The Colonialism and Post Colonialism Diaspora and its unique effect on the world culture over the years

Indian Diaspora has never been acknowledged and been neglected in India’s cultural diplomacy for long period of time but their contribution and immense leverage in local communities and government has been recognised in recent years and the Indian Government has taken some measures to link with the diaspora and make them partners in India’s growth and part of International relation. Diaspora Diplomacy plays a crucial role in the foreign policy and in increase economic, political and defense cooperation between different countries. Indian communities are spread across the global in 6 continents and 125 countries, Indian Diaspora is categorized into old, new and gulf Diaspora according to their labour characteristics. The success of Indian entrepreneurs, scientist, academics, media personalities, filmmakers, IT professionals, CEOs in the US has created trust in India’s intellectual abilities abroad. It has been a major source in branding India as a source of well-educated and hard working professionals. Ethnic Indians particularly in New Diaspora countries have become known for their economic, professional academic, scientific and artistic successes and general peaceful integration. The government of India has taken many initiatives for their betterment and organize various programmes for being the India Diaspora close to their host country and also to resolve the issues and challenges faced by the government from the Indian Diaspora.

Exploring historic changes in musical communication: Deconstructing emotional cues in preludes by Bach and Chopin

A growing body of research analyzing musical scores suggests mode’s relationship with other expressive cues has changed over time. However, to the best of our knowledge, the perceptual implications of these changes have not been formally assessed. Here, we explore how compositional choices of 17th- and 19th-century composers (J. S. Bach and F. Chopin, respectively) differentially affect emotional communication. This novel exploration builds on our team’s previous techniques using commonality analysis to decompose intercorrelated cues in unaltered excerpts of influential compositions. In doing so, we offer an important naturalistic complement to traditional experimental work—often involving tightly controlled stimuli constructed to avoid the intercorrelations inherent to naturalistic music. Our data indicate intriguing changes in cues’ effects between Bach and Chopin, consistent with score-based research suggesting mode’s “meaning” changed across historical eras. For example, mode’s unique effect accounts for the most variance in valence ratings of Chopin’s preludes, whereas its shared use with attack rate plays a more prominent role in Bach’s. We discuss the implications of these findings as part of our field’s ongoing effort to understand the complexity of musical communication—addressing issues only visible when moving beyond stimuli created for scientific, rather than artistic, goals.

Personal relative deprivation and pro-environmental intentions

Personal relative deprivation (PRD; the belief that one is worse off than other people who are similar to oneself) is associated with a reduced willingness to delay gratification, lower prosociality, and increased materialism. These results suggest that PRD may play a role in shaping people’s willingness to act to protect the natural environment. We report 3 studies that investigate a possible link between PRD and pro-environmental intentions (ENV). Study 1 was an exploratory study using a US sample; Studies 2 and 3 were pre-registered replications using UK and US samples, respectively. In each study, participants self-reported PRD and ENV; they also indicated their subjective social status (where they come on a national “ladder” of social class) and reported their income, education, age, and gender/sex. All three studies found a negative correlation between PRD and ENV. However, multiple regression analyses in which ENV was regressed on PRD and all other variables simultaneously indicated that the unique effect of PRD was small and, for Studies 2 and 3, the 95% confidence intervals included zero. No other variable emerged as a clear unique predictor across all three studies. The data suggest that PRD may be associated with reduced intention to act pro-environmentally, but the causal status of this association, and its relationship to other demographic and social-status variables, remains a topic for further research.

EXPRESS: Not just form, not just meaning: Words with consistent form-meaning mappings are learned earlier

By leveraging Phonology-to-Semantics Consistency (PSC, Amenta, Marelli & Sulpizio, 2017), which quantifies form-meaning systematicity as the semantic similarity between a target word and its phonological nearest neighbors, wedocument a unique effect of systematicity on Age of Acquisition (AoA). This effect is also found after controlling for theeffect of neighbourhood density measured for word forms and lexical semantics and several other standard predictorsof AoA. Moreover, we show that the effect of systematicity is not reducible to iconicity. Finally, we extensively probethe reliability of this finding by testing different statistical models, analyzing systematicity in phonology and orthographyand implementing random baselines, reporting a robust, unique negative effect of systematicity on AoA, such thatmore systematic words tend to be learned earlier. We discuss the findings in the light of studies on non-arbitrary form-meaning mappings and their role in language learning, focusing on the analogical process at the interface of form andmeaning upon which PSC is based and how it could help children infer the semantics of novel words when context isscarce or uninformative, ultimately speeding up word learning.

619Can social inclusion improve health and educational outcomes for youth experiencing disadvantage?

Focus of presentation Disparity in access to education is a recognised social determinant of health outcomes worldwide. Young people experiencing disadvantage often experience considerably more problems in their health and educational outcomes. The objective of this project, from a social epidemiological perspective, is to investigate whether social inclusion confers the potential to disrupt inequities by improving school completion for vulnerable young people experiencing disadvantage. Findings It is expected that groups with high vulnerability (represented by disadvantage indicators) will have poorer educational trajectories, with lower levels of school completion. It is also expected that this effect will be moderated by the level of social inclusion, such that vulnerable groups with high levels of social inclusion will have higher levels of school completion as compared to vulnerable groups with lower levels of social inclusion. It is also expected that other factors will influence the development of social inclusion, such that the developmental pattern of, and change in, social inclusion from childhood to adolescence may have a unique effect on school completion. Conclusions/Implications Identifying whether social inclusion can moderate the impact of vulnerability on school completion provides the opportunity to inform future interventions and has the potential to provide evidence to government and thus influence policy. Key messages Social inclusion may be a vital key to understanding the effect of disadvantage on health and educational pathways for young people in Australia, and an avenue for disrupting inequities.

The Limitations of Quasi-Experimental Studies, and Methods for Data Analysis When a Quasi-Experimental Research Design Is Unavoidable

A quasi-experimental (QE) study is one that compares outcomes between intervention groups where, for reasons related to ethics or feasibility, participants are not randomized to their respective interventions; an example is the historical comparison of pregnancy outcomes in women who did versus did not receive antidepressant medication during pregnancy. QE designs are sometimes used in noninterventional research, as well; an example is the comparison of neuropsychological test performance between first degree relatives of schizophrenia patients and healthy controls. In QE studies, groups may differ systematically in several ways at baseline, itself; when these differences influence the outcome of interest, comparing outcomes between groups using univariable methods can generate misleading results. Multivariable regression is therefore suggested as a better approach to data analysis; because the effects of confounding variables can be adjusted for in multivariable regression, the unique effect of the grouping variable can be better understood. However, although multivariable regression is better than univariable analyses, there are inevitably inadequately measured, unmeasured, and unknown confounds that may limit the validity of the conclusions drawn. Investigators should therefore employ QE designs sparingly, and only if no other option is available to answer an important research question.

Biofilm Medium Chemistry and Calcium Oxalate Morphogenesis

The present study is focused on the effect of biofilm medium chemistry on oxalate crystallization and contributes to the study of the patterns of microbial biomineralization and the development of nature-like technologies, using the metabolism of microscopic fungi. Calcium oxalates (weddellite and whewellite in different ratios) were synthesized by chemical precipitation in a weakly acidic environment (pH = 4–6), as is typical for the stationary phase of micromycetes growth, with a ratio of Ca2+/C2O42− = 4.0–5.5, at room temperature. Additives, which are common for biofilms on the surface of stone in an urban environment (citric, malic, succinic and fumaric acids; and K+, Mg2+, Fe3+, Sr2+, SO42+, PO43+ and CO32+ ions), were added to the solutions. The resulting precipitates were studied via X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDXS). It was revealed that organic acids, excreted by micromicetes, and some environmental ions, as well as their combinations, significantly affect the weddellite/whewellite ratio and the morphology of their phases (including the appearance of tetragonal prism faces of weddellite). The strongest unique effect leading to intensive crystallization of weddellite was only caused by the presence of citric acid additive in the medium. Minor changes in the composition of the additive components can lead to significant changes in the weddellite/whewellite ratio. The effect of the combination of additives on this ratio does not obey the law of additivity. The content of weddellite in the systems containing a representative set of both organic acids and environmental ions is ~20 wt%, which is in good agreement with natural systems.

Effects on suicidal risk: Comparison of clozapine to other newer medicines indicated to treat schizophrenia or bipolar disorder

Background: Clozapine is the only treatment with regulatory-recognition of lowering suicidal risk, at least in schizophrenia patients. It remains uncertain whether such effects extend to other drugs for psychosis. Methods: We searched for reports on rates of suicidal behavior during treatment with clozapine and other modern drugs for psychosis (aripiprazole, olanzapine, risperidone, quetiapine, and ziprasidone) versus comparison or control treatments and analyzed the contrasts by random-effect meta-analysis to obtain pooled odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results: We identified 35 paired comparisons of modern drugs for psychosis versus comparison or control treatments in 18 reports. There was moderate overall superiority of all agents tested over alternatives (OR = 0.522, p = 0.004). With clozapine, this effect was large (OR = 0.229, p < 0.0001) and consistent (7/7 trials), but significant antisuicidal effects were not found with other drugs for psychosis in 28 other trials (OR = 0.941, p = 0.497). Apparent efficacy of specific agents ranked: risperidone ⩾ olanzapine ⩾ aripiprazole ⩾ ziprasidone ⩾ mixed drugs for psychosis ⩾ quetiapine, but none of these differences was significant. Conclusions: An ability of clozapine to reduce risk of suicides and attempts in schizophrenia patients appears to be a unique effect not shared with other modern medicines indicated for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

Forward genetics combined with unsupervised classifications identified zebrafish mutants affecting biliary system formation.

Impaired formation of the biliary network can lead to congenital cholestatic liver diseases; however, the genes responsible for proper biliary system formation and maintenance have not been fully identified. Combining computational network structure analysis algorithms with a zebrafish forward genetic screen, we identified 24 new zebrafish mutants that display impaired intrahepatic biliary network formation. Complementation tests suggested that these 24 mutants affect 24 different genes. We applied unsupervised clustering algorithms to classify the recovered mutants into three classes unbiasedly. Further computational analyses revealed that each of the recovered mutations in these three classes shows a unique effect on node subtype composition and connection property distribution of the intrahepatic biliary network. Besides, we found that most recovered mutations are viable. In those mutant fish, biliary network phenotypes persist into adulthood, which themselves are good animal models to study chronic cholestatic liver diseases. Altogether, this study provides unique genetic and computational toolsets that advance our understanding of the molecular pathways leading to biliary system malformation and cholestatic liver diseases.