PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS OF EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY IN ADOLESCENTS

The article presents an overview of the problem of the affective sphere of adolescents on both theoretical and empirical levels. Its relevance and, at the same time, the prospect for further research is justified. It was revealed that the emotional life of persons of pubertal period is differently disclosed in the scientific heritage of foreign scientists, but insufficiently covered in the domestic. Correlations between the emotional experiences of adolescents and their relationships with parents, peers; gender identity; eating disorders, etc., were established. Against the background of emphasizing the influence of various external psychological factors in the life of an adolescent, the topic of the intrapersonal, psychological potential of persons of this age remains open. Taking into account the topicality of the problem of emotional instability of teenagers, we aimed to find out in detail, from an empirical point of view, the internal psychological reasons of this phenomenon. For this purpose, the ascertaining experiment was carried out which involved 300 pupils of 6-7 and 8-9 forms of the general secondary educational institutions of the Ternopil region (Berezhanska Secondary School № 1 and Berezhanska Secondary School № 2). Respondents were offered specific, according to the formulated scientific problem, a package of psychodiagnostic techniques, directed to the research of features of the level of manifestation as well as categories of hypothetical factors of emotional stability of adolescents. The next stage of the study involved processing the data by factor analysis using the capabilities of Microsoft Excel and SPSS 21 software. As a result, 10 psychological factors that cause emotional instability in adolescents were identified. Among them: imbalance of self-esteem and personal abilities, personal insecurity compensated by self-control, low resistance to stress, impulsiveness against insecurity, dissonance in the assessment of one's own self, motivational polarity, emotional uncertainty, public insecurity, uncertainty in own abilities, confident behavior. The prospect of our study is the development and practical implementation of social psychological training as a means of correcting dysregulation of the affective sphere of personality and the development of their emotional stability.

The Spitzer/IRAC Legacy over the GOODS Fields: Full-depth 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 μm Mosaics and Photometry for >9000 Galaxies at z ∼ 3.5–10 from the GOODS Reionization Era Wide-area Treasury from Spitzer (GREATS)

We present the deepest Spitzer/InfraRed Array Camera (IRAC) 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 μm wide-area mosaics yet over the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS)-N and GOODS-S fields as part of the GOODS Reionization Era wide-Area Treasury from Spitzer (GREATS) project. We reduced and mosaicked in a self-consistent way observations taken by the 11 different Spitzer/IRAC programs over the two GOODS fields from 12 yr of Spitzer cryogenic and warm-mission data. The cumulative depth in the 3.6 μm and 4.5 μm bands amounts to ∼4260 hr, ∼1220 hr of which are new very deep observations from the GREATS program itself. In the deepest area, the full-depth mosaics reach ≳200 hr over an area of ∼100 arcmin2, corresponding to a sensitivity of ∼29 AB magnitude at 3.6 μm (1σ for point sources). Archival cryogenic 5.8 μm and 8.0 μm band data (a cumulative 976 hr) are also included in the release. The mosaics are projected onto the tangential plane of the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey/GOODS at a 0.″3 pixel−1 scale. This paper describes the methodology enabling, and the characteristics of, the public release of the mosaic science images, the corresponding coverage maps in the four IRAC bands, and the empirical point-spread functions (PSFs). These PSFs enable mitigation of the source blending effects by taking into account the complex position-dependent variation in the IRAC images. The GREATS data products are in the Infrared Science Archive. We also release the deblended 3.6–8.0 μm photometry 9192 Lyman-break galaxies at z ∼ 3.5–10. GREATS will be the deepest mid-infrared imaging until the James Webb Space Telescope and, as such, constitutes a major resource for characterizing early galaxy assembly.

Italy in times of protest and negative voting: An introduction

The classic heuristics of voting behaviour have been eroded overtime especially in well-established democracies. Ideology, party identification, and social class have been gradually replaced by short-period factors. In particular, the personalization has represented an innovative variable that significantly contributes to explain voting behaviour. Cross-pressures between party identification, candidate assessments and issue preferences paved the way to the diffusion of protest voting, both against the élite and the system. In this respect, Italy represents a very interesting case from both a theoretical and an empirical point view considering the presence of protest parties and the important diffusion of anti-system movements which surfed the protest to consolidate their positions. The editors conceived this special issue aiming at analysing and measuring the impact of protest/negative voting in Italy between 2016 and 2020, a period in which protest parties and voters’ discontent have significantly increased. Data presented by the different papers confirm, albeit under different perspectives, the relevance of this peculiar form of political behaviour.

The sooner the better: lives saved by the lockdown during the COVID-19 outbreak. The case of Italy

Summary This paper estimates the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions – mainly, the lockdown – on the COVID-19 mortality rate for the case of Italy, the first Western country to impose a national shelter-in-place order. We use a new estimator, the augmented synthetic control method (ASCM), that overcomes some limits of the standard synthetic control method (SCM). The results are twofold. From a methodological point of view, the ASCM outperforms the SCM in that the latter cannot select a valid donor set, assigning all the weights to only one country (Spain) while placing zero weights to all the remaining. From an empirical point of view, we find strong evidence of the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions in avoiding losses of human lives in Italy: conservative estimates indicate that the policy saved in total more than 21,000 human lives.

A look at the complex issues of science communication: the Routledge Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology

In the year of the PCST Conference that brings together scholars and experts in public communication of science, Routledge published the new edition of the Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology, edited by Massimiano Bucchi and Brian Trench. The book, in its third edition, seeks to update and define the field of study and application of science communication from both a theoretical and empirical point of view mostly in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic which undoubtedly represents an event of historical significance that cannot fail to question scholars on the medium and long-term effects.

TOURIST DEVELOPMENTS IN COVID PANDEMIC CONDITIONS ON THE EXAMPLE OF ISTRIA COUNTY, CROATIA

The occurance of the COVID pandemic in 2020 caused major health problems to the population and the world economy, an economic crisis with an evident decline in financial and productive power, rising unemployment and falling living standards. Unemployment and declining living standards were reflected in tourism trends, which were largely absent in such conditions. Following the stated assumptions, the purpose and goal of this paper is to investigate the impact of the COVID pandemic in the segments of tourist trends on the example of the Istrian tourist destination. The research was conducted from a theoretical and empirical point of view. Theoretical research is focused on finding relevant insights into the impact of the COVID pandemic on tourism trends. Empirical research based on statistical indicators will determine the quantitative impact of the pandemic on tourism trends.

The impact of high-speed rail operations: A case study in Shanghai-Kunming line

High-speed railway is an indispensable part of the transportation system. The construction and opening of high-speed railway will contribute to the economic development of cities along the route, but it will also have an adverse impact on peripheral areas. The research of the article is mainly carried out from an empirical point of view, using comparative analysis, regression analysis and other methods to measure and quantitatively describe the impact of high-speed railways on urban and regional spatial development. The study found that the operation of the Shanghai-Kunming high-speed rail had a siphon effect on cities along the Jiangxi Province, leading to unbalanced regional development.

Genres at work: A holistic approach to genres in book publishing

This article presents a holistic approach to the study of genres in book publishing that includes formal aspects of literary texts, marketing strategies and categorisations used by producers, and perspectives on how these labels are perceived by readers and critics, as well as a temporal and spatial understanding of how genres evolve. The empirical point of departure is the recent boom in Nordic Noir, exemplified by the following three Swedish authors successful in the 21st century: Lars Kepler, Jens Lapidus and Camilla Läckberg. The discourses surrounding Nordic Noir and how these authors and their writing relate and get related to it are used as an example of how book-trade genres operate in multiple and complex ways, and how genres produce effects that move back and forth among creators, producers and consumers. It proposes a twofold model, where genres are understood as constituted by all of the relations between these areas together. Through Kepler, Lapidus and Läckberg, the article shows how Nordic Noir has emerged over the years; how it changes with its publishing context; and how the genre’s internal discrepancy between literary content and marketing and reception is a crucial component in understanding Nordic Noir.

Figuring Digital Cascades

On November 17, 2015, the newly elected Canadian government led by Justin Trudeau made an announcement that became a turning point in the heated debate around the plan to build the Memorial to the Victims of Communism in Ottawa. The government’s decision to scale the project down was massively republished and generated a heavy stream of 2,055 publications and interactions. The virality of such phenomena is sometimes described in the literature as an “information cascade” characterized by a complex and expanding series of media content that is republished, shared, and commented upon in digital public spheres, reaching a growing number of people. Our research aim is twofold. From a theoretical point of view, we combine Entman’s cascade model with the perspective of platform studies. From an empirical point of view, we put this model to the test through a case study of the cascading data flows that emerged during this public debate. We found three key factors that constituted and shaped this information cascade: 1) the economic structure of the Canadian media market, and especially the concentration of media ownership, which is notably high in the Canadian media ecosystem; 2) data-exchange mechanisms and algorithmic filtering that drive the process of news aggregation, quickly spreading media content without being a significant source of user engagement; 3) grassroots engagement in diasporic media, which activates micro public spheres around nested interests and political standpoints regarding the public issue.

El dilema de John Stuart Mill

This paper discusses the idea that John Stuart Mill supported two intellectual positions which are considered to be contradictory. On one hand, he proposed a radical empiricist epistemology in his System of Logic. On the other hand, Mill defended David Ricardo’s Political Economy, fairly criticized in its time from an empirical point of view. This paper argues that there is no internal contradiction in Mill, as he believes that the method used in Political Economy (criticized for being a priori) is necessary because of the difficulties that rise due to the nature of the study object. Furthermore, Mill suggests that it is the only possible method that social sciences may use. Key words: J.S. Mill, economic methodology, epistemology. JEL Classification: B12, B41. Resumen: Este artículo discute la idea de que John Stuart Mill mantuvo dos posiciones intelectuales consideradas como contradictorias. Por un lado, él propuso una epistemología radicalmente empirista en su System of Logic. Por el otro, Mill defendió la Economía Política de David Ricardo, bastante criticada desde una perspectiva empírica en su momento. Este artículo argumenta que no hay contradicción interna en Mill, ya que él postula que el método usado por la Economía Política (criticado por su apriorismo) es necesario debido a las dificultades propias del objeto de estudio. Incluso, Mill sostiene que ese es el único método posible para las ciencias sociales. Palabras clave: J.S. Mill, metodología económica, epistemología. Clasificación JEL: B12, B41.