Education and Political Participation

Whether education affects political participation is a long-standing and central question in political philosophy and political science. In this review, we provide an overview of the three main theoretical models that explain different causal pathways. We then synthesize the surge in research using causal inference strategies and show that this literature has generated mixed results about the causal impact of education, even when using similar methods and data. These findings do not provide clear support for any of the three theories. Our next section covers research on civic education and political participation. The quantity of civic education matters little for political participation, but how civic education is taught does matter. Namely, strategies falling under the rubric of active learning show promise. These strategies seem especially effective for historically marginalized students. Our final section calls for more research on how civic education is taught. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 25 is May 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

The Frailty Syndrome: An Emergent Property of Parallel Dysregulation in Multiple Physiological Systems?

Despite its widespread presence in older adults, frailty etiology is still unclear, being associated with dysregulation in diverse physiological systems. Here, we show evidence that frailty emerges from broad loss of homeostasis integrated through complex systems dynamics. Using the NuAge and WHAS cohorts, we calculated Mahalanobis distance-based physiological dysregulation in six systems and tested the breadth, diffuseness, and nonlinearity of associations between frailty and system-specific dysregulation. We found clear support for breadth of associations, but only partial support for diffuseness and nonlinearity: 1) physiological dysregulation is positively associated with frailty in many or all systems, depending on analyses; 2) the number of dysregulated systems or the total amount of dysregulation are more predictive than individual systems, but results only partially replicated across cohorts; 3) dysregulation trends are exponential, but not always significant. These results suggest, but do not fully prove, that frailty is an emergent property of complex systems dynamics.

Patterns of persistence and diffusibility in the European lexicon

This article investigates to what extent the semantics and the phonological forms of lexical items are genealogically inherited or acquired through language contact. We focus on patterns of colexification (the encoding of two concepts with the same word) as an aspect of lexical-semantic organization. We test two pairs of hypotheses. The first pair concerns the genealogical stability (persistence) and susceptibility to contact-induced change (diffusibility) of colexification patterns and phonological matter in the 40 most genealogically stable elements of the 100-items Swadesh list, which we call “nuclear vocabulary”. We hypothesize that colexification patterns are (a) less persistent, and (b) more diffusible, than the phonological form of nuclear vocabulary. The second pair of hypotheses concerns degrees of diffusibility in two different sections of the lexicon – “core vocabulary” (all 100 elements of the Swadesh list) and its complement (“non-core/peripheral vocabulary”). We hypothesize that the colexification patterns associated with core vocabulary are (a) more persistent, and (b) less diffusible, than colexification patterns associated with peripheral vocabulary. The four hypotheses are tested using the lexical-semantic data from the CLICS database and independently determined phonological dissimilarity measures. The hypothesis that colexification patterns are less persistent than the phonological matter of nuclear vocabulary receives clear support. The hypothesis that colexification patterns are more diffusible than phonological matter receives some support, but a significant difference can only be observed for unrelated languages. The hypothesis that colexification patterns involving core vocabulary are more genealogically stable than colexification patterns at the periphery of the lexicon cannot be confirmed, but the data seem to indicate a higher degree of diffusibility for colexification patterns at the periphery of the lexicon. While we regard the results of our study as valid, we emphasize the tentativeness of our conclusions and point out some limitations as well as desiderata for future research to enable a better understanding of the genealogical versus areal distribution of linguistic features.

Why Do Foreign PhD Students Return Home?

Amid concerns about a “brain drain” from less-developed to developed economies, one issue that arises is the role of doctoral students from these countries enrolling in universities in developed economies and then staying (as opposed to returning and bringing their enhanced human capital home). Developed economies may also be concerned with their young scholars remaining abroad post-PhD. Examining confidential micro-data from the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates from 2001-2016, this paper explores the determinants of the return decision, based on a sample of more than 100,000. There is clear support for the view that new PhDs with large amounts of graduate student debt and limited family resources are more likely to return home. Financial considerations seem especially important in the return decision facing students from developing countries not graduating from the most elite US institutions.

A blockchain-based privacy-preserving 5G network slicing service level agreement audit scheme

Network slicing, as a key technique of 5G, provides a way that network operators can segment multiple virtual logic on the same physical network and each customer can order specific slicing which can meet his requirement of 5G service. The service level agreement of network slicing (NS-SLA) of 5G, as a business agreement signed between the network operators and the customers, specifies the relevant requirements for the 5G services provided by the network operators. However, the authenticity of auditing results may not be guaranteed and the customer’s data may be leaked in the existing NS-SLA audit scheme. In this paper, a blockchain-based 5G network slicing NS-SLA audit model is proposed to address the above problems. The blockchain is applied as a public platform and all the dual monitored service parameters will be stored on the blockchain to ensure the authenticity of data. A trapdoor order-revealing encryption algorithm is introduced to audit strategy, which can encrypt the monitored parameters, realize the comparison over ciphertexts and prevent the privacy of data from leaking. Besides, an NS-SLA audit smart contract is designed to implement the audit task and execute corresponding punishment strategies automatically. We make experiments to exam the cost of the blockchain-based system and the results found clear support for the feasibility of the proposed model.

From the annals of Tarnow’s rabbinate. Three documents from the year 1743

The published documents with their explanatory introduction concern a brief episode in the history of the Jewish community in Tarnów, namely the conflict between the local rabbi and the land elder. They both came from influential families of the Jewish elite of Lesser Poland, or even the whole of Poland, and they were additionally related. At first glance, the disagreement between the two most important Tarnovian Jews seems to be a family feud, but in fact it was an element of a significantly broader conflict, taking place in the heart of Lesser Poland’s Jewish population. This was a dispute over land rabbinate, which involved not only Jews but also their Christian protectors. The conflict, which arose for reasons still not entirely clear, placed on opposite sides the rabbi, who was the brother of Dawid Szmelka, and the Landau family, who actively sought to remove Dawid and elect a new land rabbi. The documents show, incidentally, the functioning of the latifundium administration and allow us to understand the motives behind the actions of the owner, Paweł Karol Sanguszko. After a period of hesitation, he definitively settled the dispute in favour of one side, the then land elder, Jecheskiel Landau, which resulted in the Tarnovian rabbi losing his position. Despite his clear support of the new candidate, Sanguszko did not want to burn any bridges, and, even while removing the Tarnovian rabbi, he tried not to antagonize this part of the elite of Lesser Poland Jews.

High honeybee abundances reduce wild bee abundances on flowers in the city of Munich

The increase in managed honeybees (Apis mellifera) in many European cities has unknown effects on the densities of wild bees through competition. To investigate this, we monitored honeybees and non-honeybees from 01 April to 31 July 2019 and 2020 at 29 species of plants representing diverse taxonomic and floral-functional types in a large urban garden in the city of Munich in which the same plant species were cultivated in both years. No bee hives were present in the focal garden, and all bee hives in the adjacent area were closely monitored by interviewing the relevant bee keepers in both 2019 and 2020. Honeybee numbers were similar in April of both years, but increased from May to July 2020 compared to 2019. The higher densities correlated with a significant increase in shifts from wild bee to honeybee visits in May/June/July, while visitor spectra in April 2019 and 2020 remained the same. Most of the species that experienced a shift to honeybee visits in 2020 were visited mostly or exclusively for their nectar. There were no shifts towards increased wild bee visits in any species. These results from a flower-rich garden have implications for the discussion of whether urban bee keeping might negatively impact wild bees. We found clear support that high honeybee densities result in exploitative competition at numerous types of flowers.

Cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between psychotic and depressive symptoms in depressed adolescents

Adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) with psychotic features (delusions and/or hallucinations) have more severe symptoms and a worse prognosis. Subclinical psychotic symptoms are more common in adolescents than adults. However, the effects of psychotic symptoms on outcome of depressive symptoms have not been well studied in adolescents. Depressed adolescents aged 11–17 with and without psychotic symptoms were compared on depression severity scores at baseline and at 28- or 42-week follow-up in two large UK cohorts. Psychotic symptoms were weakly associated with more severe depression at baseline in both cohorts. At follow-up, baseline psychotic symptoms were only associated with depressive symptoms in one sample; in the other, the effect size was close to zero. This supports the DSM5 system of psychotic symptoms being a separate code to severity rather than the ICD10 system which only allows the diagnosis of psychotic depression with severe depression. There was no clear support for psychotic symptoms being a baseline marker of treatment response.

Did Polish Nationwide Catholic Weekly Newspapers Support Andrzej Duda in the Presidential Campaign in 2020? A Case Study

The aim of the article was to determine the degree of political involvement of the most important representatives of the Polish Catholic press, i.e. “Gość Niedzielny”, “Niedziela”, “Idziemy”, and “Przewodnik Katolicki” in the 2020 presidential campaign in Poland. The periodicals took into account the important context of the campaign, i.e. the coronavirus pandemic, the lockdown and its social and political consequences, as well as the problem of polarisation of the Polish political scene. “Gość Niedzielny”, “Niedziela” and “Idziemy” gave clear support to Andrzej Duda. The political involvement of the above press titles should be assessed as going beyond Catholic social science. “Przewodnik Katolicki” was the only one to point out both the strengths and weaknesses of the incumbent’s programme and political activity.

Typological Profiles of Depression of College Students: Latent Classes and Controlling for Response Bias of the Baptista Depression Short-Scale (EBADEP-short)

Response styles and non-linearity might reduce the validity of scores on depression inventories. To address both issues, we explored the latent class structure of the Baptista’s Depression Scale (EBADEP), and the influence of extreme response bias. In total, 1,137 Brazilian college students (M = 26 years, SD = 7.3) participated in this study. Taxometric analysis yielded ambiguous results, without clear support for either a dimensional or a categorical representation of the data. We found three latent classes: one comprising participants with a tendency to endorse items about sadness, angst, pessimism, and low self-efficacy; another with individuals scoring low on all symptoms; and a third with intermediate scores. We found no relationship between the composition of latent classes and extreme response. Participants who reported having received a diagnostic of depression were more likely to belong to the first latent class. These findings validate the clinical usefulness of a latent class structure for the EBADEP.