Wealth of nomads – an exploratory analysis of livestock inequality in the Saami reindeer husbandry

Social inequality is pervasive in contemporary human societies. Nevertheless, there is a view that livestock, as the primary source of wealth, limits the development of inequalities, making pastoralism unable to support complex or hierarchical organisations. Thus, complex nomadic pastoral organisation is predominantly caused by external factors, i.e., historically nomadic political organisation mirrored the neighbouring sedentary population's sophistication. Using governmental statistics on reindeer herding in Norway (2001 - 2018), this study demonstrates nothing apparent in the pastoral adaptation with livestock as the main base of wealth that level wealth inequalities and limits social differentiation. This study found that inequality was generally decreasing in terms of the Gini coefficient and cumulative wealth. For example, the proportion owned by the wealthy decreased from 2001 to 2018, while the proportion owned by the poor increased. Nevertheless, rank differences persist over time with minor changes. Especially, being poor is stable: around 50% of households ranked as poor in 2001 continued to be so in 2018. In sum, results from this study indicate that pastoral wealth inequality follows the same patterns as all forms of wealth. Wealth accumulates over time, and because the highest earners can save much of their income (i.e., newborn livestock), low earners cannot. High earners can thus accumulate more and more wealth over time, leading to considerable wealth inequalities.

The potential role of an activity-based guitar program on the anxiety and fulfillment levels of younger relatives of cancer patients: A pilot study

In this study, the authors evaluated the potential role of an activity-based guitar training program on reducing anxiety and providing fulfillment for younger relatives of cancer patients. Ten active members of KHYD (The Society for Relatives of Cancer Patients), between ages 11 and 17 participated in an 8-week guitar education program. The participants filled out two questionnaires before and after their engagement in the 8-week program, one to measure changes in their anxiety levels (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory) and the other to measure changes in their general fulfillment levels (Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale). Wilcoxon signed rank test, as well as descriptive statistics were used in the analysis of data. Mean rank differences were observed to be statistically significant with respect to total state and trait anxiety scores; in both cases, the participants’ scores decreased after their engagement in the program. Statistically significant mean rank differences were also observed in the overall MSLSS scores and its “friends” and “environment” sub-dimensions; with respect to these, participants’ scores increased after their engagement in the program. Recommendations for more comprehensive, larger-scale studies are given at the end.

Costs dictate strategic investment in dominance interactions

Dominance is important for access to resources. As dominance interactions are costly, individuals should be strategic in who they interact with. One hypothesis is that individuals should direct costly interactions towards those closest in rank, as they have most to gain--in terms of attaining or maintaining dominance--from winning such interactions. Here, we develop a novel analytical framework to test whether interactions are directed strategically in relation to rank differences, and use these to compare strategies across types of interactions that vary in cost. We show that male vulturine guineafowl (Acryllium vulturinum), a gregarious species with steep dominance hierarchies, strategically direct costly interactions towards males occupying ranks immediately below themselves in their group's hierarchy. In contrast, low-cost interactions are not directed towards closest competitors, but towards group members slightly further down the hierarchy. We then show that, as a result of the difference in strategic use of high- and low-cost interactions towards closest competitors, individuals disproportionately use highest-cost interactions--such as chases--towards males found one to three ranks below them. Our results support the hypothesis that the costs associated with different interaction types can determine their expression in social groups.

Search Engine Gender Bias

This article discusses possible search engine page rank biases as a consequence of search engine profile information. After describing search engine biases, their causes, and their ethical implications, we present data about the Google search engine (GSE) and DuckDuckGo (DDG) for which only the first uses profile data for the production of page ranks. We analyze 408 search engine screen prints of 102 volunteers (53 male and 49 female) on queries for job search and political participation. For job searches via GSE, we find a bias toward stereotypically “female” jobs for women but also for men, although the bias is significantly stronger for women. For political participation, the bias of GSE is toward more powerful positions. Contrary to our hypothesis, this bias is even stronger for women than for men. Our analysis of DDG does not give statistically significant page rank differences for male and female users. We, therefore, conclude that GSE’s personal profiling is not reinforcing a gender stereotype. Although no gender differences in page ranks was found for DDG, DDG usage in general gave a bias toward “male-dominant” vacancies for both men and women. We, therefore, believe that search engine page ranks are not biased by profile ranking algorithms, but that page rank biases may be caused by many other factors in the search engine’s value chain. We propose ten search engine bias factors with virtue ethical implications for further research.

Inequalities between overpartition ranks for all moduli

In this paper we give a full description of the inequalities that can occur between overpartition ranks modulo $$ c\ge 2. $$ c ≥ 2 . If $$ \overline{N}(a,c,n) $$ N ¯ ( a , c , n ) denotes the number of overpartitions of n with rank congruent to a modulo c, we prove that for any $$ c\ge 7 $$ c ≥ 7 and $$ 0\le a<b\le \left\lfloor \frac{c}{2}\right\rfloor $$ 0 ≤ a < b ≤ c 2 we have $$ \overline{N}(a,c,n)>\overline{N}(b,c,n) $$ N ¯ ( a , c , n ) > N ¯ ( b , c , n ) for n large enough. That the sign of the rank differences $$ \overline{N}(a,c,n)-\overline{N}(b,c,n) $$ N ¯ ( a , c , n ) - N ¯ ( b , c , n ) depends on the residue class of n modulo c in the case of small moduli, such as $$ c=6, $$ c = 6 , is known due to the work of Ji et al. (J Number Theory 184:235–269, 2018) and Ciolan (Int J Number Theory 16(1):121–143, 2020). We show that the same behavior holds for $$ c\in \{2,3, 4,5\}. $$ c ∈ { 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 } .

Ranks of overpartitions modulo 4 and 8

An overpartition of [Formula: see text] is a partition of [Formula: see text] in which the first occurrence of a number may be overlined. Then, the rank of an overpartition is defined as its largest part minus its number of parts. Let [Formula: see text] be the number of overpartitions of [Formula: see text] with rank congruent to [Formula: see text] modulo [Formula: see text]. In this paper, we study the rank differences of overpartitions [Formula: see text] for [Formula: see text] or [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. Especially, we obtain some relations between the generating functions of the rank differences modulo [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] and some mock theta functions. Furthermore, we derive some equalities and inequalities on ranks of overpartitions modulo [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text].

Gender disparity within academic Canadian urology

Introduction: Increasing female matriculation into medical school has shown an increase in women training in academic urology, but gender disparity still exists within this male-dominated field. This study aims to evaluate publication productivity and rank differences of Canadian female and male academic urologists. Methods: The Canadian Residency Matching Service (CaRMS) was used to compile a list of 12 Canadian accredited urology programs. Using each institution’s website, faculty members’ names, genders, academic positions, and leadership ranks were noted. SCOPUS© was consulted to tabulate the number of documents published, citations, and h-index of each faculty member. To account for temporal bias associated with the h-index, the m-quotient was also computed. Results: There was a significantly higher number of men (164, 88.17%) among academic faculty than women (22, 11.83%). As academic rank increased, the proportion of female urologists decreased. Overall, male urologists had higher academic ranks, h-index values, number of publications, and citations (p=0.038, p=0.0038, p=0.0011, and p=0.014, respectively). There was an insignificant difference between men and women with respect to their m-quotient medians (p=0.25). Conclusions: There is an increasing number of women completing residency in urology, although there are disproportionally fewer female urologists at senior academic positions. Significant differences were found in the h-index, publication count, and citation number between male and female urologists. When using the m-quotient to adjust for temporal bias, no significant differences were found between the gender in terms of academic output.