A Postcard From Chile

posted by Morgan Meis in 3 Quarks Daily: Nona Fernández at The Paris Review:



I’m writing these words in clothes that reek of tear gas. Trying to process the pulse of the street while still part of it, while our feet are still there on the ground, fleeing water cannons, not knowing where to go, hiding in the crowd, among people just like us, groups of us marching, dodging smoke and soldiers.

This is a celebration, a protest, a demand for change that began with students jumping turnstiles in the metro after fares were hiked. Without any organizer, without petitions, leaders, or negotiations, the whole thing escalated and then exploded into chaos in the streets. And there is yelling, and singing, and banging on pots, and fire, and beatings. In front of the palace of La Moneda, near the theater where I work, a man tells a soldier that he doesn’t understand why the soldier is protecting privileges that will never be his. A woman screams that we’re killing ourselves, we’re committing suicide, with all this inequality.

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Race, criminalization, and embedded discrimination in immigration court

an article by Michelle VanNatta (Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois, USA) published in Safer Communities Volume 18 Issue 3/4 (2019)

Abstract

Purpose
As the US criminal justice system and immigration system increasingly interconnect, even immigration policy that is facially race-neutral may involve biased practices. The purpose of this paper is to examine how institutional racism in criminal legal processes creates particular barriers for many individuals of Latin American and/or African descent facing deportation proceedings in US immigration courts, particularly in assertions regarding gang affiliation.

Design/methodology/approach
This research is based on ethnographic observation. The work utilized a grounded theory approach. The observation took place at public master calendar hearings at a Midwestern immigration court between 2013 and 2015, yielding over 400 pages of fieldnotes that were coded and analyzed for patterns.

Findings
Non-citizens in the USA, including lawful permanent residents, are subject to deportation if labeled “criminal.” Racial profiling and criminalization of communities of color create heightened risk of deportation. Assumptions that common tattoos or urban fashion indicate criminality, reliance on Facebook posts to “prove” gang membership, and the use of arrest records as evidence of criminality even if charges were dropped all put immigrants of Latin American and/or African descent at heightened risk.

Research limitations/implications
The ethnographic method used has strong validity but weaker reliability and generalizability.

Practical implications
This paper can help analysts, policymakers and advocates consider how to adapt systems to increase equity.

Originality/value
This research provides direct examples and ethnographic evidence of how race and cultural bias in criminal legal processes and immigration policies can affect people in deportation proceedings.

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Capitalism is modernity's most beguiling and dangerous form of enchantment

posted by S. Abbas Raza in 3 Quarks Daily: Eugene McCarraher in Aeon:

Perhaps the grandest tale of capitalist modernity is entitled ‘The Disenchantment of the World’.

Crystallised in the work of Max Weber but eloquently anticipated by Karl Marx, the story goes something like this: before the advent of capitalism, people believed that the world was enchanted, pervaded by mysterious, incalculable forces that ruled and animated the cosmos. Gods, spirits and other supernatural beings infused the material world, anchoring the most sublime and ultimate values in the ontological architecture of the Universe.

In premodern Europe, Catholic Christianity epitomised enchantment in its sacramental cosmology and rituals, in which matter could serve as a conduit or mediator of God’s immeasurable grace.

But as Calvinism, science and especially capitalism eroded this sacramental worldview, matter became nothing more than dumb, inert and manipulable stuff, disenchanted raw material open to the discovery of scientists, the mastery of technicians, and the exploitation of merchants and industrialists. Discredited in the course of enlightenment, the enchanted cosmos either withered into historical oblivion or went into the exile of private belief in liberal democracies.

As Marx put it, all that was solid melted into air, and the most heavenly ecstasies drowned in the icy water of egotistical calculation.

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Eugene McCarraher

is an associate professor of humanities and history at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Dissent, The Nation, Commonweal, The Hedgehog Review and Raritan. His latest book is The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity (2019).

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Government expenditure on labour market policies in OECD countries: responding to the economic crisis

an article by Hyungjo Hur (The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA) published in Policy Studies Volume 40 Issue 6 (2019)

Abstract

In most Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, the unemployment rate increased considerably during the early stage of the Great Recession of 2008. However, unemployment trends varied by country: some countries were more resilient, resulting in a faster recovery and lower or steady unemployment rates during the recession.

This study evaluates the impact of different government expenditures on labour market policies (especially active labour market policies) among OECD unemployment rates.

Based on panel regression and a difference-in-difference analysis utilizing panel data from 2001 to 2013, this study discusses how government active labour market policies have worked to reduce the unemployment rate, and how this policy helps resilient countries to adapt to unexpected economic crises.

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How Creating Balance in Your Gut Can Help Alleviate Anxiety

a post by Serena Poon for the World of Psychology blog



Most of us are pretty familiar with how anxiety feels in our body. When you have anxious thoughts, your body responds with a tightening in the stomach, nausea, gas, heartburn, and indigestion. The connection between your brain and your gastrointestinal tract goes the other way as well. If your digestive system is disrupted, it can send signals to your brain that may cause you to become anxious. This bidirectional connection is called the gut-brain axis.

We are still learning a lot about the digestive system’s effect on the body and the mind, but what is coming to light through scientific research is that your gut is truly a center of immunity, mental agility, and vitality. Taking the time to foster a healthy gut is a great way to improve digestive issues, emotional and mental ailments, and overall health.

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Tangled narratives of poverty in early childhood: othering, work, welfare and ‘curveballs’

am article by Sandra Lyndon (University of Chichester, UK) published in Journal of Poverty and Social Justice Volume 27 Number 3 (October 2019)

Abstract

Early years practitioners are integral to government policy on addressing child poverty in the UK.

Drawing on findings from a qualitative study this paper seeks to contribute new understandings about how practitioners’ narratives are shaped by discourses of poverty. Overall practitioners’ understandings of poverty reflected a moral discourse of deserving and undeserving poor.

However, the complexity of interconnections between morality, gender and motherhood (and fatherhood) reveals how understandings were also broad, nuanced and at times contradictory.

The study highlights the need for further research into how understandings of poverty are formed together with the need for new narratives of poverty.

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Has tourism had its day?

Destination overcrowding is unpleasant for tourists and locals alike. We need to rethink our holidays.
an article by Freya Higgins-Desbiolles for the RSA Journal Issue 2 (2019) [via Medium]



Tourism and tourists are getting bad press. Complaints about the impact of backpackers in Asia, a ‘traffic jam’ of climbers on Everest, a mega cruise ship slamming into a Venetian wharf, and anti-tourism backlashes in Barcelona and Amsterdam suggest tourism has reached boiling point. But disdain for tourists has a long pedigree, at least as far back as the birth of mass tourism in the 1850s with Thomas Cook Tours in Europe.

With growing anxiety around climate change and mounting social tensions, is it now time to ask whether global tourism has had its day? At the heart of this tension is the number of countries that rely on tourism for their economic development and the sheer volume of tourists that now transit the globe: there were some 1.4 billion international trips in 2018.

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Cosmopolitan Ottomans

posy by Azra Raza in 3 Quarks Daily: Ussama Makdisi in aeon:


Proclamation of Greater Lebanon in 1920. Photo by Photo12/Getty

Throughout modern history, the weight of Western colonialism in the name of freedom and religious liberty has distorted the nature of the Middle East.

It has transformed the political geography of the region by creating a series of small and dependent Middle Eastern states and emirates where once stood a large interconnected Ottoman sultanate.

It introduced a new – and still unresolved – conflict between ‘Arab’ and ‘Jew’ in Palestine just when a new Arab identity that included Muslim, Christian and Jewish Arabs appeared most promising.

This late – last – Western colonialism has obscured the fact that the shift from Ottoman imperial rule to post-Ottoman Arab national rule was neither natural nor inevitable. European colonialism abruptly interrupted and reshaped a vital anti-sectarian Arab cultural and political path that had begun to take shape during the last century of Ottoman rule. Despite European colonialism, the ecumenical ideal, and the dream of creating sovereign societies greater than the sum of their communal or sectarian parts, survived well into the 20th-century Arab world.

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And I, innocently, thought that it was only the Sykes-Picot line that caused a problem in the area.

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Do remittances promote human development? Empirical evidence from developing countries

an article by Chong Siew Huay (Taylor’s University, Subang Jaya, Malaysia), Jonathan Winterton (University of Huddersfield, UK) and Yasmin Bani and Bolaji Tunde Matemilola (University Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Malaysia) published in International Journal of Social Economics Volume 45 Issue 10 (2019)

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of remittances on human development in developing countries using panel data from 1980 to 2014 and to address the critical question of whether the increasing trend of remittances has any impact on human development in a broad range of developing countries.

Design/methodology/approach
Usual panel estimates, such as pooled OLS, fixed or random effects model, possess specification issues such as endogeneity, heterogeneity and measurement errors. In this paper, we, therefore, apply dynamic panel estimates – System generalised method of moment (Sys-GMM) developed by Arellano and Bond (1991) and Arellano and Bover (1995). This estimator is able to control for the endogeneity of all the explanatory variables, account for unobserved country-specific effects that cannot be done using country dummies due to the dynamic structure of the model (Azman-Saini et al., 2010).

Findings
The effect of remittances is statistically significant with positive coefficients in developing countries. The significant coefficient of remittances means that, holding other variables constant, a rise in remittance inflows is associated with improvements in human development. A 10 per cent increase in remittances will lead to an increase of approximately 0.016 per cent in human development. These findings are consistent with Üstubuci and Irdam (2012) and Adenutsi (2010), who found evidence that remittances are positively correlated with human development.

Practical implications
The paper considers implications for policymakers to justify the need for more effective approaches. Policymakers need to consider indicators of human development and to devise public policies that promote income, health and education, to enhance human development.

Originality/value
The question of whether remittances affect human development has rarely been subject to systematic empirical study. Extant research does not resolve the endogeneity problem, whereas the present study provides empirical evidence by utilising dynamic panel estimators such as Sys-GMM to tackle the specification issues of endogeneity, measurement errors and heterogeneity. The present study provides a benchmark for future research on the effect of remittances on human development.

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Explaining the Neoliberal turn

a post from Transforming Society: a space where research evidence and critique can create positive social change

In this long read, Roger Brown, author of The Inequality Crisis: The Facts and What We Can Do About It, outlines causes of the Neoliberal turn and shows how it has created vastly increased and unjust social inequality. Crucially, he explains where we need to begin in order to reverse the tide.

In November 1984, at the age of 90, the former Prime Minister, the Earl of Stockton (previously, Mr Harold Macmillan), made his maiden speech in the House of Lords. Besides warning, somewhat presciently, about a growing division of comparative prosperity in the South and an ailing North and Midlands, he asked where the theories of monetarism had really come from:

“Was it America?” he inquired, “Or was it Tibet? It is quite true, many of your Lordships will remember it operating in the nursery. How do you treat a cold? One nanny said, “Feed a cold”; she was a neo-Keynesian. The other said “Starve a cold”; she was a monetarist.

For about thirty years after the end of the Second World War, the advanced economies of the West enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. There were big increases in growth and productivity; there was full or near-full employment; economic inequality fell; home ownership increased; there was a considerable degree of financial stability.

Since the mid-70s we have had much smaller increases in growth, productivity and investment; lower savings and higher debt; higher unemployment, with many leaving the workforce altogether; greater market concentration; greater inequality; falling social mobility; greater poverty; increased fraud and other forms of crime; reduced trust, especially in institutions; and recurrent financial crises. Even the growth in home-ownership has tailed off. Only on inflation has the performance of the major Western economies since the mid-1970s been better than before. So why did most Western countries abandon what, on nearly all economic and social criteria, was a successful model, in favour of one that has been so much less successful?

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Adverse childhood experiences and neuroinflammatory biomarkers—The role of sex

Seoyoun Kim, Toni Watt,  Natalie Ceballos  and Shobhit Sharma (Texas State University, San Marcos, USA) published in Stress & Health Volume 35 Issue 4 (October 2019)

Abstract

Despite the growing interest in adverse childhood experiences and biomarkers, less attention has been paid to multiple biomarkers as representing interrelated systems among college students.

Guided by the neuroinflammatory pathway hypothesis, the current project takes the initial step in examining the link between three types of childhood adversity and biomarkers of neuroplasticity (brain‐derived neurotropic factor [BDNF]) and low‐grade inflammation (C‐reactive protein [CRP]) in an overarching model and whether this link may differ in men and women.

Undergraduate students (n = 85) were recruited through multiple departments from a state university.

The participants responded to the detailed online survey questionnaire on childhood adversity and provided one blood sample via venous blood draw. Given that CRP and BDNF represent two interrelated systems, structural equation models were considered the most suitable for the analyses.

The findings partially support neural and inflammatory pathways, such that childhood adversity and particularly family dysfunction have a significant positive effect on BDNF (b = 30.41, p< .01). The link between family dysfunction and CRP was stronger in female students (b = 0.57, p< .05).

Results suggest that interventions for college students with family dysfunctions may need to target different physiological and behavioral outcomes for male and female students.

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Pigeonholes and mustard seeds: growing capacity to use data for society

Deborah Ashby (Imperial College London, UK) published in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A: Statistics in Society Volume 182 Issue 4 (October 2019)
[The address of the President delivered toThe Royal Statistical Society on 26 June 2019]

Summary

The Royal Statistical Society was founded to address social problems ‘through the collection and classification of facts’, leading to many developments in the collection of data, the development of methods for analysing them and the development of statistics as a profession.

Nearly 200 years later an explosion in computational power has led, in turn, to an explosion in data.

We outline the challenges and the actions needed to exploit those data for the public good, and to address the step change in statistical skills and capacity development necessary to enable our vision of a world where data are at the heart of understanding and decision making.

Full text (PDF 17pp)

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10 Ways to Boost Self-Care and Happiness When You’re Single

a post by Lianne Avila for YourTango.com [via World of Psychology blog]



A lot of people feel guilty when they put themselves first.

If you’re single and looking to learn how to take care of yourself and be happier, there are a few self care ideas and tips that can help.

Self-care is the beginning of learning how to be happy with your life, even when you’re single.

When you think of self-care, you may think of getting a massage or a mani-pedi. That’s alright because there’s nothing wrong with getting those things.

But, learning how to take care of yourself means learning how to take care of your mind, body, and soul.

Creative Ways To Be Happy and Confident When You’re Single

Being single means you have more time for yourself and you should use this to your advantage. A happy life is only a few steps away.

Taking time out when you need it is the core of self-care. In today’s world, everyone is busy. You are driven to work more and do more.

If you keep up at this pace, you will end up feeling depleted and empty inside. So, take better care of yourself, now.

Unfortunately, practicing self-care isn’t always easy. Many people feel guilty when they put themselves first, even if this means they are exhausted. This means that you are going to burn out, which can lead to many other problems.

Burnout and stress put both your emotional and physical health at risk. But, unfortunately, it’s not until one of those is at risk when people begin to do something

So, in order to be happier when you’re single, here are 10 self-care tips that will help you better take care of yourself.

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The digital, quaternary or 4.0 web economy: aspects, effects and implications

an article by Philip Cooke (Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen, Norway)  and JinHyo Joseph Yun, Xiaofei Zhao and YoungDuk Kim (Techno Jungang Daero, Daegu, South Korea) published in International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development Volume 10 Number 3 (2019)

Abstract

The world economy is changing dynamically with the expansion of information technology (IT). The change is not only happening at the technology industry level itself; other industries are also being disrupted with the appearance of smart factories, autonomous cars, smart e-commerce, and the like.

This paper preliminarily analyses the economic effects and concrete aspects of the quaternary economy, the knowledge-based part of the economy, which typically includes services such as information technology, information generation and sharing, media, research and development, as well as knowledge-based services.

First, it analyses the economic effect of the quaternary economy on the USA, UK, and Israel in addition to the technological base of the quaternary such as Internet of Everything and financialisation effects.

Second, it investigates the concrete aspects of the quaternary economy in five main areas including interactive or crossover innovation in artificial intelligence, appearance of cybersecurity from firewalls to cyber warfare, precision agriculture and smart farming, smart grid, electric vehicles and pilotless planes, and precision medicine.

Third, the paper discusses the governance of the quaternary economy along with thin globalisation and relevant regulatory issues of the digital culture of our time.

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Ethnicity and neighbourhood attainment in England and Wales: A study of second generations' spatial integration

an article by Carolina V. Zuccotti (European University Institute, Florence, Italy) published in Population, Space and Place Volume 25 Issue 7 (October 2019)

Abstract

Ethnic minorities' spatial concentration and their predominance in deprived areas are two well‐known patterns that characterise Britain's social landscape. However, little is known about ethnic minorities' opportunities for spatial integration, especially those of the second generations.

Using a large‐scale longitudinal data set of England and Wales covering a 40‐year period (1971–2011), in combination with aggregated census data, the article examines ethnic inequalities in access to neighbourhoods with varying levels of ethnic concentration and deprivation.

On equality of individual, social origin, and childhood neighbourhood characteristics, second generation ethnic minorities are less likely than White British individuals to reside in “whiter” and less deprived neighbourhoods. For most minorities, these differences reduce among those with higher education and a higher social class, in line with weak place stratification/ethnic enclave.

Growing up in areas with high ethnic concentration and high deprivation has a particularly strong “retention effect” among second generation Asians.

The study shows that ethnic spatial segregation is, in part, the product of time‐persisting ethnic inequalities in the access to neighbourhoods and that these inequalities are conditioned both by childhood and by adult resources.

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How alternative employment contracts affect low wage workers

a post by Nikhil Datta (University College London, UK and Centre for Economic Performance, London, UK), Giulia Giupponi (Institute for Fiscal Studies, London, UK) and Stephen Machin (London School of Economics, UK and Centre for Economic Performance, London, UK) for the OUP blog


Eggtimer by Storkman. Public Domain via Pixabay.

Contemporary labour markets are characterised by more atypical or alternative work arrangements. Some of these – like independent contractors – have emerged in the context of self-employment, while others – like zero hours contracts and temporary work – are evolutions of traditional employment contracts. Irrespective of its form, the increase in atypical work has led to discussions of a trade-off between the potentially desirable flexibility it offers and the emergence of low-wage, dead-end jobs, characterised by considerably fewer employment rights and less job security than conventional forms of employment.

The rise of atypical work has been a key feature of the labour market of the United Kingdom in recent years.. One kind of alternative work arrangement that is increasingly common in the UK are zero hours contracts. Under such contracts, employers are not obliged to guarantee hours or times of work, and workers are – at least in principle – not obliged to accept work offered and are paid only for the work carried out. Almost a million people in the UK work like this today, compared to only two hundred thousand at the turn of the millennium. Many of these contracts are prominent in low-wage sectors of the economy, such as hospitality and social care.

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That Destructive Not So Little Inner Voice

a post by Kurt Smith for the World of Psychology blog



No, you’re not hearing things — that voice telling you you’re not good enough, you should do more, or that no one likes you is usually coming from inside your own head. Too often our biggest critics are ourselves and that nagging inner voice can create a great deal of worry, self-doubt and trouble in a person’s life.

Although not a real voice, these persistent feelings of inadequacy and self criticism can be deafening and too often keep us from pursuing our dreams or achieving our goals. They can make us feel helpless and as though there is no possibility of living up to our own self-imposed standards, or what we think others expect. This can become a vicious cycle of mental gyrations — you should be this, you aren’t good enough, you can’t, etc.

Although we all occasionally deal with this critical inner dialogue, for some it becomes a regular battle. For these people the repercussions can have a huge impact on their life and happiness, often leading to problems with depression and anxiety.

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Tax governance: the balance between tax regulatory requirements and societal expectations

J. Christian Plesner Rossing (The University of Tampa, USA), Thomas Riise Johansen (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark) and Thomas C. Pearson (University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, USA) published in International Journal of Corporate Governance Volume 10 Number 3/4 (2019)

Abstract

In October 2012, Starbucks UK branch became the subject of massive public criticism over alleged tax avoidance. Despite Starbucks arguing that its transfer pricing practices were in full compliance with regulation, public pressure led Starbucks to overpay its UK taxes on international transfer pricing beyond the regulatory requirements.

This behaviour contradicts the current literature in which international transfer pricing is portrayed as a tool for aggressive tax management or an exercise of regulatory compliance.

It is further argued that boards and top management of multinational enterprises (MNEs) can no longer approach tax governance as a purely technical, regulation-driven discipline to be addressed only by accounting staff and tax consultants. Instead, its pivotal role in the social contract between an MNE and its stakeholders needs to be recognised.

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Architectural lessons for the future, via the past

an article by Amin Al-Habaibeh (Nottingham Trent University, UK) published in UNESCO Courier (October-December 2019)

Modern cities, with their paved roads and glass towers, are hardly adapted to cope with the expected rise in temperatures. Designed to provide shade and air circulation, traditional buildings in the Middle East, Gulf and African countries could inspire more sustainable and environmentally-friendly habitats in other parts of the world.

As a result of global warming and the rise in greenhouse gas levels, cities across the world are increasingly likely to be exposed to extreme temperatures. This is particularly true in the Gulf countries, where temperatures are expected to rise to over 50 ℃ during the twenty-first century. But these heat surges have not spared other regions of the world – particularly Europe, where during the summer of 2019, record temperatures were reached in France, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, among other countries.

Today, lifestyles and architecture are dependent on air conditioning, and modern materials such as concrete, asphalt or glass. These materials, however, are not adapted to high temperatures.

Glass reflects solar radiation to the surrounding area, creating heat islands and the risk of a greenhouse effect inside buildings.

Asphalt also absorbs a large part of the sun's rays, which it converts into a heat flux – thus contributing to warming the local environment.

Concrete, on the other hand, consumes a lot of energy during its production, contributing to global warming through carbon emissions.

In addition, modern urban planning does not favour public transportation. This makes private cars a necessity, creating more pollution and localized heat islands, especially when combined with the air-conditioning systems of buildings.

Historically, before the adoption of the modern way of life, most people on the planet lived in a more harmonious way with their environment. They were either farmers within oases, agricultural or fishing village communities, Bedouins or nomads living in tents in the desert, or urban dwellers living in cities.

The materials they selected to build their dwellings came from the environment. They were sustainable, adapted to their way of life, and based on what is now termed a circular economy. Due to their travelling lifestyles and animal herding, the Bedouins lived in tents that were optimized for protection against the weather, and for flexibility. The tents were designed and built to function effectively with the environment – they were woven using available resources like goat hair and sheep’s wool. This is why they are called “houses of hair” in Arabic.

Continue reading and discover ways in which we can combat some of these effects. If not for ourselves for the sake of those who are coming after us.

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12 Things You Can Do to Learn to Trust Again

a post by Rossana Snee for the Lifehack blog

NOTE: This post is primarily about a one-to-one relationship with a partner but there are, among the 12 suggestions, ideas that you can apply to other relationships.

T R U S T – a simple five-letter word. Yet one that carries so much weight. Trust is the soul of any relationship. It is the super glue that binds it together. If you have it, it is the reason you can go to sleep at night next to your partner and feel at peace; the reason that the ding of a text, or the ring of a phone doesn’t shoot off alarm bells; the reason that your partner working late doesn’t cause an anxiety attack.

Lack of trust, however, creates just the opposite effect. It causes untold psychological distress. It turns you into a spy as you search for clues that will validate your suspicions. It pits you against your worst insecurities. It makes you sick and hypervigilant; it keeps you up at nights wondering, Am I not good enough? Is it my fault? Is everything we have a sham? What will people think?

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The prevalence and impact of online trolling of UK members of parliament

an article by Shazia Akhtar and Catriona M.Morrison (University of Bradford, UK) published in Computers in Human Behavior Volume 99 (October 2019)

Highlights

• A substantial proportion of UK MPs report being the victims of online trolling.
• Trolling is most common on the twitter platform.
• Male MPs report more concerns over reputational damage.
• Female MPs report more personal concerns, e.g., safety, risk to family, social life.

Abstract

Online trolling is a new phenomenon that is increasingly coming to public attention. Recent events in the United Kingdom (UK) have raised concerns about this behaviour.

Trolling is particularly targeted at public figures, and Members of Parliament (MPs) are a prime target.

In this study we surveyed UK MPs about their experiences and the impact of being trolled by completing a short online questionnaire.

One-hundred and eighty-one MPs responded to our survey. Chi-square tests for independence and one-way ANOVA was employed to analyse the data.

All MPs had experienced trolling and many were trolled multiple times a day, and the principal platforms for this abuse were Twitter and Facebook. The pattern of trolling varied between male and female targets, with males reporting more concern about reputational damage, and females more concern about their personal safety. The impact of being trolled varied between males and females, with a much greater impact on female MPs. We discuss the effects of online trolling on the victims of this behaviour.

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10 poems for today thanks to Interesting Literature

The build-up of posts from Interesting Literature was crowding out the other items that I found interesting – and thought you would too – that I decided to keep the poetry separate.

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‘To Sleep’: A Poem by John Keats
via Interesting Literature
‘To Sleep’, a sonnet by one of the leading second-generation Romantic poets, John Keats (1795-1821), addresses sleep as a ‘soft embalmer of the still midnight’. Sleep allows us to escape our own minds, when one’s conscience begins to prick us, keeping us awake. Sleep wraps us up in lovely delicious rest, and allows us to forget the world.
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‘In My Own Shire, If I Was Sad’: A Poem by A. E. Housman
via Interesting Literature
One of the 63 poems that make up A. E. Housman’s most famous volume of poems, A Shropshire Lad (1896), the poem beginning ‘In My Own Shire, If I Was Sad’ is written in rhyming couplets and is about the change the ‘Shropshire lad’ feels when he moves from his rural home to the bustling metropolis of London. Suddenly, he is surrounded by a sea of people, none of them cares for him – he is in a city of millions of souls, but has never felt more alone.
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A Short Analysis of ‘My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is’
via Interesting Literature
‘My mind to me a kingdom is’ is a poem that has been popular with readers ever since it was published in 1588 in William Byrd’s Psalmes, Sonets, & Songs. Yet the authorship of ‘My mind to me a kingdom is’ is by no means certain. Who wrote it? First, here’s the poem, which expresses the sentiment that one’s own mind contains a whole world, and, indeed – as Emily Dickinson would later also express – more than the world, since the only limit on it is the limit of our own imagination, or what we are able to conceive of.
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‘A Dream’: A Poem by William Blake
via Interesting Literature
Published in Blake’s 1789 book Songs of Innocence, ‘A Dream’ is about William Blake’s vision of three insects: an ant (‘emmet’), a beetle, and a glow-worm, which is in fact a kind of beetle. Not only that, but these are talking insects: the emmet confides that she has lost her children, and the bright glow-worm offers to light the way for her through the night, so she can recover them.
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A Short Analysis of W. H. Auden’s ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’
via Interesting Literature
‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’ by W. H. Auden (1907-73) was written in 1939, following the death of the Irish poet W. B. Yeats in January of that year. As well as being an elegy for the dead poet, ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’ is also a meditation on the role and place of poetry in the modern world. What is poetry for? Can it make anything happen? Should it make anything happen?
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‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’: A Poem by William Wordsworth
via Interesting Literature
Philip Larkin once recalled hearing William Wordsworth’s poem ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’ recited on BBC radio, and having to pull over to the side of the road, as his eyes had filled with tears. ‘Intimations of Immortality’ remains a powerful meditation on death, the loss of childhood innocence, and the way we tend to get further away from ourselves – our true roots and our beliefs – as we grow older.
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A Short Analysis of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Mother o’ Mine’
via Interesting Literature
‘Mother o’ Mine’ was published as a dedication to Kipling’s 1892 book The Light That Failed. Like many of Kipling’s greatest poems, it’s song-like, lending itself to being read or even sung or chanted aloud. It’s also a fine poem about a poet paying tribute to his mother.
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‘The Brook’: A Poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
via Interesting Literature
Just as rivers flow into the sea, so brooks flow into larger rivers, as Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92) highlights in this charming poem, ‘The Brook’: ‘And out again I curve and flow / To join the brimming river, / For men may come and men may go, / But I go on for ever.’
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‘The Dream’: A Poem by John Donne
via Interesting Literature
What if you were dreaming about someone, only to be woken up by the very person you had been dreaming about? This scenario is the focus of this lesser-known John Donne poem, ‘The Dream’, which – as in a number of other John Donne poems – sees the poet trying to seduce the woman to sleeping with him…
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Following Homer: The Epic Poems of the Cyclic Poets
Via Interesting Literature
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle discovers the epic poets who wrote continuations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey
When I began this column back in May last year, it was intended to be an online extension of my first book for a general audience, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History. Just as that book had arisen out of this very blog, so it returned to the blog, its natural home. The blog, and the book, are dedicated to rootling about in a mythical and entirely virtual ‘secret library’ containing all sorts of books and other texts that have been lost, forgotten, or never received their due. And although occasionally I’ve turned my thoughts to more familiar titles, unearthing the little-known sides to them, for the most part this column has concerned itself with the ‘lost’ works among literature, whatever that might signify. And they don’t come much more lost than the Cyclic poets.
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The impact of the Work Capability Assessment on mental health: claimants’ lived experiences and GP perspectives in low-income communities

an article by Lorraine Hansford, Felicity Thomas and Katrina Wyatt (University of Exeter, UK) published in Journal of Poverty and Social Justice Volume 27 Number 3 (October 2019)

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of increased welfare conditionality on people with mental health issues claiming benefits in the UK.

Drawing on data from the DeStress study, this paper explores the lived experience of welfare claimants in low-income communities, and the perspectives of GPs seeking to support them.

Particular focus is placed on people’s experience of the Work Capability Assessment, the tool used to determine welfare claimants’ entitlement to sickness benefit, and how the narratives and culture surrounding welfare reform and the actual assessment itself can have a negative impact on mental health and well-being.

Full text (PDF 18pp)

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There’s A Battle Of Storytelling About Migrants And Muslims: Populists are winning

posted by S Abbas Raza in 3 Quarks Daily: Suketu Mehta in Scroll.in:

A truly thoughtful piece of writing which deserves a wide audience.


Illustration: Nithya Subramanian

These days, a great many people in the rich countries complain loudly about migration from the poor ones. But the game was rigged: First, the rich countries colonised us and stole our treasure and prevented us from building our industries. After plundering us for centuries, they left, having drawn up maps in ways that ensured permanent strife between our communities. Then they brought us to their countries as “guest workers” – as if they knew what the word “guest” meant in our cultures – but discouraged us from bringing our families.

Having built up their economies with our raw materials and our labour, they asked us to go back and were surprised when we did not. They stole our minerals and corrupted our governments so that their corporations could continue stealing our resources; they fouled the air above us and the waters around us, making our farms barren, our oceans lifeless; and they were aghast when the poorest among us arrived at their borders, not to steal but to work, to clean their shit, and to sleep with their men.

Still, they needed us. They needed us to fix their computers and heal their sick and teach their kids, so they took our best and brightest, those who had been educated at the greatest expense of the struggling states they came from, and seduced us again to work for them. Now, again they ask us not to come, desperate and starving though they have rendered us, because the richest among them need a scapegoat. This is how the game is rigged today.

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Three Ways Childhood Trauma Affects Adulthood

an article by Jade Wu, The Savvy Psychologist for Psychology Today

Complex childhood trauma is subtle but has long-term consequences.

When you think of your early years, what comes to mind?

It might be things like diving into a fresh bowl of watermelon on a hot summer day, giggling as your parents pushed you on the swings at the local playground, biking around the block with your siblings, or gathering for a cozy winter movie night with the whole family. Or you may be among the many people who don't have these lovely childhood memories, or who have darker memories that crowd out the happy ones.

What is complex trauma?

Most of us can recognize what trauma looks like. When we think of trauma, we often think of momentous, life-changing events. We think of horrific instances of sexual assault, car accidents, natural disasters, and war—events that divide a person’s life into “before” and “after”. These are the experiences that victims are often plagued by in the form of flashbacks and nightmares.

Continue reading but please be aware that this is not likely to be a comfortable read.

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Why Mammalian Brains are Geared Toward Kindness

posted by Azra Raza in 3 Quarks Daily: Patricia Churchland in The Scientist:



Three myths about morality remain alluring:

• only humans act on moral emotions,
• moral precepts are divine in origin, and
• learning to behave morally goes against our thoroughly selfish nature.

Converging data from many sciences, including ethology, anthropology, genetics, and neuroscience, have challenged all three of these myths. First, self-sacrifice, given the pressing needs of close kin or conspecifics to whom they are attached, has been documented in many mammalian species — wolves, marmosets, dolphins, and even rodents. Birds display it too. In sharp contrast, reptiles show no hint of this impulse.

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Middle management, geographic frictions, and firm establishments

a column by Anna Gumpert, Henrike Steimer and Manfred Antoni for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Distance and other geographic frictions between firms’ headquarters and their establishments have a negative effect on performance.

Figure 2 Intuition of the model mechanism

Source: self-created based on publicly available elements 

This column shows that hiring middle managers helps firms mitigate the impact of geographic frictions, by improving the efficiency of management resources. Factors affecting the efficiency of a local establishment have knock-on effects for the whole firm, regardless of distance.

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Are humans built for living in cities?

an article by Chris Murray published in the RSA Journal Issue 2 (2019) [via Medium]

We need to understand how cities shape us psychologically if we are to improve inhabitants’ well-being and create more efficient, sustainable ways of urban living.



If Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man had a sequel, it would be an urban edition. The global rise in city living is so staggering that we must now accept one simple point with myriad, complex implications: the future success of our species is intimately linked to that of our cities. Yet, as Danish architect Jan Gehl put it, “We definitely know more about good habitats for mountain gorillas, Siberian tigers or panda bears than we do about a good urban habitat for Homo sapiens.” This is particularly the case for the emotional and mental health impacts of city living.

Moving to the city

The figures tell the story: according to the UN, more than half the world now live in urban areas. This will rise to 70% by 2050, and in the UK about 80% of the population already live in cities. But, in evolutionary terms, cities are very new. Modern humans have been around for 200,000 years or so, cities at most 10,000. So, of the estimated 108 billion people that have ever existed (according to the Population Reference Bureau), only a small percentage have lived in a city, and those only recently.

While we are a highly adaptable species, there are limits. We have evolved to best suit our environments over millennia, but the rapid pace of change of the past few centuries has placed strains on our adaptability. For example, living in cities promotes a linear, sped up experience of time. German philosopher and psychiatrist Thomas Fuchs linked this with depression and anxiety, suggesting that it is out of step not only with the cyclical and circadian rhythms of the body, but also an older, deeply ingrained experience of time that is linked to seasonal cycles.

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Dual life of seafarers’ families: descriptive study of perspectives of seafarers’ partners

an article by Ana Slišković and Ariana Juranko (University of Zadar, Croatia) published in Community, Work & Family Volume 22 Issue 5 (2019)

Abstract

Although the dual life of a seafarer’s family is recognised as a unique life, a systematic approach to the perspectives of seafarers’ partners is lacking, especially in the case of long-term separation. Therefore, we have adopted a qualitative approach to gain systematic and deeper insight into the features of the seafarers’ occupation which are reflected positively or negatively in their partners’ lives.

By means of an online survey, we collected data from 647 partners of Croatian seafarers.

The data obtained, relating to open-ended questions, were analysed by thematic analysis.

Negative effects of separation emerged as the most strongly-represented theme, wherein a range of different aspects relating to separation is identified (loneliness, overload with domestic duties and care for children, etc.). Other negative aspects relate to fear caused by risks and stressors in seafaring, subordination of one’s own job/career, and lack of understanding and support from family and friends

 Still, participants reported a range of positive aspects of the dual life, such as financial security, growth of the loving relationship, full commitment from their partner during days off, the benefits of the seafarer's job satisfaction for the relationship, and having time for one’s own growth during the partner’s absence.

I would want to add my own negative comment to those expressed in this survey: his need to take over as head of the household as soon as he got home from four months at sea. Four months when I had been in the position!

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10 for today starts with a duel between sheep! and ends with the history of the hoodie

Sheep duel
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza

Gentlemen, pick your weap— oh, I guess you'll be using those big horns.
From the mad_hippies instagram:
Link through for video

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Maps show land confiscated from Old Fox
via ResearchBuzz Firehose: Andrew Thomson for BBC Scotland

A map made by Peter May on the instructions of the Commissioners for the Forfeited Annexed Estates
Maps made to help the government control the confiscated estate of a notorious Jacobite have been made available to the public online.
They are among more than 400 maps belonging to the Lovat Estates near Beauly in the Highlands.
After the defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden, the British government took control of the estates of the 11th Lord Lovat, Simon Fraser, who was known as the Old Fox.
Fans of the Outlander books and television series will be familiar with the character, played by Scottish actor Clive Russell.
He was beheaded for high treason in 1747 because of his support for Bonnie Prince Charlie.
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The History of Printing
via the Killer Web Directory by Administrator
Here is a good looking infographic from the folks at Inkjets.com that will teach you all about the history of printing. Check out the 5,000 year history of printing starting in 3,000 BC and going all the way through to modern times.

See the full size version @ UK Feather Flags

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Mystery mud on new volcanic island baffles Nasa scientists
via the Guardian by Eleanor Ainge Roy

Vegetation growing on the new Tongan island Photograph: Dan Slayback
Island sprang up near Tonga three years ago, giving researchers a glimpse of how flora and fauna colonise it
Nasa scientists have landed for the first time on one of the world’s newest islands, and discovered the three-year-old land mass is now covered in a sticky, mysterious mud, as well as vegetation and bird life.
The volcanic island sprang up in the ocean surrounding Tonga three years ago, one of only three new islands to emerge in the last 150 years that have survived more than a few months.
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Literary Film Review: The Terminator
via Interesting Literature
This month’s classic film review analyses the inaugural film in the ‘tech noir’ genre, James Cameron’s 1984 powerhouse The Terminator
‘But The Terminator wasn’t based on a novel, surely?’ I hear you protest. You’re right, it wasn’t, so what’s The Terminator doing being featured in this monthly literary film review? Well, for one, because there are notable literary precedents for James Cameron’s 1984 science-fiction thriller, even if these are not direct influences per se.
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Asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs caused a mile-high tsunami
We knew the Chicxulub crater was massive. We just didn't know how widespread the damage actually was.
via the Big Think blog by Derek Beres

A scientific mission led by IODP (International Ocean Discovery Program) studies the Chicxulub impact crater on the Gulf of Mexico, created after an asteroid crashed 66 million years ago. Photo credit: Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP / Getty Images

• The asteroid that crashed into the Yucatan caused a mile-high tsunami.
• The wave was 52 times higher and 2,600 times more energetic than the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed over 227,000 people.
• Sediment was disturbed 3,700 miles from the site of the crash.

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This mossy plant may be ‘more medically effective than cannabis’
via Boing Boing by Rusty Blazenhoff

image by University of Bern/Stefan Fischer
Something interesting from the world of science: Liverwort contains a psychoactive substance ("perrottetinene" or "PET") that has similar molecular structures to THC. Researchers think might be superior to THC for dampening pain signals and reducing inflammation. It just doesn't produce the same kind of high.
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Empire of Trebizond (1204–1461)
via About History

The Trebizond empire is a medieval Byzantine-Orthodox state, formed in 1204 on the Anatolian coast of the Black Sea as a result of the collapse of the Byzantine Empire.
Continue reading and you will find probably more information than you wanted or needed about Trebizond together with detailed maps.

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Impact crater 19 miles wide found beneath Greenland glacier
via the Guardian by Ian Sample, science editor

An illustration of the ice-filled crater discovered in Greenland. Photograph: Nasa/Cryospheric Sciences Lab/Natural History Museum of Denmark
A huge impact crater has been discovered under a half-mile-thick Greenland ice sheet.
The enormous bowl-shaped dent appears to be the result of a mile-wide iron meteorite slamming into the island at a speed of 12 miles per second as recently as 12,000 years ago.
The impact of the 10bn-tonne space rock would have unleashed 47m times the energy of the Little Boy nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. It would have melted vast amounts of ice, sending freshwater rushing into the oceans, and blasted rocky debris high into the atmosphere.
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The hoodie is 3,000 years old
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz

In the video above, the always-fascinating Paola Antonelli, architecture and design curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art, takes us through the history of the hoodie, "a humble masterpiece," beginning in ancient Greece and Rome.

Internet Archive releases 2,500 MS-DOS games so you can relive the ’90s

Play retro computer games like Mr. Blobby, Alone in the Dark and Alien Rampage.

an article by Bonnie Burton for c|net [via Stephen’s Lighthouse by Stephen Abram]

If you loved playing MS-DOS games in the '90s like 3D Bomber, Zool and Alien Rampage, you can now replay those, and many more, with the latest update from Internet Archive.

On Sunday, Internet Archive released 2,500 MS-DOS games that includes action, strategy and adventure titles. Some of the games are Vor Terra, Spooky Kooky Monster Maker, Princess Maker 2 and I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.

"This will be our biggest update yet, ranging from tiny recent independent productions to long-forgotten big-name releases from decades ago," Internet Archive software curator Jason Scott wrote on the site's blog.

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10 for today starts with good news about brain cells and ends in Germany in 1918

Humans can make new brain cells into their 90s, scientists discover
via the Guardian by Ian Sample, Science editor
Study may help diagnose and identify people at risk of developing Alzheimer’s much earlier

This microscopic view shows tissue from the dentate gyrus, part of the hippocampus, of a man who died at 68. He had a healthy brain at time of death. On the picture, fresh brain cells are in red and mature ones in blue. Photograph: CSIC via Nature
Humans can make fresh brain cells until they are well into their 90s, but the production of new neurons falls in those with Alzheimer’s, even when the disease has recently taken hold, scientists have found.
The findings may help doctors to diagnose Alzheimer’s at an earlier stage, and identify those most at risk who may benefit from exercise and other interventions that could boost the production of new brain cells.
The work is the latest on an issue that has divided neuroscientists for decades, with some arguing humans have their full quota of brain cells by the time they reach adulthood, and others claiming fresh neurons continue to be made into old age.
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What Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel tells us about women's music
via the OUP blog by Angela Mace Christian

the Music Room of Fanny Hensel (nee Mendelssohn) by Julius Eduard Wilhelm Helfft, 1849. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Everyone loves a good plot twist. And what better plot twist than finding out that a work of art, scientific discovery, or other creation was the achievement not of a well-known man, but rather a woman? Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel was a talented composer of the early 19th century who worked mostly in private. As an upper-class woman with many social responsibilities and expectations, she was not encouraged to go on to any kind of public career. Instead she hosted concerts in her Berlin, Germany home, performed music with her friends, and composed—a lot. Over 450 works, in fact.
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Of pasta and patents
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
According to the Encyclopedia of Pasta [Amazon.com], there are hundreds of pasta shapes. At Smithsonian, Elizabeth Chu and D. Lawrence Tarazano of the US Patent Office look at relatively recent machinery to crank out the floury forms.
Link here to continue reading and watch video

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Pottery reveals America's first social media networks
via ResearchBuzz: Firehose: Washington University in St. Louis published on Science Daily
Ancient Indigenous societies, including Mississippian Mound cultures, were built through social networks
Article Summary
Long before Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and even MySpace, early Mississippian Mound cultures in America's southern Appalachian Mountains shared artistic trends and technologies across regional networks that functioned in similar ways as modern social media, suggests new research.
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Lots of images included in the Wikipedia article

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Polishing Buttercups by Paul May
via An Awfully Big Blog Adventure

Over the last couple of months I’ve developed an unexpected obsession with Enid Blyton. I think it may have started when I read Alison Uttley’s private diaries, in which she recounts a meeting with Blyton in the fish shop in Beaconsfield. These were two of the best-selling children’s authors of their day, and Blyton, of course, continues to be a best seller. She is the fourth most translated author in the world – the three ahead of her being - according to Wikipedia - Agatha Christie, Jules Verne and William Shakespeare.
By a strange coincidence Blyton and Uttley lived just a couple of miles from each other in Beaconsfield, where, in another uncanny coincidence, I also lived for a few years as a teenager. What's more, while Blyton and Uttley were meeting in the fish shop, Terry Pratchett may well have been beavering away, 'getting an education' in Beaconsfield Public Library.
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Please do. I can highly recommend this piece.

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Deep in Chislehurst Caves, the families of the Blitz built whole new lives underground
via the New Statesman by Kate Mossman
The caves, where families slept in three-tier bunk beds or pitches, had electric lighting, a canteen, a hospital and a police station.

The wartime hospital deep within Chislehurst Caves (with cave-dweller Jill Cheeseman on the end of the queue)     CHISLEHURST CAVE
In Chislehurst Caves, every fourth adult is given an oil lantern to light the way through miles of underground chalk and flint. It’s a surprising touch in a world tormented by health and safety: in the New Statesman kitchen, the toaster, “a fire hazard”, has just been removed. For 87-year-old Jill Cheeseman, the smell of paraffin and sedimentary rock is exactly the same now as it was during the Second World War, when she lived down here with 15,000 others, every night for three years, and 24 hours a day for ten weeks in the Blitz.
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A Short Analysis of the ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ Nursery Rhyme
via Interesting Literature by Dr Oliver Tearle
‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ is one of the best-loved nursery rhymes in all of English literature, but its origins are somewhat different from most beloved children’s rhymes. What does this little rhyme mean? And where did it come from?
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The human body is "full of evolutionary leftovers that no longer serve a purpose"
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder

Image: By Exordium - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
People have a little pink band in the inside corner of their eye. "This is the plica semilunaris," says Dorsa Amir, an evolutionary anthropologist. "It used to be a third eyelid that would blink horizontally." Amir posted a fascinating Twitter thread of other " evolutionary leftovers that no longer serve a purpose" in the human body.
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An ant colony has memories that its individual members don't have
Just like your brain.
via the Big Think blog by Deborah M Gordon
Like a brain, an ant colony operates without central control. Each is a set of interacting individuals, either neurons or ants, using simple chemical interactions that in the aggregate generate their behaviour. People use their brains to remember. Can ant colonies do that? This question leads to another question: what is memory?
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The German Revolution of 1918-19: democratic ancestry or subjective liberation?
via the OUP blog by Moritz Follmer

Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1972-029-03, Rätezeit by Unknown. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
On 9 November 1918 in central Berlin, Philipp Scheidemann, a leading moderate Social Democrat, and Karl Liebknecht, an antimilitaristic renegade who was soon to co-found the Communist Party, announced the end of the German Empire and the beginning of a new political era. Both tried to give direction to a revolution that had begun as a protest movement against the war and the attempts by some officers to continue fighting in the face of defeat. However, both politicians’ speeches attest to the difficult heritage which the revolution bequeathed to Social Democrats and Communists. From a balcony of the Reichstag, Scheidemann hailed a resounding victory for the German people, while also admonishing them to maintain “quiet, order, and safety” and respect the “ordinances” and “proclamations” issued by the new authorities. Such statements came back to haunt his party, for it has often been faulted for containing popular unrest rather than marshalling it for social transformation. Liebknecht confidently proclaimed “the new socialist freedom of workers and soldiers”, which later earned him a place among the German Democratic Republic’s venerated ancestors. Yet, the religious language in which he evoked the “ghosts” of countless victims of total war and proletarian struggle marching past the Berlin Palace always sat oddly with a system based on “scientific” Marxism-Leninism.
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A new perspective of performance comparison among machine learning algorithms for financial distress prediction

an article by Yu-Pei Huang (National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan; National Quemoy University, Taiwan) and Meng-Feng Yen (National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan) published in Applied Soft Computing Volume 83 (October 2019)

Highlights

• This paper reviewed the pros and cons of recent literature on various MLmodels for FDP.
• This paper compared the performance of six ML-based approaches using real-life data.
• Among the four supervised models, the XGBoost algorithm provided the most accurate FD prediction.
• The hybrid DBN-SVM model gave betterforecasts than both the SVM and the classifier DBN models.

Abstract

We set out in this study to review a vast amount of recent literature on machine learning (ML) approaches to predicting financial distress (FD), including supervised, unsupervised and hybrid supervised–unsupervised learning algorithms.

our supervised ML models including the traditional support vector machine (SVM), recently developed hybrid associative memory with translation (HACT), hybrid GA-fuzzy clustering and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) were compared in prediction performance to the unsupervised classifier deep belief network (DBN) and the hybrid DBN-SVM model, whereby a total of sixteen financial variables were selected from the financial statements of the publicly-listed Taiwanese firms as inputs to the six approaches.

Our empirical findings, covering the 2010–2016 sample period, demonstrated that among the four supervised algorithms, the XGBoost provided the most accurate FD prediction. Moreover, the hybrid DBN-SVM model was able to generate more accurate forecasts than the use of either the SVM or the classifier DBN in isolation.

JEL classification: G17, G32, O16, O31

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The Humanitarian Crisis Of Deaths Of Despair

posted by S, Abbas Raza in 3 Quarks Daily: David V. Johnson in the APA Blog:



Image by cocoparisienne from Pixabay

Last April, Princeton University economists and married partners Anne Case and Sir Angus Deaton delivered the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Stanford University. The title of their talks, “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism”, is also the provisional name of their forthcoming book, to be published in 2020.

The couple’s research has focused on disturbing mortality data for a specific demographic: white non-Hispanic Americans without college degrees. This century, they have been dying at alarming rates from what Case and Deaton call “deaths of despair”, which cover suicide, alcohol-related disease, and drug overdoses (primarily driven by opioids). These deaths have, along with US obesity, heart disease, and cancer rates, contributed to a shocking recent decline in US life expectancy for three straight years—something which hasn’t happened since World War I and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. The rates for “deaths of despair” are not as high for college-educated whites or for other racial minorities, and there are many potential economic and sociological reasons for this.

Case and Deaton’s research raises important questions for the US political economy and the legacy of neoliberalism. But I am more interested in the framing of the mortality statistics as “deaths of despair.”

More here.

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Massive Citizen Science Effort Seeks To Survey The Entire Great Barrier Reef

a post by Azra Raza for 3 Quarks Daily: Jessica Wynne Lockhart in Smithsonian:

Only about 1,000 of 3,000 individual reefs have been documented, but the Great Reef Census hopes to fill in the gaps


By collecting images and GPS data from citizen divers, scientists can get a better sense of the health of the entire Great Barrier Reef. (Damian Bennett)

In August, marine biologists Johnny Gaskell and Peter Mumby and a team of researchers boarded a boat headed into unknown waters off the coasts of Australia. For 14 long hours, they ploughed over 200 nautical miles, a Google Maps cache as their only guide. Just before dawn, they arrived at their destination of a previously uncharted blue hole—a cavernous opening descending through the seafloor. After the rough night, Mumby was rewarded with something he hadn’t seen in his 30-year career. The reef surrounding the blue hole had nearly 100 percent healthy coral cover. Such a find is rare in the Great Barrier Reef, where coral bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 led to headlines proclaiming the reef “dead.”

“It made me think, ‘this is the story that people need to hear,’” Mumby says.

The expedition from Daydream Island off the coast of Queensland was a pilot program to test the methodology for the Great Reef Census, a citizen science project headed by Andy Ridley, founder of the annual conservation event Earth Hour. His latest organization, Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef, has set the ambitious goal of surveying the entire 1,400-mile-long reef system in 2020. “We’re trying to gain a broader understanding on the status of the reef—what’s been damaged, where the high value corals are, what’s recovering and what’s not,” Ridley says. While considered one of the best managed reef systems in the world, much of the Great Barrier Reef remains un-surveyed, mainly owing to its sheer size. Currently, data (much of it outdated) only exists on about 1,000 of the Great Barrier’s estimated 3,000 individual reefs, while a mere 100 reefs are actively monitored.

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The roles of universities in knowledge-based urban development: a critical review

an article by Andrew Johnston (IBERG, Sheffield Hallam University, UK) published in International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development Volume 10 Number 3 (2019)

Abstract

Universities are increasingly recognised as key actors in the knowledge-based urban development process, occupying a crucial role of knowledge creators and transmitters.

This paper takes a critical view of these roles and reviews the extant literature to present a synopsis of relevant work examining universities and open innovation, the uncertainties involved in the process of knowledge transfer, and the spatial scope of university-industry links.

The paper proposes a number of areas for future development: understanding the heterogeneity of universities and how this influences their potential roles in knowledge-based urban development; a better understanding of how uncertainties in the partner selection process may prevent efficient university-industry collaboration to promote knowledge-based urban development; further exploration of the micro-level processes involved in knowledge transfer between universities and firms; and a broader understanding of the roles of proximities in facilitating these links.

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What do policy makers really do?

an article by Richard Freeman published by Transforming Society

What do policy makers do? The question is important, because making policy engages a great number of people one way or another, and what they do they might do well or badly. Our standard answers are rather hazy, not least because policy making entails such great numbers of people doing a great number of things.

The literature tends to have addressed the question in functional terms, outlining and defining – and endlessly debating – different sets of activities such as advocacy and agenda-setting, formulating and decision making, implementing and evaluating.

But what if we were to begin somewhere else, to explore policy as a set of human actions, as a form of work, as real-time, practical and physical ‘doings and sayings‘? What do policy makers really do? What does their work entail?

The answer is surprisingly simple:

‘The two things that civil servants do is write papers and have meetings. Because that’s what we do. From that, things happen. Extraordinary though it might seem’ (quote from a senior civil servant)

‘When someone asks me what I do at work … I read, write and have meetings, that’s what I do’ (quote from a policy manager)

Continue reading

Please note that the link to the article in “Policy & Politics” only takes you to the abstract – a lot less information than in the Transforming Society article.

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Do work commutes moderate the association between perceived neighborhood disorder and psychological distress?

an article by Anna W. Jacobs and Jennifer M. Brailsford (University of Arizona, Tucson, USA) published in Community, Work & Family Volume 22 Issue 3 (2019)

Abstract

Although numerous studies show that living in a neighborhood that is characterized by disorder (crime and dilapidation) can be psychologically distressing, very few studies have considered the element of exposure time or duration of exposure to adverse neighborhood environments.

In this paper, we explore the intersection of commuting, mental health, and the subjective experience of neighborhood disadvantage and impoverished community life.

Using data from the Welfare, Children, and Families project (2001), a probability sample of 1057 low-income women with children living in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio, we test whether the association between neighborhood disorder and psychological distress is moderated or attenuated by commuting time and distance.

Our results show that although neighborhood disorder is associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, and somatization, disorder tends to be less distressing for residents who are able to spend time away from these environments through longer commuting times and distances. In other words, working away from one’s neighborhood of residence may help to mitigate the adverse psychological consequences of neighborhood disorder.

Our findings support previous research on the stress process and neighborhood disorder. Our work builds on the commuting literature by re-conceptualizing commuting time and distance as protective resources for disadvantaged populations.

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Effectiveness of virtual and augmented reality-enhanced exercise on physical activity, psychological outcomes, and physical performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

an article by Yu-Leung Ng (Hong Kong Baptist University), Flora Ma and King-wa Fu (The University of Hong Kong, Eliot Hall) and Frederick K. Ho and Patrick Ip (The University of Hong Kong, Queen Mary Hospital) published in Computers in Human Behavior Volume 99 (October 2019)

Highlights

• This study compared VR- and AR-exercise and traditional and no-exercise programs.
• VR training programs were effective for enhancing frequency of physical activity.
• VR and AR programs were effective for improving strength of physical performance.
• Further studies of AR-enhanced exercise using randomized controlled trials are warranted.

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)-enhanced exercise training is a novel approach to promoting health. Previous systematic reviews have focused on the effectiveness of VR interventions in clinical settings. The present study was the first systematic review to investigate the effectiveness of exercise-based VR and AR training as preventive measures in improving physical activity, psychological outcomes, and physical performance of a healthy population when compared with traditional programs and no-exercise controls.

This study included 22 research articles published between 1997 and 2017, involving 1,184 participants aged 18 to 79.
The results showed a large effect on physical activity (Hedges' g = 0.83, SE = 0.18), a small to moderate effect on physical performance (Hedges’ g = 0.31, SE = 0.09), and no significant effect on psychological outcomes.

VR training programs were particularly shown to be effective for enhancing frequency of physical activity and strength of physical performance.

Only two studies examined the effectiveness of AR training programs on physical performance, and the findings concerning those effects were not separately reported.

A list of plausible moderators was tested but that variable was not significantly associated with the effects of VR on the three outcomes.

Limitations and future directions are discussed.

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Tariffs and monetary policy: A toxic mix

a column by Michael Bordo and Mickey Levy for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

The history of tariffs and immigration and capital barriers provides clear lessons of the potentially sizeable economic costs of anti-globalisation policies.

This column describes how the US-China tariff war and policy-related uncertainties are harming economic performance, and are also distorting the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy and undermining its credibility and independence. Tariffs and discretionary monetary policy are a toxic mix, and the authors encourage a de-escalation of burdensome barriers to trade and urge the Fed to adopt a systematic, rules-based approach to monetary policy.

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Solutions for counteracting human deception in social engineering attacks

an article by Curtis C. Campbell (University of Phoenix, Tempe, Arizona, USA) published in Information Technology & People Volume 32 Issue 5 (2019)

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the top three cybersecurity issues in organizations related to social engineering and aggregate solutions for counteracting human deception in social engineering attacks.

Design/methodology/approach
A total of 20 experts within Information System Security Association participated in a three-round Delphi study for aggregating and condensing expert opinions. Three rounds moved participants toward consensus for solutions to counteract social engineering attacks in organizations.

Findings
Three significant issues: compromised data; ineffective practices; and lack of ongoing education produced three target areas for implementing best practices in countering social engineering attacks. The findings offer counteractions by including education, policies, processes and continuous training in security practices.

Research limitations/implications
Study limitations include lack of prior data on effective social engineering defense. Research implications stem from the psychology of human deception and trust with the ability to detect deception.

Practical implications
Practical implications relate to human judgment in complying with effective security policies and programs and consistent education and training. Future research may include exploring financial, operational and educational costs of implementing social engineering solutions.

Social implications
Social implications apply across all knowledge workers who benefit from technology and are trusted to protect organizational assets and intellectual property.

Originality/value
This study contributes to the field of cybersecurity with a focus on trust and human deception to investigate solutions to counter social engineering attacks. This paper adds to under-represented cybersecurity research regarding effective implementation for social engineering defense.

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Supporting Trump is killing white America

an article by Jonathan Metzl published in RSA Journal Issue 2 (2019) [via Medium.com]



It is said that uncertainty drives voters to support politics that ultimately go against their own interests. What this generally means is that atmospheres of insecurity push voters into backing politicians who play on their fears by offering solutions, not just to pressing real-world issues, but to a perceived loss of status or privilege.

These politicians often find ‘others’ to blame, while promising to help those who feel that the system is no longer working for them. Yet such support represents a double-edged sword: the policies these politicians implement can foment mistrust even further, thereby worsening the very problems they claim to want to fix.

Of late, we have heard a lot about the economically self-destructive nature of policies based on nationalism and xenophobia, and for good reason — isolationism shrinks markets, often to the detriment of workers.

Thus in the US, media is replete with stories about how, for instance, farmers in conservative states continue to support President Trump even after his disastrous trade wars threaten their livelihoods. Meanwhile, in the UK, support for Brexit continues unabated, and even grows, in the face of warnings that a no-deal exit could lead to rising interest rates, lower GDP and economic recession.

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