Cosmic Evolution of Barred Galaxies up to z ∼ 0.84

We explore the cosmic evolution of the bar length, strength, and light deficit around the bar for 379 barred galaxies at 0.2 < z ≤ 0.835 using F814W images from the COSMOS survey. Our sample covers galaxies with stellar masses 10.0 ≤ log ( M * / M ⊙ ) ≤ 11.4 and various Hubble types. The bar length is strongly related to the galaxy mass, the disk scale length (h), R 50, and R 90, where the last two are the radii containing 50% and 90% of total stellar mass, respectively. Bar length remains almost constant, suggesting little or no evolution in bar length over the last 7 Gyr. The normalized bar lengths (R bar/h, R bar/R 50, and R bar/R 90) do not show any clear cosmic evolution. Also, the bar strength (A 2 and Q b ) and the light deficit around the bar reveal little or no cosmic evolution. The constancy of the normalized bar lengths over cosmic time implies that the evolution of bars and of disks is strongly linked over all times. We discuss our results in the framework of predictions from numerical simulations. We conclude there is no strong disagreement between our results and up-to-date simulations.

It’s Only You and Me and We Just Disagree: The Ideological Foundations of Affective Polarization

Using the extensive battery of issue questions included in the 2020 ANES survey, I find that a single underlying liberal-conservative dimension largely explains the policy preferences of ordinary Americans across a wide range of issues including the size and scope of the welfare state, abortion, gay and transgender rights, race relations, immigration, gun control and climate change. I find that the distribution of preferences on this liberal-conservative issue scale is highly polarized with Democratic identifiers and leaners located overwhelmingly on the left, Republican identifiers and leaners located overwhelmingly on the right and little overlap between the two distributions. Finally, I show that ideological preferences strongly predict feelings toward the parties and presidential candidates. These findings indicate that polarization in the American public has a rational foundation. Hostility toward the opposing party reflects strong disagreement with the policies of the opposing party. As long as the parties remain on the opposite sides of almost all major issues, feelings of mistrust and animosity are unlikely to diminish regardless of Donald Trump’s future role in the Republican Party.

FACTORS INFLUENCE CUSTOMERS PURCHASE INTENTION TOWARDS HYPERMARKETS AT KOTA BHARU, KELANTAN

The study's goal was to look into the relationship between price, product quality, and interior atmosphere and customers' purchasing intentions in the Kota Bharu, Kelantan area. Kota Bharu Mall, Aeon, Billion, Tesco, Mydin, Giant, and Pantai Timur Hypermarket were among the hypermarkets studied. Furthermore, this study was carried out to establish what the most influential variables are that which affect consumers' buying intentions and, as a result, how they choose their favourite hypermarket. The independent variables in this study were price, product quality, and interior atmospheric, while the dependent variable was purchasing intention. In this research, a questionnaire survey was used to collect data from customers at seven hypermarkets in Kota Bharu. A total of 417 accurate and usable questionnaires were collected, with responses reported on a four-point Likert-type scale, with one indicating strong disagreement and four indicating strong agreement. All of the independent variables were found to be strongly related to the dependent variables in the sample. Product quality has the highest positive correlation with purchasing intention following by Interior atmospheric and price came in second and third. This demonstrates that even minor changes in all of the independent variables have an impact on purchasing intent.

Is it fair that advanced workers get paid disproportionally more: economic analysis

PurposeOn the one hand, everyone agrees that economics should be fair, that workers should get equal pay for equal work. Any instance of unfairness causes a strong disagreement. On the other hand, in many companies, advanced workers – who produce more than others – get paid disproportionally more for their work, and this does not seem to cause any negative feelings. In this paper, the authors analyze this situation from the economic viewpoint.Design/methodology/approachTo analyze the problem, the authors use general mathematical models of how utility – and hence, decisions – depends on the pay-per-unit.FindingsThe authors show that from the economic viewpoint, additional payments for advanced workers indeed make economic sense, benefit everyone, and thus – in contrast to the naive literal interpretation of fairness – are not unfair. As a consequence of this analysis, the authors also explain why the labor share of the companies' income is, on average, close to 50% – an empirical fact that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, was never previously explained.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that explains the empirical fact – that the labor share of the income is close to 50%.

Utilisation of Vignettes Instructional Method and Ethical Sensitivity in Decision-Making among Business Studies Teacher Trainees at the University of Nairobi, Kenya

Vignettes have been applied in many academic disciplines over time, as an essential element of experiential learning. At the Department of Educational Communication and Technology, adoption of vignettes instructional method by instructors remains slow, while application by early adopters remains inconsistent. Despite this, little is known about how utilisation of vignettes to teach business ethics at the Department influences teacher trainees’ ethical sensitivity in decision-making. The cross-sectional survey design guided the research process, and primary data were sourced in 2018 from 116 learners. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques were applied. Key results show that trainees who strongly agreed that utilisation of vignettes influenced their ethical sensitivity in decision-making had about 2 times the odds of being ethically sensitive in their decisions as their colleagues who expressed strong disagreement about the same. Besides, those who agreed that utilisation of vignettes influenced their ethical sensitivity in decision-making were about 1.9 times as likely to make ethically sensitive decisions as those who indicated strong disagreement. On aggregate, utilisation of vignettes caused a positive and significant influence on trainees’ ethical sensitivity in decision-making. It also emerged third in the order of relative importance. Notably, the more the trainees appreciated that utilisation of vignettes influenced their ethical sensitivity in decision-making, the higher odds of making ethically sensitive decisions. Thus, improving trainees’ knowledge on the various parameters of vignettes’ utilisation is likely to enhance their ethical sensitivity in decision-making. This may be achieved by dedicating a section of training modules on optimisation of vignette utilisation.

Disagreement and Agonistic Chance in Peer Review

The purpose of grant peer review is to identify the most excellent and promising research projects. However, sociologists of science and STS scholars have shown that peer review tends to promote solid low-risk projects at the expense of more original and innovative projects that often come with higher risk. It has also been shown that the review process is affected by significant measures of chance. Against this background, the aim of this study is to theorize the notions of academic judgment and agonistic chance and to present and analyze situations in which expert reviewers are faced with the challenge of trying to decide which grant proposals to select when there is strong disagreement. The empirical analysis is based on ethnographic observations of ten panel groups at the Swedish Research Council in the areas of natural and engineering sciences. By focusing on disagreement, the study provides a more in-depth understanding of how agonistic chance creeps into the peer-review process and becomes part of the consensus that is created.

Different Memories, Different Worlds

The chapter begins with an illustration of a “mnemonic standoff” between the author and Vitya, a Soviet friend from the 1970s, over the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The two are stunned that they had such different accounts of “what really happened,” and this leads to three general questions: 1. How is it that there can be such strong disagreement between entire national communities about the past? 2. Why were Vitya and I so certain that our accounts of the events in 1945 were true? 3. What deeper, more general commitments of a national community led to the tenacity with which we held our views? The remaining sections of the chapter address why national memory, as opposed to other forms of collective memory, deserves special attention, what a “narrative approach” to national memory is, and how disciplinary collaboration is required to deal with such questions. It then turns to three illustrations that help clarify the conceptual claims. The first involves American and Russian national memory of World War II, the second focuses on differences between Chinese and American memory of the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and the third examines how Russian national memory is used as a lens for interpreting contemporary events in Russia and Georgia. Final sections of the chapter introduce the notion of narratives as “equipment for living” in national memory.

Descriptive analysis of a comparison between lung ultrasound and chest radiography in patients suspected of COVID-19

Background Lung ultrasound (LUS) and chest radiography (CXR) are the most used chest imaging tools in the early diagnosis of COVID-19 associated pneumonia. However, the relationship between LUS and CXR is not clearly defined. The aim of our study was to describe the comparison between LUS interpretation and CXR readings in the first approach to patients suspected of COVID-19. Methods In the time of the first COVID-19 pandemic surge, we prospectively evaluated adult patients presenting to an emergency department complaining of symptoms raising suspicion of COVID-19. Patients were studied by LUS and only those performing also CXR were analyzed. All the patients performed viral reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). LUS studies were classified in 4 categories of probabilities, based on the presence of typical or alternative signs of COVID-19-associated interstitial pneumonia. Accordingly, the CXR readings were retrospectively adapted by 2 experts in 4 categories following the standard language that describes the computed tomography (CT) findings. Patients were divided in two groups, based on the agreement of the LUS and CXR categories. Results were also compared to RT-PCR and, when available, to CT studies. Results We analyzed 139 cases (55 women, mean age 59.1 ± 15.5 years old). The LUS vs CXR results disagreed in 60 (43.2%) cases. RT-PCR was positive in 88 (63.3%) cases. In 45 cases, a CT scan was also performed and only 4 disagreed with LUS interpretation versus 24 in the comparison between CT and CXR. In 18 cases, LUS detected signs of COVID-19 pneumonia (high and intermediate probabilities) while CXR reading was negative; in 14 of these cases, a CT scan or a RT-PCR-positive result confirmed the LUS interpretation. In 6 cases, LUS detected signs of alternative diagnoses to COVID-19 pneumonia while CXR was negative; in 4 of these cases, CT scan confirmed atypical findings. Conclusion Our study demonstrated a strong disagreement between LUS interpretation and CXR reading in the early approach to patients suspected of COVID-19. Comparison with CT studies and RT-PCR results seems to confirm the superiority of LUS over a second retrospective reading of CXR.

Turn-Taking and Disagreement: A Comparison of American English and Mandarin Chinese

This study compares turn-taking and disagreement behaviors in spontaneous conversations in American English and Mandarin Chinese. The English and Chinese speakers observed some turn-taking rules and employed weak disagreement, but differed in the deployment of extended concurrent speech and strong disagreement. Analysis of the Chinese speakers’ reactions reveals nothing negative. This was confirmed by the Chinese speakers’ viewpoints that were explicitly stated in follow-up interviews, which signal that they perceived the practice of extended concurrent speech and strong disagreement in the collected conversations as politic. Furthermore, the similarities and differences between the speakers’ turn-taking and disagreement behaviors appear to be constrained by contextual factors. This discloses the interplay of context, practice, and perception. These findings can raise our awareness of potential issues that might occur in intercultural encounters and the importance of understanding cross-cultural pragmatic differences to avoid miscommunication.

The pragmeme of disagreement and its allopracts in English and Serbian political interview discourse

The paper explores the disagreement pragmeme as a culture-bound notion (Mey 2016a, 2016b, 2001) in the language use of English-speaking and Serbian-speaking politicians. The objectives are to establish the types, frequencies and cultural specificities of disagreement allopracts in political interviews. Furthermore, the research analyses allopracts in relation to the single and multiple dispute profiles (van Eemeren, Houtlosser and Henkemans 2007). The starting assumption is that allopracts will be realised in culturally specific ways despite the fact that the analysed pragmeme belongs to the same communication genre, which is the Immediately Relevant tertium comparationis (Krzeszowski 1990) of the research. The hypothesis to be verified is that the Serbian sub-corpus will yield more examples of strong disagreement. Another aim is to classify the obtained allopracts according to their degrees of strength. The analysis is based on the corpus of 50 political interviews, involving 30 politicians and 262 allopracts.