Is suicide underreported? Evidence from Japan

Purpose The underreporting of suicides has been a serious global concern among scholars and policymakers. Several studies have sought to detect the prevalence of underreporting by examining whether suicide mortality rates are negatively correlated with those due to unknown intent or causes. This study adds to the literature by examining the potential underreporting of suicides in Japan, where suicide rates have greatly declined in the recent years. Methods We compiled subnational data from 47 prefectures between 1995 and 2016, obtained from Vital Statistics of Japan. We examined whether (1) mortality rates due to unknown intent or causes increased as suicide rates decreased; and (2) major socioeconomic causes of suicide (unemployment and divorce rates) had any relationship with the deaths due to unknown intent or causes. Results Our analysis indicates that mortality rates due to unknown intent or causes were uncorrelated with suicide rates and the above socioeconomic indicators. Conclusions In Japan, the frequency of suicides has no systematic relationship with deaths due to unknown intent or causes, suggesting the accuracy of suicide statistics.

Base rate neglect and conservatism in probabilistic reasoning: Insights from eliciting full distributions

Bayesian statistics offers a normative description for how a person should combine their original beliefs (i.e., their priors) in light of new evidence (i.e., the likelihood). Previous research suggests that people tend to under-weight both their prior (base rate neglect) and the likelihood (conservatism), although this varies by individual and situation. Yet this work generally elicits people's knowledge as single point estimates (e.g., x has 5% probability of occurring) rather than as a full distribution. Here we demonstrate the utility of eliciting and fitting full distributions when studying these questions. Across three experiments, we found substantial variation in the extent to which people showed base rate neglect and conservatism, which our method allowed us to measure for the first time simultaneously at the level of the individual. We found that while most people tended to disregard the base rate, they did so less when the prior was made explicit. Although many individuals were conservative, there was no apparent systematic relationship between base rate neglect and conservatism within individuals. We suggest that this method shows great potential for studying human probabilistic reasoning.

A Literary Aesthetics of War Crime

In order to develop a literary aesthetics of war crime, I examine the phenomenon of moral immunity in military memoir. Using three paradigmatic examples of memoirs of unjust wars characterised by the routine perpetration of war crimes, I argue that moral immunity is achieved by means of three literary devices: literary irresponsibility, ethical peerage, and moral economy. I then employ the proposed literary aesthetics of war crime to provide an answer to the perennial question of the relationship between literature and morality as well as to two specific instantiations of this question, the value interaction debate in literary aesthetics and the ethics of reading in literary theory. My conclusion is that the literary aesthetics of war crime demonstrates both that there is a systematic relationship between aesthetic value and moral value and that there is no systematic relationship between literary ambiguity and moral uncertainty.

Pandemic Leadership: Did “Scientists” Lock Down More Quickly?

Commentators have suggested a link between leaders having a “science” background and the speed of lockdown after the outbreak of COVID-19. We examine possible underlying mechanisms and test this relationship empirically with a global dataset of the educational background of 188 leaders in office at the start of the pandemic. Using several statistical tests, we find no support for a systematic relationship between a leader having studied a natural science or medicine and the timing of the first lockdown. There are no systematic effects for female leaders and populists either. We caution against generalizations based on a small number of high-profile anecdotes about how certain leadership traits translate into different policy responses during the pandemic.

On Serpents and Doves: the systematic relationship between prudence and morality in Kant’s political philosophy

This paper argues that the political adage “Be ye prudent as serpents and guileless as doves” involves three different types of relation between prudence and morality, namely: unification (Vereinigung), subordination (Unterordnung), and association (Beigesellung). I maintain that these relations are set up according to the same principle that determines the relationship between mechanical and teleological causality in the third Critique. Thus, I argue that morality and prudence are much more systematically related within the system of critical philosophy than is normally assumed in the literature and that this is made possible by way of an intimate relationship between prudence and teleological judgment.

A (supra)nationalist personality? The Big Five’s effects on political-territorial identification

Recent work suggests personality affects the subjective psychological weight one attaches to an identity. This study extends prior findings showing a static effect on European identification in a single country by investigating whether a similar systematic relationship exists for a wider range of political-territorial identities (regional, national, supranational, and exclusively nationalist) across different country contexts (Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom) and over time (2012–2018). Original cross-national and panel survey data show that different traits predict both the type and degree of inclusivity of individuals’ identity attachments. These results contribute to the growing scholarship surrounding personality’s effects on EU support while underscoring the impact predispositions have on citizens’ sociopolitical orientations. They especially illuminate the contrasting profiles associated with those who identify as exclusively nationalist versus supranational European.

The PhyloCode applied to Cintractiellales, a new order of smut fungi with unresolved phylogenetic relationships in the Ustilaginomycotina

The PhyloCode is used to classify taxa based on their relation to a most recent common ancestor as recovered from a phylogenetic analysis. We examined the first specimen of Cintractiella (Ustilaginomycotina) collected from Australia and determined its systematic relationship to other Fungi. Three ribosomal DNA loci were analysed both with and without constraint to a phylogenomic hypothesis of the Ustilaginomycotina. Cintractiella did not share a most recent common ancestor with other orders of smut fungi. We used the PhyloCode to define the Cintractiellales, a monogeneric order with four species of Cintractiella, including C. scirpodendri sp. nov. on Scirpodendron ghaeri. The Cintractiellales may have shared a most recent common ancestor with the Malasseziomycetes, but are otherwise unresolved at the rank of class.

A META-REVIEW OF MANAGEMENT INSIGHTS

There are several overlaps in terms of management. Different books and different scientists approach different subsets of management definitions. This research has been carried out:First, through a series of literature reviews, to capture all aspects of the management term.Second, to shape a systematic relationship enough supporting the term ―management‖, in a hope that it will provide readers with the most optimal definition of management.Type of research: This is a meta-review research which investigates the insights of management via asystematically comprehensive review of management literature.Design/Methodology/Approach: The research is conducted with the whole review of existingtheoretical literature on management which has been mostly published in Management Science Journaland carefully selected qualified papers or book chapters from drives of typical stores such as Elsevier,Jstore, and so on.Findings: Literature review reveals that the management definition should cover both quantitative andqualitative aspects of management. The study has provided a comprehensive model of management andthe most complete definition of management ever.Originality: The research has given the findings of entirely sufficient aspects of management comprisingboth quantitative and qualitative facets and the mutual or causal relationships of synthesized terms.