Does Origin Matter? Ethnic Group Position and Attitudes Toward Immigrants: The Case of Russia

This article analyzes the relationship between the relative position of an ethnic group, as measured by its majority/minority status at a subnational level, and attitudes of its members toward immigrants of different origins. Based on the Russian case, it addresses the question whether the effects of in-group majority status within a region on attitudes toward the general category of immigrants hold regardless of out-group origin and, if not, what may drive this variation. Using data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey of the Higher School of Economics and Bayesian hierarchical structural equation modeling, the study demonstrates that the relative position of an ethnic in-group is of varying importance as a predictor of attitudes toward migrant groups of European versus non-European origin in Russia. A group’s majority status within a region proved to play a role in predicting attitudes toward migrants originating from the “south” (encompassing North and South Caucasus; Central Asia; and China, Vietnam, and Korea) but not toward migrants coming from the “west” (Ukraine and Moldova). We draw on arguments related to the source and the level of threat induced by the out-groups, ethnic hierarchies, and group cues to explain this pattern of results.

Postawy internautów wobec szczepionek w dobie pandemii na przykładzie wybranych memów internetowych

The aim of this article is to discuss the attitudes exhibited by internet users to vaccines during the pandemic. It is assumed here that the activities of internet users fall within the general category of the activity of media users, while memes are a way to manifest the users’ attitude to specific issues. The article employs the active audience theory and elaborates on the phenomenon of internet memes as a key category of research. The research material comprises messages posted on Demotywatory.pl that are subject to content analysis. The material is first categorized on the basis of its connection to the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequently, the internet users’ attitudes are determined – whether they support or reject vaccinations – and the implications of particular messages are analysed. The research results make it possible to pinpoint the attitude of a given group to the issue of vaccination. Further, they show that health issues are often a starting point for a broader discussion (and critique) on the level of political communication.

Defining Pedagogical Differentiation in Higher Education

The purpose of this paper is, through content analysis of 19 publications in the Greek and international literature in scientific texts, books, journal articles, and conferences, to investigate the conceptual content of pedagogical differentiation in higher education, as it emerges from the descriptions and discussion of authors, researchers, and experts. From the analysis, twelve dimensions or characteristics of pedagogical differentiation emerged that presented the highest frequency of occurrence in four broad categories. These are a. modification of the supportive learning context, meeting the needs of learners, and continuous improvement of the learning for all the learners who joined the category entitled "processes", b. student-centered teaching and learning, flexible learning context / flexible grouping and the possibility of learning option / multiple options as dimensions of a more general category called "context", c. the success and active participation of the learner in his learning, the development of life skills as well as the development of procedural knowledge skills that were included in the category called "learning outcomes" and d. the modification of "learning" products, the alternative / modern forms of assessment and the continuous assessment that were dimensions of the category "assessment". The results of the research show that the dimension with the highest frequency is a modification of the supportive learning context and follows in order of frequency of occurrence, the modification of learning "products" and meeting the needs of learners. Finally, the dimensions with the lowest frequency of occurrence include the continuous assessment and the development of procedural knowledge skills.

The proliferation of secular religions

The term ‘secular religion’ first appeared in the description of modern totalitarian ideologies but soon became a general category applied to other political, socio-economic and cultural phenomena. The first problem with this approach is the inherent contradiction of the term, since ‘secular’ by all modern definitions means ‘non-religious’, making a secular religion something like a ‘nonreligious religion’. The second is the wide range of examples from communism to liberalism, from capitalism to ecology, or from transhumanism to social media, which suggests that with some creativity almost anything can be described as secular and religious at the same time. The first part of the paper deals with the terminological difficulties, while the second outlines the history of drawing secular-religious analogies, concluding that the ultimate failure to give a coherent narrative of secular religions is rooted in the impossibility of giving an adequate definition of religion in the first place.

Assessing the Potential for Agonistic Engagement Among Accountants: A quasi-experimental repeated Q study of social and environmental reporting

<p>A number of writers have recently criticised a perceived narrowness in accountants’ understanding of their profession. In particular, they claim that the predominant focus on shareholders and capital markets may be at the expense of wider public interests that accounting should serve. As accountants engage increasingly with a variety of complex and politically contentious issues, there is cause for concern regarding their capacity to represent and engage with non-financial interests. Some of these concerns are reflected in ongoing debates regarding social and environmental reporting (SER). Accountants are important players in the SER field. They have high-profile roles as self-proclaimed ‘thought leaders’ in areas such as sustainability and integrated reporting, and are increasingly involved in developing SER concepts and practices, discussion papers and best practice guidance. These technologies increasingly rely on, and are legitimised by, their incorporation of a plurality of perspectives. However, both academics and civil society groups have raised concerns that professional accounting bodies are too closely aligned with business interests, and prioritise ‘business case’ (BC) understandings of concepts such as SER, which favour shareholder-oriented perspectives. As in other areas of policy controversy, the capacity to engage with a plurality of perspectives is important because of its impact on, inter alia, the issues that are recognised, how problems are conceived and responded to, and which or whose perspectives are prioritised. While prior research has explored management and stakeholder perspectives, there has been very little research to date on accountants’ perspectives on SER. Relatedly, relatively little is known about accountants’ abilities to incorporate a multiplicity of views when attempting to engage with complex issues. This study seeks to fill this gap. My research was designed as a quasi-experimental investigation that uses Constructive Conflict Methodology (CCM) and Q methodology (QM) to examine divergent perspectives of SER among three groups of accountants: academics, practitioners, and students. In particular, my research explores the use of CCM as a framework, which when implemented via QM, can help operationalise the theoretical developments of an agonistic approach to critical dialogic accounting (CDA). Drawing on applications of CCM and QM in political theory and policy analysis, my research design is divided into two distinct phases. Phase One focuses on identifying and understanding the range of perspectives among participants regarding SER. Informed by this understanding, Phase Two develops a workshop, the SER Dialogue, to bring together participants who are representative of the diverse perspectives identified. In Phase One, 34 participants’ perspectives of SER were explored through a mix of semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and QM. The participants evidenced a range of diverse understandings of SER, with three general approaches identified from participants’ Q data: the Critical (F1(CR)), Business Case (F2(BC)) and Incremental Change (F3(INC)) approaches. These general categorisations helped identify differences, inconsistencies and contradictions in the participants’ ideological orientations and illustrated the contested discursive landscape within which SER is conceptualised. Participants’ alignment with each general category also identified possible constraints in their capacity to recognise and understand divergent perspectives. Informed by these insights, Phase Two focused on developing a discursive space for agonistic pluralist engagement (the SER Dialogue) with a group of participants, representing the three diverse perspectives. Ultimately, these participants had both a larger number and magnitude of shifts in their perspective of SER compared to a control group. There was also a general increase in alignment with F1(CR), with many participants demonstrating the development of critically pluralist and reflexive understandings. These findings illustrate the potential for agonistic pluralist engagement to develop accountants’ capacity for pluralist engagement with perspectives surrounding complex and politically contentious issues, while also enabling resistance to the hegemony of BC perspectives within the field of accounting.</p>

Is categorization in visual working memory a way to reduce mental effort? A pupillometry study

Recent studies on visual working memory (VWM) have shown that visual information can be stored in VWM as continuous (e.g., a specific shade of red) as well as categorical representations (e.g., the general category red). It has been widely assumed, yet never directly tested, that continuous representations require more VWM mental effort than categorical representations; given limited VWM capacity, this would mean that fewer continuous, as compared to categorical, representations can be maintained simultaneously. We tested this assumption by measuring pupil size, as a proxy for mental effort, in a delayed estimation task. Participants memorized one to four ambiguous (boundaries between adjacent color categories) or prototypical colors to encourage continuous or categorical representations, respectively; after a delay, a probe indicated the location of the to-be-reported color. We found that, for set size 1, pupil size was larger while maintaining ambiguous as compared to prototypical colors, but without any difference in memory precision; this suggests that participants relied on an effortful continuous representation to maintain a single ambiguous color, thus resulting in pupil dilation while preserving precision. In contrast, for set size 2 and higher, pupil size was equally large while maintaining ambiguous and prototypical colors, but memory precision was now substantially reduced for ambiguous colors; this suggests that participants now also relied on categorical representations for ambiguous colors (which are by definition a poor fit to any category), thus reducing memory precision but not resulting in pupil dilation. Taken together, our results suggest that continuous representations are more effortful than categorical representations, and that very few continuous representations (perhaps only one) can be maintained simultaneously.

Assessing the Potential for Agonistic Engagement Among Accountants: A quasi-experimental repeated Q study of social and environmental reporting

<p>A number of writers have recently criticised a perceived narrowness in accountants’ understanding of their profession. In particular, they claim that the predominant focus on shareholders and capital markets may be at the expense of wider public interests that accounting should serve. As accountants engage increasingly with a variety of complex and politically contentious issues, there is cause for concern regarding their capacity to represent and engage with non-financial interests. Some of these concerns are reflected in ongoing debates regarding social and environmental reporting (SER). Accountants are important players in the SER field. They have high-profile roles as self-proclaimed ‘thought leaders’ in areas such as sustainability and integrated reporting, and are increasingly involved in developing SER concepts and practices, discussion papers and best practice guidance. These technologies increasingly rely on, and are legitimised by, their incorporation of a plurality of perspectives. However, both academics and civil society groups have raised concerns that professional accounting bodies are too closely aligned with business interests, and prioritise ‘business case’ (BC) understandings of concepts such as SER, which favour shareholder-oriented perspectives. As in other areas of policy controversy, the capacity to engage with a plurality of perspectives is important because of its impact on, inter alia, the issues that are recognised, how problems are conceived and responded to, and which or whose perspectives are prioritised. While prior research has explored management and stakeholder perspectives, there has been very little research to date on accountants’ perspectives on SER. Relatedly, relatively little is known about accountants’ abilities to incorporate a multiplicity of views when attempting to engage with complex issues. This study seeks to fill this gap. My research was designed as a quasi-experimental investigation that uses Constructive Conflict Methodology (CCM) and Q methodology (QM) to examine divergent perspectives of SER among three groups of accountants: academics, practitioners, and students. In particular, my research explores the use of CCM as a framework, which when implemented via QM, can help operationalise the theoretical developments of an agonistic approach to critical dialogic accounting (CDA). Drawing on applications of CCM and QM in political theory and policy analysis, my research design is divided into two distinct phases. Phase One focuses on identifying and understanding the range of perspectives among participants regarding SER. Informed by this understanding, Phase Two develops a workshop, the SER Dialogue, to bring together participants who are representative of the diverse perspectives identified. In Phase One, 34 participants’ perspectives of SER were explored through a mix of semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and QM. The participants evidenced a range of diverse understandings of SER, with three general approaches identified from participants’ Q data: the Critical (F1(CR)), Business Case (F2(BC)) and Incremental Change (F3(INC)) approaches. These general categorisations helped identify differences, inconsistencies and contradictions in the participants’ ideological orientations and illustrated the contested discursive landscape within which SER is conceptualised. Participants’ alignment with each general category also identified possible constraints in their capacity to recognise and understand divergent perspectives. Informed by these insights, Phase Two focused on developing a discursive space for agonistic pluralist engagement (the SER Dialogue) with a group of participants, representing the three diverse perspectives. Ultimately, these participants had both a larger number and magnitude of shifts in their perspective of SER compared to a control group. There was also a general increase in alignment with F1(CR), with many participants demonstrating the development of critically pluralist and reflexive understandings. These findings illustrate the potential for agonistic pluralist engagement to develop accountants’ capacity for pluralist engagement with perspectives surrounding complex and politically contentious issues, while also enabling resistance to the hegemony of BC perspectives within the field of accounting.</p>

Unequal burden of equal risk factors of diabetes between different gender in India: a cross-sectional analysis

Many studies have supported that the burden of diabetes is shared differently by different genders due to various factors associated with it. This study aims at capturing whether women and men with a similar background, dietary and smoking habits, and biological conditions (blood pressure and body mass index (BMI)) are being affected equally or differently by diabetes. We have used cross-sectional data of NFHS-4 by covering the age group 15–49 years. Association between socio-economic background, dietary habits, biological conditions, and diabetes has been estimated using two separate multivariate logistic regression models. Results show that the overall prevalence of diabetes is higher among men (2.63%) than women (2.35%). Whereas, women belonging to urban areas (3.53%), Christian category (3.92%), richer section (3.22%), women with no schooling (2.51%), those reported never to consume pulses (2.66%) and green vegetables (2.40%) and daily consuming eggs (3.66%) and chicken or meat (3.54%) are more affected by diabetes than their men counterparts. Whereas men residing in rural areas (2.30%), belonging to the general category (3.12%), SCs (2.37%) and STs (1.72%) are more affected than their women counterparts. Results have also shown a higher prevalence of diabetes among obese men (11.46%), non-vegetarian (2.71%) and those who watch television almost every day (3.03%) as compared to their women counterparts. Regression analyses show that the richest, hypertensive, and obese women and men are significantly more likely to suffer from diabetes. This study concludes that women and men with similar socio-economic status, biological conditions, dietary and smoking habits are being affected differently by diabetes. Thus, there is a need for gender dimension in research to understand and validate the differences in the needed interventions for diabetes control in India.

Medicinal Plants Used by Tai Lao Healers in Roi Et Thailand

Background: Local knowledge of herbal medicine in rural communities is rich. This part of cultures plays an important role in societies where knowledge of indigenous medicine and folk healing has been passed down from generation to generation. Most of the knowledge was never written down and much such knowledge has disappeared over time when it was presented orally and through memorization. The objective of this study was to compile knowledge related to medicinal plants used by Tai Lao traditional healers in Roi et province and identify their explicit use in order to preserve the useful wisdom for the people. Methodology: In this study we identify and document medicinal plants and associated ethnobotanical knowledge held by 14 traditional Tai Lao healers. They were selected by snowball and purposive sampling and questioned using semi-structured interviews. Interviews about their knowledge, covered their training, the ailments they treated, the techniques they used, their methods of preparation and, in addition, several healing sessions were observed. During walks in the fields, we searched for the medicinal plant with help from the healers to review and document their availability at each locality and in different habitats around the villages. Use Values (UV) were calculated to estimate the importance of each medicinal plant and Informant Agreement Ratios (IAR) were calculated to understand how widely known the uses were among the healers. Results: We found 146 species of medicinal plants in 127 genera and 60 plant families that were used for medicinal purposes by the 14 traditional healers interviewed. The family with most medicinal plants was Fabaceae (12 spp., 8%) followed by Poaceae (9 spp., 6%) and Zigiberaceae (8 spp., 5%). The most important and widely used medicinal plants were the sedge Cyperus rotundus (UV=0.71) followed by the dicot tree Salacia dongnaiensis (UV=0.64) and the palm Borassus flabellifer (UV=0.42). The most common preparation method was decoction, which was done for 99 species (68%) followed by grinding with water to produce a drink for 29 species (20%). The 14 healers together used medicinal plants to treat 53 specific conditions. Itching had the highest informant agreement ratio (IAR) value among the specific conditions with 0.33 (4 use-reports, 3 spp.). The general category of digestive system disorders had an informant agreement ratio (IAR) value of 0.35 (57 use-reports, 37 spp.) and this category of treatments also had the highest degree of consensus. The most common life form among the medicinal plants was trees (56 spp., 38%), followed by herbs (41 spp., 28%). The medicinal plants were mostly collected in homegardens (60 spp., 41%). The most commonly used plant parts for medicine was the stem which was used for almost half of the species (69 spp., 48%), followed by the roots (54 spp., 37%). The age of the Tai Lao healers varied from 26–87 years. All of them were male. Their age and educations were not correlated with the number of known medicinal plants. The highest number of known medicinal plants was held by a 70 years old healer (55 spp.). Conclusion: Considering the richness of the healers’ pharmacopeia, and the fact that their profession is not being perpetuated, this study points to the urgent need to document the traditional knowledge from the old herbalists before it disappears with the last practitioners in the rural communities.

Asymmetries in Perceptual Adjustments to Non-Canonical Pronunciations

This paper examines two plausible mechanisms supporting sound category adaptation: directional shifts towards the novel pronunciation or a general category relaxation of criteria. Focusing on asymmetries in adaptation to the voicing patterns of English coronal fricatives, we suggest that typology or synchronic experience affect adaptation. A corpus study of coronal fricative substitution patterns confirmed that North American English listeners are more likely to be exposed to devoiced /z/ than voiced /s/. Across two perceptual adaptation experiments, listeners in test conditions heard naturally produced devoiced /z/ or voiced /s/ in critical items within sentences, while control listeners were exposed to identical sentences with canonical pronunciations. Perceptual adaptation was tested via a lexical decision test, with devoiced /z/ or voiced /s/, as well as a novel alveopalatalized pronunciation, to determine whether adaptation was targeted in the direction of the exposed variant or reflected a more general relaxation. Results indicate there was directional and word-specific adaptation for /z/-devoicing with no evidence for generalization. Conversely, there was evidence of /s/-voicing generalizing and eliciting general category relaxation. These results underscore the role of perceptual experiences, and support an evaluation stage in perceptual learning, where listeners assess whether to update a representation.