The Flynn Effect

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Duckworth ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Graduate School ◽  
The United States ◽  
Delay Of Gratification ◽  
Average Score ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Abstract Reasoning ◽  
Flynn Effect ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Difference

In tandem with increases in delay of gratification, the human capacity for abstract reasoning has increased enormously over the past century. This phenomenon is called the Flynn Effect, after the political scientist who discovered it. I first learned about the Flynn Effect in graduate school. I remember thinking it was impossible. How could it be that as a species, we're getting smarter? And not just a little bit smarter. The size of the Flynn Effect is staggering: more than 30 IQ points—the difference between getting an average score on a standard intelligence test versus qualifying as mentally gifted. Gains are comparable in all areas of the United States and, indeed, around the world.

scholarly journals STATEMENT FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE W. E. B. DU BOIS INSTITUTE

2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Louis Gates
Keyword(s):  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
The Past ◽  
Considerable Work ◽  
Public Policy Decisions

In 1903, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois famously predicted that the problem of the twentieth century would be the problem of the color line. Indeed, during the past century, matters of race were frequently the cause of intense conflict and the stimulus for public policy decisions not only in the United States, but throughout the world. The founding of the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race at the beginning of the twenty-first century acknowledges the continuing impact of Du Bois's prophecy, his pioneering role as one of the founders of the discipline of sociology in the American academy, and the considerable work that remains to be done as we confront the “problem” that Du Bois identified over a century ago.

The Preservation of Chesapeake Bay Watercraft

1977 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Baker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Chesapeake Bay ◽  
The United States ◽  
Naval Architecture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Sailing Yacht ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Naval Service ◽  
Maritime Heritage

The logo for this Third Chesapeake Sailing Yacht Symposium, the profile of a rakish sailing log canoe superimposed on that of a modern racing sloop, vividly illustrates the difference between the past and the present. Some might say good riddance to the past but there are many good reasons for trying to preserve something of our maritime heritage, not only the larger vessels such as the whaler Charles w. Morgan and the U. S. Corvette Constellation, but the smaller working watercraft as well. Although the Constellation was built in the Bay region, she was designed as a normal ocean-going ship for naval service; she has none of the unique features of Bay naval architecture hence is outside of the scope of this paper. In the days of our grandfathers the Chesapeake Bay region was the home of a multitude of watercraft employed for a wide variety of pursuits from general freighting to crabbing. There were rams, pungies, schooners, sloops, bugeyes, brogans, canoes, bateaux, skiffs, and scows. Of the skiffs alone, it is said that fourteen different designs were recognized on the Bay. While large numbers of these working boats and vessels have disappeared, it is only on Chesapeake Bay, of all the waters of the United States, that a fair variety of local watercraft can be found. Here there is still a chance of preserving for posterity more than isolated examples.

How to Get There

2019 ◽  
pp. 202-234
Author(s):  
Lane Kenworthy
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Public Insurance ◽  
The Past ◽  
Government Role ◽  
The Right ◽  
Organized Interest

Abstract: The lesson of the past one hundred years is that as the United States gets richer, we are willing to spend more in order to safeguard against loss and enhance fairness. Advances in social policy come only intermittently, but they do come. And when they come, they usually last. The expansion of public insurance that has occurred over the past century is what we should expect for the future. I consider an array of potential obstacles, including Americans’ dislike of big government, Democrats’ centrism, Democrats’ electoral struggles, the shift to the right in the balance of organized interest group strength, the structure of America’s political system, racial and ethnic diversity, slowing economic growth, and more. None of these is likely to derail America’s slow but steady movement toward an expanded government role in improving economic security, enhancing opportunity, and ensuring decent and rising living standards for all.

scholarly journals Vulnerability due to Nocturnal Tornadoes

2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 795-807 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walker S. Ashley ◽  
Andrew J. Krmenec ◽  
Rick Schwantes
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Building Structures ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mobile Homes ◽  
The Past ◽  
High Fatality Rate ◽  
Potential Break ◽  
Tornado Warning ◽  
Dissemination System

Abstract This study investigates the human vulnerability caused by tornadoes that occurred between sunset and sunrise from 1880 to 2007. Nocturnal tornadoes are theorized to enhance vulnerability because they are difficult to spot and occur when the public tends to be asleep and in weak building structures. Results illustrate that the nocturnal tornado death rate over the past century has not shared the same pace of decline as those events transpiring during the daytime. From 1950 to 2005, a mere 27.3% of tornadoes were nocturnal, yet 39.3% of tornado fatalities and 42.1% of killer tornado events occurred at night. Tornadoes during the overnight period (local midnight to sunrise) are 2.5 times as likely to kill as those occurring during the daytime hours. It is argued that a core reason why the national tornado fatality toll has not continued to decrease in the past few decades is due to the vulnerability to these nocturnal events. This vulnerability is magnified when other factors such as escalating mobile (or “manufactured”) home stock and an increasing and spreading population are realized. Unlike other structure types that show no robust demarcation between nocturnal and daytime fatalities, nearly 61% of fatalities in mobile homes take place at night revealing this housing stock’s distinct nocturnal tornado vulnerability. Further, spatial analysis illustrates that the American South’s high nocturnal tornado risk is an important factor leading to the region’s high fatality rate. The investigation emphasizes a potential break in the tornado warning dissemination system utilized currently in the United States.

scholarly journals Equity and length of lifespan are not the same

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (30) ◽  
pp. 8420-8423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Seligman ◽  
Gabi Greenberg ◽  
Shripad Tuljapurkar
Keyword(s):  
Life Expectancy ◽  
Health Equity ◽  
Causes Of Death ◽  
The United States ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Mortality Improvement ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Age Of Death

Efforts to understand the dramatic declines in mortality over the past century have focused on life expectancy. However, understanding changes in disparity in age of death is important to understanding mechanisms of mortality improvement and devising policy to promote health equity. We derive a novel decomposition of variance in age of death, a measure of inequality, and apply it to cause-specific contributions to the change in variance among the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) from 1950 to 2010. We find that the causes of death that contributed most to declines in the variance are different from those that contributed most to increase in life expectancy; in particular, they affect mortality at younger ages. We also find that, for two leading causes of death [cancers and cardiovascular disease (CVD)], there are no consistent relationships between changes in life expectancy and variance either within countries over time or between countries. These results show that promoting health at younger ages is critical for health equity and that policies to control cancer and CVD may have differing implications for equity.

From Tent Meetings and Store-front Healing Rooms to Walmarts and the Internet: Healing Spaces in the United States, the Americas, and the World, 1906–2006

2006 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-647 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candy Gunther Brown
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Spiritual Healing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Attractive Alternative ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
The World

The centennial of the Azusa Street revivals of 1906 provides us with convenient poles for charting shifts in the landscape of Christian spiritual healing practices during the past century. Alongside unprecedented achievements in medical science, nearly 80 percent of Americans report believing that God supernaturally heals people in answer to prayer. Individuals who need healing, even after trying the best medical cures, readily transgress ecclesiastical, physical, and social boundaries in their quest for health and wholeness. The promise of a tangible experience of divine power, moreover, presents an attractive alternative to seekers disillusioned with what they perceive as the callous materialism of medical science and the religious legalism of traditional Christian churches. This essay calls for new narratives of sacred space that map the ways that pentecostal and charismatic healing practices have proliferated, diversified, and sacralized a growing number and variety of physical, social, and linguistic spaces in the past hundred years. At the turn of the twentieth century, modernist epistemological assumptions that privileged reason over experience encouraged fine intellectual distinctions between the sacred and the secular. In esteeming bodily experience as more trustworthy than disembodied doctrine and in resisting linguistic binaries as culturally constructed, postmodern epistemologies have multiplied the number and range of places available to be endowed with sacred meanings. I argue that boundaries between the sacred and the secular are dissolving at the same time that new boundaries are being established, privileging particular places and defining a new relationship among the United States, the Americas, and the world.

Archaeology and the Ainu

1959 ◽  
Vol 24 (4Part1) ◽  
pp. 426-427
Author(s):  
Howard A. MacCord
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Army ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western World ◽  
Past Century ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Southwestern Part ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Many

At the present time little is known in the Western world about the archaeology of Hokkaido, Japan. Groot (1951) is of limited value for most of his explorations were in the Tokyo area. This dearth of evidence is extremely regrettable in view of the so-called "Ainu problem" about which so many speculations have been published during the past century. During 1953-54 while stationed in Hokkaido with the United States Army, I explored and visited a number of prehistoric sites and made several collections which are now in the U. S. National Museum. Of the many sites visited, three in the southwestern part of Hokkaido in the Sapporo area were chosen for partial excavation. Radiocarbon dates for these sites were determined by the U. S. Geological Survey Radiocarbon Laboratory through the courtesy of Meyer Rubin.

scholarly journals Home hours in the United States and Europe

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Fang ◽  
Cara McDaniel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Time Use ◽  
Time Allocation ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Using Data

AbstractUsing data from the Multinational Time Use Study, this paper documents the trend and level of time allocation, with a focus on home hours, for the US and European countries. Three patterns emerge. First, home hours per person have declined in both the US and European countries over the past 50 years. Second, female time allocation contributes more to the difference in time allocation per person between the US and European countries than does male time allocation. Third, the time allocation between the US and European countries is more similar for prime-age individuals than for young and old individuals.

scholarly journals The Politics of Gun Control in the United States

2019 ◽  
pp. 46-59
Author(s):  
Vibeke Sofie Sandager Rønnedal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Second Amendment ◽  
The People ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Right ◽  
Standing Army

The discussion of the right to keep and bear arms has been a growing issue in American society during the past two decades. This article examines the origin of the right and whether it is still relevant in contemporary American society. It is found that the Second Amendment was written for two main reasons: to protect the people of the frontier from wildlife and foreign as well as native enemies, and to ensure the citizen militia being armed and ready to fight for a country with a deep-rooted mistrust of a standing army and a strongly centralized government. As neither of these reasons have applied to American society for at least the past century, it is concluded that American society has changed immensely since the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, and that the original purpose of the right to keep and bear arms thus has been outdated long ago.

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