Fear of pregnancy and childbirth in women and men: gender aspects and parenting experience

The article discusses the fear of pregnancy and childbirth as a multidimensional subjective phenomenon. It is noted that the fear of pregnancy and childbirth is a phenomenon associated not only with the period of expectation of a child and (or) preparation for childbirth, but also with existential experience that arises in the subject outside of partnership and the context of procreation, which is recorded from fertile age. However, pregnancy contributes to the understanding and concretisation of this fear in both partners. The sources of fear of pregnancy and childbirth are extensive. At the same time, in Russian literature, the interpretational aspects of fear are revealed mainly in the female sample. An empirical study was carried out to in-depth study of the fear of pregnancy and childbirth as a female and male problem and its dependence on parenting experience or prospects (n=141). The results demonstrate that fear of pregnancy and childbirth is present in both women and men and does not depend on the life context. The content of the main female and male fears is identical, but the female fear of pregnancy and childbirth is more pronounced and structured. The unified fears for women and men are revealed. However, this fear is more pronounced in subjects without experience of pregnancy and parenting.

Study of the expression of attitudes on intensive parenting in Russian women

The cultural and ideological shift of the parenting paradigm towards the child-centred approach in upbringing leads to the need to study the phenomenology of intensive parenting (motherhood) in Russian psychology. For the first time, the article has presented the quantitative results of the intensity of the attitudes of intensive parenting in Russian women (as part of the pilot version of the Intensive Parenting Attitudes Questionnaire (IPAQ) methodology testing) (Liss M., Schiffrin H.H., Mackintosh V.H., Miles-McLean H., Erchull M.J., 2013) The study involved 138 women aged 23 to 56 years (M = 38.43) with number of children 1 to 5 (M = 1.93). It was found that the central element in the model of intensive parenting Russian women advocate child-centredness. Differences in the fullness of intense parental attitudes, depending on the age of the mother, are described. The severity of the attitudes to intensive motherhood is rather weakly interconnected with the peculiarities of the life context, and the socio-demographic characteristics of women. The findings can be used to address parental stress, burnout and general life dissatisfaction with individual clients and families.

Starring role of Biomarkers and Anticancer Agents as a Major Driver in Precision Medicine of Cancer Therapy

: Precision medicine represents the most modern contemporary medicine trend, based on enormous amounts of data relating to people's health, individual characteristics, and life context using the most appropriate strategies to prevent and cure them. Precision medicine in cancer coordinates most precisely and viable treatment to every individual cancer patient based on the disease's genetic profile. Precision medicine changes the standard one size fits all medication model, which has focused on average responses to care. Significantly, consolidating different modern methodologies for streamlining and checking anticancer drugs can have continuous effects on understanding results. Precision medicine can help explicit anticancer treatments using various drugs and even in discovery, thus becoming the paradigm of future cancer medicine. Cancer biomarkers are a significant focus point in precision medicine, and findings of different biomarkers make this field more promising and challenging. Naturally, genetic instability and the collection of extra changes in malignant growth cells are ways that cancer cells use to adapt and survive in a hostile environment, for example, one made by these treatment modalities. Precision medicine is centered around recognizing which treatments are best for individual patients, dependent on their malignant growth and genetic characterization. This new era of genomics, which is progressively referred to as precision medicine, has ignited a new episode in the relationship between genomics and anticancer drug development.

Daily reality as a relevant form of life

The article focuses on the phenomenon of daily reality as an element of public life. The author analyses the principles this notion is based on. Daily reality is a mode that states the authenticity of a man’s being. The premises which have led to the necessity of the notion’s study are defined, the latter being a fundamental rethinking of rationality’s role as a method to figure out where a man’s place in the world is. The author analyses methodology of the problem within the philosophical discourse, and gives a socio-cultural justification of daily reality structures and levels. To formulate the social and philosophical nature of daily reality clearly actual historical and public life context is considered. Potentially this approach helps investigate the practical side of being, which earlier has been considered by philosophers unessential from the standpoint of motives of a man’s life. The author argues that the rationalization of all the spheres of life is not the only way to regulate social being. Processes which go beyond rationality play a very significant role in human activity organization. Daily reality is not a form of passive, irresponsible living, it is viewed as the human mode of authentic being and one of the phases of active, creative, responsible existence constructing.

Spiritual Exercise as Techne: Philosophy as a Way of Liberating Education

The study of education systems as social phenomena has led scholars to question the role of education in modern society. The question of how to improve education naturally leads to concerns about what is wrong with the present education system. If education is meant to elevate the next generation, how can it meet the goal of ensuring a meaningful existence for those being educated? Scholars have demonstrated that education has been reduced to a process of the construction of objects, where curriculum as techne commodifies students into products with market value. We propose that the tendency of interpreting techne as technology is a perspective of the modern age, and the rules of modern education are based on the rules of modern technology, under the guidance of the paradigm of productivity. We will introduce a broader interpretation of techne which frames it as the cultivation of virtue, i.e., virtue-techne. On this basis, education could be viewed as techne in the sense of praxis (practice, exercise), rather than as fabrication in the sense of production. We highlight the rising rate of student suicides in Taiwan in recent years, where we determine the education system lacks a focus on praxis. This article investigates alternative praxis-oriented notions of education, from Aristotle's cultivation of virtue to Hadot's "spiritual exercises," to advocate for a shift away from the production paradigm. Indebted to Heidegger, we clarify his "techne as revealing" by emphasizing two frameworks for education: The first, modern education being valued by its adherence to metrics based in the paradigm of production. The second, education as a process wherein its value is derived from the life context of the participating individual. Finally, as a comparative study, we explore the current state of education in Russia and Taiwan, and present the case of one high school in Taiwan which has adopted the practice of spiritual exercises in its curriculum, including a required hike to the peak of Taiwan's tallest mountain, to cultivate a sense of (and value for) the liberated life before its students graduate.

Website Design and Trust Elements: A/B Testing on a Start-up's Website

Start-ups are young companies that are hardly known, especially during their early stages, by the relevant stakeholders. A start-up's website is, therefore, often the first point of contact for potential customers, investors, or partners. Such a website usually explains the new product or service and presents the founding team with its competencies. The user's perception of the website and its design can be crucial in determining whether the user is interested in getting in touch with the start-up or even considering the purchase of the respective product or service. User’s trust in the website and its operator is essential for this. The so-called trust elements, such as logos, testimonials, or seals, are intended to create trust on websites. So far, the influence of these elements on user behaviour has hardly been empirically proven in a real-life context. Therefore, we have applied the method of A/B testing to the website of a fictive start-up. Trust elements were placed on one variant of the website (A), whereas on the other variant, there were none (B). The experiment shows that the duration of the user sessions does not differ between the two variants. However, more requests were made on the website variant with trust elements. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Tourist Experiences Recommender System Based on Emotion Recognition with Wearable Data

The collection of physiological data from people has been facilitated due to the mass use of cheap wearable devices. Although the accuracy is low compared to specialized healthcare devices, these can be widely applied in other contexts. This study proposes the architecture for a tourist experiences recommender system (TERS) based on the user’s emotional states who wear these devices. The issue lies in detecting emotion from Heart Rate (HR) measurements obtained from these wearables. Unlike most state-of-the-art studies, which have elicited emotions in controlled experiments and with high-accuracy sensors, this research’s challenge consisted of emotion recognition (ER) in the daily life context of users based on the gathering of HR data. Furthermore, an objective was to generate the tourist recommendation considering the emotional state of the device wearer. The method used comprises three main phases: The first was the collection of HR measurements and labeling emotions through mobile applications. The second was emotional detection using deep learning algorithms. The final phase was the design and validation of the TERS-ER. In this way, a dataset of HR measurements labeled with emotions was obtained as results. Among the different algorithms tested for ER, the hybrid model of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks had promising results. Moreover, concerning TERS, Collaborative Filtering (CF) using CNN showed better performance.

Perceptions of Pre-Service Teachers Regarding the Model Eliciting Activities

This study aims to examine the perceptions of pre-service mathematics teachers about mathematical modelling activities. Participants of the study comprised 23 pre-service mathematics teachers who undertook a course on mathematical modelling. A 12-hour mathematical modelling course revealed the perceptions of participants. After it, the participants found/developed a modelling problem and explained why they evaluated it as a model eliciting activity (MEA). MEA found/developed by participants were examined by taking the principles of developing MEA into consideration. Results showed that many participants considered having more than one solution, the principle based on real-life context, and suitability for group work for MEA. The participants did not focus on the model documentation principle. Based on this result, faculty members can help pre-service teachers by using activities that can be considered appropriate for this principle in modelling education.

How to select good leaders in Asian countries: the case of China and Singapore

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to bring out the possibility of selecting good leaders in Asian countries, i.e., China and Singapore.Design/methodology/approachSince comparative historical analysis enhances the objectivity for academic discussion, Deng Xiaoping’s and Lee Kuan Yew’s leadership successions have been chosen as the cases for studies by virtue of “method of agreement”. Incorporating “argument based on the contrary” into the context for macro-historical analysis, this paper characterises the duo’s successful (at least quite successful) leadership successions, thus offering an alternative paradigm beyond Western-style democracy.FindingsBoth cases of post-Mao China and the independent Singapore indicate that in quite a number of Asian countries, good leaders could still be selected beyond universal suffrage as practised among Western Electoral Democracies, mainly because of the elites-driven context. As to the duo’s succession results, Deng Xiaoping’s selection of leaders was somewhat successful, while Lee Kuan Yew’s was phenomenal.OriginalityThis paper offers readers a glance over the possibility of selecting good leaders in Asian countries not fully based on Western-style democracy. Learning from the duo’s leadership successions, the West may treat elite politics as the supplement under Western Electoral Democracies in order to avoid their countries falling into the trap of populism. The West could meanwhile consider the exceptional criteria prized by the duo for leadership successions. Considering such interactions among elites in the real-life context, it could serve as an alternative model to Western-style democracy.

Transversal Skills for the Implementation of Competence Approach during a Music Pedagogy Process at Primary School

Expertise-based (competence) approach is one of the approaches in pedagogy which in the 21st century can be applied to develop important value-based knowledge, skills and habits. Transversal skills help learners to use knowledge in a real-life context, be ready to take on responsibility for their own learning, constituting a complex achievement, and strengthening the link between knowledge and personal experience. These skills can be acquired by purposefully integrating them with the core skills in all subjects, music including. Transversal skills include such components as: cooperation, creative and entrepreneurial ability, civic participation, critical thinking and problem solving, digital literacy, and self-guided learning skills. It is essential to bring the above-mentioned skills into focus in music pedagogy – to substantiate them theoretically and give a practical guidance how they can be seen in a pedagogical reality and develop them within the frame of music teaching in primary school. Research aim: to describe and substantiate how to enhance the development of transversal skills by applying competence approach during a music pedagogy process at primary school. Materials and methods: this paper will provide the analysis of theoretical literature and education documents on the competence approach, examine possibilities of developing transversal skills in music at Music Primary School. Theoretical findings will be brought into foreground in connection with the pedagogical experience obtained while teaching at Jazeps Vitols Latvian Academy of Music and giving music lessons in general education institutions.