outcome (i.e. contagion) and influence of one individual's covariates on another's outcome (i.e. covariate interference). The second TMLE is developed under a causal sub-model assuming the cluster-level and individual-specific covariates are sufficient to control for confounding. Simulations compare the alternative estimators and illustrate the potential gains from pairing individual-level risk factors and outcomes during estimation, while avoiding unwarranted assumptions. Our results suggest that estimation under the sub-model can result in bias and misleading inference in an observational setting. Incorporating working assumptions during estimation is more robust than assuming they hold in the underlying causal model. We illustrate our approach with an application to HIV prevention and treatment.

Since the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis, the term “macroprudential” has appeared more and more often in specialized works and in researchers' discussions. After the 2008 crisis a new global financial stability framework is needed to reduce the probability and severity of a future financial crisis. This paper aims to the evaluate the importance of systemic risk analysis and identification for the calibration of macroprudential policies by exploring the extensive literature on systemic risk and macroprudential policies.

AbstractMarket participants, policymakers, and practitioners might have ignored the connection between global commodities and the currency markets in sub-Saharan Africa and the potential for contagion at various time scales. We examine the degree of time-varying connectivity and contagion between commodities and the exchange rates of sub-Saharan African countries (SSA). We use the Barunik and Krehlik (BK18) spillover index on monthly data from 1990 to 2019 to illustrate the dynamic connectivity in the time and frequency domains. The BK18 captures the nonlinear, nonstationary, asymmetric, and time-dependent comovements in the relationship. Our analysis indicates that the relationship between commodity returns and exchange rates in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is both time- and frequency-dependent, but stronger at higher frequencies. We observe that, among the three commodities, only crude oil is a dominant spillover propagator. The exchange rates of South Africa dominate spillover transmission among metal-producing countries, and those of Cote d’Ivoire dominate agricultural-producing countries. The dynamic results reveal significant spillovers between commodities and exchange rates during economic turmoil, indicating contagion among the markets. Since uncertainty spillover is more severe amid market upheaval, investors should use their awareness of market dynamics and fluctuations to protect their holdings from lower asset returns. Policymakers should keep a close eye on spillovers because they endanger cross-market connections.

The growing concern about the risk and safety of autonomous vehicles (AVs) has made it vital to understand driver trust and behavior when operating AVs. While research has uncovered human factors and design issues based on individual driver performance, there remains a lack of insight into how trust in automation evolves in groups of people who face risk and uncertainty while traveling in AVs. To this end, we conducted a naturalistic experiment with groups of participants who were encouraged to engage in conversation while riding a Tesla Model X on campus roads. Our methodology was uniquely suited to uncover these issues through naturalistic interaction by groups in the face of a risky driving context. Conversations were analyzed, revealing several themes pertaining to trust in automation: (1) collective risk perception, (2) experimenting with automation, (3) group sense-making, (4) human-automation interaction issues, and (5) benefits of automation. Our findings highlight the untested and experimental nature of AVs and confirm serious concerns about the safety and readiness of this technology for on-road use. The process of determining appropriate trust and reliance in AVs will therefore be essential for drivers and passengers to ensure the safe use of this experimental and continuously changing technology. Revealing insights into social group–vehicle interaction, our results speak to the potential dangers and ethical challenges with AVs as well as provide theoretical insights on group trust processes with advanced technology.

This study investigates the relationship between mental health and employment using an instrumental variable approach with the 2012 Canadian Community Health Survey–Mental Health. Using a family member's mental health problem(s) as an instrument for poor mental health, the estimates reveal that poor mental health significantly reduces employment outcomes. These findings are robust to various specifications, such as an alternative instrument and a relaxation of the exclusion restriction assumption. In addition, the relationship is driven mainly by men and younger workers. Moreover, the findings suggest that the relationship is mediated by a decline in cognitive abilities, such as difficulties in concentration and motivation, and social relations with acquaintances and friends. Finally, the estimates show that this phenomenon is contagious: poor mental health has a significant spillover effect on coworkers' mental health in workplaces. This study demonstrates the importance of mental health illness in Canada and other developed countries.

Abstract This paper investigated the existence of contagion between S&P500 and FTSE100 stock indexes, the two major stock exchange markets in the world, due to Brexit. Brexit caused a wave of volatility in international financial markets and the immediate reaction in US market has brought instability among investors, who remained cautious regarding the unexpected unfolds over the global economy. Dynamic conditional correlation model (DCC GARCH) was applied to analyze the shift-contagion phenomenon in the time series data. The results showed that there was no evidence of shift-contagion between the two markets during the Brexit period. It was possible to observe a moderate increase in the conditional correlation during the month of the Brexit referendum, which may be due to the high interdependence between the two asset markets.

Copyright of Human Review is the property of Eagora Science 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.)

This article analyzes the historical circumstances of the change in medical discourse and care given to people with leprosy in Puerto Rico. The US invasion of 1898 and its project to transform public health on the island are taken as a starting point. As part of these changes, a new care model was identified based on the idea of isolation. In this way the health authorities distanced themselves from the theory of inheritance, according to which care had been managed prior to that date. The article argues that isolation was an expression of the colonialist policy of the moment. It is evident that the rigor of the new care model transformed the lives of patients, who went from living with their families to seclusion on an islet. This process of transformation was initiated by the doctors of the Marine Hospital Service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are certain linguistic phenomena of great importance in the most current semantics whose relevance can be traced, stage by stage, from the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century. In this article we want to focus on one of them, which is essential in diachronic semantics: the change of meaning caused by the frequent contact of words in the same context. This phenomenon is behind two fundamental concepts for the stage of semantics called "historical semantics", both for the French current of this stage and for the German one: contagion, described by Michel Bréal, and consociation, described by Hans Sperber. The central part of this work is dedicated to the description of these two concepts and their immediate repercussions. However, this phenomenon begins to be treated more frequently from the moment that Stephen Ullmann includes it in his classification of semantic changes, as a previous step to the ellipsis originated by lexical combination. It is from this classification that this type of change later reaches the cognitive studies on semantic change. Along the way, the origins of the concept have been somewhat forgotten. We hope that this article will help to recover them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider bootstrap percolation and diffusion in sparse random graphs with fixed degrees, constructed by configuration model. Every vertex has two states: it is either active or inactive. We assume that to each vertex is assigned a nonnegative (integer) threshold. The diffusion process is initiated by a subset of vertices with threshold zero which consists of initially activated vertices, whereas every other vertex is inactive. Subsequently, in each round, if an inactive vertex with threshold θ has at least θ of its neighbours activated, then it also becomes active and remains so forever. This is repeated until no more vertices become activated. The main result of this paper provides a central limit theorem for the final size of activated vertices. Namely, under suitable assumptions on the degree and threshold distributions, we show that the final size of activated vertices has asymptotically Gaussian fluctuations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grounded in the historical conditions of epidemics intertwined with state power, we examine the factors that contribute to women of color's high proximity to contagion. We build on significant contributions to scholarship on the racial and sexual politics of work and the colonial history of contagion to argue that colonialism is key in the state's weaponization of illness against entire populations. This is crucial to decipher how women of color in feminized labor sectors, in our case, cleaning services and nursing, confront death during the COVID‐19 pandemic. This transforms readers' understanding of governmentality within public health crizes and the roles of colonial state institutions in administering death in raced, gendered, and classed ways. We conclude that future studies focused on pandemics, labor, race, and gender must account for the ways in which colonialism positions feminized workers as fungible in structures of response to mass crizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the contagion effect on business failure, focusing on the Spanish hotel sector. The sample consists of 3,948 hotel micro-, small, and medium-sized enterprises in the 2012-2015 period and includes variables related to characteristics of the hotel and tourist destination. The results show that the contagion effect is significant, increasing the explanatory capacity of the model. Moreover, the results show that the analysis of the contagion effect should consider not only its simultaneous impact but also that deferred over time on the probability of failure. Thereby, this study found that after the initial shock, the contagion effect decreases and changes its sign from negative to positive in the fourth year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 6 January 2021 events must be analysed within a broader context than the phenomenon of Trumpism. The attempted coup that brought together (former) members of the military, White supremacist organisations, and regular citizens has a rich genealogy. We trace this genealogy to the events of 11 September 2001 and the homeland security state built in their wake, even as its reach extends further into U.S. history. Post-9/11 discourse became a mechanism for seeking and interpreting perceived threats to the United States and its citizens. Through it, immigration, disease, and White supremacy became intertwined. Perceptions of infectious and biological threats became racialised. With the emergence of the novel coronavirus, President Trump enacted travel bans and routinely referred to the virus as the "Wuhan virus" or "Chinese virus." Hate crimes against Asians and Asian Americans followed, as this language reinvigorated Orientalist histories. We examine rhetoric about disease over the past twenty years, particularly as it has reinforced militarism and White supremacy, all against the backdrop of 9/11. State constructions of 9/11 and 9/11 memory inform and explain our recent and contemporary terrain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The energy sector has been the main economic hub in everyone's lives and in world geopolitics. Consequently, oil, gas, electricity and energy from renewable sources (wind and solar) are traded on the stock market, and all interconnected around the world. On the other hand, a global health crisis, such as COVID-19, can produce a great economic catastrophe. In this scenario, a robust statistical analysis will be performed here with respect to the concept of interdependence and contagion effect. For this project, we chose to study the relationship between the main source of energy (crude oil, WTI and Brent) and two (Gold and Silver) precious metals (which are a safe haven for investment). Therefore, with the novelty of the application of ρ D C C A and Δ ρ D C C A coefficients before and during the COVID-19 crisis (announced by the World Health Organization), the interdependence and the contagion effect were calculated. We verified that COVID-19 had no influence on contagion effect between crude oil in its indexes, WTI and Brent, since they have already shown to be highly interdependent, both before and after the World Health Organization COVID-19 decree. Likewise, COVID-19 had a significant influence on the crude oil and precious metal sectors, which was evident as we identified an increase in its interdependence, with a clearly positive contagion. These results show that COVID-19 imposed a restructuring in the relationship between energy (crude oil) and precious metals. More details will be presented throughout this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's understanding of contagion has been a fruitful area for studying children's learning. However, despite a large literature on children's conceptual understanding of illness, there is very little research on the impact of children's knowledge about illness transmission on adaptive behavior. This is important because how children behave when faced with a sick individual or a contaminated object is what is most relevant to whether children get sick and pass along that illness to other people. Here, we will bring together various theories of how children learn to behave adaptively when faced with the possibility of getting sick (a) to better illuminate the different ways by which children might acquire health-related behaviors and (b) to help develop recommendations for designing interventions aimed at teaching children about contagion and illness prevention in a way that produces the most adaptive health behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of Western modernity in India, as a by-product of British colonialism, brought about considerable strain within Indian medical traditions. Indigenous medical traditions which were operating within the broad humoral theory of disease causation came to be subjected to the logic of biomedicine. By the late nineteenth century, as the British in India consolidated their state systems and the princely states modelled their administrative structures in accordance with the British state, there was an increased acceptance of biomedical standards against indigenous medical norms. This was further accentuated by the fear of epidemics, which suggested that diseases spread from person to person and could affect large geographic areas bringing death and suffering in its wake. Disease control and management had, therefore, become a major concern for both the state systems in the British presidencies and in the princely states. The prevalence of contagious diseases offered a challenge to reorganize the public health systems of the states, yet they also provided an opportunity to legitimize state sovereignty over the bodies of its subjects. Diseases that were previously seen as localized and situated within culturally specific locales were now increasingly subjected to the governing mechanisms of the state. This paper examines how the medical bureaucratization of Travancore, in the south-western part of the Indian subcontinent, affected local healthcare traditions in the face of expanding fear of epidemics, ultimately led to the reshaping of indigenous medical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of COVID‐19 on tail risk contagion across commodity futures markets using a copula‐based network method. We document a significant increase in the lower and upper tail contagiousness of commodities following the COVID‐19 outbreak. Contagion shows an obvious clustering characteristic, that is, there is higher tail risk connectedness between commodities in the same category. Agricultural commodities are significantly less contagious than metals and energy commodities; soft commodities in particular can offer investors significant diversification benefits. There are several hub commodities in the contagion network, chief among them copper, which are good transmitters of shocks and should be treated with caution by investors and regulators. Although tail risk and contagiousness of individual commodities increase together during the pandemic, we find a negative cross‐sectional relationship between tail risk and contagiousness, that is, commodities with high tail risk are not necessarily highly contagious and may even be less so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contends that intersensory experiences of the plague are key to comprehending how the inhabitants of seventeenth-century London understood outbreaks of epidemic disease. Interplay between the senses influenced how people understood the processes of disease transmission, the vulnerability of bodies to contract disease and disease prevention. Previous research into the sensory histories of the plague has focused on smell and touch as isolated sensory phenomena. In doing so, studies have tended to suggest that the plague was understood as either an airborne or contagious disease. An intersensory approach reveals that this binary between miasma and contagion was not so clear cut. People navigated their relationships with their bodies, neighbours and the city via a complex web of understandings of epidemic disease, many of which were born out of interactions between the senses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May of 1939, DC Comics introduced their popular Batman series, but it was a year later when the iconic villain, the Joker, entered the story. What began as a lighthearted pulp comic has since evolved, with Batman's enemies growing darker and more sinister. In the film, the Joker is now less "clown prince" than violent madman, determined to wreak havoc and spread his warped view of society. Through a thematic discourse analysis, this article explores how Batman films featuring the Joker routinely naturalize and reinforce sanist beliefs about mental illness and are deployed as narrative prostheses to rationalize his heinous crimes. Blending work from both disability studies and mad studies, we explore the cultural construction of madness as animated by filmic representations of the Joker and consider how these narratives inform perceptions of mental illness and subsequently rationalize the disciplining of mad people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the European credit default swap spreads and their relationship to other financial assets such as stock indices. This study aims at better investigating the European sovereign debt crisis from the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2013. For this purpose, using daily data covering the period from January 2004 to December 2018, first we examine the impact of the sovereign crisis on spread sovereign credit default swaps, using both an asymmetric DCC-MGARCH model and a Copula-based Multivariate GARCH model (C-MGARCH). Then, we estimate the relations between spread sovereign credit default swaps and equity indices. We analyse in particular the lead–lag relationship between these two financial indicators by using a vector autoregressive model. We note a negative correlation between the spreads and stock market indices. There is a significant unidirectional causality from CDS spread changes to stock market indices returns. Our findings show that the CDS spreads have played a leading role in most European countries during this crisis. These results are potentially important because the current pandemic is threatening the economies of European countries, especially Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the strong connection between the construction industry and the economy, very little is known about how a nation's prevailing economic conditions affect the construction industry and firm performance. Building upon economic contagion literature, this research empirically investigates the effect of the 2007–2009 global financial crisis (i.e., prevailing economic conditions) on the United States (US) construction industry and firm performance. The authors performed the analysis of the joint test of contagion, crisis severity index, and student t-test using the daily stock index in the US market and the daily stock prices and annual financial data of 39 selected US construction firms between 1st January 2005 and 31st December 2012, spanning precrisis, crisis and postcrisis periods. The longitudinal empirical data, involving a total of 2084 data points for each firm and the US stock market, confirmed a widespread negative effect of the crisis on the US construction industry in a pattern that is consistent with the occurrence of major events (e.g., the collapse of Lehman Brothers); and this negative effect continued, with a lower level of severity, into the postcrisis period. Within the industry, the highly market-driven homebuilding firms are affected more significantly by the crisis than construction and engineering firms. These time series trends and patterns support the strong construction-economy nexus. Additionally, construction firms with poor financial positions (i.e., profitability, liquidity, leverage, and turnover ratios), especially liquidity positions, are likely to suffer more strongly from the crisis and its residual impact. Thus, to survive, recover from and prepare for future economic disturbances, such as those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, construction firms should closely monitor and manage their capabilities to generate revenue and repay their debt—that is to maintain sound cash flows. In this regard, practical recommendations are made accordingly. Theoretically, this research contributes to the understanding of the heterogeneous effect of economic conditions on the construction industry and firm performance and its contributing contextual factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many questions remain unanswered regarding the so-called "Spanish" influenza pandemic of 1918. This article addresses three of them and describes the state of knowledge for each of them: Where did the pandemic start? How many people died? And why was it so deadly?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assessed the reaction of American adults to scenarios involving explicit types of exposure to live COVID viruses in June 2020, in the first months of the COVID pandemic. Four features of magical contagion are physical contact focus, insensitivity to elapsed time ('permanence'), insensitivity to sterilization ('spiritual essence'), and insensitivity to dose. We demonstrated the operation of all four features in a majority of participants. We also report another dramatic demonstration of the principle of dose insensitivity. When asked for the minimal number of COVID viruses that would have to enter their lung to give them a 50% chance of contracting COVID, more than half of subjects responded with 'one'. Magical contagion should generally function to increase fear and perceived risk of COVID. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mary Douglas claims that ideas about dirt and pollution are often analogies reflecting a view of the social order. This article explores the representations of dirt and pollution in a Norwegian group home for people with intellectual disabilities. It shows how the staff's use of separate chairs and workwear, and their frequent and intensive washing of clothes and cups touched by the residents, are part of an institutional work to preserve a classificatory order in their relationship with the residents, an order that has been blurred by political ideology and reform. Combining several theoretical resources, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of the symbolic and ritual meanings of dirt and pollution in the establishment and maintenance of social order. It also contributes to a better understanding of why progressive reforms tend to fail without a clear and practical map for its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]